Online video sites have more than doubled their traffic since the Hollywood writers strike began at the end of October, according to Nielson Online. With so many popular TV programs off the air, U.S. consumers have sought out alternatives like YouTube, whose traffic has spiked 18 percent in the last two months. Newer video sites have also found success. Startup Crackle said its audience doubled from 1.2 million at the end of October to 2.4 million in November and December. "That is greater growth than you would normally see in such a short period, and the strike …

The Pirate Bay, a gigantic directory of pirated movies, music and software, might soon be shut down, thanks to evidence gathered during a raid on its offices by Swedish police in 2006. Prosecutors expect to charge the service's operators with conspiracy to breach copyrights. The raid came at the behest of Hollywood execs and U.S. government officials, who have long complained about Sweden's "weak copyright laws, lax enforcement, high broadband penetration and general antipathy toward the entertainment industry." But the Pirate Bay will be tough to prosecute. Millions across the world use its Web site to …

2007 was a bad year for Big Music; 2008 could be even worse. Physical album sales across the world fell between 10 and 20 percent in most countries (19 in the U.S.), and while digital download sales grew tremendously, they did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. Worse, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing. In 2007, Radiohead released a new album online and let consumers choose the price, it was also the year Madonna left Warner Music to strike a deal with concert promoter Live Nation. It also …

Blogger Scot Wingo from eBay Strategies reports that Yahoo is bidding against Microsoft for online auctioneer eBay. Yahoo, apparently, is the favorite to win with a bid of $40-$41 per share. eBay shareholders would end up owning most of a combined Yahoo-eBay (eBay has a bigger market cap than Yahoo). Moreover, Yahoo's misfiring management team might not do any better running eBay than eBay's own management team. Valleywag's Owen Thomas sees this as a move of last resort for Yahoo, saying the company's shareholders "would be foolish to sign onto a highly dilutive deal unless they see absolutely …

Days after adding key members from Google, Facebook and Plaxo, the Data Portability Workgroup has added more social media executives from LinkedIn, SixApart, Twitter and Yahoo's Flickr. The additions underscore the new interest in the recently formulated group, which seeks to develop a set of open access standards for sharing social media data. The new members are Steve Ganz, Senior Web Developer at LinkedIn, Matthew Rothenberg, Product Strategy and Management at Flickr, David Recordon, an IT exec at SixApart, and Blain Cook, a developer at Twitter. Moreover, just because Facebook has signed up doesn't mean the company …