Google Inc.’s YouTube hopes recognition technology will be in place in September to stop the posting of copyrighted videos on the popular Web site, a lawyer Friday told a judge presiding over copyright lawsuits.

The lawyer, Philip S. Beck, told U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton in Manhattan that YouTube was working “very intensely and cooperating” with major content providers on a video recognition technology as sophisticated as fingerprint technology the FBI uses.

He said the company planned to have the technology in place in the fall, “hopefully in September.”

Digg Inc., a reader-powered news site, fired Google Inc. as its online advertising partner Wednesday in favor of a company Digg’s top executive described as young and willing to take risks: Microsoft Corp.

“We at Digg couldn’t think of a better partner to get to where we need to go,” said Jay Adelson, the company’s chief executive officer. “They’re a young ad service, they’re innovative, they’re willing to work with us on the cutting edge.”

For three years, Microsoft will deliver ads - mostly small, contextually relevant text links - on Digg.com.

More than 9.5 million people visited the site in June to read, suggest a story or help vote a favorite onto a list of top news, according to data from comScore World Metrix. Digg competes with similar sites including Reddit.com, acquired last fall by magazine publisher Conde Nast, and Netscape, which is owned by Time Warner Inc.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal. Google declined to comment.

At the beach of the future, high tide will meet high tech.

Visitors will wear wristbands that automatically debit their bank accounts or credit cards to pay for beach access, food and parking. Garbage cans will e-mail cleanup crews when they’re ready to be emptied.

And people won’t even think about trying to sneak in: Beach checkers could scan the sands with handheld devices and instantly know who didn’t pay.

This southern New Jersey city plans to deliver a variety of public services and Internet access using radio-frequency identification chips and Wi-Fi wireless technology. The $3 million project is expected to be finished by next summer.

Beach badges, those plastic or cloth scourges of the Jersey shore could become a thing of the past. The beach access fees - $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the entire summer - will remain.

MySpace.com has found more than 29,000 registered sex offenders with profiles on the popular social networking Web site - more than four times the number cited by the company two months ago, officials in two states Tuesday.

North Carolina’s Roy Cooper is one of several attorneys general who recently demanded the News Corp.-owned Web site provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using the popular social networking site, along with information about where they live.

After initially withholding the information, citing federal privacy laws, MySpace began sharing the information in May after the states filed formal legal requests.

At the time, MySpace said it had already used a database it helped create to remove about 7,000 profiles of sex offenders, out of a total of about 180 million profiles on the site.

Cooper’s office said Tuesday, however, that now the figure has risen past 29,000.

The British government rejected a plea to extend copyright laws for sound recordings to beyond 50 years on Tuesday, prompting the music industry to accuse it of not supporting musicians and artists.

The music industry had won support from opposition politicians and a parliamentary committee in its bid for a copyright extension that would allow veterans such as Cliff Richard and Paul McCartney to carry on receiving royalties in later life.

The government would have had to push the European Commission for a change in the law but said such a move did not seem appropriate as it would not benefit the majority of performers and could lead to increased costs.

Hackers could take control of an iPhone if its owner visits a doctored Web site or Internet hotspot, security researchers reported Monday.

The vulnerability of the vaunted device, Apple Inc.’s first cell phone, is only theoretical for now. There are no reports of criminals actually taking advantage of the security glitch to remotely access an iPhone.

But if it were exploited, hijacked iPhones could be very useful to the same gangs that take over personal computers and use them to disseminate spam, said Charlie Miller, principal security analyst at Independent Security Evaluators, which discovered the flaw.

When TiVo Inc. introduced a high-definition digital video recorder last fall, it touted the long-awaited set-top box as a best-in-class product with a price tag to match.

But in a market already filled with lower-priced offerings from cable companies and other rivals, TiVo’s $800 Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder had a hard time winning customers, even as throngs of consumers opened their wallets for high-definition televisions during the holiday season.

This year, TiVo hopes to widen its appeal with a more affordable model: the TiVo HD DVR for $299.99.

The Alviso-based company will begin taking pre-orders for it on its Web site Tuesday, and units are expected to hit retail outlets by early August.

Netflix Inc. cut monthly subscriptions for two of its most popular plans by $1 on Sunday, a day ahead of a quarterly earnings report that will show whether rival Blockbuster Inc has further dented the online DVD rental company’s growth.

Netflix now has cut prices on its four most popular plans this year, bringing them in line with the prices of Blockbuster By Mail plans.

The two companies are locked in a price war for the second time since Blockbuster launched its online service in 2004. Blockbuster plans to spend $170 million this year to win subscribers for its new Total Access plan, which gives online subscribers free in-store rentals.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said in April that he planned to grow the company’s subscriber base slowly but profitably until Blockbuster’s losses on Total Access force it to raise prices.

Most Netflix plans let subscribers take out an unlimited number of DVDs, but limit the number a customer can have at home at one time.

The new Netflix prices take effect on Sunday and apply to unlimited plans that were formerly $9.99 per month for one DVD at a time, and $17.99 for three DVDs at a time.

Microsoft Corp. said on Sunday the software maker was taking new steps to protect consumer privacy in the areas of Web search and online advertising and called on the Internet industry to support it.

Microsoft said it was responding to public concern over the recent consolidation of the online ad industry as well as stepped-up interest from government regulators in its call for a comprehensive rather than piecemeal approach to privacy.

“We think it’s time for an industrywide dialogue,” Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy officer, said in an interview. “The current patchwork of protections and how companies explain them is really confusing to consumers.”

Specifically, Microsoft said it would make all Web search query data anonymous after 18 months on its “Live Search” service, unless it receives user consent to store it longer. The policy changes are retroactive and worldwide, it said.

Google has acquired ImageAmerica, a company that builds high-resolution cameras and uses them to take aerial photographs.

The search engine giant announced the move Friday on its LatLong blog about Google Earth and its other mapping efforts. It didn’t disclose terms of the deal.

“We’re excited about how ImageAmerica’s technology will contribute to our mapping services down the road,” Product Manager Stephen Chau said on the blog. “Since we’re in the research and development phase right now it may be some time before you see any of this imagery in Google Maps or Earth.”

Microsoft has revealed that its patent deal with Linspire doesn’t cover the new version of the GNU General Public License (GPL), the company’s latest effort to distance itself from the GPLv3.

Separately, Lindows said it will imminently release new versions of its flagship Linspire and Freespire products.

In a copy of the Linspire agreement published on Microsoft’s website, the company said specifically that the agreement doesn’t cover “any portions of products that comprise or include Foundry Products, Clone Products, GPLv3 Software or Other Excluded Products”

Microsoft is planning to ship its next major version of Windows–known internally as version “7″–within roughly three years, CNET News.com has learned.

The company discussed Windows 7 on Thursday at a conference for its field sales force in Orlando, Fla., according to sources close to the company.

While the company provided few details, Windows 7, the next client version of the operating system, will be among the steps taken by Microsoft to establish a more predictable release schedule, according to sources. The company plans a more “iterative” process of information disclosure to business customers and partners, sources said.