On June 10, the Associated Press sent Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown orders to Rogers Cadenhead's site The Drudge Retort for seven different articles the news service claims violated copyright.

Drudge Retort is painted as a liberal alternative to the Drudge Report and receives editorial content from about 25 writers. The Associated Press found six instances of bloggers recycling AP copyrighted material, and one instance of a commenter doing the same.

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A sweeping copyright reform bill officially introduced in the Canadian Parliament yesterday would impose stiff penalties on individuals circumventing DRM protection, including on TV programming, and would illegalize DRM-breaking tools.

Canada's Industry Minister Jim Prentice (Con. - Alberta) and Heritage Minister Josee Verner (Con. - Quebec) have introduced a copyright reform bill that updates regulations on digital rights management, file sharing, and penalties associated with trading copyrighted materials.

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With complaints to the FCC rising over the long-held practice of fining those who end their cellular contracts early, the agency looks poised to intervene. And for the first time, all sides may be nearing some sort of agreement.

Yesterday afternoon, FCC commissioners heard testimony from consumer advocate groups and carriers alike, and there seemed to be at least some agreement among all parties on the subject of early termination fees (ETFs). Chairman Kevin Martin has taken the lead on the subject, questioning the reasoning for the fee that has become a common part of everyday life with wireless devices.

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A typical developer may often leave a major developers' conference thinking that most everything relating to how a graphical operating system works, has already been invented. But a new video from Mozilla Labs blows away that illusion.

A new set of conceptual videos produced by Mozilla Labs engineer and user experience chief Aza Raskin -- the son of the late, legendary Apple Macintosh and Xerox PARC user interface designer Jef Raskin -- offers some completely new ideas for how a Web browser, ostensibly a future version of Firefox for mobile, would work on touch-capable handsets.

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AMD and physics simulation tools provider Havok announced they will work together to study the benefits of optimizing the Havok Physics engine for future AMD CPUs and ATI video cards.

AMD elected to work with Intel-owned Havok after NVidia wisely snapped up Ageia, which is best known for its PhysX physics engine. A possible working relationship between AMD for the PhysX engine hasn't been ruled out by AMD, though nothing has been confirmed by the CPU maker.

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Late Thursday afternoon, the news came from Google that it will indeed become a full-time provider of AdSense advertising for Yahoo's search pages, and the two companies' IM protocols will become interoperable.

Under the deal, as Google's announcement today describes it, Yahoo will become a carrier of AdSense-driven contextual ads not only within its own search pages, but also optionally for other services that it hosts. But Yahoo will continue to provide the search functionality -- it is not sublicensing Google's search to substitute for its own, or making any kind of a deal that passes control of Yahoo Search over to Google.

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A senior Republican US Senator has accused Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin of misleading Congress and the Justice Dept. about the XM + Sirius merger deal. But this round of opposition has a familiar flavor to it.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R - Kansas), ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee, has long opposed the XM + Sirius merger, saying in April that the Department of Justice had "made a mistake" last March when it found nothing anti-competitive about the combination of the two satellite radio companies.

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In its plan to gain back usage share it has steadily been losing to Firefox in recent months, Opera this morning released version 9.5 of its Web browsers for Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Download Opera 9.5 Final for Windows from FileForum now.

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How many consumers base their HDTV purchase decisions around style? At the CEA's Digital Downtown show in New York today, panelists discussed whether consumers will still pay a premium to be fashionable, especially with gas at $4/gallon.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Are consumers still willing to pay a premium to keep pace with fashion? Evidently, some CE manufacturers are gambling they will.

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Building upon technology from Sigma Designs Inc., renowned cabling company Monster has announced the upcoming availability of its Wireless Digital Express HD wireless HD and ultra-wideband-over coaxial system.

The system will require two boxes: a transmitter that connects to the media components (DVD, Blu-ray, and set top boxes), and a receiver that connects to the TV's HDMI port.

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Will Web services fulfill the same functions found on today's CE devices? Some panelists answered "yes" and others "no," during a panel presentation at a pre-CES briefing in New York today.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - On the first day of the new "Digital Downtown" show,
Adam Guy, general manager for telecommunications for Web analytics service Compete Inc., argued that consumers tend to look at new software and services simply as new alternatives, or "adds," rather than as replacements for devices.

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EA has postponed the deadline for its planned hostile takeover of Take-Two entertainment four times. Now it appears as if EA is ready to play hardball with the FTC itself.

The most recent deadline extension happened on June 3, when EA said it was postponing its decision until June 16. It appeared at that time that the two sides had reached an agreement on securing a deadline to conclude investigations into the merger.

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A statement issued by Yahoo this afternoon says that all talks with Microsoft over any possible combination of their businesses has effectively concluded, and that it wants to maintain its own search business.

One final meeting between both companies' executives apparently took place on Sunday. "At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo, even at the price range it had previously suggested," the statement reads.

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After Apple's announcement earlier in the week regarding plans to launch iPhone 2.0 for a lower price of $199.99, Samsung announced that its Instinct smart phone will launch on June 20 with a similar $199.99 price tag...after you take those rebates into account.

With some observers calling it the first possible "iPhone killer," Instinct has a 3.1" TFT LCD screen, supports 240 x 432 resolution, 2 Mp camera, microSD slot, 32 MB internal memory, MP3 player, video support, full Internet, and Bluetooth support. The phone measures 4.5" x 2.17" x 0.49", weighs 4.4 ounces, and thus far works on the Sprint EV-DO Rev. A network.

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Palm and Verizon Wireless today jointly announced that the popular Palm Centro smartphone will launch for the VZW network starting tomorrow.

Interested customers will be able tomorrow to purchase a cobalt blue Centro for $99, after rebates and a two-year service agreement. In addition to the voice plan, customers can pay $29.99 per month for unlimited data and an additional $30 per month for the ability to tether the phone to a laptop for use with Verizon's Broadband Access.

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