The internal Google documents, marked “highly confidential,” were obtained and released by media company Viacom Inc. in part to bolster its case in a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google and YouTube.
Viacom alleges the companies built YouTubes success by promoting the unlicensed use of video taken from Viacom cable channels such as MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon, rather than paying the creators.
Google bought YouTube for $1.76 billion in November 2006.
In one document, an internal review of Internet video services from May 2006, Googles video division asserted YouTubes business “is completely sustained by pirated content.”
[...]

The worlds largest software maker was responding to a report from The National Labor Committee, a nonprofit that looks into the treatment of foreign workers by U.S. companies. On Tuesday, the group published a report detailing long working hours, low pay, insufficient food and few freedoms for workers at the KYE Systems Corp. factory in Dongguan, China.
The factory makes Microsoft-brand Webcams, computer mice and Xbox controllers.
Included in the report are claims that 16- and 17-year-olds work 15-hour shifts for about 50 cents an hour, are prohibited from talking or using the bathroom during working hours, sleep [...]

The social networking site, in the midst of an overhaul to regain its lost mojo, is rolling out a service Thursday that blends nearly 1 million concert listings with a calendar and new links to buy tickets from partners or artists. Other pop culture events such as movie debuts and album releases are expected to appear on the calendar as well.
Users can add or subtract which events they see on their personal calendars on MySpace by clicking on categories such as music or friends events. They even could list or remove events they were notified of on Facebook, the rival [...]

The winner, to be announced at a ceremony in Helsinki on June 9, will be awarded euro800,000 ($1.1 million).
The two runners-up will each receive euro150,000 ($204,000).
The Technology Academy of Finland, which announced the finalists on Wednesday, chose them from 55 people and 39 innovations.
Richard Friend from Britain was selected for inventions in optoelectronics that have enabled the production of electronic paper and cheap organic solar cells; Stephen Furber, also British, for designing microprocessors found in 98 percent of the worlds cell phones; and Michael Graetzel from Switzerland for inventions of solar cells used in renewable energy technologies.
Friend, a professor of [...]

The startup is trying to make money without alienating the tens of millions of people who have gotten used to tweeting and following friends, celebrities and others without commercial interruptions. Just as it has through most of its four-year existence, Twitter is treading cautiously.
The new ads, called “promoted tweets,” will pop up only on searches at Twitters Web site, and the messages will be limited to a small group of test marketers including Virgin America, Best Buy Co., Sony Pictures and Starbucks Corp. Fewer than 10 percent of Twitters users were expected to see the ads Tuesday, but the messages [...]

AT&T Inc. offers two phone models that can receive the broadcasts through a FLO TV service branded as “AT&T Mobile TV,” while Verizon Wireless sells another two for “V Cast Mobile TV.” Qualcomm also sells a portable TV set for $200, while Audiovox Corp. sells an in-car entertainment system that can receive FLO TV.
Mobile TV hasnt been a big draw for phone shoppers so far.
Qualcomm said Tuesday that it aims to change that in the second half of this year by giving buyers more flexibility.
The video-recording feature will let them watch shows when they like. The company will also let [...]

Facebooks “Safety Center,” which features new tools for parents, teachers, teens and law enforcement, is the first major endeavor from the social networking site and its four-month-old global safety advisory board.
The company unveiled its Safety Center a day after meeting with child advocacy officials in the U.K., who had been pushing the company to install a so-called “panic button” on the site for some time, following the kidnapping and murder there of a teenager by a man she encountered on Facebook.
Britains Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center, or CEOP, had wanted Facebook to install a prominent [...]

AT&T Inc.s new “Rethink Possible” sales pitch touts grand visions for untethered Internet access and avoids tearing down its top competitor. It could mean a truce to a battle that experts say had no clear winner.
The new campaign, which debuted last weekend during the Masters golf tournament, tells people AT&T can help them simultaneously talk on their phones and surf the Internet or go from room to room to watch recorded television.
It represents a strategy shift that positions the company as being more than just a wireless carrier. AT&T wants to be thought of as a company with many ways [...]

The worlds largest mobile phone maker said it wants “to put better messaging and social networking tools in the hands of more people around the world at affordable prices.”
The new Nokia C3, Nokia E5 and Nokia C6 handsets have full QWERTY keyboards, enable instant messaging and give access to e-mails. Their expected selling prices respectively are euro90, euro180 and euro220 before taxes and subsidies.
The handsets will be available during the second and third quarters of this year.
“Nokias strategic focus is clearly on emerging markets now and taking higher feature devices to the masses and these three devices do that quite [...]

Microsoft said its new touch-screen phones - a short, square-shaped handset called Kin One and a longer, more rectangular one called Kin Two - will be sold exclusively in the U.S. by Verizon Wireless. They are being made by Sharp Corp., which has produced Sidekick cell phones, whose software comes from Microsoft-owned Danger Inc.
In the past, Microsoft has mostly sold its mobile software to other companies to put it on phones they make. This will be the case with its recently announced Windows Phone 7 Series software, which is expected to be on handsets by the holidays. The Kin phones [...]