Apple's newest operating system, iOS6, set for release next Wednesday, will replace unique device identifiers with a new type of tracking mechanism, 9to5Mac reports. Unlike UDIDs -- 40-character alphanumeric strings -- the new so-called "advertising identifiers" won't be permanent, according to 9to5Mac. Apple also intends to offer users its version of do-not-track -- a setting marked "limit ad tracking." When that setting is activated, advertisers won't be allowed to collect data that can be used to serve behaviorally targeted ads.

The Federal Trade Commission and Myspace have finalized the settlement of a privacy complaint alleging that the social network passed along users' names to advertisers via referrer headers.The agreement prohibits Myspace from misrepresenting its privacy policy in the future. The deal also requires Myspace to implement a comprehensive privacy policy, and to agree to audits for 20 years.

Kazaa user Jammie Thomas-Rasset must pay $220,000 to the record labels for sharing 24 files on Kazaa, a federal appeals court ruled today. The decision, issued by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, reinstated a 2007 jury verdict against Thomas-Rasset -- the first of three jury verdicts issued in the long-running case. The decision obviously is bad news for Thomas-Rasset, who now must cough up six figures to the record labels. But the 8th Circuit also didn't give the RIAA everything it had requested. That organization wanted a ruling that people who make tracks available on file-sharing services infringe copyright …

Roy Fielding, an influential computer programmer who helped found Apache, has taken it upon himself to create a "patch" that prevents publishers from ever seeing the do-not-track settings in Internet Explorer 10. Fielding says he did so because he disapproves of Microsoft's decision for IE10 to enable do-not-track by default. "Apache does not tolerate deliberate abuse of open standards," Fielding says in a post about the patch.

Add Philip Roth to the growing roster of people unhappy to discover what someone else has written about them online. The author today issued a 2,500-plus-word missive to Wikipedia, informing the online encyclopedia that its entry regarding his novel "The Human Stain" contains "a serious misstatement."

Today, as Jeff Bezos was unveiling his newest threat to Apple -- an 8.9-inch tablet -- his company got a boost from a federal judge overseeing antitrust litigation about ebooks. Despite objections from the Authors Guild, Barnes & Noble, Apple and literally hundreds of other commenters, U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote today approved a deal requiring three book publishers to immediately cancel their current contracts with Apple.

When Bob Kohn, a longtime entertainment attorney, wanted to weigh in on the Department of Justice's antitrust lawsuit about ebook pricing, he did what lawyers typically do: He drafted papers -- filled with dry legalese, footnotes and citations to precedent -- and then asked U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote for permission to submit his 25-page brief. Cote responded by telling Kohn that he could submit papers, but only if he kept them to under five pages -- the same length as a friend-of-the-court brief by the Authors Guild, which also opposes the settlement. This week, Kohn did so -- …

For years, digital rights advocates have warned that automatic filtering systems could shut down completely legitimate videos, blog posts or other material online. That's because copyright issues aren't always clear-cut. Content creators can incorporate copyrighted material in a way that makes fair use of it. And owners can authorize clips to be shown in some contexts, but not others. But technological filters can't always account for those nuances. Now advocates can point to a high-profile example of filtering gone awry: Sunday night, Ustream shut off a Webcast of the Hugo awards -- given for science fiction and fantasy writing -- …