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1. Firms working to halt pirates; Many people post videos in violation of copyright laws

To build a case against YouTube, Viacom turned to a Silicon Valley company to sniff out pirated clips on the popular video- sharing site. Viacom, which last week sued YouTube and parent company Google Inc. for publishing its videos on the Web without its permission, hired BayTSP Inc. in October and asked the Los Gatos technology company to scour the site and find the offending clips. By the time Viacom filed its $1 billion lawsuit, BayTSP had amassed more than 160,000 unauthorized videos, snippets from "South Park," "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," "SpongeBob SquarePants" and other popular shows owned by MTV, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other Viacom networks. YouTube says it took all those videos down.

2. AT&T to settle probe of wireless cancellation fees

AT&T Inc.'s mobile phone unit agreed to pay $30.6 million to settle an investigation by California regulators over early-termination fees charged to wireless customers.

3. College loan kickbacks are alleged; A nationwide probe finds that lenders are engaged in widespread illegal and deceptive practices, New York's attorney general says.

Student loan providers are engaged in widespread illegal and deceptive practices, including kickbacks to colleges for directing students to lenders, New York Atty. Gen. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday. A nationwide investigation by his office revealed all-expense-paid trips to luxury Caribbean resorts for college financial aid officers and their spouses as well as college call centers secretly manned by lenders, Cuomo said. He did not single out specific lenders or schools. "A student's first lesson in college should not be in consumer fraud," Cuomo said. "The school-lender relationships are often for the benefit of the school at the expense of the student."