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.”

Google also referred to YouTube as a “rogue enabler of content theft.”

The authors of that document sought to steer Google away from that model, saying the company should “differentiate based on our respect for copyright.”

Viacom sought the release of the files and Google recently relented. It is the second batch of three that Viacom wants made public.

A YouTube spokesman responded to the release of the documents Thursday, saying, “Its revealing that Viacom is trying to litigate this case in the press. These documents arent new. They are taken out of context and have nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Some documents suggested Google had an evolving strategy.

In one June 2006 e-mail forwarded to CEO Eric Schmidt and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, two employees recommended Google “pressure premium content providers to change their model towards free,” and to “set up play first, deal later around hot content.”

YouTube and Google contend that Viacom employees themselves were releasing videos on YouTube to generate buzz for their shows and to reach new audiences.

In one prescient document from May 2006, Google said premium content owners “still dont know whether Google is friend or foe,” and said if the company were to promote the theft of copyright-protected material, it could jeopardize its ability to work with them going forward.

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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 crammed in 14-person dorm rooms and are only allowed to leave the factory grounds at certain times.

In a blog post, Microsoft said it has rigorous standards in place for suppliers such as KYE, and those suppliers are audited every year. Microsoft said it also does quarterly onsite assessments and gets weekly reports from KYE about certain labor and safety criteria.

The software maker said a team of independent auditors are headed to the KYE factory, and it will place monitors at the factory pending results of its inspection.

“We will take all appropriate steps to ensure the fair treatment of the KYE workers,” said Brian Tobey, a corporate vice president of manufacturing and operations at Microsoft, in the blog post.

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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 social networking giant. Listings can be tailored to a users favorite artists and location.

MySpace is capitalizing on its strength as a forum where 14 million musicians interact with fans and on its bustling invitation application, which it says handled 126 million event invitations in March alone. The new project also opens a channel for advertising that is needed to improve the finances of MySpace, which has become an underperforming unit of News Corp.

MySpace is selling event listings that will show up prominently on users calendars and profile pages. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is promoting an event to sell merchandise that goes with DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc.s latest movie, “How To Train Your Dragon.”

MySpace co-president Jason Hirschhorn said the service will make the sites huge database of event listings more relevant to users and give advertisers a way to blend in more seamlessly with users lives.

“As we look at the future of MySpace, its important to diversify our revenue streams, but also to figure new ways to integrate advertising,” Hirschhorn said.

The new feature takes advantage of MySpaces $20 million acquisition last year of iLike, a popular music application that also runs in Facebook, and blends it with Social Plan, an event application that was absorbed by MySpace in January. Social Plan was also a unit of News Corp.

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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 physics at Cambridge University, was cited for his work in plastic electronics “that has revolutionized the field of optoelectronics with far-reaching consequences for energy efficient applications in display devices, lighting, sensing and solar energy harvesting.”

Professor Furber of the computer engineering department at the University of Manchester, Britain, was recognized for being the principal designer of the ARM 32 bit RISC microprocessor 25 years ago that “unlocked the world of consumer electronics … benefiting hundreds of millions worldwide.”

German-born chemist Graetzel, director of the photonics and interfaces laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique de Lausanne, in Lausanne, Switzerland, was lauded for inventing “dye-sensitized, low cost-high performance solar cells,” which led to the development of electricity-generating windows and mobile solar panels.

The biennial Millennium Technology Prize was launched by the Finnish government and industry in 2004. It is given for achievements in energy and the environment, communications and information, new materials and processes as well as health care and life sciences.

The previous prize winner, in 2008, was American Professor Robert Langer from MIT for developing bio-materials used in combatting cancer and heart disease.

Other winners include Japanese Professor Shuji Nakamura for inventions in laser technology and LED lighting, and Tim Berners-Lee, the MIT scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web.

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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 should start appearing on all relevant searches within the next few days.

One promoted tweet from Starbucks was getting retweeted heavily, thanks to its free tax-day offer: “On 4/15 bring in a reusable tumbler and well fill it with brewed coffee for free. Lets all switch from paper cups.”

The move heralds a turning point for Twitter, which has held off on selling ads even as its widening audience turned it into an obvious marketing magnet and investors poured $155 million into the San Francisco company.

The last cash infusion seven months ago valued privately held Twitter at about $1 billion, even though its only significant revenue had come from giving Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. better access to its service. The technology powerhouses paid Twitter an undisclosed amount for that right.

Twitters seemingly ambivalent attitude about making money reminded some Silicon Valley observers of the profitless Internet startups that wooed investors during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, only to crash and burn at the turn of 21st century.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone defended the companys “slow and thoughtful approach to monetization” in a blog announcing promoted tweets, even as he recalled a joke Comedy Centrals Stephen Colbert made at his expense during an interview last year: “So, I assume that Biz in Biz Stone does not stand for Business Model.”

The new advertising system should give a better inkling about whether Twitter will be more like Google or Pets.com, whose most valuable asset turned out to be a sock puppet.

Google itself took several years after its 1998 inception before it began selling short ads next to its search results, spawning one of the worlds biggest marketing vehicles with ad revenue of nearly $23 billion last year.

Twitter already is parroting Google in some respects. Thats not surprising given that Stone and a fellow co-founder, Twitter CEO Evan Williams, briefly worked at Google, as did Twitters chief operating officer, Dick Costolo.

Theres a twist to the way Twitter is using its search engine as an advertising springboard. Instead of displaying commercial messages on the margins of the search results, as Google does, Twitter will blend them with the rest of the tweets and label them as promotions.

The ads will be confined to Twitters standard 140-character limit so they can be passed along, or “retweeted,” to other users. Twitter plans to pull promoted tweets that arent attracting attention.

“You want to create something that interests people rather than just screams at them,” Bernoff said.

Michael Wilson, a Brigham Young University student who lives in Salt Lake City, is worried Twitters advertisers eventually will dominate the service.

“I think its going to be harder and harder to have your voice heard,” he said.

Many companies already use their own Twitter accounts to connect with customers and offer discounts to people who follow them.

What remains to be seen is whether Twitters new advertising system will prove effective enough to persuade companies to pay for a featured spot in the search results instead of just trying to reach people through the free communications channel.

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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 viewers buy service by the day, rather than committing to subscriptions that cost $10 to $15 per month for a package of a dozen channels.

Qualcomm will also add interactive features to its viewing software, to let viewers click for more information about a show or click to buy an advertised product.

Qualcomm said the new features will become available on current FLO TV devices through software upgrades.

The new features dont address FLO TVs main problem: that its accessible on only a few devices. But Qualcomm has demonstrated a device that takes the FLO TV signal and rebroadcasts it over Wi-Fi, which would make it accessible to smart phones such as the iPhone. It hasnt said when that device would be available.

Theres competition on the way for FLO TV. TV stations have been testing their own broadcasts designed to be picked up by mobile devices. Consumers are supposed to be able to tune in the broadcasts starting in the Washington, D.C., area in May.

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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 link on U.K. users profile pages that would take them to CEOPs own safety site designed to help children deal with online threats.

In a statement Tuesday, the center called Facebooks move “long overdue,” and “nothing more than we would expect from any responsible social network provider.”

But it added that “critical issues remain unresolved” since Facebook did not actually install a “panic button.”

“We believe that without the deterrence provided by direct visible access to the CEOP button on each and every page children will not be appropriately empowered, parents cannot be reassured and the offender will not be deterred,” the center said on its Web site.

Facebooks board is composed of Internet safety groups Common Sense Media, ConnectSafely, WiredSafety, Childnet International and The Family Online Safety Institute.

Some new features of the safety center include more content on staying safe, such as dealing with bullying online, an interactive portal and a simpler design.

The presence of sexual predators is a problem for social networking sites and their users. Facebook, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has helped identify, and has disabled accounts of, registered sex offenders. In 2008, Facebook said it agreed to assist 49 Attorneys General to protect kids against Internet predators.

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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 to improve peoples lives beyond phones.

The five ads mix whimsical fantasy - childlike drawings prancing through a city - and voiceovers urging people to “Explore, try, do.” They will replace a series that has been running since the fall starring actor Luke Wilson that answered Verizon Wireless criticisms with some of its own.

Later this week, Verizon plans to debut a new campaign targeted at its business customers, but the company said it had nothing new to announce about its current consumer campaign, which maintains its attacks on AT&Ts wireless coverage.

The attacks surged as the industry fights for new customers in a mature cell phone market, where the majority of people who want phones already have them. Companies are cutting prices to woo customers and pitching new phones and features to prompt movement between carriers. They also have to contend with prepaid plans that are cheaper and growing in popularity.

AT&Ts move marks the end of a rare advertising spat that goes against a marketing truism: never attack your opponent by name because it can turn customers off to you and the entire industry.

Verizon struck first with its “Theres a Map for That” commercials that mocked AT&T by referencing its popular iPhone and slamming its 3G coverage as spotty.

AT&T responded and the sparring continued, with spending likely costing hundreds of millions of dollars for both companies, heavy hitters in the advertising world. Verizon was the worlds second-biggest advertiser last year with $2.24 billion in spending, while AT&T was fourth at $1.9 billion, according to Kantar Media.

The ad war even prompted lawsuits, although the two agreed late last year to drop the cases that accused each other of lying in ads. AT&T did take some of the criticism about its dropped calls and slow downloads seriously. It announced in late January it would spend an additional $2 billion to improve its network this year.

Its hard to call either company a winner, because neither likely drew subscribers from the other, said Charles Golvin, principal analyst at Forrester Research, in San Francisco. Instead, smaller competitors got caught in the crossfire. Both AT&T and Verizon added customers at similar rates.

“Both their numbers were still pretty good,” Golvin said of Verizon and AT&T. “They were taking a lot of share away from T-Mobile and Sprint and probably not so much away from each other. I think neither one of them came out ahead.”

Both companies have more subscribers than their next two biggest competitors, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA, combined.

AT&T wont say how much it is spending on the new campaign. AT&T spokesman Steven Schwadron said the ads attacking Verizon drove home to viewers how widespread AT&Ts coverage is.

The new campaign will include print, outdoor, in-store signs, he said. Future ads will build on the theme.

“Its really about showing how innovation is having an impact on peoples daily lives,” he said.

The change in tone is also a breather for viewers.

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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 nicely,” said Neil Mawston, analyst at Strategy Analytics in London.

Finland-based Nokia, which is increasingly turning to providing applications and services for handset users, said in December it will focus on the smart phone sector, including providing cheaper handsets in emerging markets.

Despite strong competition from Blackberry and iPhone, Nokias market share in smart phones grew from 35 percent to 40 percent in the last quarter of 2009.

The cheapest of the new models, the C3, with an estimated price tag of euro90, includes a two megapixel camera, a 2.4 inch screen and will include access to Nokias Ovi Mail and Ovi Chat that allow first-time users to set up e-mail and chat accounts straight from the device without the need for a computer.

It has WiFi connectivity and support for up to an 8GB memory card, allowing users to update their status and share pictures on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

“The C3 stands out the most at a very competitive price with a very effective feature set … that goes squarely after the lower-tier mass market in India, Africa, China,” Mawston said. “Its going to be one of their star devices over the next two quarters.”

The Nokia C6, with an estimated price of euro220, has a 3.2-inch touch screen with full slide-out keyboard and a five megapixel camera featuring autofocus and flash.

The E5, expected to sell for some euro180, is targeted at corporate customers with numerous productivity applications available in Nokias Ovi Store. It has direct access to over 90 percent of the worlds corporate e-mails through Mail for Exchange and IBM Lotus Notes Traveler.

Nokias share price was virtually unchanged at euro11.18 ($15.19) in early afternoon trading in Helsinki.

On the Net:

Nokia: http://www.nokia.com

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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 mark a departure, as Microsoft has sway over the creation of their software and hardware.

Verizon said it will start selling the Kin phones online in early May and in stores shortly thereafter. In the fall, carrier Vodafone Group PLC - which owns Verizon Wireless in partnership with Verizon Communications Inc. - will start selling the Kin phones in Italy, Spain, Germany and the U.K. Microsoft has not yet announced prices.

Microsoft needs help in the cell phone market. Its software has been losing share while Apple Inc. and Google Inc., which makes the Android operating software, have gained. Microsoft software ran on 13.1 percent of smart phones sold in the U.S. last year, according to research firm In-Stat. That put Microsoft in third after BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. and Apple.

Roz Ho, leader of the Microsoft team behind the Kin, said the company has been working on the Kin devices for several years, trying to create a handset for people who especially want to connect with others over social Web sites such as Facebook. The phones are also meant for people who want a handset that works simply, without forcing them to hunt through menus and icons, she said.

That setup could also present a risk. Unlike most popular smart phones, the Kins wont have access to application stores that let customers download add-on software programs. Ho said her team studied consumer habits and then built the activities they used most often into the Kin phones.

For instance, in a demo for The Associated Press, the Kins home screen showed a live stream of updates to social networks and Web sites that can be clicked on and responded to. Users can send photos and other material to people by dragging it onto a little circle at the bottom of the screen. A finger swipe across the screen can then bring up a page with applications such as photos and music.

The music player will be based on Microsofts Zune software, which also will be incorporated into the Windows Phone 7 handsets that multiple manufacturers will be able to use. That software was announced first, at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, Spain, in February, but will hit the market later. Microsoft and Verizon said they dont think consumers will get confused.

The Kin handsets will not be obviously branded as Microsoft products. They will sport a sizable “Kin” logo on the back and, in smaller type, an indication that they are Windows phones from Verizon and Sharp.

Gartner Inc. analyst Ken Dulaney doesnt think the lack of a dedicated application store will hurt the Kins chances. Instead hell be watching how Verizon prices the devices and accompanying data plans. Hes hoping to see the Kins cost $49 or be given free with a Verizon contract.

“By pricing it properly, they can give themselves some room to grow and differentiate themselves from Apple. If they put themselves in the same ballpark, I think theyre going to get hurt,” he said.

Both Kins are black with screens that respond to multiple finger gestures, similar to the “multitouch” technology on the iPhone. The shorter Kin One has a full QWERTY keyboard that slides out from the bottom, while the Kin Two has a full QWERTY keyboard that comes out from its side.

Neither has a memory card slot; instead, the phones will upload content such as photos and videos to a Kin online storage service to free up memory.

Microsoft already does something similar with the Sidekick phones - it stores phone numbers, photos and other personal data on servers it runs. This resulted in an embarrassing incident late last year, when a server meltdown caused data to disappear from some users phones. T-Mobile temporarily stopped selling the phones, and some customers even sued.

Microsoft managed to restore most of the missing data, and gave $100 gift cards to affected customers.

The Kins arrival doesnt signal the end for the Sidekick. T-Mobile, which owns the brand, said it will introduce new hardware and software and consumers should look for updates “in the months ahead.” But those new units will not use Dangers software.

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