Audio/Video

And the winner for best music video: "Chocolate Rain."

Tay Zonday morphed from an unknown musician to an Internet superstar who got booked on national TV shows after his song "Chocolate Rain" -- an amateur clip of his baritone crooning -- went viral last year.

Now he's among the 12 winners of the second annual YouTube Video Awards, recognizing the top user-created videos of 2007.

YouTube users voted on six nominees for each category: music, sports, comedy, instructional, short film, inspirational, commentary, creative, politics, series, eyewitness and "adorable."

In early February, in the midst of Microsoft's surprise bid to acquire Yahoo, I wrote about Yahoo's Flickr Video coming soon. It's been a long time coming. I first asked Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake about a Flickr video service in December 2005.

After spending a few hours at the Flickr fourth anniversary party in San Francisco on Saturday night, the "coming soon" line was uttered by various Yahoo people, including Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. Upon further investigation, it appears that "coming soon" means that Flickr Video will debut in beta next month.

Think of classic Hollywood action heroes, and pumped-up gym jocks such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone or Vin Diesel will probably come to mind. However, there is another group of heroes who also battle the forces of evil, using their wits rather than their fists - hackers.

It was strongly rumoured last week that the Chinese government had ordered Tudou.com, the country's top online video site, to close. However, Tudou.com has continued to operate, and news reports about its demise have disappeared from top sites.

Reports appeared online late Thursday or Friday that China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), whose purview now generally includes online video and audio content, ordered Tudou.com to shut down to "punish Tudou.com for violations in providing internet audio-visual services".

Conversations from thousands of internet chatrooms, message boards and other public forums have been transformed into an electronic art piece.

Described as a unique portrait of the internet, the electronic art - called the Listening Post – forms a free exhibition at the Science Museum in London.

The BBC's commercial arm is expected to announce a deal to distribute shows via the iTunes video store next week.

A TV industry source claims BBC Worldwide will on Tuesday detail plans to set up shop at Apple's online media mall. Our source says BBC Worldwide's digital media director Simon Danker has contacted the BBC's third party production partners to inform them of the new distribution channel.

PERHAPS you found a gift-wrapped MP3 player under the Christmas tree, or maybe you invested hard-earned dollars on the very best iPod you could afford.

However you received your digital jukebox, it will be no good to you unless you pack it with digital tunes.

This need not be an expensive exercise though, as there's a veritable smorgasbord of free songs available on the internet to download and hold. Plus, downloading these songs won't turn you into a musical pirate or set American prosecutors on you – they're legal and free for the listening.

A distributor of Internet file-swapping software has abruptly postponed the launch of its free online music service until it can finalize music licensing deals.

Qtrax omitted that detail when it threw a star-studded coming-out party over the weekend. The ambitious, ad-supported music service promised unlimited music downloads with the blessing of the major recording companies.

But that claim began to unravel just hours before Qtrax's scheduled debut Monday when Warner Music Group issued a statement that it had not authorized the firm to distribute its artists' music.

Impatient film fans can now instantly watch streaming versions of hundreds of the latest Hollywood blockbusters thanks to a new generation of pirate websites.

The format is similar to YouTube and surprisingly simple, making it arguably the most tempting way for people to watch movies that have not yet been released in Australia — a matter of great concern for bodies like the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

Sony BMG Music Entertainment, the last major music label holding out against selling music online without copy protection, relented Thursday and announced Amazon.com Inc.'s digital music store will carry songs by its artists.

Until this week, Sony BMG had resisted selling songs from its catalog without embedding Digital Rights Management coding, which prevented them from being copied.