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Fending criticisms from multiple parties, Google once again made the case for digitizing millions of orphaned books before the U.S. District Court Southern District Court of New York, in a fairness hearing held Thursday. A total of 27 different parties requested to speak before the court. Five were in favor, including Sony, the National Federation of the Blind and the Center for Democracy and Technology. The rest -- 22 in total -- opposed the settlement, including Amazon, Microsoft, the Open Book Alliance, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center. Those in favor praised the idea of rendering hard-to-find books in electronic form, because they could be accessible to a much larger group of readers, and not be lost to the ages. The objectors, however, voiced strong concerns that the settlement case preempts U.S. copyright law altogether. Others voiced privacy and antitrust concerns.

In the first case of its kind, an Australian court has ruled that an internet service provider cannot be responsible for illegal downloading. iiNet, Australia's third largest ISP, was taken to court by a group of 34 movie production houses. The group included the Australian divisions of Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox. They claimed that iiNet was guilty of copyright infringement for not preventing illegal downloads of films.

Hollywood studios lost a landmark copyright court case against an Australia internet provider on Thursday, when a court ruled iiNet could not be held responsible for unauthorized downloads of movies using its service.

"Do American students have First Amendment rights beyond the schoolyard gates? The answer is yes and no, according to two conflicting federal appellate decisions Thursday testing student speech in the online world. "Ultimately, the Supreme Court is going to have to decide if there ever is a time students have full-fledged First Amendment rights," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of Virginia-Based Student Press Law Center. He's one of the attorneys in the cases the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided."

Former children's laureates Quentin Blake, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson, bestselling authors Jeffrey Archer and Louis de Bernières and critical favourites Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith and Jeanette Winterson have all opted out of the controversial Google book settlement, court documents have revealed. Authors who did not wish their books to be part of Google's revised settlement needed to opt out before 28 January, in advance of last week's ruling from Judge Denny Chin over whether to allow Google to go ahead with its divisive plans to digitise millions of books. The judge ended up delaying his ruling, after receiving more than 500 written submissions, but court documents related to the case show that more than 6,500 authors, publishers and literary agents have opted out of the settlement.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday resurrected a possible settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by freelance writers who said that newspapers and magazines had committed copyright infringement by making their contributions available on electronic databases. The proposed settlement was prompted by a 2001 decision from the Supreme Court in favor of six freelance authors claiming copyright infringement in The New York Times Company v. Tasini. After the Tasini decision, many freelance works were removed from online databases. Most publishers now require freelance writers to sign contracts granting both print and online rights. After the decision, the authors, publishers and database companies who were parties to several class-action lawsuits negotiated a global settlement that would pay the plaintiffs up to $18 million.

"The time is ripe for media vultures to make their move. In 2007, the court blocked the FCC's attempt to change the rules of ownership. Now it is reconsidering that decision. 'A three-judge panel of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, which had put the stay in effect…ordered the FCC and consumer groups to 'show cause' by mid January (2010) why the stay should not be dropped.'"

Clear Channel has lost in appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals to challenge a 70 year old billboard zoning regulation in New York.

"Lawmakers also said there is a "causal connection" between access to such games and psychological or other harm to children. In their petition to the high court, state lawyers cited studies showing children who repeatedly watch on-screen games can become more aggressive, antisocial, and less able to distinguish the consequences of violence in real life."

A sour economy and civil litigation - including one suit filed by Titan Media Group's parent company - have prompted video website Veoh.com to file for bankruptcy. Veoh co-founder Dmitry Shapiro wrote in a blog post that despite "great vision, a passionate team, tens of millions of users, millions in revenues and victory in court were not enough."

Update on the court case between Arbitron radio ratings and Spanish Broadcasting Systems over SBS's refusal to encode their signals so that Arbitron can measure audience. SBS claims that Arbitron's measurment under counts Hispanic listeners and hurts their advertising rates.

The issue of pairing fan-created videos with recorded music is one that still awaits court ruling. Music companies are suing video sites for copyright infringement when fans upload self-created videos using songs from their copyrighted artists.

The impact of the Supreme Court's recent ruling on political advertising and corporations could be an increase in revenues for local TV news stations.

"An article published in, The Guardian, discusses a debate taking place in the British Parliament around a new "digital economy bill. One amendment in particular is stirring a lot of discussion about its impact on content online. The Guardian writes: The new proposal - which was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140 - gives a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a Web site accused of hosting a "substantial" amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. Critics say the major problem with this amendment is that ajudge could shut down a Web site because of copyright infringement, even if thesite's manager didn't put the content online."

An article published on Thursday in, The Guardian, discusses a debate taking place in the British Parliament around a new "digital economy bill." One amendment in particular is stirring a lot of discussion about its impact on content online. The Guardian writes: The new proposal - which was passed in the House of Lords by 165 votes to 140 - gives a high court judge the right to issue an injunction against a Web site accused of hosting a "substantial" amount of copyright infringing material, potentially forcing the entire site offline. Critics say the major problem with this amendment is that a judge could  shut down a Web site  because of copyright infringement, even if the site's manager didn't put the content online. What is left unanswered is how a company can be held accountable for every piece of content placed on its site.  Many critics of this bill and others in Europe say it is most likely to result in the stifling of creativity, innovation and free speech. In the United States, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act offers some protection against liability to Internet service providers and Web sites that host copyrighted material uploaded by third parties.

The San Francisco Bay Guardian is entitled to half the advertising revenue of the rival SF Weekly to help collect $21 million in damages after a jury verdict of illegal price-cutting, a Superior Court commissioner ruled Tuesday.

More specific legal language on the Net-Neutrality court decision.

Court overturns FCC ruling banning Comcast from restricting Bit Torrent

"A federal court policy-making body is belatedly entering the internet age by proposing that judges clearly inform jurors they must not electronically discuss cases they are hearing."

The Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, combines in a single piece of legislation provisions from around the world: whistle-blower laws and rules about Internet providers from the United States; source protection laws from Belgium; freedom of information laws from Estonia and Scotland, among others; and New York State's law to counteract "libel tourism," the practice of suing in courts, like Britain's, where journalists have the hardest time prevailing.

RealNetworks has agreed to kill its DVD-copying software and pay $4.5 million in settling a copyright-infringement lawsuit filed by Hollywood studios. As part of the settlement announced Wednesday, the provider of online entertainment services also agreed to drop its appeal of a San Francisco federal court ruling that barred RealNetworks from distributing or supporting RealDVD or any other technology that enables the duplication of the studios' copyrighted content. The 2008 lawsuit filed by Viacom and the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that RealDVD illegally circumvented the anti-piracy technology embedded in DVDs. The DVD Copy Control Association, which licenses Hollywood-sanctioned copyright-protection technology, joined the suit later, claiming RealNetworks was also in violation of its DVD CCA license.