NBC Universal and News Corp. have joined forces to crush YouTube, and how does Google respond? By suggesting that it wants to sign on as a distribution partner for the venture. It seems the world weird Web is always made a little weirder by Google. Indeed, News Corp. President Peter Chernin confirmed Google's request. The "frienemy" strikes again? It certainly sounds as though this would result in a more favorable deal for News Corp. and NBC than either could have negotiated on its own. But any Google deal would be conducted on News Corp. and NBC's terms. …

A recent column by the newspapers,which urged newspaper companies to start charging for content in order to stave off declining revenues, was met with a barrage of criticism from readers. "Content is no longer worth paying for," said one. "Going forward, it will not be possible to charge for [it]..." Added another: "Why would I ever pay to read a column like yours when I could just as easily read someone's blog?" In a follow-up editorial, the columnist, Joe Lazarus, understandably hurt when he read such remarks, said his readers exuded "a sense of entitlement" in "benefiting from …

Rocketboom founder Andrew Baron says ad revenue just isn't doing it for the popular tech news video blog. The site, which averages 200,000 downloads per day, seven days a week, simply doesn't attract a large enough audience for advertisers that want to blast their commercials to millions. So Baron says Rocketboom is again toying with the idea of charging for its content, an idea many Web publishers seem to be revisiting. Haven't consumers shown that they don't want to pay for content? Hasn't the proliferation of shared information sites like Digg and user-generated content in general proved that? It …

Things got worse for Vonage Holdings Corp. on Friday after a federal judge issued an injunction, barring the VoIP provider from using Internet phone technology patented by Verizon Communications. U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton agreed that Verizon would suffer harm if he allowed the Internet phone company to continue using its patented VoiP technologies. The judge will delay signing the order for two weeks, giving Vonage time to convince him to delay it indefinitely as the company seeks to have the whole patent infringement case overturned. Vonage told its customers that it wouldn't experience service interruptions, but the …

Activist groups are hitting back at Viacom in its $1 billion lawsuit against Google's YouTube, according to an AP report. MoveOn.org and Brave Films LLC on Thursday sued Viacom for improperly asking that YouTube remove a parody containing clips from the network's popular show, "The Colbert Report." The activist groups argued that their usage of the "Colbert" clips was protected under "fair use" provisions of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act and that Viacom's removal request amounted to a "misrepresentation" subject to legal damages. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, and comes about a …

Libery Media Holding Corp., the folks behind DirecTV and other satellite services, said it was suing The Walt Disney Corp. for allowing movie download services to sell titles the media giant licensed exclusively to its cable network, Starz Entertainment. The movie company brought the suit directly against Disney's Buena Vista Television unit, which inked deals to sell movies on Apple's iTunes as well as Wal-Mart's new movie download store. Starz says that under a 2005 licensing agreement, Disney is barred from selling certain films over the Web, such as the blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," …

Microsoft is closing the doors of its Soapbox video service to new users until it implements better safeguards to keep its users from uploading copyrighted materials. This means the establishment of content-filtering technology, now being built by Audible Magic, a service that's also used by News Corp.'s online properties. The software giant has agreements with several big media companies to distribute movies and TV shows over the new video service, but it's already seen Soapbox fill up with unauthorized clips since its beta test began last month. As a result, no new subscribers will be added, but anyone …

If you've listened to Yahoo chief Terry Semel recently, you know Yahoo Search's switch to Panama, the search advertising system designed to bring in more money for Yahoo and make text ads more relevant for advertisers, has gone swimmingly. Given his renewed love affair with both his ad customers and search in general, Semel and Yahoo are making a PR blast about its new efforts to curb click fraud. Pre-empting the new standards to be laid out jointly by the IAB and Yahoo's search engine cousins, the Web giant has appointed a new vice president of marketplace quality …

Given that Google was just sued by Viacom for $1 billion in copyright damages, you could be forgiven for reading that headline twice. But Google, everybody's favorite "frienemy," is allowing users to put video content from Viacom and other media companies on their Google home page. Indeed, the search giant is now letting its billions of users download a free software tool called "Google Gadget" that lets users watch a selection of video channels--not TV, but their mobile and broadband versions--on Google.com. Double-click on the little video image and you can instantly watch full-screen video. This development …

In the tech circles, bloggers are shouting "hooray" at the news that CD sales for the first three months of the year declined 20 percent from a year earlier. This latest sign indicates that the seismic shift in the way consumers get music is accelerating. Sadly for the music industry, CD sales still represent 85 percent of all sales, despite the decline. According to The Wall Street Journal, music retailers are already going the way of the dinosaur: approximately 800 retail stores closed nationwide last year. Even worse for music executives is the fact that the rate of decline …