Benjamin Edelman, the Harvard Law student who spends his free time fighting cyber crime, has issued a new report that takes aim at the shady world of ad network affiliates. In his research, Edelman implicates a handful of relatively unknown ad networks, including a few well-regarded technology providers like DoubleClick's Falk and behavioral targeting firm AlmondNet. The report shows how an endless trail of affiliates can lead to sexually explicit advertisements on unsuspecting publishers' sites. Representatives from both Falk and AlmondNet said they felt victimized by their affiliates, who they thought were legitimate players. Edelman says it's "very typical" for …

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 …

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 …

Mark Tutssel, worldwide CEO of the ad agency Leo Burnett, told marketers they need to learn to reach consumers on user-generated content sites like YouTube, which the Financial Times points out now has greater reach than MTV. Tutssel said TV-like commercials would be effective on a site like YouTube, but savvy marketers would create videos with the intention of having them distributed virally like the other viral content on the site. Consumer interaction, allowing consumers to create their own commercials and content, and trusting that they want to interact with your brand would also be key to the future of …

Google, Inc., has sold its stake in Baidu.com, the Chinese search engine it was at one time thought to be interested in buying. The search giant will instead turn its focus to usurping Baidu's top spot among search engines in China. Google spokeswoman Debbie Frost confirmed the sale of some 750,000 shares--worth about $63 million. "It has always been our goal to grow our own successful business in China and we are very focused on that," Frost said in a statement. Google is still a distant number 2 to Baidu in China; last year, Google signaled its intent to compete …

How frustrating is it to find good news on the Web these days? Every news organization with a Web site (and at this point that would be almost all of them) seems to be reporting on the same 3-5 stories every day--original reporting is now a hard thing to come by indeed. That's more or less the idea behind Digg.com, a tech-news community site that lets readers recommend good articles to others. Digg.com challenges the old media notion that editors know best what consumers want to read--and it's quickly become the third-most-visited Web site dedicated to technology news, according to …

A Wall Street Journal article attempts to demonstrate how to market your products on MySpace the right way. Marketers, weary about buying ad inventory on the massive site due to the explicit content that can be found all over its user pages, have no control over the content on MySpace--and thus, many don't want to play. But some are turning to what they can control to help them reach MySpace's 85-100 million users. To promote its summer blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," the Walt Disney Company built its own MySpace page, and bought an ad appearing on …

Google, which built its empire on pay-per-click search and contextual advertising, is now testing a cost-per-acquisition network, that would only require merchants to pay when users perform a specific action. As usual, Google was light on details about the new test--but according to the Financial Times, the ads will be carried on a separate network from AdSense, leading the way for advertisers and publishers to take advantage of both AdSense and the new CPA network. Publishers that take part in the test will be able to select the merchants whose ads they want on their sites. CPA networks are similar …

Silicon Valley heavyweights want a new law passed that would protect them from consumer ire, should the government come calling for their personal data. eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman and other members of the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum gathered in Washington to discuss more clearly defined legislation of consumer privacy and company compliance as it pertains to consumer privacy. The companies involved in the Forum each have a vested interest in simple-to-understand compliance legislation--they want to be able to assure the extent to which their privacy is being protected. U.S. Rep Joe Barton, R-Texas--who has been actively involved in Net …

Maybe members of the RIAA and MPAA should turn their attention inward: a new report says media companies--of all places--should consider banning MP3 music players and memory sticks from their offices because employees are using them to steal data. The report, from professional services firm Deloitte, says more than half the world's media companies were victims of data theft last year, and employees were often the culprits. The research points to insufficient protection from inside the IT systems at media and telecom firms. This, too, despite the fact that more and more assets are becoming digital. In this day and …