Google looks set to launch a beta test of a document translation service, a new move in the company’s efforts to break down language barriers.

(Credit: Google)With the service, the company will connect people who need documents translated with humans who will be paid to do so, according to the Google Translation Center information page. The site was spotted by sharp eyes at the Google Blogoscoped blog.

“Google Translation Center is the fast and easy way to get translations for your content. Simply upload your document, choose your translation language, and choose from our registry of professional and volunteer translators. If a translator accepts, you should receive your translated content back as soon as it’s ready,” the site said.

Google prefers to rely on computer algorithms rather than humans, so at first glance the Google Translation Center looks somewhat anomalous, even though Google is only playing a middleman role. But it’s possible that the human translators might be gradually improving Google’s machine translation technology as they work, in effect helping to put themselves out of a job.

That’s because Google’s translation system uses a statistical model that works better the more it can compare the same text in two different languages. And Google evidently will track translation work in its database; according to the center’s introduction for translators, “our translation search feature matches your current translation with previous translations, so you don’t have to translate over and over again.”

Google is fervently interested in better machine translation. With it, it can use its search technology to link people with data around the world, regardless of language barriers, making its search engine significantly more powerful.

Wanted: More Rosetta Stones
Google’s translation technique essentially relies on having as many Rosetta Stone-like documents as possible. The more documents it has in two languages, the better able it is to match words and phrases from one language to another, according to a recent speech by Jeff Dean, a Google fellow who works Google’s computing infrastructure.

“By computing statistics over all words and phrases, you…get a model of word-by-word and phrase-by-phrase replacements,” Dean said. Machine translation often produces awkward results today, but “the impact of having a really large language model makes the sentences flow a lot more easily.”

The screenshot below, from Google, shows the online interface a Google translator apparently will see. It shows text in two languages, with the passage broken down into chunks of text. It also suggests a previous translation of one chunk, offering a “use suggestion” button to employ it. It’s not clear if the previous translation draws just on that individual translator’s work or a larger collection.

Based on the Bilingual Evaluation Understudy method for rating translation accuracy, Google scored first place in a 2005 evaluation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology evaluation.

Google was mum about the project. “We’re always looking at new ways of providing tools for users to connect with each other, share information, and improve access to information on the internet, but we don’t have any new details to share at this time,” the company said in a statement.

Paying the middleman
It’s a time-tested business to be the middleman who connects customers to those willing to pay for a product or service, but the Internet has taken the role to new heights by more easily enabling that process on a national and sometimes global scale. For example, Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk, Serebra Connect, and Elance can help companies that need tasks done find people who can do them.

But the Google Translation Center seems to have a different approach. Translators get access to free Google tools, and it appears Google isn’t involved in any payment transactions, according to the site.

“Google Translation Center provides a venue for you to enter into and complete translation transactions. Except when you use Google Translation Center as provided in Section 4, Google is not involved in any transactions in Google Translation Center. Your interaction with any third party participant(s) or user(s) within Google Translation Center, including payment and delivery of goods and services…are solely between you and such third party participant(s) or user(s) and Google is not involved in such dealings,” according to the terms of service. Section 4, titled “Google Participation,” says just that “Google and/or its subsidiaries and affiliates may use Google Translation Center from time to time.”

So what’s in it for Google?
Of course, Google has a strong search-ad business that it uses to subsidize any number of efforts that may not be profitable for years, if indeed ever. After all, Google’s mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

But even if Google doesn’t charge a percentage, improving automated translation could be a powerful incentive as Google tries to keep its core product, the search engine, competitive.

Google’s translation technology is available through the Google Translate site, but the company also has technology called Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) that builds translation into its search engine.

Search increasingly is the gateway by which people discover what’s on the Internet, so building automated two-way translation into the process could open up the very parts of the Internet that today are available but effectively hidden by language barriers.

CLIR can translate a search query into a foreign tongue then translate the answer back into the search results. Clicking a link produces the translated version of that page.

For example, a search in Russian for Tony Blair’s biography will present an option, in Russian and presented at the bottom of the search results page, to search pages written in English. Clicking on a link then translates the English page into Russian.

Google executives have given indications recently about just how grand the company’s ambitions are for the automated language translation. The company wants people from any major language to understand any other.

“We will eventually do 100 by 100 languages, to take this set of languages and convert to another,” Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a June talk. “That alone will have a phenomenal impact on an open society,” he said, a reference to concerns many have expressed about Google’s censored search results in countries such as China.

BEIJING (AFP) - Foreign reporters will not have complete access to the Internet during the Beijing Olympics, Games organisers said Wednesday, reversing a pledge to bring down the Chinese firewall of censorship.

Sites linked to the banned Falungong spiritual movement and other unspecified ones would remain blocked for the thousands of foreign reporters covering the Games, organising committee spokesman Sun Weide told AFP.

“During the Olympic Games we will provide sufficient access to the Internet for reporters,” said Sun.

However “sufficient” access falls short of the complete Internet freedoms for foreign reporters that China’s communist authorities had promised in the run-up to the Games, which begin on August 8.

The head of the International Olympic Committee’s press commission, Kevan Gosper, told AFP that he would take the matter up with Chinese officials.

“I will speak with the Chinese authorities to advise them of the restraints and to see what their reaction is,” he said.

Australian Olympic team chief John Coates, who is also an IOC member, expressed frustration with the decision to continue to censor the Internet, pointing out that China had gone back on one of its “key” Olympic promises.

“It certainly is disappointing… I think it’s a matter that the IOC will take seriously,” Coates told reporters at the main press centre for the Games here where sensitive Internet sites remained blocked.

In an exclusive interview with AFP two weeks ago, Rogge insisted that there would be no censorship of the Internet.

“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China,” he said.

“There will be no censorship on the Internet.”

However Sun said China’s pledge was only to allow foreign reporters enough information to carry out their duties to cover the Games, not to have unfettered Internet access.

“Our promise was that journalists would be able to use the Internet for their work during the Olympic Games,” he said. “So we have given them sufficient access to do that.”

Falungong is a particularly sensitive issue for China’s communist authorities, who outlawed the group in 1999, describing it as an evil cult.

Sun would not say which other sites would remain censored for foreign reporters.

But journalists working at the main press centre for the Olympics could not access a wide range of sites on Wednesday.

When AFP accessed the Internet through the wireless system at the centre, a wide range of sites considered sensitive by the Chinese government were blocked.

These included sites for Amnesty International, the Tibet government-in-exile, dissidents, and ones giving information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the Chinese military crushed democracy protests.

Chinese authorities operate strict Internet censorship with a so-called “Great Firewall of China” that blocks information the Communist Party views as improper, unhealthy or a threat to its rule.

Amnesty describes China as one of the world’s “enemies of the Internet”.

Last year China introduced new regulations relaxing general media curbs for foreign journalists in the run-up to the Games.

However, domestic journalists, who work under strict censorship, were not included in the measures to relax reporting restrictions, nor were they promised any greater Internet freedoms during the Games.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc. is introducing more tools to help the software applications fueling the online hangout’s popularity and is promising to intensify its efforts to weed out programs that violate its rules for protecting users’ privacy.

  Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s precocious chief executive, outlined on Wednesday the steps in a programmers’ conference that underscored the growing influence of the Web site that he started 4 1/2 years ago in his Harvard University dorm room.

A crowd of about 1,500 programmers turned out to hear Zuckerberg discuss how he hopes to make it easier for people to share information and entertainment wherever they go on the Web.

Zuckerberg, 24, is counting on programmers who aren’t employed by Facebook to play a vital role in realizing his vision.

More than 30,000 applications have been designed to run on Facebook since the company opened its site to outside developers 14 months ago. The most successful applications have been embraced by millions of Facebook users, helping to turn the startups that developed them into hot commodities.

Facebook estimates that the makers of its top applications have raised a combined $200 million from venture capitalists. The applications offer a wide variety of features, including sharing photos, recommending music and playing games.

“I have to credit Facebook with a large part of our success,” said Hadi Partovi, president of iLike, which offers a music-recommendation application. Partovi said about half of iLike’s 30 million users signed up through Facebook.

As the number of outside applications have swelled, Facebook’s users have ballooned from 24 million in May 2007 to about 90 million today. The rapid growth has narrowed MySpace.com’s lead in the Internet’s social networking niche and helped privately held Facebook secure a $240 million investment from Microsoft Corp.

Zuckerberg is setting out to broaden the appeal of Facebook’s outside applications by giving programmers access to Facebook’s tools for translating into 20 different languages.

Facebook also is trying make it easier for its users to transplant their personal profiles and favorite applications to other sites.

The “Connect” initiative, announced in May, moved a step closer to fruition Wednesday with the opening of a “sandbox” for programmers to begin making their applications more portable. Two dozen Web sites, including Digg, Citysearch and Movable Type, already have signed up for Connect. Facebook expects the feature to debut in autumn.

Having so many outside applications on its site has occasionally caused headaches for Facebook, too. Some applications have included security holes that gave Web surfers unauthorized peeks at the personal profiles of Facebook users while other programs “tricked people into doing things that they didn’t want to do,” iLike’s Partovi said.

Facebook has already removed about 1,000 abusive applications since it opened up its Web site to outside programmers and plans to move even more aggressively as it establishes clearer ground rules for operating on its site, said Benjamin Ling, Facebook’s director of platform program management.

Besides banning abusive programs, Facebook plans to endorse applications it considers to be “great.” Facebook expects the applications that get its seal of approval to be more appealing to the site’s users. ILike and Causes, a program for promoting philanthropy, are the first programs to get Facebook’s blessing.

Rating the applications “is a huge shift in philosophy for Facebook,” said Sean Parker, Causes’ chairman and a former Facebook executive who remains close to Zuckerberg. “Every developer involved with Facebook is going to either walk out of here elated or scared to death.”

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc’s AOL will launch a personal finance site on Tuesday, adding to a roster of new properties that do not bear its name.

The new site, called WalletPop.com, is a spin-off of AOL’s Money & Finance channel and will focus on consumer and personal finance. AOL Money & Finance will continue to business and investing news and tools.

The launch of another site not bearing the AOL brand is part of a plan to create new online businesses courting younger audiences unfamiliar with a company whose heyday ended with the popularity of high speed Internet access.

TMZ.com, a celebrity entertainment site created by AOL and a unit of Warner Bros, added 35 percent more users in May, now attracting about 9.2 million visitors monthly, according to comScore. Asylum, which the company said is now the top men’s site, attracted 2.7 million unique visitors in May.

Walletpop offers “a comprehensive, accessible, and interactive web site focused exclusively on the money matters of real people, such as debt management, finding the best deals, saving, retirement, insurance, real estate, banking, taxes and more,” Marty Moe, Senior Vice President, AOL Money & Finance said in a statement.

Walletpop’s launch follows on the heels of the July launch of BigDownload.com, a site targeting PC gamers.

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SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. has rejected Microsoft’s latest attempt to buy its online search operations in a “take or leave it” proposal that Yahoo said would have dismantled its Internet franchise.

As described by Yahoo in a statement released late Saturday, Microsoft packaged its latest offer with activist investor Carl Icahn, a billionaire who is seeking to overthrow Yahoo’s board of directors in a shareholder meeting scheduled for Aug. 1.

Without providing many specifics, Yahoo said Microsoft renewed an earlier bid to buy the company’s search engine and proposed turning over the remaining pieces to a board controlled by Icahn.

Yahoo said it received the complex proposal Friday and was given less than 24 hours to respond.

Backed into a corner, Yahoo lashed out in a blunt manner likely to inject even more bad blood into its already venomous relationship with Microsoft and Icahn.

“It is ludicrous to think that our board could accept such a proposal,” Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock said in the statement. “While this type of erratic and unpredictable behavior is consistent with what we have come to expect from Microsoft, we will not be bludgeoned into a transaction that is not in the best interests of our stockholders.”

In another indication of the animosity between the two companies, Bostock said Microsoft has taken the “completely absurd and irresponsible” stance of refusing to hold any further talks with Yahoo’s current board and management.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Saturday. Efforts to reach Icahn were unsuccessful.

Yahoo said it unsuccessfully reiterated its willingness to sell the entire company to Microsoft for $47.5 billion, or $33 per share — a bid that the software maker dangled in early May before withdrawing it in a pique over Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang’s demand for $37 per share.

Sunnyvale-based Yahoo hasn’t explained why it finds a sale at $33 per share to be more palatable now than it was a little over two months ago. Microsoft, though, has said it’s no longer interested in buying Yahoo in its entirety unless Icahn’s board is on the other end of the negotiations.

The breakdown of those takeover negotiations infuriated many Yahoo shareholders who fear the company’s stock price would plunge back below $20 — a threshold reached just before Microsoft made its initial bid in early January. Yahoo shares finished Friday at $23.57.

Yahoo’s squandered opportunity to sell to Microsoft in May prompted Icahn to lead a rebellion aimed at removing Yahoo’s entire board so he could fire Yang and try to revive sales talks with Microsoft.

Icahn’s attempted coup gathered more steam earlier this week when Microsoft publicly announced it might be willing to buy all or part of Yahoo if shareholders voted to remove the current board. Yahoo shares climbed 10 percent during the past week on hopes that Microsoft’s backing of Icahn might pave the way for a deal.

Since it dropped its bid to buy all of Yahoo, Microsoft has focused its overtures on Yahoo’s search engine — the second most used on the Internet behind Google Inc.’s.

Microsoft in May offered to buy Yahoo’s search operations for $1 billion and to spend another $8 billion to acquire a 16 percent stake in Yahoo’s remaining operations.

Yahoo said the proposal that Microsoft submitted Friday “contains a number of improvements,” but insisted it still wasn’t good enough.

Yahoo offered no concrete details about what Icahn had proposed to do with the rest of the business, but indicated part of the plan included spinning off the company’s Asian operations. The company pooh-poohed the notion of entrusting its business to Icahn, noting his inexperience in the Internet industry.

Icahn, who has been challenging corporate boards for more than two decades, owns a roughly 5 percent stake in Yahoo and hopes to make a profit by pushing the company’s stock price above $30.

Instead of selling its search engine to Microsoft, Yahoo opted to forge an advertising partnership with rival Google Inc. That represented a bit of irony because Google’s dominance of the Internet search advertising market is the primary reason that Microsoft is pursuing Yahoo.

As Google has become more successful, both Yahoo and Microsoft have been regressing, a dynamic that many analysts believe make it imperative for the two companies to put aside their differences and combine forces.

Yahoo has estimated that it can boost its annual revenue by about $800 million by relying on Google’s superior technology to show some ads alongside the search results on its Web site.

But Yahoo’s alliance with Google is being closely vetted by antitrust regulators because the two companies together control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market. To accommodate the review, Yahoo and Google have voluntarily agreed to wait until late September to begin working together.

Microsoft has maintained its proposal would be better for Yahoo’s stockholders than the Google partnership.

Yahoo!

SAN FRANCISCO - Microsoft Corp. threw its weight behind investor Carl Icahn’s effort to dump Yahoo Inc.’s board, saying Monday that a successful shareholder rebellion would encourage the software maker to renew its bid to buy Yahoo’s Internet search engine or possibly the entire company.

The unexpected endorsement gives Icahn a carrot to dangle before Yahoo shareholders as he wages an acrimonious campaign to replace Yahoo’s nine directors at the company’s annual meeting Aug. 1.

It marks the first time that Microsoft has publicly sided with Icahn since the billionaire investor launched his attempted coup nearly eight weeks ago.

The two sides decided they could work together after Icahn held “frequent” discussions with Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer and some of his top lieutenants during the past week, according to a letter that Icahn sent Monday to Yahoo shareholders.

Industry analysts said Icahn now has more credibility with Yahoo shareholders because he has been arguing that a purge of Yahoo’s board is the only way to salvage a deal with Microsoft.

“This breathes new life into Icahn’s proposal,” said Stanford Group analyst Clayton Moran. “It really pushes the power to Icahn and his board (nominees).”

The prospect that a changing of the guard at Yahoo might pave the way to a friendly deal with Microsoft lifted Yahoo shares $2.56, or 12 percent, to finish Monday at $23.91.

Echoing previous remarks in its battle with Icahn, Yahoo questioned Microsoft’s interest in buying the entire company.

“If Microsoft and Mr. Ballmer really want to purchase Yahoo, we again invite them to make a proposal immediately,” Yahoo said.

But Icahn said Microsoft doesn’t want to risk making a bid under Yahoo’s current regime, because the software maker fears Yahoo’s management would make more poor decisions during an antitrust review that would take at least nine months.

“If the current board and management team of Yahoo mismanage the company (and their recent track record is far from reassuring), Microsoft would be putting its money at risk and a great deal could be lost,” Icahn wrote in his letter to shareholders.

Microsoft’s willingness to work with Icahn undermines one of Yahoo’s chief arguments for re-electing its board.

Yahoo has maintained that it would be foolhardy to back Icahn’s slate of alternate nominees because Icahn had no concrete ideas besides selling the company to Microsoft — something that Yahoo has been depicting as a pipe dream since Microsoft withdrew a $47.5 billion offer in early May.

Microsoft reinforced that perception by refusing to revive its bid last month even after Yahoo’s board signaled its willingness to accept the earlier offer.

With Microsoft in Icahn’s corner, “the dynamic has changed,” Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said. “There is now a rationale for voting for Icahn’s board because there now seems to be a real possibility for a deal again.”

Monday’s turn of events amplifies the pressure on Yahoo co-founder and CEO Jerry Yang, whose handling of the earlier negotiations with Microsoft infuriated many shareholders.

Yahoo’s stock price had plunged by more than 30 percent to fall below $20 during Yang’s first six months as CEO. Then, in January, Microsoft raised hopes for a quick windfall with its unsolicited takeover bid, only to be repeatedly rebuffed.

If he seizes control of the board, Icahn has promised to fire the 39-year-old Yang as CEO and replace him with a more seasoned leader.

Yang has been meeting with Yahoo’s major stockholders during the past week, hoping to persuade them to give him a chance to prove the Sunnyvale-based company is worth more than the $33 per share that Microsoft previously offered.

Ballmer withdrew that bid after Yang sought $37 per share — a height the stock hasn’t reached in 2 1/2 years.

In its Monday statement, Microsoft didn’t mention how much it thinks Yahoo is worth now.

Industry analysts estimated Microsoft would likely pay anywhere from $28 to $33 per share if it takes another stab at swallowing Yahoo whole.

“Microsoft is still asking Yahoo shareholders to make a big decision with incomplete information,” said Standard & Poor’s Internet analyst Scott Kessler. “I could still see a scenario where the Yahoo board is replaced and Microsoft comes in with a bid that is lower than people want. Then what do you do?”

Microsoft more recently has been trying to pry away Yahoo’s search engine for $1 billion, plus an additional $8 billion investment for a 16 percent stake in Yahoo’s remaining operations.

Yahoo instead opted for an online advertising partnership with rival Google Inc. that is supposed to boost its annual revenue by $800 million. That alliance faces an antitrust review by the U.S. Justice Department because Google and Yahoo combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market.

In its Monday statement, Yahoo asserted Microsoft is trying to use Icahn to engineer a purchase of Yahoo’s search engine in a deal that would hurt the company in the long run, by hindering its ability to compete in the Internet’s rapidly growing ad market.

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NEW YORK - Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won’t eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative.

Say it on the Internet, and you’ll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that’s controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

The governmental role that companies play online is taking on greater importance as their services — from online hangouts to virtual repositories of photos and video — become more central to public discourse around the world. It’s a fallout of the Internet’s market-driven growth, but possible remedies, including government regulation, can be worse than the symptoms.

Dutch photographer Maarten Dors met the limits of free speech at Yahoo Inc.’s photo-sharing service, Flickr, when he posted an image of an early-adolescent boy with disheveled hair and a ragged T-shirt, staring blankly with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Without prior notice, Yahoo deleted the photo on grounds it violated an unwritten ban on depicting children smoking. Dors eventually convinced a Yahoo manager that — far from promoting smoking — the photo had value as a statement on poverty and street life in Romania. Yet another employee deleted it again a few months later.

“I never thought of it as a photo of a smoking kid,” Dors said. “It was just of a kid in Romania and how his life is. You can never make a serious documentary if you always have to think about what Flickr will delete.”

There may be legitimate reasons to take action, such as to stop spam, security threats, copyright infringement and child pornography, but many cases aren’t clear-cut, and balancing competing needs can get thorny.

“We often get caught in the middle between a rock and a hard place,” said Christine Jones, general counsel with service provider GoDaddy.com Inc. “We’re obviously sensitive to the freedoms we have, particularly in this country, to speak our mind, (yet) we want to be good corporate citizens and make the Internet a better and safer place.”

In Dors’ case, the law is fully with Yahoo. Its terms of service, similar to those of other service providers, gives Yahoo “sole discretion to pre-screen, refuse or remove any content.” Service providers aren’t required to police content, but they aren’t prohibited from doing so.

While mindful of free speech and other rights, Yahoo and other companies say they must craft and enforce guidelines that go beyond legal requirements to protect their brands and foster safe, enjoyable communities — ones where minors may be roaming.

Guidelines help “engender a positive community experience,” one to which users will want to return, said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s vice president for policy.

Dors ultimately got his photo restored a second time, and Yahoo has apologized, acknowledging its community managers went too far.

Heather Champ, community director for Flickr, said the company crafts policies based on feedback from users and trains employees to weigh disputes fairly and consistently, though mistakes can happen.

“We’re humans,” she said. “We’re pretty transparent when we make mistakes. We have a record of being good about stepping up and fessing up.”

But that underscores another consequence of having online commons controlled by private corporations. Rules aren’t always clear, enforcement is inconsistent, and users can find content removed or accounts terminated without a hearing. Appeals are solely at the service provider’s discretion.

Users get caught in the crossfire as hundreds of individual service representatives apply their own interpretations of corporate policies, sometimes imposing personal agendas or misreading guidelines.

To wit: Verizon Wireless barred an abortion-rights group from obtaining a “short code” for conducting text-messaging campaigns, while LiveJournal suspended legitimate blogs on fiction and crime victims in a crackdown on pedophilia. Two lines criticizing President Bush disappeared from AT&T Inc.’s webcast of a Pearl Jam concert. All three decisions were reversed only after senior executives intervened amid complaints.

Inconsistencies and mysteries behind decisions lead to perceptions that content is being stricken merely for being unpopular.

“As we move more of our communications into social networks, how are we limiting ourselves if we can’t see alternative points of view, if we can’t see the things that offend us?” asked Fred Stutzman, a University of North Carolina researcher who tracks online communities.

First Amendment protections generally do not extend to private property in the physical world, allowing a shopping mall to legally kick out a customer wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a smoking child.

With online services becoming greater conduits than shopping malls for public communications, however, some advocacy groups believe the federal government needs to guarantee open access to speech. That, of course, could also invite meddling by the government, the way broadcasters now face indecency and other restrictions that are criticized as vague.

Others believe companies shouldn’t police content at all, and if they do, they should at least make clearer the rules and the mechanisms for appeal.

“Vagueness does not inspire the confidence of people and leaves room for gaming the system by outside groups,” said Lauren Weinstein, a veteran computer scientist and Internet activist. “When the rules are clear and the grievance procedures are clear, then people know what they are working with and they at least have a starting point in urging changes in those rules.”

But Marjorie Heins, director of the Free Expression Policy Project, questions whether the private sector is equipped to handle such matters at all. She said written rules mean little when service representatives applying them “tend to be tone-deaf. They don’t see context.”

At least when a court order or other governmental action is involved, “there’s more of a guarantee of due process protections,” said Robin Gross, executive director of the civil-liberties group IP Justice. With a private company, users’ rights are limited to the service provider’s contractual terms of services.

Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard professor who recently published a book on threats to the Internet’s openness, said parties unhappy with sensitive materials online are increasingly aware they can simply pressure service providers and other intermediaries.

“Going after individuals can be difficult. They can be hard to find. They can be hard to sue,” Zittrain said. “Intermediaries still have a calculus where if a particular Web site is causing a lot of trouble … it may not be worth it to them.”

Unable to stop purveyors of child pornography directly, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo recently persuaded three major access providers to disable online newsgroups that distribute such images. But rather than cut off those specific newsgroups, all three decided to reduce administrative hassles by also disabling thousands of legitimate groups devoted to TV shows, the New York Mets and other topics.

Gordon Lyon, who runs a site that archives e-mail postings on security, found his domain name suddenly deactivated because one entry contained MySpace passwords obtained by hackers.

He said MySpace went directly to domain provider GoDaddy, which effectively shut down his entire site, rather than contact him to remove the one posting or replace passwords with asterisks. GoDaddy justified such drastic measures, saying that waiting to reach Lyon would have unnecessarily exposed MySpace passwords, including those to profiles of children.

Meanwhile, in response to complaints it would not specify, Network Solutions LLC decided to suspend a Web hosting account that Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders was using to promote a movie that criticizes the Quran — before the movie was even posted and without the company finding any actual violation of its rules.

Service providers say unhappy customers can always go elsewhere, but choice is often limited.

Many leading services, particularly online hangouts like Facebook and News Corp.’s MySpace or media-sharing sites such as Flickr and Google Inc.’s YouTube, have acquired a cachet that cannot be replicated. To evict a user from an online community would be like banishing that person to the outskirts of town.

Other sites “don’t have the critical mass. No one would see it,” said Scott Kerr, a member of the gay punk band Kids on TV, which found its profile mysteriously deleted from MySpace last year. “People know that MySpace is the biggest site that contains music.”

MySpace denies engaging in any censorship and says profiles removed are generally in response to complaints of spam and other abuses. GoDaddy also defends its commitment to speech, saying account suspensions are a last resort.

Few service providers actively review content before it gets posted and usually take action only in response to complaints.

In that sense, Flickr, YouTube and other sites consider their reviews “checks and balances” against any community mob directed at unpopular speech — YouTube has pointedly refused to delete many video clips tied to Muslim extremists, for instance, because they didn’t specifically contain violence or hate speech.

Still, should these sites even make such rules? And how can they ensure the guidelines are consistently enforced?

YouTube has policies against showing people “getting hurt, attacked or humiliated,” banning even clips OK for TV news shows, but how is YouTube to know whether a video clip shows real violence or actors portraying it? Either way, showing the video is legal and may provoke useful discussions on brutality.

“Balancing these interests raises very tough issues,” YouTube acknowledged in a statement.

Unwilling to play the role of arbiter, the group-messaging service Twitter has resisted pressure to tighten its rules.

“What counts as name-calling? What counts as making fun of someone in a way that’s good-natured?” said Jason Goldman, Twitter’s director of program management. “There are sites that do employ teams of people that

do that investigation … but we feel that’s a job we wouldn’t do well.”

Other sites are trying to be more transparent in their decisions.

Online auctioneer eBay Inc., for instance, has elaborated on its policies over the years, to the extent that sellers can drill down to where they can ship hatching eggs (U.S. addresses only) and what items related to natural disasters are permissible (they must have “substantial social, artistic or political value”). Hypothetical examples accompany each policy.

LiveJournal has recently eased restrictions on blogging. The new harassment clause, for instance, expressly lets members state negative feelings or opinions about another, and parodies of public figures are now permitted despite a ban on impersonation. Restrictions on nudity specifically exempt non-sexualized art and breast feeding.

The site took the unusual step of soliciting community feedback and setting up an advisory board with prominent Internet scholars such as Danah Boyd and Lawrence Lessig and two user representatives elected in May.

The effort comes just a year after a crackdown on pedophilia backfired. LiveJournal suspended hundreds of blogs that dealt with child abuse and sexual violence, only to find many were actually fictional works or discussions meant to protect children. The company’s chief executive issued a public apology.

Community backlash can restrain service providers, but as Internet companies continue to consolidate and Internet users spend more time using vendor-controlled platforms such as mobile devices or social-networking sites, the community’s power to demand free speech and other rights diminishes.

Weinstein, the veteran computer scientist, said that as people congregate at fewer places, “if you’re knocked off one of those, in a lot of ways you don’t exist.”

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NEW YORK - Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.

The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user’s real name or e-mail address.

Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data — equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books — would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users’ privacy.

The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer’s unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer’s computer.

Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.

Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code — the technical secret sauce — powering its market-leading search engine, saying there’s no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.

The court has yet to rule on Google’s requests to question comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Viacom’s Comedy Central.

Viacom is seeking at least $1 billion in damages from Google, saying YouTube has built a business by using the Internet to “willfully infringe” copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and Nickelodeon’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” cartoon.

The lawsuit was combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties.

Together, the plaintiffs are trying to prove that YouTube has known of copyright infringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolve the immunity protections that service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users.

Though Google said giving the plaintiffs access to YouTube viewer data would threaten users’ privacy, Stanton referred to Google’s own blog entry in which the company argued that the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.

In a statement, Google said it was “disappointed the court granted Viacom’s overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users’ privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court’s order.”

Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.

Stanton’s ruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring the disclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request or obtain.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have considered that law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including a right to read or view materials anonymously.

He said a user’s ID can sometimes include identifying information such as a first initial and last name.

Viacom said it isn’t seeking any user’s identity. The company said any data provided “will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner.”

This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for a case involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requests made by their users.

After Google resisted, a federal judge ruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Web addresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.

According to a Reuters report , Yahoo and Time Warner have been chatting for months about a potential deal involving Time Warner’s AOL and Yahoo. The report, however, notes that the parties don’t appear any closer to inking a deal than they were when Microsoft had a buyout bid on the table for the Internet search pioneer.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo’s talks with Time Warner have regained some traction, now that Microsoft’s withdrawn offer of $33 a share for the Internet search pioneer appears to remain comatose. But as with Reuters, the Journal also notes that the discussions don’t appear to be serious. For one thing, the Journal notes such a combination had put an approximate $10 billion valuation on AOL, but that was before Yahoo’s stock had plummeted back to trading levels near the pre-Microsoft offer watermark.

In the end, Yahoo is looking for ways to bring its value back to the $33 a share that Microsoft had offered before merger talks broke off in early May, and Microsoft is looking for ways to bring scale to its online advertising search business, which may one day ultimately pay for any free business applications the Redmond giant gives out to compete with those currently offered by Google, like its Google Docs and Google Calendar .

So, Yahoo and Microsoft can continue to hit the replay button with Time Warner and News Corp., or switch to a new channel. I hear a new season with potentially a new cast of characters is gearing up for an August 1 debut.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Internet media firm Yahoo Inc said on Tuesday that its mobile search service will be offered by six more telecom companies in Asia.
 
It now has 60 such partnerships worldwide, including with Mahanagar Telephon Nigam (MTNL) in India, Hong CSL Limited, Smart Communications and Digital Mobile Phlis (Sun Cellular) in the Philippines and Vibo Telecom in Taiwan. “We are now able to reach 600 million subscribers,” David Ko, Asia managing director and vice president of Yahoo’s mobile division, told reporters at a media briefing.

“This creates the scale to make mobile advertising attractive.”

He said the mobile advertising market is expected to rise to $16.2 billion in 2011 up from $1.5 billion in 2006 and that Yahoo “would obviously love to take a large chunk of that pie.”

Yahoo!