Guns N’ Roses today officially debuted “Chinese Democracy,” its unreleased album from 1991, on MySpace, where it’s available for free streaming.

In a comically inept move, U.K. Internet service provider BT Group has decided to delete posts on its forums about its deployment of Phorm’s controversial behavioral targeting platform.

The Internet has made it possible for every citizen with a gripe against a company to broadcast their feelings far and wide online. But that doesn’t mean that businesses are happy about this. Increasingly, organizations that find themselves targeted by online critics are asking courts to shut down the detractors. These groups can’t ask to silence critics simply because of what they say — after all, the First Amendment protects people’s ability to bash companies — so instead the groups allege that the criticism violates their trademark or copyright.

A federal district court judge in Chicago has allowed Jones Day to proceed in its ill-conceived lawsuit against Blockshopper.com, accusing the online real estate publication of trademark infringement for having linked to the law firm’s Web site.

Now that the election is over, it seems certain that Democrats will renew their push for net neutrality laws. Sen. Byron Dorgan, who previously introduced legislation, intends to unveil a new proposal in January, one of his aides said this week at a University of Nebraska conference.

Behavioral targeting company Phorm seems to be suffering from a privacy-related backlash in the U.K.This week, Neil Berkett, CEO of Internet service provider Virgin Media, told investors in New York that the company wasn’t likely to work with Phorm any time soon. “Our next initiative probably won’t be with the Phorms of the world,” he said, according to reports.

Market research companies have long tried to make predictions about matters ranging from shopping patterns to election results by examining Web users’ searches. Now, Google itself is getting in on the forecasting game. The company said it will scrutinize people’s searches to provide what it calls “an early-warning system” for flu outbreaks.

The judge in the MySpace suicide case said this week that he might not let the prosecution tell the jury that 13-year-old Megan Meier killed herself, allegedly as a result of online harassment. If so, that would be the one sensible decision to date in this case — a case that should never have been brought, let alone gotten this far in court.

Do lawmakers intend to ban online behavioral targeting? Some observers say there’s a remote chance that the next Congress will introduce privacy legislation that outlaws behavioral targeting, both based on cookies and based on ISPs’ use of deep-packet inspection. In fact, there’s little evidence that such legislation is even being contemplated, much less that it will be introduced and enacted.

Ray Beckerman has been such a thorn in the side of the RIAA that the organization recently asked a court to sanction him for “vexatious” conduct in defending people the group has sued. Today, Beckerman fired back with an answer charging the RIAA with attempting to keep its litigation efforts as secretive as possible.