Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd presented a pretty bleak picture of how privacy and publicity is managed online in her SXSW Interactive keynote. Targeting Chatroulette, Facebook, and Google Buzz as examples, Boyd says consumers have no idea what they are sharing online, and that the businesses that build social networks don't either.
China and Iran are among the world's top "Internet enemies" tagged by Reporters Without Borders for restricting Internet freedom. But even democratic countries like Australia and South Korea are raising concerns.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who is criticized by media freedom groups, called for regulation of the Internet and singled out a website that he said falsely reported the murder of one of his ministers. "The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. Every country has to apply its own rules and norms," Chavez said.
Nike Inc. is seeking to wrest control over 66 Internet domain names it says are hawking counterfeit goods. The athletic footwear and apparel giant filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Virginia against the domain names, all of which are registered to entities in China.
Reported losses from Internet fraud more than doubled in 2009, with scams that falsely used the FBI's name generating the most complaints, the law enforcement agency said. The total dollar loss rose to $559.7 million last year from $264.6 million in 2008, based on amounts reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center.
Iran has arrested 30 people suspected of belonging to a U.S.-linked cyber network gathering information on Iranian nuclear scientists and sending people abroad for training, a news agency reported. It said the group sought to recruit people through the Internet for training in Iraq with the People's Mujahideen Organization, a leftist exile group which launched attacks on the Islamic Republic from Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Just before wrapping up its meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board voted to postpone any decision about a proposal to create a ".xxx" top level domain for adult Web sites. The matter is scheduled to be taken up again at its June meeting in Brussels.
The Federal Communications Commission is proposing an ambitious 10-year plan that will reimagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network. The plan is likely to generate debate in Washington and a lobbying battle among the telecommunication giants, which over time may face new competition for customers.
Google, seemingly torn between Chinese censorship and Chinese opportunity, is now "99.9 percent" certain that it will shut down its Chinese search engine, Google.cn. According to a Financial Times source "familiar with the company's thinking," the search giant, having reached an apparent impasse with the Chinese government officials, has drafted detailed plans to close the Chinese search business, though it remains optimistic about finding a way to maintain its overall operations in China.
Sarah Palin and her husband Todd will testify in the federal case against a Tennessee man who allegedly accessed Palin's private e-mail account during the 2008 presidential race, Palin's attorney said. The case involves University of Tennessee student David C. Kernell, the 22-year old son of a Democratic state representative.
Although Google, Facebook and their rivals have enjoyed a relatively "safe harbor" from prosecution over user-generated content in the United States and Europe, they face a public that increasingly is more inclined to blame them for cyber-bullying and other online transgressions.
Many governments have used the Internet to curtail freedom of expression at home, the U.S. state department says in its latest annual human rights report. In many cases new forms of electronic communications are restricted to control domestic dissent, it says.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission launched a broadband test service to help consumers clock the speed of their Internet. Located at the site www.broadband.gov, the test is aimed at allowing consumers to compare their actual speeds with the speeds advertised by their providers.
The U.S. Federal Court of Appeals has once again upheld a jury's verdict that Microsoft willfully infringed on patents awarded to i4i. The verdict, which the appeals court first affirmed in December, required Microsoft to pay more than $240 million in damages and forced it to remove a feature in versions of Microsoft Word 2007 starting in January.
Pink Floyd tracks may be removed from digital music services like iTunes after a High Court ruling. Their latest record deal, signed with EMI before legal downloads came along, said individual songs must not be sold without the band's permission.
Twitter is launching a new service designed to stop users of the social-media site from getting duped by phishing links that steal their login credentials and other attacks. The company will route all links submitted to the site through a filter created to catch links that lead to malware, the company said.
The European Parliament took aim at a secret intellectual property treaty that has been criticized for possibly giving copyright holders more power to pull the plug on peer-to-peer users. By a remarkable vote of 633 to 13, the Parliament rebuked European negotiators who have been drafting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in a series of confidential meetings around the globe.
Ever since the disputed victory of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June elections led to wide-scale protests, Iran's leaders have been cracking down on the tech-savvy opposition movement with the Revolutionary Guard and police blocking millions of foreign and domestic Web sites, including some Google services, CNN and the BBC. Iran's leaders say these measures are necessary to counter efforts by the United States and other Western countries.
Google expects an outcome soon from its talks with China over a censorship and hacking dispute, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said. "I'm going to use the word 'soon', which I will not define otherwise," Schmidt told journalists at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit.
A global Internet oversight agency is reopening discussions about whether to create a ".xxx" domain name as an online red-light district where porn sites can set up shop away from the wandering eyes of children and teenagers. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the allocation of Internet addresses globally, may revive ICM Registry's bid yet again as ICANN meets this week in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
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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.