Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) today introduced a broad net neutrality bill that bans Internet service providers from discriminating based on content.

Microsoft has wanted to gain a larger presence in the search market for years. Now it looks like the company has done so, assuming its proposed deal with Yahoo is cleared by regulators. Yet in some ways this deal could be worse for competition than the Google-Yahoo arrangement shot down last year.

In a bold and controversial strategy, the lawyer for accused file-sharer Joel Tenenbaum is urging the jury to reject the record industry's basic premise that music fans who share files online infringe on copyright.

The pranksters at online bulletin board 4chan are notorious for antics like hacking a Time magazine poll, gaining access to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin's email account and "Rick Rolling," or tricking unsuspecting Internet users into watching the music video of Rick Astley's 1988 "Never Gonna Give You Up." This weekend 4chan was famous for another reason: the site became the poster child for the prospect of Web censorship.

Making good on a promise to crack down on the unauthorized use of its stories, The Associated Press has announced that it's creating a new registry to tag and track digital articles. The articles will now contain a beacon that will enable the AP to easily know when another site has reposted stories via an RSS feed or other automated mechanism.

Authorities at Pearl High School in Pearl, Mississippi have allegedly joined the managers of a Houston's in New Jersey and officials from Bozeman, Montana in demonstrating a stunning disregard of people's online privacy.

The Federal Trade Commission has been considering a controversial update to testimonial guidelines that would require bloggers and other online commenters to disclose any connections they have to marketers. If the FTC goes through with the proposal, bloggers would have to reveal when they're paid per post by a marketer. But they would also have to disclose when they've received free review copies -- even though newspapers, magazines and other mainstream media aren't subject to similar requirements.

Amazon's ill-considered decision last week to remotely remove George Orwell books from users' Kindles has already sparked much outrage, including at least one call for new legislation and a vow to file a class-action lawsuit.

Forced into damage control mode by its decision to erase books that people had already purchased, Amazon is vowing to never again delete material from users' Kindles. That promise comes too late for some Kindle users who found that copies of "1984" and "Animal Farm" had been remotely deleted from their devices last week. That statement also might carry more weight if Amazon hadn't already said in its user agreement that people could keep their books forever.

TechCrunch's decision this week to publish formerly confidential Twitter documents is still stirring up the blogosphere. While some commenters argue that TechCrunch is on safe legal ground -- at least to the extent that it's publishing information that's arguably of public interest -- others are condemning site owner Michael Arrington for making use of hacked documents. Legalities aside, Arrington seems to be facing a public relations crisis of sorts. But it doesn't stem from the fact that he disclosed Twitter's information, but that he told everyone that he obtained it from a hacker.