The question of whether Google is liable for damages for secretly intercepting data on open WiFi routers across the United States is boiling down to the definition of a “radio communication.”

That appears to be the legal theory embraced by the Silicon Valley federal judge presiding over nearly a dozen combined lawsuits seeking damages from Google for eavesdropping on open WiFi networks via its Street View mapping cars. The cars had been equipped with WiFi-sniffing hardware to record the names and MAC addresses of routers to improve Google location-specific services.

Online and digital video options continue to grow in popularity, but people still love their "old fashioned" physical discs. According to new data from market research firm NPD Group, the overwhelming majority of video consumers still watch and spend money on DVD or Blu-ray "more than all digital-video options combined," even though they are constantly faced with newer and more feature-rich alternatives.

NPD surveyed 9,636 US consumers over the age of 13 on their personal video usage trends between January and March of this year. Seventy-seven percent reported that they watched a movie on DVD or Blu-ray over that period of time, with an average of about four viewing hours per week. Comparatively, only 49 percent reported seeing a movie in a theater during that time, and only 21 percent said they used some kind of video-on-demand service through their TVs.

Meet the senator blocking Big Content's Web censorship plan: Senator Ron Wyden is on the warpath against Web censorship. "The content industry is trying to use government as a club to beat up on one of the most promising parts but the economy of the future—the Internet," he tells me. And he vows to stop them.

Judge to copyright troll: your "business model" isn't my problem: A federal judge blasted copyright litigation firm Righthaven for using lawsuits to squeeze settlements from "Defendants cowed by the potential costs of litigation and liability." The company immediately ditched that case, but the same judge is overseeing 50 more.

Federal prosecutors have charged some of the biggest names in online poker with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling, the US Justice Department announced on Friday. Those behind PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker have had their domains seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and 76 bank accounts owned by the companies have been temporarily shut down via restraining orders.

Online gambling technically became illegal in the US starting in 2006, when legislators barred wire transfers, "payment system instruments," and credit cards from being used as payment methods for online gambling sites. Unsurprisingly, this didn't stop many gambling sites from running offshore operations and continuing to grow. Full Tilt Poker, for example, has grown large enough that it regularly sponsors players at the World Series of Poker. The domains of popular poker sites are no secret among online gambling aficionados.

The Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), which is the organization responsible for distributing IP addresses in most of Asia, Australia, and the Pacific, announced that on April 15, it reached its final /8 block of IPv4 addresses. This cryptic announcement means that APNIC's supply of IPv4 addresses has been exhausted, and since the global pool of IPv4 addresses was previously exhausted, IPv4 addresses are no longer available in the APNIC region as they were before—basically, "to each according to his needs."

European advertisers have begun hopping on board with a new set of guidelines (PDF) that will allow users to block cookie tracking. The rules, developed by an industry group called the Internet Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe), come just over a month before Europe is expected to issue its own legal guidelines for online advertisers.

The self-regulatory framework isn't just about avoiding being tracked—the goal is to offer transparency to consumers about which sites are using their cookie data, when, and for what purpose. Participating companies will display an icon on their behaviorally tracked advertisements that signifies that they're participating in the Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) Framework. When people click the icon, they'll be able to get more information about the ads and have the option to turn off the ad's tracking element.

"The OBA Framework will introduce cross-industry self-regulation for behavioural advertising across Europe, backed up by a compliant and enforcement mechanism," IAB Europe president Alain Heureux said in a statement. "This initiative is the culmination of 18 months planning and collaboration with European organisations representing advertisers, agencies, publishers and advertising standards."

Indeed, nearly 40 companies have already signed the pledge to begin implementing the OBA guidelines, including AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Additionally, IAB Europe says it worked closely with the European Commission in order to develop the rules so that they'll mesh with the Commission's own ad transparency guidelines when they are released on May 25.

"If this code ensures that they are fully compliant with their legal obligations under the new e-privacy directive, all well and good," European Commission spokesperson Jonathan Todd told Reuters.

Read the comments on this post

Those of you who have checkered driving records are familiar with the concept of traffic school. Google has decided to take that concept and move it to the Internet with the introduction of YouTube Copyright School, which will now be required for users who upload videos that are taken down due to copyrighted content.

In the past, YouTube has simply suspended the accounts of users who uploaded three videos that sparked copyright complaints. (It's important to note that not all videos with copyrighted content spark complaints. For example, YouTube sometimes notifies you that your video contains music that belongs to a certain record company, but there are no consequences to you because of whatever licensing deal that has been worked out.) However, as the company wrote on the official YouTube Blog, this one-size-fits-all policy hasn't been perfect—especially for regular YouTube users.

"Consider, for example, a long-time YouTube user who received two copyright notifications four years ago but who’s uploaded thousands of legitimate videos since then without a further copyright notification," the company wrote. "Until now, the four-year-old notifications would have stayed with the user forever despite a solid track record of good behavior, creating the risk that one new notification—possibly even a fraudulent notification—would result in the suspension of the account."

That's where Copyright School comes in. Users can now remove certain strikes from their YouTube record after they watch a campy-but-amusing Copyright School video (I didn't know you could use a touchscreen phone with a hook for a hand) and complete the accompanying quiz. When combined with a "solid demonstrated record of good behavior over time," a loyal YouTube user can ensure that his or her account won't get suspended over a few videos that infringe or skirt the lines of fair use.

YouTube reserves the right to keep your strikes on record if the situation warrants it, but it's clear the company is making an effort to throw a bone to its loyal user base. And users can still dispute the copyright notices and file counter-notifications if their content has been misidentified as infringing, so those who believe they're operating within the confines of US copyright law still have a few options before they're forced to take a quiz and wait for "teacher" approval.

Read the comments on this post

Apple is officially hopping on the "Do Not Track" train, adding support for special opt-out headers in the version of its Safari Web browser set to ship with Mac OS X 10.7 Lion this summer. The feature is already being tested in developer builds of Lion, according to the Wall Street Journal, making Apple the third major browser vendor to support a centralized opt-out mechanism.

The Federal Trade Commission recently called for online advertisers to devise a standard way for consumers to opt out of tracking associated with online behavioral advertising. Instead of the hodgepodge of opt-out mechanisms used for each website or advertiser—if they allow for one at all—the FTC recommended that the industry support a browser-based setting that consumers concerned with privacy could easily set and forget.