The Bush Administration has weighed in on the side of the record companies in their copyright infringement lawsuit against Jammie Thomas, a single mother recently found liable for uploading 24 tracks to Kazaa.

After weeks of criticism, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg Wednesday finally apologized for the controversial Beacon program, which publishes information about members' off-site purchases to their friends. The company also changed the program so that people can now opt-out once and for all.

Nielsen is reportedly set to join the ranks of companies offering online copyright policing. The company has partnered with Digimarc for the program, Digital Media Manager, which will roll out next year, according to media reports.

Universal Music Group has decided to stop MySpace from streaming entire songs of artists signed to the label. Instead, UMG is only permitting 90-second samples of songs to stream on the social networking site, according to press reports.

This weekend, The New York Times condemned Yahoo for having revealed the identities of two Chinese dissidents to the authorities, resulting in their jailing....

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.