MySpace has replaced Imeem songs and playlists embedded on blogs and elsewhere on the web with advertisements for generic ringtones and the MySpace Music service.

Now, thousands of independent artists are not being paid money they're owed and countless posts on Listening Post and elsewhere on the web feature not Imeem's songs or playlists, but rather advertisements like the ones pictured to the above right.

The long-awaited decision, while not unexpected, was the first in the United States in which a federal judge found that BitTorrent search engines are an unlawful avenue (.pdf) to free movies, music, videogames and software.

Fung, in an e-mail, said his sites should be protected by safe-harbor provisions of the copyright law, which immunize search engines from infringement liability if they promptly remove works when a rights-holder notifies them to take down infringing content.

The company still stands behind its controversial methods for "managing" network traffic, but claims that it wants to "avoid a potentially lengthy and distracting legal dispute that would serve no useful purpose."

Angry customers argued that Comcast had violated its own Terms of Service as well as various consumer protection laws by representing itself as offering the fastest Internet connection-P2P or not.

AT&T wants its iPhone users to use less wireless data, and it plans to introduce new pricing models to curb users' data usage as it tries to keep up with growing demand.

AT&T has been reluctant to admit that there is a problem, but recently, the company has acknowledged that problems exist.

Unlike voice service, which is already tiered, wireless-data service is charged at an all-you-can-eat flat rate.

For now, it looks as if AT&T will try to slow the growth with hefty prices. It will be interesting to see if its competitors follow suit.

Eric Schmidt suggests you alter your scandalous behavior before you complain about his company invading your privacy.

The generous explanation for Schmidt's statement is that he's revolutionized his thinking since 2005, when he blacklisted CNET for publishing info about him gleaned from Google searches, including salary, neighborhood, hobbies and political donations.

Schmidt's philosophy is clear with Bartiromo in the clip below: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."

A journalism professor by the name of Tim Luckhurst is claiming that newspaper paywalls are needed to preserve democracy, and that free content online undermines democracy.

The basic argument is that free content online isn't bringing in enough revenue to pay reporters, thus newspapers are going under and firing reporters. Thus, with fewer reporters, there are fewer people to watch the government and therefore corruption runs rampant.

Reports are coming out that Virgin Media is starting to use controversial deep packet inspection technology to spy on users to see if they're sharing any copyrighted works. As the article notes: "It's the equivalent of the Royal Mail opening every parcel to see if there's a CD inside, and making a note if there isn't a receipt in there too."

No matter how you look at it, it does seem quite extreme for your ISP to carefully look at everything you do online.

Following braindead efforts to block specialized browsers, even though they access Hulu content just like regular browsers, combined with blocking anonymous proxies, even those used for perfectly legitimate reasons, Hulu is apparently now cracking down on sites that embed a lot of its videos -- yes, despite having embed functionality specifically allowed.

Many sites apparently are still embedding lots of Hulu shows, and Hulu has simply decided to tell those sites to stop.

A lax security policy in Adobe Flash puts visitors to user-generated content sites at risk, says a researcher who has found a technique exploiting the way browsers handle Flash files.

For example, someone could upload what appears to be a picture to a social-networking site but which is actually a Flash file designed to execute malicious code in the browser when the file is opened.

Meanwhile, users should disable Flash completely or use NoScript, a browser plug-in that blocks Flash and Java from untrusted sites, he said.

The billionaire told Sky News Australia he will explore ways to remove stories from Google's search indexes, including Google News.

"There's a doctrine called 'fair use', which we believe to be challenged in the courts and would bar it altogether," Mr Murdoch told the TV channel.

Mr Murdoch announced earlier this year that the websites of his news websites would begin charging for access.