America

Another index declining this year is the shrinking of America's leisure time, according to the latest results from The Harris Poll, tracking America's leisure time since 1973. The poll finds that The median number of leisure hours available each week dropped 20% in 2008, from 20 hours in 2007, to an all-time low of only 16 hours this year. This continues a trend which has seen America's median weekly leisure time shrink 10 hours from 26 hours per week in 1973.

Facebook resisted a few days longer than MySpace but finally has given in to the RIAA's demands that the Project Playlist app be removed for copyright violation. It's been a real take-one-step-forward and two-steps-back few days for Project Playlist, which also scored a big win by signing a licensing deal with Sony BMG.

The British music industry had always eschewed American cousins' penchant for suing illegal downloaders. Now America's RIAA music org has come around to a European way of thinking. It's giving up suing the downloaders and will instead enlist ISPs to send warning letters to transgressors.

Five years, three months and 11 days after filing its first batch of lawsuits against file-sharers, the Recording Industry Association of America shocked industry watchers Friday with the announcement that it will no longer sue peer-to-peer users, but will instead work with Internet service providers to sanction individuals.

NYTimes.com is being blocked in China, even as some news sites have had recent restrictions lifted, IHT reported. A number of news sites belonging to the BBC, Voice of America and Asiaweek had restrictions lifted by Friday after being blocked a few days earlier.

After years of engaging in a largely futile campaign of lawsuits against illegal file-sharers, the Recording Industry Association of America is giving up that tactic. Instead, the RIAA hopes to enlist the help of broadband ISPs to stop music pirates from giving away copyrighted material, WSJ reported. The record label organ has crafted initial agreements with the major internet providers, though the companies weren't specifically identified.

In a new round of enforcement actions, Hollywood has filed lawsuits against three video search sites, Campusist.com, Movies-on-Demand.tv and Sswarez.com, that allegedly make it easy for users to find pirated movies. With the latest filings, in federal district court in Los Angeles, the Motion Picture Association of America has now targeted a dozen sites that allegedly provide links to allegedly pirated movies and TV shows.

After all the recent challenges to its wire service that have been creeping up lately, now the Associated Press has a labor action on its hands. As the AP and its employees negotiate over a new contract, the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America have called for a "byline strike" on behalf of the 1,400 AP staffers it represents Sunday, E&P reports.

-Jeff Zucker made all sorts of offers to Jay Leno before they agreed to a 10 p.m. hour-long show on NBC. Among them: an 8 p.m. half-hour, and an hour on the USA network starting at 11. [NYT]