The four men behind The Pirate Bay, who were found guilty of promoting copyright infringement in April, have been denied a request for a retrial, the BBC reports, after a Swedish court said that the affiliation with several copyright protection groups by one of the presiding judges did not constitute a bias. However, the court of appeal said Judge Tomas Norstrom should have declared that he was a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association before the case went to trial. "The fact that he failed to shed …

It's an understatement to say that online video ads have thus far been disappointing for advertisers. They still mostly look and feel like TV -- in many cases they are repurposed TV ads -- but because they are online, they are much more annoying, says Ad Age's Michael Learmonth. Meanwhile, because the video market is splintered, and many sites lack the kind of content advertisers are comfortable with, advertisers have been reticent to spend money on new creative for online video. Nevertheless, the ad recession has led to a push to try and find new formats for …

Apple's iPhone 3GS is a great device, boasting faster speeds and video functionality, but at less than two weeks old, it's still too new a product for game developers to be creating games that take advantage of its new features. In fact, some developers say it's simply "not wise" to do so. Last week, Apple announced that it sold 1 million iPhone 3GSs in its first weekend. While this is impressive, the consumer electronics giant has sold more than 40 million iPhones, iPhone 3Gs and iPod Touches worldwide. As Cnet's Erica Ogg points out, the older models …

TechCrunch has vague details about a new "Twitter-powered ad network" from vertical ad network operator Glam Media. The report is short on details, although in a statement, CEO Samir Arora, says the initiative will be tied to GlamApps, the company's application platform. He adds: "Unlike Social Network apps that live 'inside' MySpace and Facebook, Twitter is revolutionizing the apps business by pioneering an open model- Glam sees this as the first mid and long tail of Social Apps, much like iPhone has done for mobile apps with a pay for apps model. Given Internet apps are free, …

EBay's plans to take Skype public are being threatened by a dispute with the company's cofounders, who still own a piece of the software used by the voice-over Internet protocol provider, Bloomberg reports. The company told a London court in April that it may have to suspend its service if the fight is not resolved. Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, who left the company after eBay acquired it in 2005, have accused the online auctioneer of breaching a licensing deal, and are threatening to pull the technology. EBay in turn is suing the founders in London to prevent …

At an investors meeting on Thursday, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said the company had "nothing to say" about a possible search deal with Microsoft. "If we ever have a deal with Microsoft, it will be announced publicly and until we do, we have nothing to say." Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said the software giant was still open to a partnership with Yahoo but he didn't elaborate. According to The Wall Street Journal, Bartz has sent "mixed signals about a deal" during recent conference appearances. At the investors meeting, Bartz also laid out her plan …

Several Web sites faced problems immediately following the death of pop star Michael Jackson, as millions of Web users sought out information online as soon as the news broke. Not surprisingly, microblogging site Twitter was among them, receiving hundreds of thousands of tweets about the subject in a very short amount of time. As TechCrunch's MG Siegler says, "while I only got a couple actual Fail Whales, the site was really sucking wind for much of the hour that people were trying to get information about him." Who else failed? According to Siegler, AOL-owned TMZ went down several …

A lengthy BusinessWeek article portrays Microsoft as a very different company than it was two or three years ago. "No longer able to impose its will on the computing world, the Redmond, Wash.-based software giant is scrambling to catch up with all the changes the Web is unleashing," writes Peter Burrows. Indeed, CEO Steve Ballmer has recognized that Microsoft needs to change, as legacy software businesses like Office and Windows face new challenges brought about by cheap or free Web software and communications platforms. Ballmer has said the software giant needs to move towards selling the likes of Office on …