Michael Copps, a Democratic commissioner at the Republican-controlled Federal Communications Commission, told an audience of technology executives to get more involved in Net neutrality, an issue that could have big implications for their industry. He says that letting operators control the Internet would irrevocably change it forever, and further telecom consolidation would exacerbate the issue. It's the same thing as media consolidation, he says, which has lead to controlling media messages and content from the top down. That, partly, is what led people away from mass media to the Web in the first place. "We need to figure out," Copps …

For every Google or Yahoo, the short history of the Web is positively littered with "next big thing" startups that got their 15 minutes but couldn't sustain the success in the end. YouTube, started by a pair of twenty-something friends last year, is in that boat now, except its 15 minutes isn't over yet--and may never be if it can figure a few things out. The first thing the company needs is advertising revenue. To that end, YouTube's first significant move is this new partnership with NBC, which will pay the home video site to distribute promotional video clips of …

You'd think Rupert Murdoch is MySpace's Chief Publicity Officer, granting one lengthy sit-down interview after the next, piping on and on about MySpace, a company that doesn't even represent 1 percent of News Corporation's massive media fortune, and the tremendous value of social networks. Not only that, but given what he says during these lengthy sit-down interviews--that technology is shifting power away from editors, publishers, the establishment, the media elite, etc.--you wouldn't think he's talking about businesses he actually owns and people he actually employs. And he's all-smiles while prognosticating the downfall of traditional media, on which 99 percent of …

GBuy, Google's PayPal killer, is going live--possibly this week, writes The Wall Street Journal. The service, which would allow consumers to enter a password at a secure site instead of throwing their credit card information around everywhere, is expected to be available as early as this week, "people briefed on the situation" said. To attract initial customers, Google plans to offer an unspecified rebate to people who complete their online purchases using GBuy. So what's so great about this service? Google will add little GBuy icons to the items searched for on Google.com that use the service. The little GBuy …

Why? For possibly helping pedophiles, identity thieves, and other sickos find the private information of 619 students at public schools in Catawba County, North Carolina. The search engine made the social security numbers and test scores of 619 students available on its site until Friday, when the company complied with a local court order to delete all information about that county's board of education from its servers. Forbes spoke with search indexing experts who said Google's Web robots couldn't have successfully hacked into the school's site without knowing the password. Instead, something else must have happened--like someone making the student …

Real Networks will start selling streaming-video ads on its popular online gaming platform RealArcade, the company said Tuesday. The site gets about 750,000 downloads a day; users will soon have to sit through 10- to 15-second ads while games download or between levels. According to The Washington Post, RealNetworks is the first major online game service to feature streaming video ads. That's a little hard to believe, actually. I thought WildTangent and Atom Shockwave already sold streaming video ads. In any event, Real's first advertisers will be Honda Motor Corp. and Hasbro. RealArcade is one of dozens of so-called casual …

Metropolitan-area Wi-Fi: the next big thing or the next colossal waste of tax dollars? In Taipei, an experiment by the city government to outfit the city with wireless Internet access has been a big disappointment; just 40,000 of its 2.6 million residents have signed up to use the service, called WiFly, in the six months it has been operational. WiFly was part of Taipei's plan to position itself as a world leader in technology. It only charges $12.50 a month too, so why isn't anyone biting? As one man hunched over his laptop in a coffee shop told The New …

When interviewing major media executives, New York Times reporter Richard Siklos says they often turn the tables on him, asking: 'So who do you think has got this Internet thing figured out?' His answer: no one, but each of the biggies get a certain number of brownie points here and there. Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation deserve big points for getting MySpace and its 80 million users, but now they need to figure out what to do with it, because MySpace still makes a pithy contribution to the conglomerates' bottom line. Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company get points …

Nobody involved in the net neutrality debate is taking a neutral stance, writes Jeff Birnbaum in The Washington Post. At the heart of the issue lies the question: who should pay for improvements to the Internet? Telecom companies are spending billions to upgrade their networks, and they believe someone should have to pay--notably Google, Yahoo, and anyone else who benefits from the speedy delivery of Web traffic over big telecom's pipes. Forcing companies to pay for faster delivery would likely prove to be a hardship for smaller companies, which to date have benefited from free traffic and equal opportunity, net …

Former AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case knew as early as 2000 about transactions that allowed the Web giant to overstate its revenues ahead of its merger with Time Warner, according to Reuters. Court documents made available Friday show that AOL Board Member Miles Gilburne was "under extreme pressure to help the company make its financial targets" while it tried to close its purchase of Time Warner. The documents apparently illustrate just how much top executives at AOL knew about over-zealous accounting practices prior to the largest merger in corporate history. Reuters received the information in a series of e-mails …