The High Court of England and Wales has determined that filesharing site The Pirate Bay violates copyright laws on a large scale. Justice Richard Arnold said the site's operators "induce, incite or persuade its users to commit infringements. ..."

Demandware, Inc. released a WordPress plug-in that provides retailers with the means to make content published on a WordPress blog "more social and shoppable." The app can be customized to meet individual brand requirements.

Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) launched the OnCopyright Education Certificate Program. The program is comprised of industry-specific courses that are geared towards a number of different user communities and their respective challenges in managing copyright.

Google's daily deals service, Google Offers, is expanding to include five new cities: Charlotte, N.C.; Kansas City, Kan.; Milwaukee, Wis.; San Antonio; and Tampa, Fla. Oklahoma City, Okla., and Omaha, Neb., are scheduled to be added soon.

Bluefin Labs, Inc., a social TV analytics startup, raised $12 million in a Series B round of funding. The Time Warner Investments group led the round with participation from SoftBank Capital, Redpoint Ventures, and Lerer Ventures.

The best things in life are free, it's been said -- but the cost to compete in the online news business has taken its toll on countless newspapers from The New York Times to The Australian, which have started charging users to access digital content. Now, add British daily The Guardian to the mix, which last week put up a paywall on its iPad app, requiring a £9.99 ($13.99 USD) monthly subscription.

The average American may not spend much time thinking about individual bills working their way through government machines. But popular websites are making sure the average web user knows exactly what SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (the Protect IP Act) are by hitting them where it hurts: in the Wikipedia.

Outsell, Inc.'s release of "The Business Intelligence Landscape Today: The New Rules of Aggregation" in September shed some new light on where content aggregators are succeeding and where they need to change in order to meet evolving market needs.

Scout Analytics last week announced a new research division, Scout Research, which is "dedicated to providing revenue intelligence for digital publishers," according to the Issaquah, WA-based company that calls itself "the leader in digital revenue optimization for publishers." Scout kicked off its new venture with an analysis of the age-old problem of the print vs. digital revenue models.

With newsrooms shrinking, journalists need somewhere to peddle their wares. But needs don't generally go unmet in the digital age. Enter MediaCooler. In a Q&A with Journalism.co.uk the CEO of Media Cooler, Alison Yesilcimen, describes the site this way: "It's an online content market place that allows professional journalists to showcase and sell features and columns to global publications."

In publishing, small is the new big. An increasing number of publishers are releasing e-singles -- short works published digitally on a variety of platforms -- to generate ancillary revenue, build brand equity, and reach new audiences. Among those joining the e-singles market are Hearst, Rodale, Princeton University Press, and as recently as last week, Penguin.

Few, if any, would argue that the internet has dramatically and permanently changed the publishing industry. As print publishers have scrambled to find ways to compete with and, ultimately, embrace the digital world, some are excelling through a combination of traditional and online options. Others, new to publishing, are operating in the online-only world, but everyone is dealing with the age-old problem of circulation building and audience development.

The recent proposal of the Commercial Felony Streaming Act, and the uproar over the potential it holds to send artists like Justin Bieber to jail for copyright violation, has put the subject of intellectual property and copyright on the front page. The following is an excerpt from a chapter in the book, Dancing with Digital Natives: Staying in Step with the Generation That's Transforming the Way Business is Done. The full chapter is titled: "Ethics, Technology, and the Net Generation: Rethinking Intellectual Property Law" and is written by Albert M. Erisman. The book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers in e-book and print format.

People love saving money. Sales and coupons are time-honored advertising traditions for a broad field of retail businesses, from supermarkets to office suppliers. The latest manifestation of human beings' long-running obsession with coupons is the daily deal-websites and mobile apps that deliver a selection of daily coupons and deals to savings-hungry consumers.Companies such as Groupon, Inc. and LivingSocial have made a name for themselves by combining daily coupons, group buying, and local marketing. And the success of these two companies is spawning a thriving ecosystem of businesses, publishers, and deal networks all looking to get a piece of the pie.

People often take for granted the notion that content comes bundled with an inherent value. It's an easy mistake to make, especially with so much digital content available instantly with a price tag helpfully affixed for immediate purchase and consumption. All content experiences are not created equal, however, and that experience can make a world of difference in how valuable content is for a user. Even excellent content can be dragged down by a poor user experience that prevents users from easily finding and engaging with the content they need. With user expectations rising steadily, that failure to engage can translate into poor site ROI and even a major impact on a company's brand.

Digital old-timers may recall the three C's of successful online business models circa 2001. Content, Community, and Commerce appeared on just about any business plan that circulated in VC Land at the time. Understanding that the web was at least three channels at once (publishing, merchandising, and person-to-person communication) was considered essential to establishing unique business models. The problem at the time for most media sites was that all three C's were a bit broken. It has taken a decade, but the rise of online search along with Facebook and Twitter have helped content companies attack two of the three C's. And in the last year, we have seen a full program to get the Commerce piece up-to-speed as challenged media models look to ecommerce revenue streams. Skittishness about maintaining separation of editorial and commercial church and state is dissolving about as fast as company margins are.

Guess what's back in vogue: that lovely old chestnut, the paywall. In September, The Boston Globe announced it was putting up a paywall for its new http://bostonglobe.com website, leaving the very popular http://boston.com intact but apparently with less free content.It's part of a trend we are seeing in the newspaper world. Desperate to find new sources of revenue, traditional media is trying the tried-and-true paywall. The New York Times--which owns The Boston Globe by the way--made the transition last spring, but this was a paywall with a twist. It wasn't so much a wall as maybe a hedge.

Every year at this time we take a look downstream- revenue stream, that is. Nearly a decade ago when I started writing these annual forecasts of money-making propositions that looked to be promising in the months ahead, most publishers were looking to wring what they could from the desktop experience. But the story of 2011-2012 is content's migration to a host of new platforms and devices, each of which holds the promise (the promise, mind you) of altering the free-content models that bedeviled the web. Whether on or off the traditional web browser, many of the revenue-generating ideas are being influenced by a new age of apps.

Whereas my personal Los Angeles community of technological early adopters tends to be driven to buy the coolest, most cutting-edge gadgets, we often forget (and I'm the most guilty here) that a huge chunk of the population is driven more by a good value. It could be a function of generation, socioeconomic status, the overall economy, or simply priorities, but while I expected to immediately put digital deals in place with my new film library, I've been forced to recognize that I must first focus on selling this audience entertainment in the way that it wants it right now. That just happens to be on the uber-traditional DVD.

I have fallen under the spell of one of the most sinister forces in the digital universe. Yes, I'm talking about Angry Birds. I managed to avoid the birds' pull for a long time. In fact, I refused to even download the game until the rest of the world had more or less stopped incessantly talking and tweeting about it. I mean, how great could one game be?