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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Microsoft's search share lost ground once again as competitors Google and Yahoo gained, statistics from research firm Nielsen/NetRatings indicate. Released Monday, the study showed that once again Microsoft was having trouble holding on to any gains it had made previously. In April, the company's share of the market stood at 9 percent, down 1.1 percent from the month previous.

Yahoo gained a statistically insignificant .1 percent to grow to 21.9 percent, but Google showed the most gains, with its share up 1.5 percent to 55.2 percent of all Web searches. The results are sure to cause consternation in Redmond; Microsoft has expressed disappointment with its search performance. Rounding out the top five search engines were AOL with 5.4 percent and Ask.com with 1.8 percent of the market.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has halted an antirust lawsuit against the regional Bell companies on Monday, saying the case needed specific allegations in order to continue.

A class action suit alleged that the companies had a pact not to compete with one another and offer service in their own territories. However, the case was light on facts and evidence, and by a 7-2 vote, the judges reversed an earlier appeals court ruling that let it go forward.

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Just a few months ago, with Microsoft's Web services division still waning in comparison with its others, speculation began on whether it was gearing up to address that problem by purchasing an existing ad brokerage. The focus centered on DoubleClick, one of the oldest and most reputable display ad providers on the Web; and before too long, Google responded to that speculation by pre-empting a Microsoft takeover. That started a tidal wave of major players playing catch-up, including Yahoo's acquisition of Right Media a few weeks later.

Last week, amid speculation that Microsoft was scrambling to acquire 24/7 Real Media, another ad services firm, it was pre-empted yet again, this time by established advertising agency WPP Group. So Microsoft ended up spending its $6 billion late last week on aQuantive, which not only has its own digital marketing division (Atlas) but an online ad agency (Avenue A | Razorfish).

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An errant update for Norton Antivirus has caused the computers of at least 1,000 users in a China city to crash, several Chinese news sources reported on Monday. According to authorities, the problem was caused by an update on May 18 that accidentally flagged and deleted two essential Windows XP files, causing the system to lock up -- showing the "blue screen of death" -- and fail to reboot.

Experts say that both the traditional and simplified Chinese versions of the Symantec software are affected. The company confirmed that it was aware of the problem and is currently looking into a solution, although no time frame has been given.

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While IBM today unveiled a new dual-core Power6 processor for its new System p570 server, resulting in what the Transaction Performance Processing Council confirmed to be the best performance score per core recorded thus far, a manufacturing advance still in the works there could give its next generation Power6 even higher performance on account of improved signaling.

The advance was poorly explained by the general press a few weeks ago: In actuality, it's a manufacturing process that enables vacuum gaps to form in specifically designated segments of chips, reducing or replacing the need for microscopic glass insulators around copper wires. The tiny bubbles, or "airgaps" as IBM calls them (even though there's no air in a vacuum), serve as a far better insulator. In so doing, they improve the signaling ability of chips - by their very presence, enabling them to be sped up.

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MySpace has acquiesced to demands from several states' attorneys general, saying it would release data on sex offenders it has identified and removed from its site.

The social networking company had originally cited federal privacy laws in declining to release the information. However, following legal actions and subpoenas filed by several of the seven states' attorneys, MySpace released the information.

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Microsoft said Monday that it had signed an agreement with the Vietnamese government that would require its government offices ensure they are running genuine copies of the Redmond company's software. The country has one of the highest rates of piracy, according to recent studies. The partnership came the same day as another with the state-run Vietindebank banking chain.

Microsoft has put a lot of focus on Vietnam in recent months, with Bill Gates recently visiting the country to address the piracy issue with government leaders. His visit resulted in the signing of an anti-piracy agreement with Vietnam's Finance Ministry.

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Dell confirmed Friday its plans to offer a tablet PC based on its popular line of Latitude notebook PCs. The first device will be appearing later this year, the company's business product group head Jeff Clarke confirmed in a video posted to the company blog.

"I am here to end much speculation in the industry that there is about our plans to enter the tablet marketplace," Clarke said. "In fact, I'm here to confirm that we will enter the market later this year with a Latitude Tablet PC."

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For decades in America, claimants in a patent suit have been eligible for treble damages -- three times the assessed amount of the violation -- if a jury can establish that violation was willful on the part of the defendant. Now, new restrictions being proposed to not only the conditions under which treble damages can occur, but also the method for assessing the extent of violation, has raised the ire of lobbying groups following the forwarding of new language in the Patent Reform Bill to the full US House for approval.

As the bill now reads, a judge will make the determination of whether a patent's violation was willful, rather than a jury. Furthermore, the defendant will be entitled to make what's called a "good faith defense:" He can argue, for instance, that a lawyer advised him the patent he may be violating could be deemed invalid if it were reviewed.

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While authorities in the United States and Europe can't directly shut down Russia music store AllofMP3.com, which they say sells songs without paying licenses or royalties to artists, they have been successful in cutting off the site's ability to take money from customers outside Russia.

PayPal, MasterCard and Visa have already stopped handling payments for the service, leading AllofMP3 to resort to a "voucher" system, which United States and European consumers could use to purchase music. Songs on the site are offered for pennies, far less than licensed services like Apple's iTunes.

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Car rental company Avis said Monday that it will provide its customers with a service called Avis Connect, which allows multiple computers to connect to the Internet wirelessly from any location, including within the car. Service would be provided at a rate of $10.95 per day, and would initially be offered at airport locations in San Jose, Oakland, Los Angeles and Newark.

The device was produced by Autonet Mobile, which plugs into the cigarette lighter and runs on 1xRTT and EVDO cellular networks. The cellular data service itself is supplied by an agreement with Verizon Wireless, but all customer support is handled by Autonet. Autonet also plans to market the service independently for $399 USD for the router and $49.95 USD per month for data service, it said.

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According to a report in Monday's Wall Street Journal Google is discussing an alliance with Salesforce.com, a provider of Web applications for businesses, in order to better compete with Microsoft when courting enterprise customers.

While Google has reigned supreme on the Web with consumers, businesses have been a harder sell, especially with the ubiquity of Microsoft's Office and server products. In turn, Google was rumored to be interested in acquiring Salesforce.com, but is now looking to a partnership that would integrate services from both companies. E-mail and IM from Google would join Salesforce.com's CRM tools in a single offering.

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