The Pirate Bay, a BitTorrent tracking site that lets users search for files that are available for sharing, is facing a battle on at least two fronts. A Danish court this week ordered a Denmark Internet service provider, Tele2 Denmark, to block the site. That order came just days after four people behind the ad-supported site were arrested in Sweden for promoting copyright infringement.

Now that Microsoft has put Yahoo in play with a $44.6 billion bid for the company, Google is ratcheting up the anti-Redmond rhetoric, arguing that Microsoft's antitrust history is reason alone to be wary of a deal.

After months -- if not years -- of behind-the-scenes negotiations, Microsoft this morning went public with a proposal to buy Yahoo in hopes of more effectively competing against Google.

When it comes to online privacy, predicting just how much data the typical consumer is willing to give up is proving to be a daunting task. But, thanks to Facebook, the industry now knows at least one type of program that won't fly with consumers. That was the conclusion of online marketing executives who addressed the issue at the AlwaysOn Media conference in New York this week.

A European court said this week that Internet service providers in the EU need not disclose the names of suspected file-sharers who the record labels or movie industry are attempting to sue.

When Apple launched the iPhone in June, the sole wireless carrier in the United States was AT&T -- a drawback to many who wanted to use the device with other telecoms. So it wasn't surprising that people found ways to unlock the phones, making them compatible with other networks....

A new ad-supported online music service, Qtrax, boasting 25 million tracks from all four of the major record labels, announced this weekend that it was launching. As it turns out, however, the company's splashy pronouncement, made at the Midem music conference in Cannes, was overly optimistic. Instead of debuting with all of the major labels on board, the company didn't have deals with any of them, according to the blog Silicon Alley Insider.

Shortly after Rupert Murdoch purchased The Wall Street Journal last year, he gave every indication that he planned to take down the paid subscriber wall online and offer the newspaper for free on the Web. But he's apparently had second thoughts.

Here's the good news: Digital sales of music grew to $2.9 billion globally last year, marking a 40% increase from 2006. But here's the bad news: Music sales overall still dwindled to $17.6 billion, a drop of 10%, as the digital growth wasn't enough to offset lost revenue from plummeting CD sales.

CBS today unveiled its free music-on-demand plan for Last.fm, the music site it purchased last year for $280 million.