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Students at one Missouri university don't just have to take surprise quizzes on economics, chemistry, or Spanish these days. They also get pop quizzes on digital copyright law. The online test aims to prevent piracy and violation of copyright laws, and if students want access to peer-to-peer file sharing, they have to ace it.

According to an Associated Press report, the Missouri University of Science and Technology now requires students to correctly answer six questions about digital copyright law before they can use peer-to-peer tools. If they pass the test, they get six hours of access to the software. … Read more

While not a new idea, AirBed & Breakfast is a fun approach to couch surfing--a time honored tradition that encourages resource sharing between travelers who need a place to stay for a night or two, and people with open couches or a spare room.

The tool is set up like a hotel booking service, allowing people in need of a place to stay an easy way to browse open accommodations by city. As a host you can have people in your house as long as you'd like and set a fee per night or for a specific amount … Read more

Google gained share of U.S. search in April compared with rivals, ComScore said Wednesday.

Compared with March, the company gained 1.8 percentage points to reach 61.6 percent share, ComScore said. Yahoo dropped 0.9 percentage points to 20.4 percent, Microsoft dropped 0.3 to 9.1 percent, AOL dropped 0.2 to 4.6 percent, and Ask dropped 0.4 percent to 4.3.

Americans conducted 10.6 billion search queries total in April, a number that dropped 2 percent from March, ComScore said. That means Google increased its absolute number of queries 1 percent, but … Read more

Google passed Yahoo in its share of monthly visitors in the United States for the first time this April, buoyed by growth in search and YouTube videos, according to ComScore statistics released Thursday.

However, underscoring the variability of this sort of measurement, which extrapolates overall data from the usage of a "panel" of users at home and work, ComScore rival Nielsen Online released its own data as well with some different results. Although it also showed Google as No. 1 in terms of unique users, it said Google passed Yahoo way back in January 2007.

ComScore said Google … Read more

As the self-imposed deadline of June approaches, Simplify Media remains in beta for Windows, Mac, and mobile users. The iTunes and Winamp plug-in that lets you share your music with friends has, however, added three new features: chat, a "now playing" message that displays what your friends are listening to from your collection, and a built-in password reset for the forgetful among us.

The chat feature is the strongest, allowing you to directly communicate with friends, family, and even enemies with whom you've shared your music. It's a great way to give and get some direct … Read more

A painstaking examination of how the RIAA goes about its business hunting down file sharers on college campuses is available online.

The Chronicle of Higher Education visited the offices of the Recording Industry Association of America and got a demonstration.

The RIAA employee, who declined to give his or her name for fear of receiving hate mail, said the organization has hired online copyright enforcer MediaSentry to do most of the heavy lifting. MediaSentry writes scripts to automatically hunt for the names of copyright songs and locate the IP addresses of computers sharing files, and forwards the information to the … Read more

Update 4:07: I corrected a typo in the Yahoo market share statistics.

When you're talking about billions and billions of search queries, each potentially with some keyword-based ads alongside, every few hundredths of a percent of market share is important in the search market.

And that's what Google carved away from its main competition yet again, according to statistic for U.S. searches performed in April. Google increased its share from 67.25 percent in March to 67.90 percent in April, while Yahoo dropped a smidgen from 20.29 percent to 20.28 and Microsoft dropped … Read more

Photobucket, the photo-sharing site that was acquired by News Corp.'s Fox Interactive Media last year, is expected to launch a "group albums" feature on Wednesday.

"Group Albums are designed to offer a simple way for colleagues, friends, and families to collaborate on creating photos and video collections where the entire group can contribute, access, and enjoy them," Photobucket President Alex Welch explained in a statement Tuesday. Photobucket released its first developer application program interface (API) last month.

Basically, these are collaborative media-sharing albums much like the "groups" feature in Yahoo's Flickr. Photobucket'… Read more

People in the United States watched about 11.5 billion videos online in March, and Google extended its dominance in the area, according to new figures released Monday.

Google's sites served up 38 percent of the total videos watched, and YouTube accounted for 98 percent of Google's tally, ComScore said. Google gained 2.6 percentage points of market share since February.

Rivals are far, far behind: Fox Interactive Media, with 4.2 percent share; Yahoo with 2.9 percent, Viacom with 2.2 percent; and Microsoft with 2.1 percent.

Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in 2006. … Read more