Thirteen record labels have filed for a summary judgment in a two-year-old case against peer-to-peer software company Lime Wire for allegedly inducing copyright violations of music files.

The 47-page legal document was filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. The record labels, including Warner Bros. Records, Sony Records and Virgin Records, asks the judge to summary judgment because Lime Wire has "promoted infringement," and has taken no steps to prevent illegal file-trading, among other complaints.

The record companies originally filed their suit against Lime Wire in August 4, 2006, charging the company with "inducement of copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and with respect to pre-1972 recordings, common law copyright infringement and state law unfair competition." They also charge Mark...

Social-news site Digg.com, a perpetual target of acquisition rumors, is in "final negotiations" to sell itself to Google for $200 million, according to a TechCrunch report Tuesday that cited multiple sources.

Google has been in talks to bring Digg into the Google News group, but it could be a few weeks before the deal closes, if it closes, according to the report.

Representatives for Google and Digg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Usually a "no comment" or the like is the response to questions about rumored acquisition negotiations. However, that was not the case in March--when the Digg takeover rumor mill was in full swing.

Rumors back in March that the social news site might be purchased by Google, Microsoft, or a major media company had whipped a sizable number of Digg users into a panic. Digg...

Google's YouTube is quickly shedding its reputation in Hollywood as a clearinghouse for pirated content and could soon be home to clips from popular movies and TV shows--all legally obtained.

Insiders say the search company has adopted a more accommodating approach toward Hollywood, and that it's finally starting to pay off. Last week, Lionsgate struck a content agreement with YouTube in a deal that calls for unprecedented cooperation between a major film studio and the Web's largest video-sharing site.

That agreement is likely only the beginning. Other big media companies are in talks with Google about similar deals, say sources with three different entertainment companies. They detailed the ways Google has become more flexible in talks about sharing revenue and helping protect films and TV shows against piracy.

"We've...

A Romanian man pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal fraud charge for his role in setting up fake Web sites in order to steal credit and debit card details.

Ovidiu-Ionut Nicola-Roman, 22, could also face a US$250,000 fine, according to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Nicola-Roman pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit fraud.

Nicola-Roman is one of 38 people of several nationalities charged in May with running a cybercrime ring centered around spam and phishing. In just one incident, the crew sent 1.3 million spam messages luring people to visit Web sites they had built to collect financial details.

Using instant messaging programs, the hackers sent those details to "cashiers" in the U.S. Those cashiers would make fraudulent bank cards, encoding the bank information onto the magnetic stripe of dummy cards.

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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom met with jailed IT administrator Terry Childs Monday, convincing him to hand over the administrative passwords to the city's multimillion dollar wide area network.

Childs made headlines last week when he was arrested and charged with four counts of computer tampering, after he refused to give over passwords to the Cisco Systems switches and routers used on the city's FiberWAN network, which carries about 60 percent of the municipal government's network traffic. Childs, who managed the network before his arrest, has been locked up in the county jail since July 13.

On Monday afternoon, he handed the passwords over to Mayor Newsom, who was "the only person he felt he could trust," according to a declaration filed in court by his attorney, Erin Crane. Newsom is ultimately responsible for the Department of Telecommunications...