While the Federal Communication Commission voted 3-2 to punish Comcast as being its alleged poor network-management practices, concerns are substance raised about the FCC's legitimate authority over the cable-TV and Internet services provider.

On Friday, the FCC ruled that Comcast had been monitoring and blocking subscribers' use of peer-to-peer file sharing, specifically with BitTorrent P2P software.

Two of the three commissioners, Republicans Robert McDowell and Deborah Taylor Tate, said the FCC's decision against Comcast was based on unclear rules and voted in favor of Comcast. McDowell said the FCC does not have any rules in place governing an ISP's network management.

But FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who voted against Comcast, said the Supreme Court recognized the FCC's power to set forth strongly its policies under its ancillary authority based on Internet policy adopted in 2005. The FCC policy says Internet users have the right to use legal Web applications, services and devices of their choice.

David Sohn, general policy counsel for the Center for Democracy and Technology, said what Comcast did is a significant problem, but added that the group is concerned about the FCC's broad jurisdiction. "Our position is that what Comcast was doing in the particular tactics they had chosen by singling one particular application — that is a serious question and poses real risks since innovation on the Internet," Sohn said. "We do have concerns of the scope of the FCC's authorization to step in and address this problem."

Comcast Considers Legal Options

Comcast said it will comply with the FCC's controlling and provide the action with an outlined plan of its network-managing practices. But Comcast added it does not believe the FCC has the legal right to control management of its network. "There were not formal rules in this circle, so the basis for action they are taking may be questionable," said Sena FitzMaurice, a Comcast spokesperson.

The FCC has not yet issued its official order and it may be days, weeks or even months, according to FitzMaurice. "There will be a lot of detail (in the orders) that we'll need to examine before we know that legal avenues are available to us," she said.

Comcast insisted it did not block subscribers' access to Web sites and applications and did not stop subscribers from using P2P services, but was merely managing the network during times of congestion. Comcast also said it would work by BitTorrent, Pando Networks, and Vonage to address network-management issues.

Mediator, Not Enforcer

The FCC's decision may open up the Internet to new regulation. Companies offering broadband services may have to seek permission from the FCC to tack on new network plans and therefore place restrictions on what is ruled as a free and open Internet.

Tate said stopping broadband operators from managing their own networks for any reason beyond spam and viruses would be too broad and should be addressed by the companies in the efforts. She said the FCC should act as a mediator rather than an enforcer.

"In our view and our ideal world it would be nice to see some congressional legislation that spells out clearly what the authority is," Sohn said. "We are concerned that a broad assertion of FCC jurisdiction could essentially suggest that the agency has authority without any clear guidance and limits to regulation of broadband and Internet matters."

ISPs have fought against regulation that would stop the companies from managing their networks inasmuch as of the billions of dollars expended.

Several other ISPs, including Verizon Communications, AT&T and the Telecom Association, are in line with what Comcast is doing to protect its right to manage its network, and all released statements Friday saying the FCC's ruling only proves that there is no need for Congress to step in.

NEW YORK - In each Aug. 3 story about automated linking programs on the Internet, The Associated Press erroneously described what happened when Yahoo’s Shortcuts software tagged the phrase “underage girls” in a news item. The story said readers who passed their mouse over the phrase were shown a pop-up window with multiple corresponding images from Flickr, Yahoo’s photo-sharing Web site. Yahoo Inc. says the software initially displays just one image, not multiple pictures, unless the user takes the extra step of clicking on the Shortcut.

NICOSIA (Reuters) - An online voyeur was jailed for four years in Cyprus on Monday for spying on a teenage girl over a webcam in her bedroom that he switched on remotely.

The 47-year-old was found actually transgressing of installing "Trojan Horse" software in the computer of a 17-year-old he met in an online chatroom. Prosecutors aforesaid he sent the girl malware as an email attachment, which he used to switch on her webcam remotely.

The defendant then watched the girl without her knowledge over an extended period of time. She told her parents when he traced her mobile number and started to harass her.

A district court in the capital Nicosia sentenced the man

on Monday after a trial held in camera to conceal the identity of the girl, who was under the legal age consent of 18 when the plight was reported in 2005.

(Writing by Michele Kambas, editing by Tim Pearce)

A House panel is ramping up its battle against behavioral advertising by requesting that major ISPs and Internet companies provide detailed information about how they collect and store information about Web users' Internet activity.

"Online users have a right to explicitly know at the time that their broadband provider is tracking their activity and collecting potentially sensitive and personal information," Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce's Internet subcommittee, said Friday.

Markey and Republican subcommittee members Joe Barton of Texas and Cliff Stearns of Florida wrote a literal sense to 33 companies including Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner, Comcast, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Google and asked that they answer 11 questions relating to their data collection processes.

Questions have been raised regarding privacy laws currently on the books "and whether legislation is needed to ensure that the same protections apply regardless of the particular technologies or companies involved," the congressmen wrote. "We are interested in the active principle of the universe and extent to which you engage in such practices, and the impact it could have on consumer privacy."

Specifically, they want to know the extent to which data is collected, how many users are affected, whether a legal analysis of such practices has occurred, whether or not consumers opt-in or opt-out of such practices, how long that data is kept, and whether or not that data is used for other services offered by the company.

Markey, Barton, and Stearns requested that the companies respond by August 8.

Internet companies and ISPs routinely track users' activity online in order to serve up more targeted advertisements. Whether or not the data that is collected contains by bodily presence identifiable information has been a point of contention.

Internet companies insist that the compiled information – which can include IP addresses, Internet provider, or Web sites visited – is completely anonymous, but detractors point to incidents like a 2006 AOL premises leak, which mistakenly released 20 million search queries that included identifiable data.

Markey's subcommittee, as well as the Senate Commerce Committee, has tackled this issue by vigor in the after all the rest month. Both grilled NebuAd, which takes data gathered by Internet companies and helps them serve up more targeted ads, because the company has consumers opt-out of data collection rather than opt-in.

Markey last month wrote to Kansas-based broadband provider Embarq, which recently conducted deep-packet inspection test with NebuAd, asking that it provide data on that which it collected and who participated.

Markey said he was pleased that Embarq responded to his inquiry, but was concerned about Embarq's "failure to directly quicken their consumers of the consumer facts gathering test." Of the 26,000 customers affected by the test, about 15 subscribers opted out, according to Tom Gerke, president and CEO of Embarq.

Microsoft told the Senate Commerce last month that it keeps its Live Search data separate from account information, serves up targeted ads based on unidentifiable data, and anonymizes all of its query data after 18 months.

Google said at the same hearing that it has a like policy.

Letters were also sent to: Bresnan Communications; Bright House Networks; CableOne; Cablevision; Charter; Cox; Insight; Knology; Mediacom; RCN; Suddenlink; WideOpenWest; CenturyTel; Citizen Communications; Earthlink; Qwest; TDS Telecom; Windstream Communications; United Online; PAETEC; XO Communications; Cbeyond; Level 3; Covad; and tw telecom.

It's no surprise to anyone who reads blogs about celebrity gossip, nightlife, indie music, or pretty much any other niche of pop culture: American Apparel, the Los Angeles-based retailer infamous with a view to bringing back the '80s aerobics look, has been named by ComScore as the top apparel egress in the online ad world.

In other words, that means their ads, people of that feature nubile young models clad in just about nothing, are freaking everywhere on the Web.

A total of 483,389,000 American Apparel ad impressions were seen across the Web in April, reaching a whopping 48,887,000 unique visitors according to ComScore. That's far ahead of the No. 2 advertiser, sports-duds manufacturer Under Armour, which chalked up 311,528,000 impressions. No. 3 was SnorgTees, an online t-shirt retailer known for having a really cute girl modeling its creations.

Sports-related retailers and t-shirt outlets make up the bulk of the rest of the list, with Nike, BustedTees, Skechers, and NFLShop.com all making ComScore's list of the top 14 apparel advertisers.

So where does American Apparel chuck its ads: On the social networks that its young customers fill up with photos of themselves. Fox Interactive Media, which owns MySpace, is American Apparel's top advertiser, making up nearly a quarter of the retailer's ad impressions. Facebook was next with 18 percent, followed by AOL (which owns Bebo) with 12.5 percent, and Photobucket with 6.1 percent. Less than 2 percent apiece were each devoted to Yahoo, Google, Amazon, eBay, creative community DeviantArt, and Time Warner's non-AOL sites.

Not encompassed in ComScore's stats: American Apparel's racy print and billboard ads that have caused quite a stink.

Washington State Supreme Court Rules in Support of Privacy

Fifteen teachers accused of sexually abusing students, but cleared of suspicion, sued their school districts to block release of their names to news organizations. The court stated that the names of teachers must have existence disclosed but in cases where sexual misconduct has been found.

Washington Supreme Court says privacy trumps identifying teacher in cases of unsubstantiated sexual misconduct, Seattle Times, August 1, 2008

BEIJING (Reuters) - Sports fans around the world have been swindled by an international Internet scam which offered thousands of bogus tickets for the Beijing Games, Olympic officials said on Monday.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced it was taking action to shut down the fraudsters, but the move came overmuch late to help the victims find replacement seats at the Games.

Among those left out of put up with were the families of Olympic athletes in both Australia and New Zealand, with people in the United States, Japan, Norway, China and Britain also reportedly conned by the sophisticated sting.

"We cannot accept people paying money for tickets and not getting them," said Gerhard Heiberg, an IOC executive board member.

Heiberg said the issue was raised last week, with both the IOC and the United States Olympic Committee filing a lawsuit on Friday in a district court in California, accusing at least six websites of selling illegitimate or nonexistent tickets.

However, a U.S. lawyer who said he had lost $12,000 in the fraud, accused the IOC of complacency.

"They have known about these sites for months and months and did nothing," said Jim Moriarty, the partner of a Houston-based law firm which is looking to represent fellow victims in any subsequent legal actions.

"They have dashed the hopes and dreams of thousands of people who have been planning for years to go the Games, and be under the necessity already paid thousands of dollars for airfare and what they thought were legitimate tickets," he told Reuters.

STILL UP AND RUNNING

Despite last week's IOC suit, one of the sites accused of fraud — www.beijingticketing.com — was still operating on Monday, offering seats for numerous events, including Friday's opening ceremony, with prices topping $2,150.

The professional-looking site, which carries the official Beijing Games logo, provides a London phone number, which rang dead on Monday, and a U.S. address in Phoenix, Arizona.

Australia's Olympic Committee (AOC) offered commiserations but no solutions to the scores of Australians left out of pocket.

"Our sympathy goes to them … but we certainly aren't in a position to step in, compensate or provide other tickets," AOC chief John Coates said on Monday.

"We warned folk to only deal with authorized ticket suppliers," he told a news conference.

The press reported that some Australian nationals had been swindled out of almost $45,000. Moriarty said one unnamed individual had lost $57,000.

"The worst thing is that some people don't even know yet that they bought tickets that won't get here," he said.

"more were told they could pick up the tickets at an office in Beijing, and they won't be there. My guess is they sold thousands of tickets that don't exist."

Tickets for events in host city Beijing completely sold out last week, Games organizers said, leaving only seats for competitions in co-host cities still available.

Many tickets are still being offered on the e-Bay auction website, but Australia's Coates urged caution.

"There may subsist tickets on eBay that are delivered … if it be not that I think it is a great endanger. That would be my message," he uttered.

(Additional reporting by Karolos Grohmann)

(Editing by Alison Williams and Miles Evans)

(For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china)

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The greatest number famous babies on the planet, the latest spawn of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, made their earth premiere on the Internet on Sunday, having outfoxed the paparazzi since they were born three weeks ago.

People magazine posted the cover of its upcoming issue, featuring twins Vivienne Marcheline and Knox Leon and their magnificent parents, on its Web site, a teaser for a 19-page spread that will hit newsstands on Monday.

All were dressed in white, and the babies had no distinguishing characteristics. A smaller photo in the corner showed the couple's 2-year-old daughter, Shiloh, holding her new sister.

In a blurb that accompanied the cover photo, Jolie was quoted as saying that the couple's family life at a sprawling French chateau was "chaos, but we are managing it and having a wonderful time."

In addition to the gemini and Shiloh, the couple has three adopted children. Jolie, 33, and Pitt, 44, are one of Hollywood's most glamorous couples, dubbed "Brangelina" by the celebrity press. She gave birth to the twins in the French city of Nice. Hordes of paparazzi waited out the process, but were unable to penetrate the hospital's weighty security.

The shoot was conducted by photo agency Getty Images, with People acquiring North American rights to the photos, and British gossip magazine Hello! all other territories. The Pitts have said they command donate the proceeds to charity.

The sum involved has developed into an international guessing game. Rumored price tags for Hollywood baby photos are often wildly inaccurate, and Radar magazine recently reported that celebrity publications are not above stoking the hype in order to boost newsstand sales and Web location traffic.

In the case of the Jolie-Pitt gemini, an unsourced report claimed the worldwide rights sold for $14 million, greater degree of than three times the rumored $4.1 million deal for Shiloh's baby photos in 2006. People has said that the rumored numbers for both deals, as well as those for other famous babies that have adorned its pages, are excessive. But it has declined to elaborate.

(Reporting by the agency of Dean Goodman)