Sources say Google and Feedburner have agreed to a deal where the Mountain View, Calif. company would pay cash for the company, with the deal closing within two to three weeks. However, neither company had responded to requests for comment on the deal as of press time.

Feedburner provides RSS management services for blogs and websites, and has seen tremendous growth in the past several months. Such an acquisition would fit nicely with Blogger, the web log service Google acquired in early 2003. Details of the deal were first reported by technology web log TechCrunch on Wednesday.

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At a House hearing in Washington, polticians debated whether or not to renew the ban on taxing net access. Opponents say its original purpose, to spur net usage, has long been accomplished.

Initally passed in 1998 and signed by then President Clinton, the latest renewal is set to expire in November of this year.

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Yesterday, the SoundExchange organization which the US Copyright Royalty Board designated as the handler for performers' royalties, offered "small webcasters" the option of returning to an earlier arrangement, which would cap the amount of royalties it receives from them at 10% of net revenues up to the first $250,000, and 12% thereafter.

The deal may be encouraging to streaming music providers who might otherwise be faced with annual royalty fees that many predict - and evidence compiled by BetaNews appears to confirm - could conceivably usurp their entire revenue stream. It would effectively extend the provisions of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 (SWSA) - which was allowed to lapse in 2005 - until 2010.

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Sprint said Wednesday that it is offering personalized streaming radio channels through a partnership with Pandora, the free Internet radio service which creates personalized music stations based on what types of music a user likes and dislikes. While the service is free for the first 30 days, the service will carry a $2.99 per month charge thereafter.

While only Sprint is carrying the music service right now, Pandora says it would like to offer its services on other carriers eventually. The company did not specify, however, who it was discussing offering the service through.

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Nintendo said Wednesday that it expects to sell as many as 35 million Wii consoles in the US alone by 2012, which would place it close to the record 38.2 million PlayStation 2 consoles already sold in the market.

Over 2.5 million have already been sold, solidly putting it in second place behind the Xbox 360, which has sold some 5.4 million units since its debut in November 2005. Sony's PlayStation 3 remains in third with 1.3 million consoles sold.

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Responding to our story yesterday regarding the movement on Capitol Hill to strengthen copyright enforcement through the imposition of performers' copyright fees on both terrestrial and Internet radio broadcasters, the director of the Copyright Alliance, Patrick Ross, told BetaNews it's a mistake for anyone - including us - to attribute certain advocated copyright policies to the Alliance, although they share key members and supporters.

"The Copyright Alliance has taken no position on any specific policy initiative to date, including radio performance royalties," Ross wrote. "The Copyright Alliance is a very, very broad coalition of organizations that are bound by copyright, from artists' groups and unions to corporations and trade associations, from professional and amateur sports to music, movies, video games, photography, graphic art, book and magazine and newspaper publishing, business software and, yes, broadcasting. Our focus is on a broader educational mission of copyright as an engine for creativity, jobs and growth."

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The House of Representatives passed legislation Wednesday that further penalizes the use of spyware, but leaves out requirements for compliance by software developers.

Some lawmakers sought provisions that would have required software to clearly notify what would be installed and obtain consent. Software industry officials protested the proposed policies, which were taken out and resubmitted as a new bill that passed.

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Despite the protests of the industry, The EU said Wednesday it had approved a measure that caps roaming rates within the 27-nation bloc. Carriers have one month to comply.

Approved by EU Parliament, the legislation only needs to be approved by the EU's telecommunications ministers. Following the approval, the resolution takes effect June 29, meaning consumers could see cheaper rates as soon as August.

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INTERVIEW While the fundamental changes to Windows' core architecture were first seen by the general public last January with the release of Vista, the impact those changes will make to how businesses work will be felt later this year, with the release of Windows Server 2008.

The way time slices for processes are allocated, the way errors and exceptions are handled, the way the system recovers from faults - the situations that may benefit Vista users on occasion, could make a tremendous positive impact on servers that handle skyrocketing IP traffic, especially with voice and video becoming more commonplace.

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Microsoft continued its battle against open source on Tuesday with the release of yet another company-funded study showing that developers believe the next version of GPL shouldn't cover patent deals.

This latest study was performed by the Harvard Business School, and found that developers would rather have GPLv3 stay out of the deal regulation business. Perhaps not coincidentally, the study comes a week after Microsoft claimed that open source software violates 235 patents.

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Google on Tuesday rolled out a new service designed to provide instant insight into what people are searching for in different areas of the world. "Hot Trends," currently in testing on Google Labs, combines the company's Zeitgeist and Google Trends features.

The Hot Trends list is updated throughout the day and links to Google News, blog and Web searches so users can see why the search term made the list. Google is not simply listing the most popular search queries, but rather those that deviate from their typical frequency. As a result, seemingly odd searches make the list, such as "legless chihuahua." Currently, many of the Hot Trends relate to XM Satellite Radio's outage.

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T-Mobile said Tuesday it had launched the Wing, the successor to its MDA smartphone and the first handset in the United States to ship with Windows Mobile 6 installed.

The carrier was also the first to offer an upgrade for Windows Mobile 5 users with a T-Mobile Dash, and it said phones with the new OS installed would appear next month.

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Last week's announcement of the formation of a US-based content industry activist organization called the Copyright Alliance was greeted with a flurry of positive press, echoing the sentiments of influential congressmen such as the chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee handling the Internet and IP matters, Rep. Howard Berman (D - Calif.). In an environment where patent reform is at last being debated seriously, "stronger copyright protection" has also become a rallying point for lawmakers.

But a Los Angeles Times story published yesterday revealed that the Alliance, which Rep. Berman supports, has as its key mission to establish a system of rates which both terrestrial and Internet-based radio stations would pay as performance royalties, to a group representing the recording industry and recording artists.

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XM subscribers were dealing with a second day of service problems Tuesday as the company finally acknowledged an outage and offered an explanation for the lack of signal many were experiencing, especially across the Eastern US and Canada.

According to subscribers, the outages began around noon ET Monday and included either full loss of signal reception, or significant degradation in signal quality. Reports indicated the problem was nationwide, although the most significant problems existed on the East coast.

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China has decided to back away from its proposed policy of requiring bloggers to register for blogs with their real name, instead opting for a less strict policy that would 'encourage' self-policing.

The communist country's plans drew criticism from human rights groups and bloggers worldwide. First proposed in October of last year, the rule was aimed at keeping dissention to a minimum, as subversion is a serious crime in the China.

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