Belgian newspapers that sued Google to be removed from its index are now back in, having agreed to use the commonly-accepted blocking standards that they initially rejected as not being legal.

The Belgian French and German-language daily press publishers and Google Inc. intend to use a quiet period in the court dispute to continue their efforts to identify tangible ways to collaborate in the long term.

An astonishing number of stories related to HD-DVD encryption keys have gone missing in action from digg.com, in many cases along with the account of the diggers who submitted them. Diggers are in open revolt against the moderators and are retaliating in clever and inventive ways. At one point, the entire front page comprised only stories that in one way or another were related to the hex number. Digg users quickly pointed to the HD DVD sponsorship of Diggnation, the Digg podcast show.

Search Google for a broader picture; at this writing, about 283,000 pages contain the number with hyphens, and just under 10,000 without hyphens. There's a song. Several domain names including variations of the number have been reserved.

The International Chamber of Commerce 'Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting And Piracy' initiative has been accused of pirating thousands of documents from anti-piracy tracking service Gieschen Consultancy. The documents apparently later reappeared in a slightly different format under the ICC's own brandname.

The ICC and BASCAP misrepresented themselves as a partner in 2006 and 2007, gained access to proprietary information and then took what they learned and incorporated it into their own product offerings.

Its functionality, user interface, presentation, method of classification, and delivery is clearly based on our designs and existing products. It is extraordinary that an organization committed to fighting counterfeiting and piracy would steal the intellectual property of another organization.

The Pirate Bay file-sharing collective, one of the world's largest facilitators of illegal downloading, is only the most visible member of a burgeoning international anti-copyright - or pro-piracy - movement that is striking terror in the heart of an industry that seems ever less capable of stopping it.

When the Pirate Bay's Stockholm headquarters were raided last May and their servers seized, the Motion Picture Assn. of America thought it had scored a major victory. "Swedish Authorities Sink Pirate Bay," trumpeted its news release. (As has since been pointed out, this is a mixed metaphor.) But the rejoicing didn't last long. The site was back online three days later, and worse yet for Hollywood, the raid and several mass protests afterward generated so much sympathy for the pro-file sharing cause that both candidates for prime minister announced publicly that they did not think young file-sharers should be treated as criminals.

The Pirate Bay has built its reputation on taunting big entertainment and scoffing at copyright law. One of its claims to fame is its online gallery of legal threats, each of which is appended with a less-than-polite riposte from the pirates.

There has been an understandable public outcry against the RIAA's attempts to more than triple the sound recording copyright royalties on Internet radio.

One solution proposed by Webcasters is to just not play RIAA-member songs under the assumption that then they don't have to pay the royalty to the RIAA's collection body, SoundExchange; Webcasters would then just pay the independent artist the royalty.

However, the RIAA is not about being fair and just. The game is rigged and the RIAA has rigged it in their favor. The strategy of playing only non-RIAA songs won't work though because the RIAA has secured the right to collect royalties on all songs regardless of who controls the copyright.

SoundExchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, SoundExchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free.

Even if you do own the copyright to your own recording of your own song, SoundExchange will collect Internet radio royalties for your song even if you don't want them to do so.

Curious how LSD and other hallucinogens might be used in treating patients, Andrew Feldmar turned on and tuned in himself.

Thirty-two years, however, turned out to be but an instant in the long, unrelenting U.S. war on drugs. Last summer, in an incident that has just come to light, Mr. Feldmar, now 66, was banned from entering the United States because of his long-ago use of LSD.

The guards simply looked up Mr. Feldmar on the Internet and discovered his own article about using LSD, written for the scholarly, peer-reviewed journal Janus Head.

Given the United States' "almost fanatical position on drugs," Mr. Oscapella said, even a teenager who simply writes in a blog about smoking marijuana is now vulnerable to online scrutiny by U.S. border guards.

Mr. Feldmar was held at the border for five hours, before being allowed to return to Canada after signing an admission that he had once violated the U.S. Controlled Substance Act.

Mr. Feldmar is now banned permanently from entering the United States, unless he applies for and receives a waiver.

After months of consideration, Mr. Feldmar said he has decided not to apply for a waiver, despite the hardship of not being able to visit his two adult children, who live in Los Angeles and Denver.

Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood from the censorship era to the digital age, died Thursday. He was 85.

When he took over as president of the Motion Picture Association of America, Mr. Valenti was caught between Hollywood's outdated system of self-censorship and the liberal cultural explosion taking place in America.

In Mr. Valenti's later years he handled tricky new challenges from the Internet and technologies that allow movies to be illegally reproduced and distributed in an instant. Mr. Valenti also travelled worldwide seeking to thwart movie piracy and boost film exports to reluctant countries such as China.

The latest ruling comes from a judge who already told the RIAA it needed to pay fees. Now he's reaffirmed the decision and explained it quite clearly to the RIAA. The quotes are absolutely worth reading at that link, as the judge highlights the fact that copyright isn't solely for the benefit of the content creator/owner, but for enriching the public domain, and that gives anyone accused of infringement strong defenses to their use of the content.

The judge also challenges a bunch of questionable or misleading claims by the RIAA, basically suggesting that the RIAA was assuming he wouldn't actually look into any of its claims.

Trying to trick a judge that way doesn't tend to end well. Also, rewriting history doesn't work well, as the judge points out the RIAA tried to do in claiming that it had offered the defendant a way to settle without paying anything.

There's a lot more like that in the decision, including the judge pretty much slapping the RIAA down for suggesting that it may have won the case anyway...

Literally 15 minutes after I posted Wayne Crookes sues Google, Wikipedia there was a knock on my door. It was a writ server telling me I, too, have been named in a Crookes lawsuit, alongside the Wikipedia Foundation, six anonymous people and an Arizona proxy service.

What did I do? I linked to an article Crookes says libels him.

while some pundits are insisting that Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung Hui must have been influenced by violent video games, police have ruled that line of inquiry out.

A search of Hui's dorm room has not found any game gear of any type in his room. His roommate has also told coppers that during Hui's rare appearances in the dorm he never saw him play any computer games either.

Those who want to dust off the idea of violent television programmes and videos as the cause of Hui's murder rampage will be disappointed that he didn't have a TV or video either.