Internet

A federal judge in Massachusetts agreed this week to allow live Internet streaming coverage of a Jan. 22 motions hearing in an illegal file-sharing case involving the recording industry.

Another newspaper has prevailed in a court battle over the identities of people who commented anonymously on its Web site.

A federal judge in Pennsylvania held last month that The Pocono Record did not have to reveal the identities of several people who commented anonymously on an article the paper wrote about a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the Pocono Medical Center.

A battle over Web site links has landed two media companies in court.

GateHouse Media, which owns several hundred newspapers and Web sites, filed a lawsuit last month in federal court in Massachusetts against The New York Times Co. alleging copyright infringement.

The Associated Press has fallen short in its bid for details on which state-owned computers were used to edit Wikipedia entries about Arkansas officials, after a judge ruled against the wire service in an open-records lawsuit.

So-called "bump messages" -- new comments made to older messages in order to move them back up to prominent positions on a Web site and keep a conversation alive  --  do not count as republication in the libel context, a New York judge wrote in an opinion last week.

A Maryland appeals court heard oral arguments Monday over the outing of anonymous Web writers responsible for posting online allegedly defamatory remarks about a Dunkin’ Donuts store, according to The Washington Post.  

JuicyCampus.com founder Matt Ivester, whose site has been criticized as profiting from invasion of college students’ privacy and tarnishing their reputations, fielded questions this week at Georgetown University and largely brushed off concerns that the site is offensive and damages lives, The Washington Post reported.

Arizona's attorney general declared in a legal opinion Monday that it would not violate state open-government laws for some school board meetings to be held online. 

The Tribune Co. probably needn't worry about a libel suit after last week's mishap over an archived article on the 2002 bankruptcy of United Airlines, The New York Times reports, but the incident -- which temporarily cost United the bulk of its share value -- underscores a risk news groups face as they "adapt to the Internet age."

To the lengthy list of Web sites blocked on city employees' computers in Vallejo, Calif., which so far includes pornography, social networking and gambling sites, we can now add three blogs -- one hosted by the local Times-Herald.