Week in review: Lights! Camera! Download?

The Internet appears to be ready for its close-up, but you may want to decline any invitations to join a prerelease party.

A file swapper who distributes a single copy of a prerelease movie on the Internet would face a possible prison sentence of up to three years, if a bill approved this week by Congress becomes law, as expected. Adoption of the bill would represent the most dramatic expansion of online piracy penalties in years.

The bill is written so broadly that, if passed into law, it could make a felon of anyone who has even one copy of a film, software program or music file in a shared folder and who should have known the copyrighted work had not been commercially released. Fines of up to $250,000 could also be levied. Penalties could apply regardless of whether any downloading took place.

If signed into law, the bill would significantly lower the bar for online copyright prosecutions. Current law allows criminal penalties of up to three years in prison for "the reproduction or distribution of 10 or more copies or phonorecords of one or more copyrighted works, which have a total retail value of $2,500 or more."

But there is still plenty from the silver screen available on the PC screen. The Net is becoming a popular medium for amateur filmmakers who represent a genre called "fan films." One of the more technically sophisticated is "Star Wars: Revelations." With its audience primed by anticipation of the new Star Wars movie, slated for release May 19, the film is sweeping the Internet as fast as any X-wing.

The movie is part of a broader online culture in which big-screen commercial works are grist for a small-screen creative mill, and onetime audience members are taking over the tools of production. Indeed, this community of fan creators is increasingly the subject of study by academics--not to mention marketing departments--seeking clues to tomorrow's trends.

Meanwhile, Verizon Communications launched a movie download service for broadband customers through a partnership with Movielink. The rentals are available to customers of Verizon Online's digital subscriber line and Fios Internet service, the carrier said. These customers can choose from a selection of titles on Movielink's video-on-demand service.

The downloaded movies can be stored on a hard drive for up to 30 days, Verizon said. People can watch a rented film as often as they want in a 24-hour period. The files can be viewed on a PC, on a television connected to the PC, or on a laptop computer--the system does not have to be online. Thirty days after downloading, the movie files are automatically deleted, Verizon said.

In search of...
Internet search giants Google and Yahoo are in talks with TiVo over a possible deal aimed at bridging television and the Web, CNET News.com has learned. The talks are still fluid and could result in a number of outcomes, two sources familiar with the negotiations said.

One scenario that's been discussed would see TiVo partner with Google or Yahoo on a new service that would let consumers search for videos on the Web and then watch them on their television sets, according to one person with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

A second person familiar with the talks said TiVo has had discussions with both Google and Yahoo about a potential equity investment, including the possibility of an outright acquisition.

Also this week, Google began offering people custom accounts for storing their personal query histories, in a move to outdo rivals and endear itself to Web surfers. The search king's My Search History is another of its experimental services that takes a page from long-standing "My" programs from Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and others. However, unlike typical personalized portal services, such as custom stock reports and headlines, Google's feature will focus exclusively on archiving personal search histories for later recall.

Addressing consumer privacy, Google said that search history data is password-protected and stored securely on its servers. People also can pause search tracking or remove records from their histories.

The importance of search hasn't been lost on Microsoft and Apple Computer. In the next version of Windows, which is still in the early stages of development, and in the soon-to-be-released new version of Mac OS X, users won't have to know where a file is stored. Instead, both operating systems will have a search window in which people need only start typing what they remember--who created the file, what it's called, or even words within the document itself. Results will begin appearing instantly, and then early incorrect matches will be ruled out as a user continues entering information.

Judging from other product similarities, that's not the only understanding Microsoft and Apple share. Longhorn is also expected to