New York - Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. edged closer to its goal of acquiring Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones yesterday, when the Bancroft family, which controls 64% of Dow Jones, said that it was willing to meet with Murdoch and consider his bid, as well as competing bids and other options, The Wall Street Journal reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - Online dating service eHarmony has been sued by a California woman, who claims that she was denied access to the site because she is gay. [more..]

Los Angeles - Following a trip up north this week by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Canadian government said it will introduce legislation aimed at stemming film piracy in the country, Variety reported. [more..]

New York - Major record label EMI Music this week announced an agreement with Google's YouTube that will see the label's music videos made available for viewing on the video-sharing site, becoming the last of the four major labels to strike a deal with YouTube. [more..]

Alicante, Spain - Panoramio, a photo storage and sharing site that has been tightly integrated with Google Earth, announced this week that it has reached an agreement to be acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum. [more..]

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital civil liberties group, said this week that, after examining information embedded on the DRM-free tracks sold on Apple's new iTunes Plus -- first reported on by Ars Technica and TUAW, which found them to include user names and e-mail addresses -- it found significant differences in the sizes of the files. [more..]

Irvine, Calif. - Blizzard Entertainment, the unit of Vivendi Games that operates the popular "World of Warcraft" multiplayer online game, has filed a federal lawsuit against a company it says has spammed players with ads for its service that sells virtual gold used in the game, Wired News reported. [more..]

Los Angeles - Electronics retailer Best Buy and video rental firm Blockbuster are signing deals with movie studios in preparation to launch some form of video download stores, Variety reported. The news was leaked by Canadian film studio Lionsgate's CEO Jon Feltheimer on Thursday, during a conference call with analysts in which the companies were listed alongside Apple and Amazon.com as having signed digital distribution deals with the studio. Neither Best Buy nor Blockbuster have so far announced plans to launch movie download stores. [more..]

San Francisco - Sony Ericsson has filed for a patent on the design for a next-generation PSP handheld game system that will double as a mobile phone, Wired News reported. The smaller device features a screen that can be rotated to vertical and horizontal views. The patent filing includes a screen-capture schematic that shows a game on-screen, with an overlay that reads: "Incoming call received. You'd like to suspend game to answer call?" [more..]

Los Angeles - Viacom's MTV Networks has announced that its Nickelodeon children's cable network plans later this month to launch a series of animated mini-shows based on Neopets, the online virtual pet community acquired by MTV Networks in 2005 for an estimated $160 million. The mini-shows will air in between other shows, and serve to introduce kids to Neopets characters and drive traffic to the website, which claims 40 million registered users. Neopets.com also launched Neovision, a broadband video player that will showcase both the mini-shows and user-generated content. [more..]

Washington - The U.S. Copyright Office on Friday announced that it will launch a public beta test of its new Web-based copyright registration system, electronic Copyright Office (eCO), next month. Interested parties can register for the beta test by filling out the form at a link below. [more..]

Santa Monica, Calif. - AOL's Userplane, a provider of communications tools for online communities, this week launched Userplane Money, a revenue-sharing program that pays publishers who distribute its applications. The Userplane platform serves ads in instant messaging, Web chat and other widgets used on community sites such as MySpace. Santa Monica, Calif.-based Userplane said publishers who deploy its Instant-Install community platform can receive revenue-sharing payments via PayPal. [more..]

New York - The Entertainment Software Ratings Board (ESRB), the video game industry's voluntary ratings provider, said this week that it has partnered with entertainment product distributor Ingram Entertainment, to provide 10,000 independent and small chain retailers with in-store signage describing the ESRB ratings system. "Our partnership with national retail outlets continues to be strong, and with the help of Ingram Entertainment we're helping smaller, independent retailers across the country inform their consumers about the rating system and support their store policies," said ESRB president Patricia Vance. [more..]

Redmond, Wash. - Nintendo said on Friday that its Wii Virtual Console, an online store that sells classic downloadable game titles for the next-generation system, will soon count 100 titles, with the addition of "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link." Since launching last November, Nintendo said the store has sold more than 4.7 million titles that were originally published for NES, Super NES, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx16 consoles. [more..]