About four months ago Meredith Massey uploaded three pictures of her children skinny-dipping, along with more than 50 other photos, to the online photo site Flickr. She marked those untitled and unclothed pictures "private" for her parents' eyes only. But a couple of weeks ago, the District woman discovered the selected snapshots had been viewed thousands of times, while other photos had about 20 hits.
RIAA Sends More "Prelitigation" Letters to Universities
The Recording Industry of America is nearing the one-year anniversary of dispatching "prelitigation" letters to alleged pirates on college campuses nationwide. And it's showing no signs of slowing down, celebrating -- not surprisingly -- by firing off a new wave of 401 legal threats to 12 major universities from coast to coast.
Registration Process Opens Up for .asia Domain Names
The so-called landrush for the latest domain name suffix -- .asia -- has begun. DotAsia, the organisation overseeing the registration, is expecting huge demand for the first domain name extension for the Asia Pacific region.
Lawyer Seeks Trademark Protection for "Cyberlaw"
Eric Menhart, a recently sworn-in D.C. technology attorney, applied for trademark rights on the term "cyberlaw," which also happens to be the name of his personal firm. It has caused a lawyerly outcry among the industry's bloggers, who say the well-worn word clearly belongs in the public domain.
High Court Rejects Law Banning Online Cigarette Sales
The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a Maine law that slapped severe restrictions on sales of cigarettes via mail order and the Internet. In their opinion, the justices said a 1994 federal law trumped the Maine statute restricting sales and shipments of tobacco.
Gates Says, "You Cannot Control the Internet"
Efforts by countries such as China to restrict the exchange of information on the Internet are ultimately doomed to failure, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told an audience of Stanford University students. "I don't see any risk in the world at large that someone will restrict free content flow on the Internet," he said. "You cannot control the Internet."
Service Lets Users Decide Which Websites to Block
You can now help decide what Web sites your boss should block. A new service from OpenDNS lets users tag sites under categories such as "gambling," "hate" and "social networking."
Google Finds 3 Million Web Pages with Malicious Code
Google trained its Web crawling software on billions of Web addresses over the past year looking for malicious pages that tried to attack their visitors. They found more than 3 million of them, meaning that about one in 1,000 Web pages is malicious, according to Neils Provos, a senior staff software engineer with Google.
Hacker's Company Lets Users Copy iTunes Songs
A start-up co-founded by famed Norwegian hacker "DVD Jon" is introducing a service that enables users to copy and use copy-protected Apple Inc. iTunes songs on many popular non-Apple devices. The San Francisco-based company, doubleTwist, is releasing a service that makes it easy for consumers to share both user-generated and professionally created audio, photos and video clips via computers, certain mobile phones or PSP game players.
Baidu.com Censured by Chinese Government Group
China's top Internet search engine, Baidu.com, has been censured by a government-sponsored watchdog for allegedly helping spread sexually explicit photos that appear to feature several Hong Kong stars. The photos, which appear to show actor Edison Chen and several female stars performing sex acts or in sexually suggestive poses, are believed to have originated in Hong Kong.
British Official Wants Some News Articles Offline
Articles relating to high-profile court cases should be removed from online news archives, the former Lord Chancellor has told the BBC. Lord Falconer believes the action is necessary to avoid news stories written before a case influencing its outcome.
Embattled Russian Teacher Lobbying for Open Source
A Russian schoolteacher who became a popular hero after he was put on trial for using pirated Microsoft programs has launched a campaign against the software giant's global domination. Alexander Ponosov announced he is founding a lobby group whose aim is to reduce Russia's dependence on software produced by firms like Microsoft and instead promote so-called open-source software.
Committee Finds No Evidence of Domain Front-Running
An Internet committee investigating suspicious domain name transactions has found no evidence that insider information is being used to snatch desired Internet addresses to make money off the individual or business that actually wants to register them. The committee said the 120 claims of "domain name front running" it reviewed generally resulted from misunderstandings about how the domain name industry works.
BlackBerry Maker Files Patent Suit Against Motorola
BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion has sued Motorola, over what the Canadian company says are patent infringements and "exorbitant" licensing fees, according to court documents. The civil action, filed on Friday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that Motorola infringed on a number of patents held by RIM.
Smugglers Find Ways to Get iPhones Back Into China
Factories in Shanghai churn out iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe. Then thousands of them are smuggled right back into China.
FBI Error Led to Wide E-mail Surveillance
The FBI revealed that human error led to surveillance of an entire e-mail network back in 2006, rather than the single e-mail address approved by the secretive court which approves domestic wiretaps and other forms of e-surveillance. Although the alleged mistake came to light in an Electronic Frontier Foundation Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the Internet service provider involved remains unpublished, due to the classified nature of the work involved.
MPAA Sues Chinese Website Over Film Piracy
A Hollywood group said it is suing a popular Chinese Web site over film piracy, expanding a legal battle over use of the Internet by China's thriving industry in product copying. The Motion Picture Association accused Xunlei Networking Technology Co. of allowing users of its file-sharing service to download hundreds of movies from other Web sites despite repeated warnings. The group said it is seeking 7 million yuan, or about $1 million.
H-P Settles Pretexting Cases with Three Journalists
Hewlett-Packard settled cases with The New York Times Company and three BusinessWeek journalists after being caught spying on reporters in 2006. HP has already paid $4.5 million in a civil-case settlement with the State of California related to the incident.
Court Ruling Takes Down Whistle-Blowers' Website
A controversial website that allows whistle-blowers to anonymously post government and corporate documents has been taken offline in the U.S. Wikileaks.org, as it is known, was cut off from the internet following a California court ruling, the site says.
"JuicyCampus" Website Leads to Debate Over Freedom
In campus debates over Internet freedom, students normally take the side of openness and access. However, student leaders, newspaper editorials and posters are fighting back against a website called JuicyCampus, where threads of anonymous innuendo have been a popular Web destination on the seven college campuses where the site launched last fall.
