Facebook late last night agreed to fix the most glaring privacy problem posed by its new Beacon program, which tells members about their friends' online purchases.

After three weeks of increasingly loud protests, Facebook is reportedly considering retooling its controversial Beacon program, which notifies members about their friends' purchases.

In a sweeping ruling, a federal court in Wisconsin said that the government isn't entitled to view Amazon's records of book purchasers to investigate whether an online seller has evaded taxes.

Confronted with mounting complaints and negative press coverage, Facebook reached out to the media yesterday to say that the company had changed its controversial Beacon program, which notifies people's friends about their purchases. Which would be a step in the right direction -- if only it were true.

The more details that emerge about Facebook's Beacon platform, the worse an idea it seems. It's glaringly obvious that the new program -- which alerts people's friends of their online purchases -- violates users' privacy. And, while Facebook argues that the program poses no threat because users can always opt out of it, it's now come to light that the opt-out mechanism itself is seriously flawed.

As predicted, Facebook's two-week-old "Beacon" program, which publicizes users' purchases at e-commerce sites to their friends, is already drawing privacy complaints.

Many observers have said that copyright laws are out of touch with everyday experience. Now, University of Utah professor John Tehranian has laid out the case for that proposition in a law review article, describing a hypothetical day where he regularly violates at least the letter of the copyright law -- with each violation carrying a potential penalty of $150,000 in damages.

With the Writers Guild of America strike dragging on into its third week, NBC has apparently come up with a contingency plan: Come January, the network will start running the new Web show "Quarterlife" on TV.

In preparation for its upcoming reissue of its 1987 album "The Joshua Tree," U2 has released a version of "Wave of Sorrow" -- a track that didn't make the original cut -- on Facebook via the iLike widget.

While the major music labels still seem skittish about the Web, some signs indicate that they're coming to recognize that digital distribution has its benefits.