The Electronic Frontier Foundation has managed to convince Michael Crook to stop filing bogus DMCA claims against websites carrying a picture of him that appeared on Fox News. A settlement of the EFF lawsuit requires him to withdraw his complaints, take a copyright law course, and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of those he targeted.

Wired News will put the phrase, “We are the media,” to the test as it launches its Assignment Zero project. The project will run for two to three months, and offers any willing contributor a chance at being a reporter or editor. Results of the project will be published at NewAssignment.net and Wired. If it works, it would show that a widely separated group of people can report completely and well on news issues.

The next generation of search will be improved for people as it becomes more personalized. Google’s Matt Cutts told Read/Write Web that “personalization has a very high chance of being able to improve search for the average user.” Matt also talked about web spam, and said being able to offer spam free search in any language has been a big trend for Google both last year and this year.

Long-time YouTube critic Mark Cuban weighed in with an opinion on Viacom’s billion-dollar lawsuit against the video sharing site and its owner, Google. Cuban said in a post at his Blog Maverick site that he hopes the lawsuit is not just a negotiating ploy. He sees no downside for Viacom and expects many more suits to follow Viacom’s action.

Google may be softening its stance on net neutrality. GigaOM writer Drew Clark cited recent comments made by Google senior policy counsel
Andrew McLaughlin that ran counter to Google’s publicly stated opposition to quality of service agreements. Although Google distanced themselves from McLaughlin’s comments by calling them his “personal view,” Google did sign an exclusive contract with Verizon to carry YouTube videos in November 2006.

Rumors of a MySpace News site have gained more credibility. Screenshots of the news portal at the social networking site were leaked to Wired News in the form of a sales document. The leaked data discussed how the site will be structured, but a launch date was not included. Previous rumors stated the launch would happen sometime in the second quarter of 2007.

The RSA security conference in San Francisco suffered a moment of irony, thanks to Oracle C-E-O Larry Ellison. He had been scheduled to give a keynote address at RSA, and that would have been his first ever keynote speech at the conference. But instead of Ellison taking the stage, another Oracle executive stepped up to the microphone to explain why the C-E-O could not be there. He had caught a flu virus. Shouldn’t he have gone to RSA anyway? There would have been some anti-virus researchers in the audience, right?

There’s a reason why people at Digg and other socially oriented sites hate S-E-O’s. Muhammad Saleem at Pronet Advertising found a video by a guy giving advice on optimizing one’s website, and the video is so cheesy and creepy that it makes you understand why Digg hates S-E-O so much. Jason Calacanis has called ninety percent of the S-E-O market “snake oil salesmen” and videos like this one just make his point for him. Said Jason:

“Don’t smoke the SEO-crack… you’ll just wind up chasing your tail as Digg and Google close the tiny SEO loopholes and put your domain on the black list.”

Mark Cuban wants you to upload your porn videos to YouTube! He claims it is quite coincidental that somehow YouTube somehow can keep porn and hate videos off of their servers but not copyrighted clips from TV. Cuban comments in his blog … “Is there anyone out there who really believes that the Google and Youtube “communities” scans all 60 thousdan daily uploads to protect those that might be offended by a nipple flash or two ?”

He claims it must be done by a sophisticated Google algorithm … and if they can stop porn they could eliminate copyrighted videos before they appear ed on YouTube. So Mark Cuban has issued this challenge…. “Everyone should upload their personal porn collection to Youtube and see what happens.” Of course, that assumes you have a personal porn collection … I don’t!

Florian Reichling at SEM Punch lost her Yahoo Panama account and they don’t know where to find it. When she noticed that her ads were conspicuously absent, she got a hold of Yahoo technical support, and her day didn’t get any better.

Reichling says: “It turns out a system glitch due to a bulk submission I’ve made turned off the account, but now comes the best – Customer support cannot turn the account back on.”

The complaint cited by Florian Reichling is actually false according to Yahoo. We’ve had several conversations with this client and have informed them multiple times by phone and email that the account was turned offline because of keyword spamming… it has nothing whatsoever to do with Panama or the bulk upload tool at all. Once an account is turned offline for keyword spamming, it is no longer available to the client, but they are allowed to create a new account and add keywords appropriately. Reichling was provided the opportunity to open a new account, but declined.

Our reps have made every effort to make it crystal clear to this customer that the issue had nothing to do with our new system or import tool but rather due to the lack of quality with his keywords, which were not tied to any content. This is standard procedure for handling advertisers who spam our system.

Thanks to some help from the crew at Search Marketing Gurus, Florian received a quick fix. First, you have to take a shot and pray. Second, remove all campaign negatives from the bulk upload file, because Yahoo doesn’t understand those yet. Third remove the CSV file and upload at will. Take another shot and pray Yahoo figures out their own system.

Do you love your iPod? Did you know that it could kill you? I’ve heard some pretty bad music on some people’s playlists, but nothing I thought was lethal. But a state Senator in New York thinks it’s time to ban people from using iPods, cellphones, Blackberries, and any other gadget while crossing the street. Violators would be fined one hundred dollars. How would they enforce this if fifty people cross a busy street in Manhattan and they’ve all got iPods? Half the city would be standing around on corners waiting for a cop to write them each a ticket. At least they wouldn’t be stepping in front of an oncoming bus because they were paying more attention to Britney Spears.