Google responded to losing a court decision in Belgium over Google News. The case found the search engine accused of copyright infringement because it indexed articles managed by Copiepresse. Google’s Rachel Whetstone said the whole legal mess could have been avoided if Copiepresse had employed robots dot text files like any other publisher that might not want their content in Google News. The court did agree that Google should be given notice when a publisher wants content removed.

YouTube gave up a user’s identity to Fox after the network filed a subpoena to find out who uploaded four episodes of the new season of “24″. The person who went by the user name of EcoTotal put the first four episodes online a week before the new season began. If EcoTotal hoped that YouTube’s new owner Google would fight the subpoena on privacy grounds, as they have over search data, he got a wakeup call that was about as subtle as Jack Bauer dropping out of his ceiling.

Yahoo Music may compete with Apple’s iTunes, but their executives agree that D-R-M needs to go. Dave Goldberg, the head of Yahoo Music, told Silicon Valley Watcher’s Tom Foremski that he’s been in favor of dropping copy protection from the music they sell. When Yahoo Music has done experiments in selling music without D-R-M, it boosted music sales. He had another reason why D-R-M should go, saying that that Microsoft D-R-M Yahoo Music uses “doesn’t work half the time.”

Gmail is really open to everyone now. Lots of people reported last week that Google would drop the cellphone number requirement to get a Gmail invite, but it didn’t happen until now. Back when Gmail launched, people were selling invites on eBay. Unlike other free email services with very small inbox sizes, Gmail waved a generous gigabyte of storage at its users, which made it very popular. That’s a lesson for anyone doing some last-minute diamond shopping today - size matters.

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