These were the top, breaking news stories in interactive services, the Internet, broadband, and e-commerce, as reported by Newsbytes this week:

New AOL Boss Reassures Shareholders

Playing at Harlem's famed Apollo Theatre: AOL Time Warner executives singing the corporate blues. At least that was the note company officials struck at the media giant's annual shareholder meeting as they sought to take responsibility for last year's poor financial performance, explain why it happened and describe how they intend to turn things around. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176616.html

Web-Shy Advertisers Might Be Coming Around - Study

Companies that make consumer packaged goods (CPG) long have dominated advertising in traditional media, but so far have stayed away from the Internet in droves. According to a new study, the online sector may receive a welcome boost in advertising spending from CPG companies. The study, released by e-business information research firm Emarketer, said CPG companies spent $12.4 billion across all measured media in 2000, and $11.9 billion in 2001. Different studies place the amount CPG companies spend online at just 2 percent or less of their total advertising budgets, the firm said. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176633.html

Clothier Helps Fashion Own Defeat In Domain Dispute

Internet addresses packing the famous labels of Ralph Lauren and Polo fashions and an alleged cybersquatter who didn't even bother to respond to the accusation would normally add up to a slam-dunk decision for a trademark holder under a fast-track system to resolve disputes over domain names. In fact, PRL (as in, Polo Ralph Lauren) USA Holdings Inc. has emerged victorious in just that way in previous forays with the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) that has settled spats over more than 8,000 other domains in the past two years. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176612.html

Businesses Seek Death For Senate Privacy Bill

The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to pass a controversial Internet privacy bill on Thursday, despite heavy resistance from high-tech and other businesses. Committee Chairman Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.) has enough Republican votes for his privacy bill after promising to support legislation designed to curb junk e-mail, sponsored by Republican Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.). A Senate aide said the two lawmakers struck the deal because many lobbying groups were just as opposed to Burns' "CAN SPAM" bill as Hollings' privacy legislation. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176609.html

Senators Hear War Of Words Over Webcast Royalties

The fight over online radio royalties spilled into the halls of Congress when the Senate Judiciary Committee met to consider the fairness of a sound-recording royalty plan that would force Webcasters to pay out for every tune streamed to each listener. It is a plan that many online-only radio stations insist will, if enacted, kill off their businesses. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee met in Washington, D.C., to hear an overview of the Webcasting industry, including testimony from the lead music industry trade group, Webcasters and a recording artist. One point at issue was whether Congress needs to revisit the provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that led to arbitration of the royalty rates. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176607.html

Napster Execs Gone, Bankruptcy 'Imminent'

Now that Napster founder Shawn Fanning and CEO Konrad Hilbers have abandoned ship, bankruptcy could very well be the next step for the renegade song-swapping service that scared the daylights out of the recording industry. Fanning late Tuesday left the company he founded, soon after Hilbers - a former executive with Bertelsmann AG, AOL, Netscape and Compuserve - resigned the post he has held since he replaced Hank Barry last July. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176604.html

Judge Freezes Order To Snoop On SonicBlue Customers

A federal court judge has given gadget company SonicBlue more time to battle an order that it begin monitoring exactly how customers use its ReplayTV 4000 digital video recorder. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper stays an order from Magistrate Charles Eick, who gave SonicBlue 60 days to begin harvesting the data as evidence-collection in a copyright-infringement lawsuit against the company. A host of motion picture studios and television broadcasters say the ReplayTV 4000's ability to detect and skip past commercials threatens their revenues. In addition, they say the device's broadband Internet connections can be used for unauthorized distribution of television programs and movies. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176603.html

Deceptive Duo Suspects Netted In FBI Raids

Teenager Robert Lyttle, notorious more than a year ago as the pro-Napster hacker Pimpshiz, has been linked to another round of high-profile Web-site defacements following FBI raids targeting a pair known as the Deceptive Duo. Lyttle, now 18, told Newsbytes that he "can't confirm or deny" that he and another hacker known as "The-Rev" were the Deceptive Duo who recently slipped in to a host of poorly secured servers operated by the U.S. military, Sandia National Laboratories and an assortment of government agencies and banks. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176601.html

Scour To Promote Songs By Sony Artists

Almost two years after suing the Scour Exchange for enabling distribution of copyrighted songs on the Internet for free, Sony Music Entertainment is using the service to promote the work of five of its artists. Scour owner CenterSpan Communications on Tuesday said current music by B2K, Five for Fighting, Macy Gray, Flickerstock and John Mayer can be accessed at Scour.com for online delivery by its C-StarOne network. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176599.html

Fake XBox Emulator Gets A Stinging Update

A re-tooled version of a Trojan horse program that claims to run Microsoft XBox video games on personal computers has hit the Web, marking the latest effort by Internet scam artists to prey on gullible game aficionados. Like an earlier version of the hoax, the program, uploaded to three Angelfire.com Web sites on May 12, does not deliver on its promise to give users the ability to turn their PCs into XBox consoles. Instead, the Trojan, a file called EMU_xbox.exe, installs a small "dialer" program named StealthXP.exe, according to an analysis by Newsbytes. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176598.html

Canadian Pharmacists Take Action On U.S. Internet Sales

U.S. authorities trying to stop the flow of prescription drugs purchased from foreign companies on the Internet have received some enforcement help north of the border. The Ontario College of Pharmacists in Canada announced Tuesday that it had laid a total of 15 charges against two medical professionals, a number of companies and one of the companies' directors in a crackdown on an operation that filled prescriptions online. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176589.html

Judge Orders VeriSign To Stop Marketing Campaign

Internet domain naming giant VeriSign on Tuesday was ordered to halt a direct-mail campaign one day after BulkRegister filed a lawsuit against its No. 1 rival seeking to stop the mailing. BulkRegister alleged that VeriSign's "Domain Name Expiration Notice" direct-marketing campaign is deceptive. At an initial hearing in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, VeriSign was slapped with a preliminary injunction that ordered the domain-name giant to stop sending the marketing "notices," BulkRegister said in a statement. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176584.html

Microsoft Denies Changing Passport Users' Privacy Settings

Microsoft officials denied reports that they have changed their privacy practices at the company's .Net Passport sign-on service to make it easier for marketers to contact users. But the company conceded that some services require that it share users' e-mail addresses with other sites that participate in its Passport service. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176571.html

Internet Mergers, Acquisitions Heat Up - Report

A new report shows that money spent to buy Internet properties reached a six-month high in April and the number of deals was the third highest since January 2001, providing further evidence that the Internet economy is coming around. Just over $2.7 billion was spent to acquire 120 Net-related companies, 75 percent greater than March spending on 102 deals, said the April mergers and acquisitions report by Webmergers.com. The average deal rose from $15 million in March to more than $20 million. http://www.newsbytes.com/news/02/176568.html

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For a complete list of all the Net-related top stories this week go to http://www.newsbytes.com/online/list.html

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Reported By Newsbytes.com, http://www.newsbytes.com .

10:03 CST

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