Internet & Media

The amount of time people spend online has not increased since last year, according to a report released by Forrester on Monday. Perhaps more interesting, however, is the reason for the trend: people's online behavior has changed.

"Engagement with the online channel has deepened," writes Forrester analyst Jackie Anderson. "Web users are becoming savvier and are better multi-taskers. Many know exactly where they want to go when they log in."

The report, titled "Consumer Behavior Online: A 2009 Deep Dive," shows that overall time spent on the Internet has remained at 12 hours … Read more

Wayne Rosso, the former president of Grokster, has walked away from Global Gaming Factory because of "strong doubts" the Swedish company has enough funds to acquire The Pirate Bay.

Global Gaming, a Swedish software company, made big news last month by announcing plans to acquire The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million. Hans Pandeya, Global Gaming's CEO, then hired Rosso to negotiate legal music and film licensing deals on the company's behalf.

Rosso had spoken to executives from the top four major labels as well the music industry's worldwide trade group about The Pirate Bay, … Read more

Editors' note: This article was updated at 2:50 p.m. PDT with HP's statement.

It's war on hazardous chemicals that Greenpeace single-handedly provoked Tuesday.

After rating Hewlett-Packard low on its Green Meter did little to convince the company to change its ways, the organization decided to resort to trespassing.

It sent activists to HP's global headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., where they climbed on top of the building and painted a gigantic message announcing "Hazardous Products," using nontoxic children's finger paint. The message covered more than 11,500 square feet, which is about … Read more

NEW YORK--Online video start-up Blip.tv on Tuesday unveiled an wide range of infrastructure and partnership announcements that, according to chief operating officer Dina Kaplan, explains why "for the past year we have been very quiet."

Part of Tuesday's announcement, made in conjunction with a breakfast event at Blip.tv's downtown offices here, was a new set of syndication partnerships with hosting platforms YouTube and Vimeo, local TV station NBC Local Media New York (which acquired video production company LX.TV last year), and set-top box manufacturer Roku. It's also expanded existing partnerships with TiVo, … Read more

The end result of Google's $1 billion investment in AOL in 2006? 28 cents on the dollar.

Time Warner, which is in the process of spinning out AOL as a separate company once again, confirmed that Google sold its 5 percent stake in AOL for $283 million on July 8, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Both companies had signaled their intentions long ago regarding that stake: Google notified Time Warner in February that it was ready to make a move and wrote off more than $700 million of that investment in January, … Read more

Oracle, the giant enterprise software company, has accused Qtrax, the legal peer-to-peer music service, of copyright infringement and breach of contract in a $2 million lawsuit filed last week in Northern California.

Qtrax is the music service that was ridiculed in January 2008 after the four major labels denied the company's claims that it had licensing agreements with them. Eventually, Qtrax did get the major label deals. Nonetheless, the start-up has apparently run into some trouble paying bills in the past several months, said a source close to the company.

Oracle said in the complaint, filed with U.S. … Read more

Reports began to surface Sunday charging that AT&T had blocked broadband access to parts of the notorious (and powerful) Internet forum site 4chan, which the telecom company confirmed on Monday. Late in the evening, a fake story surfaced on CNN's iReport citizen journalism site alleging that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson had been "found dead in his multimillion dollar beachfront mansion" after a cocaine overdose.

Suffice it to say that the two events are likely connected. Access to 4chan has since been restored for AT&T broadband customers.

For those who stepped in … Read more

Apparently, the digital download didn't kill the album after all.

The four largest recording companies and Apple reportedly have plans to create what they hope is the next-generation album. Driving the efforts is the hope that music can once again deliver fat profits, instead of the scrawny margins earned on 99 cent downloads.

On Sunday evening, the Financial Times reported that Apple plans to entice customers to accept packaged music by throwing in "photos, lyric sheets and liner notes" and also enable consumers "to play songs directly from the interactive book without clicking back into Apple'… Read more