YouTube has no way of knowing how often police tap into its videos to make arrests, company spokesman Scott Rubin said, but police across the country say they are increasingly using YouTube and other online social networks to root out criminals. "Technology has revolutionized law enforcement in many ways," said Jack Rinchich, president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police.
Prodded by the Federal Communications Commission, Google has lowered the fee it charges users who return its Nexus One before their contracts expire. The "equipment recovery fee" is now $150 instead of the initial fee of $350.
A Queensland man will have to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages after illegally copying and uploading one of its new games to the Internet ahead of its release, the gaming giant says. Nintendo said the loss was caused when James Burt made New Super Mario Bros for the Wii gaming console available for illegal download a week ahead of its official Australian release in November last year.
Children as young as five are being targeted in a new online safety campaign backed by the government. The campaign uses cartoons to show five to seven-year-olds that people are not always what they seem.
Spam that uses the latest news headlines was just one of the hot trends last year in the world of cybercrime, according to McAfee's "Q4 Threats Report". The latest threat assessment also noted a rise in "hacktivism," or politically motivated cyberattacks.
Behind a veil of secrecy, the United States, the European Union, Japan and other countries are forging ahead with plans to coordinate an international crackdown on illegally copied music, movies, designer bags and other goods that change hands in sidewalk souks and Internet bazaars. Negotiators, under intense pressure from media companies, luxury brands and other corporate victims of piracy, are scrambling to complete a so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by the end of the year.
Poker lobbyists are ramping up an aggressive push backed by millions of dollars to legalize Internet gambling in the United States this year, hoping to overcome passionate objections from social conservatives, sports leagues and other longtime opponents. Partly bankrolled by offshore gambling companies, the campaign has already persuaded the Obama administration to delay enforcement of a 2006 law cracking down on Internet wagers.
Police in Hubei province announced to the Chinese media that they had closed down the largest training site for Chinese hackers, and arrested three of its ringleaders. Black Hawk is accused of collecting more than $1 million in tuition from 12,000 subscribers and 170,000 others who took its online courses, according to Chinese media.
Verizon temporarily blocked traffic from some Web sites affiliated with the 4chan online forum after finding that some affiliate sites were apparently launching network attacks. "Our network security system found traffic from some 4Chan Web sites that had strong potential to disrupt the Verizon Wireless network, affecting our customers' use of their services," said Verizon spokesman Jeffrey Nelson.
Federal law enforcement officials have received more than 170 complaints about fundraising scams tied to Haitian earthquake relief, and they're bracing for more online cons using Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites. Scams are growing more diverse, and the FBI has a special team of computer analysts, fraud investigators and white-collar crime experts reviewing complaints, says David Nanz, chief of the FBI's economic crimes unit.
Mozilla disclosed that a pair of add-ons hosted on its addons.mozilla.org site included Trojans. As a result, if a Windows user installed the add-ons, they would be infected by malware that could potentially steal their information.
The International Olympic Committee made it clear that athletes should feel free to share their experiences via Twitter at the upcoming Games in Vancouver. In a post on its own Twitter feed, the IOC pointed to its detailed rules for bloggers, but summarized its position with the succinctness called for in a tweet.
A tiny electronics company in southern China is claiming that Apple didn't steal just the name of its iPad product, but also its design. Wu Xiaolong, executive director of Shenzhen Great Loong Industrial, says that last July, his company released a tablet computer called the P88.
Vodafone has been forced to issue a grovelling apology to its thousands of followers on Twitter after one of its customerservice staff broadcast an obscene message on the micro-blogging service. The message appeared on Vodafone's official Twitter account, which is used by the company to deal with customer complaints.
Google has turned to the National Security Agency for technical assistance to learn more about the computer network attackers who breached the company’s cybersecurity defenses last year, a person with direct knowledge of the agreement said. The collaboration between Google, the world’s largest search engine company, and the federal agency in charge of global electronic surveillance raises both civil liberties issues and new questions about how much Google knew about the electronic thefts it experienced when it stated last month that it might end its business operations in China.
The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a cybersecurity bill that calls for beefing up training, research, and coordination so the government can be better prepared to deal with cyberattacks. The Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2009, which passed by a vote of 422 to 5, authorizes the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop a cybersecurity education program that can help consumers, businesses, and government workers keep their computers secure.
In another blow to Google's plan to create a giant digital library and bookstore, the Justice Department said that a class-action settlement between the company and groups representing authors and publishers had significant legal problems, even after recent revisions. In a 31-page filing that could influence a federal judge's ruling on the settlement, the department said the new agreement was much improved from an earlier version but said the changes were not enough to placate concerns.
A leading Australian Internet service provider was cleared of copyright allegations when a federal judge ruled against Hollywood's lawsuit that iiNet was responsible for infringing BitTorrent data traveling its pipes. The Australian Federal Court decision siding with the country's third-largest ISP was a legal blow to worldwide efforts to make ISPs liable for the unlawful behavior of their customers.
The chief executive of book publisher Macmillan said his company is still in talks with online retailer Amazon.com Inc, despite the apparent settlement of a dispute over the price of electronic books. Amazon caved in to pressure from Macmillan, which wanted to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most of its books sold at the bookstore of Amazon's Kindle electronic reader.
Tech-security companies are poised to become Wall Street darlings this year, thanks in part to Google's tiff with China. The Google-China affair has reinforced an already positive outlook for 2010 stock price performance of major security vendors, such as McAfee, Symantec and Check Point, says Daniel Ives, analyst at FBR Capital Markets.
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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.