Righthaven is no longer just losing lawsuits. The copyright enforcement outfit that once touted itself as the savior of the newspaper industry has now racked up at least $42,000 in sanctions and attorneys' fees as a result of its actions in three cases. And it could be on the hook for tens of thousands more, if things keep going this way.

The Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Review Council said today that it will start formally enforcing privacy principles for online behavioral targeting. Those principles require ad networks and other companies engaged in behavioral targeting to notify consumers about data collection via an icon and allow them to opt out of receiving targeted ads. But the self-regulatory principles don't require companies to stop collecting data about users.

A decision by San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit to cut off wireless service in some commuter stations last week in hopes of stemming protests related to a police shooting isn't sitting well with many observers.

The Federal Communications Commission recently approved neutrality regulations that prohibit wired broadband companies from blocking sites or degrading traffic. But, as is often the case with policies aimed at protecting online users, regular consumers have no easy way of knowing whether companies are following the rules. Now, however, engineer Dan Kaminsky hopes to change that with the N00ter (neutral router), which can determine when ISPs are throttling traffic.

KISSmetrics CEO Hiten Shah said today that the company was "blindsided" by allegations that it violated people's privacy by tracking them even after they deleted their cookies. Shah was responding to a paper published last Friday by Ashkan Soltani and other researchers showing how KISSmetrics tracked people using ETags. KISSmetrics used ETags to store information in people's browser caches. When those users erased their cookies, they could be recreated with information from the ETags.

A federal appellate court handed a victory to Google, and to Chilling Effects Clearinghouse, in the 7-year-old copyright infringement lawsuit brought by adult entertainment company Perfect 10.

Many people who connect to the Web through DSL lines are getting even slower service than advertised. That's according to a new report released today by the Federal Communications Commission.

For years, people who wanted to avoid online tracking have regularly deleted their cookies in hopes of also erasing any profiles of them compiled by ad networks or other Web sites. But Web companies are increasingly developing work-arounds to track people regardless of how their browsers treat cookies.