Google said it had reached agreement with the Italian culture ministry to scan up to a million books housed in the national libraries of Rome and Florence. "Google will cover the costs of scanning all these works and will set up a scanning centre in Italy," making them available on its Google Books website, the company said in a statement.
Rock band Pink Floyd launched a High Court action against EMI in a dispute over the calculation of online royalty payments and marketing of their music. Robert Howe QC, appearing for the group, said it partly concerned EMI's "entitlement to sell individual tracks, or indeed any tracks, otherwise than in the original configuration of the Pink Floyd albums."
Sex.com, often touted as one of the most valuable Internet domain names, is due to head to the auction block. DOM Partners LLC, a New Jersey lender that backed a 2006 purchase of the domain name for a reported $14 million, is foreclosing on the Internet property, and is due to auction it on March 18 at New York law firm Windels Marx Lane & Mittendorf LLP, according to legal notices.
Amazon.com Inc. pulled the plug on its marketing affiliates in Colorado after the state enacted a law that imposes new sales-tax regulations on online retailers. Amazon sent an email to members of its associates program, who earn a fee for providing links to the online retailer on their own Web sites.
A criminal court in Thailand has approved the extradition to the U.S. of a Malaysian man suspected of participating in credit card thefts of more than $152 million, according to a local news report. Gooi Kokseng, 44, was arrested on January 30 after being accused of causing more than 5 billion baht, or $152.9 million, in damage by accessing credit card information in the U.S. and Southeast Asia, according to The Bangkok Post.
Software that can be downloaded for use with the Energizer Duo USB battery charger contains a backdoor that could allow an attacker to remotely take control of a Windows-based PC, Energizer and US-CERT is warning.
Four of every five adults believe access to the Internet is a fundamental right, and more than half believe it should never be regulated, according to a new survey. In a BBC World Service poll of 27,000 adults in 26 countries, 78 percent of Internet users believed the Internet is a fundamental right -- with particularly strong response in South Korea and China.
Seeking to exploit the Internet’s potential for prying open closed societies, the Obama administration will permit technology companies to export online services like instant messaging, chat and photo sharing to Iran, Cuba and Sudan, a senior administration official said. He said the Treasury Department will issue a general license for the export of free personal Internet services and software geared toward the populations in all three countries, allowing Microsoft, Yahoo and other providers to get around strict export restrictions.
China has pledged to punish hackers who attacked Google if there is evidence to prove it, but said it has yet to receive any complaint from the world's top search engine. Google had never filed a report to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology over the cyber attacks or sought negotiations, Vice Minister Miao Wei was quoted as saying by state news agency Xinhua.
Two IT employees at Pennsylvania's Lower Merion School District have been put on administrative leave, and pictures taken from Webcams on school-issued computers have been turned over to the local police department, according to the attorney of one of the employees now on leave. Attorney Charles Mandracchia, who represents school district information coordinator Carol Cafiero, told Philadelphia TV station Fox 29 that that "they had a private Web site for some of these pictures for the Lower Marion Police Department to view and they were the only ones who could view it."
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will seek to bring Internet speeds of 1 gigabit per second by 2020 to community institutions such as schools and government buildings, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said. The FCC's National Broadband Plan is also expected to free up airwaves for mobile broadband, seek to increase universal access and adoption of broadband, and create a nationwide public safety network.
Just as Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano did the previous day, FBI Director Robert Mueller told an audience at the RSA Conference that the U.S. risks falling dangerously behind in the fight against cyber criminals. Noting the breadth of attacks by numerous criminal organizations here and abroad, Mueller said our computer systems are suffering "death by a thousand cuts, bleeding data, bit by bit and terabyte by terabyte," as he put it.
PC support company Rescuecom has dropped a trademark lawsuit against Google, giving it time to defend itself against a similar suit filed by Best Buy. Rescuecom declared "victory" in a press release, although it wasn't clear if anything had changed since Rescuecom was able to win an appeal of a 2006 decision dismissing its lawsuit over Google's keyword-based ad system.
Internet crime is up, but arrests of "mastermind" hackers are rare. And the whole get-the-bad-guys effort, while it makes for good drama, is a futile way to secure the Internet, some computer security experts say.
The hackers behind the attacks on Google and dozens of other companies operating in China stole valuable computer source code by breaking into the personal computers of employees with privileged access, a security firm said. The hackers targeted a small number of employees who controlled source code management systems, which handle the myriad changes that developers make as they write software, said George Kurtz, chief technology officer at anti-virus software maker McAfee.
TiVo Inc. won a U.S. appeals court ruling that Dish Network Corp. and EchoStar Corp. are still infringing its patent and should stop providing digital-video recording services. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a lower court’s finding that the companies were still in violation of TiVo’s patent, even after claiming they had changed their technology enough to avoid infringement. TiVo claimed the changes weren’t sufficient.
Activision Blizzard Inc. was sued by the executives who created the “Call of Duty” video-game franchise over claims the company used “false” insubordination charges to fire them and avoid paying royalties. Jason West and Vince Zampella, who co-founded Activision’s Infinity Ward studio, sued the company in Los Angeles Superior Court, claiming breach of contract and wrongful termination.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is calling on anyone with good ideas for boosting public awareness about the importance of making the Internet safer to step forward. "We are challenging our nation's best and brightest to utilize their expertise and creativity to devise new ways to engage the public in the shared responsibility of safeguarding our cyber resources and information," she said.
At first glance, it looks like we’re in the middle of a patent lawsuit Super Bowl party. Nearly every large mobile phone player -- with the exception of Microsoft and Palm -- and, so far, Google, have recently been involved in some sort of patent litigation around their mobile technologies.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel has issued a permanent injunction that bars RealNetworks from selling RealDVD, the DVD-copying software that Hollywood claimed in a lawsuit violated copyright law. Real and the Motion Picture Association of America reached a settlement, according to statements issued by both companies, that called for Real to stop selling RealDVD or any similar products and to pay $4.5 million to reimburse the studios for legal fees.
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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.