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In a setback for Hollywood, an Australian judge has ruled that an Internet Service Provider (ISP) is not liable for the illegal downloads of its customers.

Good technology has value, but leading social networks require "network effects." Facebook is infinitely more valuable because all your friends are on it. Facebook has leveraged this "critical mass" of users to stay ahead of new rivals, too. Why visit Twitter, you may ask, when Facebook has continually extended its feature set to keep up with its less popular competitor? The story of social networks is in fact a story about network effects: How can a service reach a point at which there are enough users and content to be useful?

"On average, viewers watch FLO TV for 30 minutes a day while commuting, sitting at their desks, or waiting in line. The service is available in more than 100 U.S. cities now."

Wal-Mart Stores reached an agreement with Live Nation Entertainment to sell tickets to concerts and other events at about 500 stores. The service will be introduced in the next few months in cities including Chicago and Los Angeles, according to Irving Azoff, executive chairman of Live Nation. The new accord will let Wal-Mart shoppers buy tickets for concerts, sports and other events at cash registers in the retailer's entertainment department, Mr. Azoff said. Live Nation also sells tickets at Blockbuster stores.

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.

Article discussing the projected increases in entertainment content for consumers in India as a result of the recent Finance Bill, which will instate a service tax on temporary transfers of copyright

NBC-Universal Vice President Richard Cotton called upon internet service providers to be permitted to filter content over their pipes for copyright violations, and compared copyright filtering to filtering for computer viruses."

Universal Music Group is using music download service Grooveshark for offering pre 1972 Universal Recordings for free without permission.

google putting in place the resources to expand its local services. poses a problem, however, as google expands beyond research to content. its reputation rests on impartial search, but with as the slowing growth of revenues from search advertising, it needs to find new growth markets.

Buried in the language of the FCC's proposed rules for net neutrality is a loophole that states the the principles do not apply to copyrighted works. This clause would pressure Internet Service Providers to act as copyright police.

Verizon is terminating internet service to an unknown number of repeat copyright scofflaws, a year after suggesting it was not adopting a so-called graduated-response policy.

The XBox moves into cable TV turf. What does it mean for the industry?

"International cable company Liberty Global Inc. has reached a deal to sell its stake in a Japanese telecommunications-services provider for $4 billion, a transaction that will help it focus on consolidation of the European cable-TV industry."

"Australian internet rights groups fear a piracy court case could force internet service providers (ISPs) to become "copyright cops" and cut web access to customers who illegally download"

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.

Explores the economic angle of google's potential withdraw from China, and offers a competing argument that the firm's threats to leave may in fact be a face saving measure driven by the bottom line.

"Apple's iPad is due in late March, pending FCC approval, and on the FCC's official broadband blog, Director/Scenario Planning Phil Bellaria and Wireless Bureau Deputy Chief John Leibovitz say there may be trouble ahead if the device drives up demand for mobile broadband. They write that the iPad announcement on January 27 "set off a new round of reports of networks overburdened by a data flow they were not build to handle," saying the problems are reminiscent of the outages AOL users ran into when the then-dialup service went to unlimited use in 1996 -- problems that persisted for months."