• SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Last Update on March 18, 2010 03:09 EDT

IN THE NEWS: VIACOM/YOUTUBE BEEF GOES PUBLIC

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Talk about hanging your dirty laundry in public -- and that of your feuding neighbor, to boot. A legal battle between Viacom and YouTube is going public -- now that a judge is ready to release documents that will show how the two companies have been going at each other. The documents to be unsealed today will include some of the evidence the two sides have collected to prove their points in their ongoing tiff. Viacom sued YouTube in 2007, seeking more than $1 billion in damages. Viacom owns Paramount Pictures and TV channels like Comedy Central. It claims YouTube built its early success by rampantly infringing on copyrights. For its part, YouTube maintains it follows the copyright laws governing the Internet.

IN THE NEWS: FIRED AUTO DEALERSHIP WORKER USES COMPUTER TO CAUSE TROUBLE

DALLAS (AP) -- They aren't calling it an act of revenge. But a man fired from an Austin, Texas auto dealership allegedly did some dirty dealing that was, at the very least, a big pain to his ex-employer. Authorities claim Omar Ramos-Lopez used the Internet to remotely disable ignitions and set off car horns of more than 100 vehicles sold at his old job. That left some owners without use of their cars. The dealership puts GPS devices in their cars to keep them from being started. That makes the cars easier to repossess if buyers fail to make payments. The odd thing about all of this: an official at the dealership says Ramos-Lopez didn't seem all that upset about being fired.

ON THE WEB: ONLINE-ONLY NEWSPAPER MARKS FIRST BIRTHDAY

CYBERSPACE (AP) -- They worried it wouldn't last. But the first Web-only "newspaper" has made it to its first birthday. Seattlepi.com is the online successor to the print version of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. It was launched a year ago today -- one day after the newspaper published its last newsprint edition. Officials say the site has 4 million visitors a month -- about the same as the site did when the paper was being printed. Though readership is stable, it's unclear whether the site will make enough money to remain viable. The P-I was the first major metropolitan daily in the country to go Web only. Few have followed suit.

On the 'Net:

Seattle P.I. site: http://www.Seattlepi.com