In yet another sign that the Federal Trade Commission is serious about examining online privacy, Christopher Soghoian said today that he's accepted a job as technical consultant to the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection

The Obama administration is asking a judge to reject a Minnesota woman's argument that a jury verdict ordering her to pay $1.92 million for sharing 24 tracks is unconstitutional.

In many ways, the emergence of YouTube, Flickr and other platforms that allow people to distribute their own content has marked the biggest shift in the media world in decades. One obvious result is that it's far more difficult for event organizers to limit the publication of photos and videos when consumers create content than when a limited number of media organizations did so. Now some groups are attempting to rein in consumers' ability to create content by establishing limits on photos and videos as a condition of admittance.

Until relatively recently, ad industry executives tended to talk about the differences between "personally identifiable" and "non-personally identifiable" information when they discussed privacy. But in the last three years, it's become apparent that the difference between personally identifiable and non-personally identifiable can be illusory.

In what appears to be its first decision involving pay-per-post Web marketing, a unit of the National Advertising Review Council said today that marketers should disclose when they have paid consumers to write reviews.

Last week, some digital rights advocates cheered news that the Federal Communications Commission was investigating Apple's rejection of an app for Google's voice service. Now it turns out that Google's voice app might be available on the iPhone even without FCC intervention. Google currently is developing a substitute for the rejected app, The New York Times reports.

When you go to a kiosk and buy that day's Wall Street Journal, you can be fairly certain that no one's going to request your name and address and send that information back to News Corp. And when you go to a library and borrow, say, Selena Robert's "A-Rod," it's not likely that your librarian will ever tell Harper Collins -- or anyone else -- that you've done so. Should the situation be different for digital newspapers and books? Rupert Murdoch apparently thinks the answer is yes.

Two years ago, when News Corp. head Rupert Murdoch purchased the Wall Street Journal, he talked about taking down the pay wall and making many articles available for free online. But now that we're in a recession, Murdoch says he intends to start charging for Web articles at his newspapers, including not just the Journal but also The Times of London, The New York Post and other papers.

As talk heats up about potential new laws for behavioral targeting, warnings of doomsday scenarios also are increasing.Some Web company executives are saying that free content will disappear from the Internet because privacy regulations could have the effect of destroying online advertising. Or at least the companies say that laws requiring opt-in consent to targeting could kill online advertising, because consumers' aren't likely to change their default settings.

"Internet advertising differs significantly from advertising in traditional media." That's according to U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman in Louisiana, who Monday invalidated portions of new state restrictions on attorney advertising.