Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, released a new draft of their legislation aimed at improving the nation's response to cyber attacks. The bill would raise the priority of cybersecurity throughout the federal government and streamline cybersecurity-related functions, authorities and laws.
A judge has awarded a San Francisco attorney $7,000 in damages in a rare trial under California's anti-spam law -- $1,000 for each unsolicited, misleading commercial e-mail he received. Daniel Balsam, who started suing spammers even before he graduated from law school in 2008, filed suit against Trancos Inc., a Redwood City advertising company, over a series of ads that showed up in his personal e-mail in-box in 2007.
Several major U.S. Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, need to "step up" and better protect consumer privacy or face tougher penalties from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, a commissioner said. Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour, who is leaving the FTC next month, ripped into Google for the launch of its Buzz social-networking tool in February, and she complained that many other Internet firms, including Facebook and Microsoft, aren't encrypting the consumer data that lives in their clouds.
A U.S. federal judge has agreed to freeze the assets of a company being accused of manipulating the stocks of 38 companies listed on the Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange via compromised trading accounts, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said. The SEC alleges in a complaint filed in federal district court in New York that BroCo Investments and its president, Valery Maltsev, gained access to investor accounts using stolen usernames and passwords, and placed unauthorized trades through the accounts.
Google's bid for a trademark on its Nexus One smartphone has been denied by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which concluded that the name is too similar to a trademark held by Portland-based Integra Telecom. That trademark has been held since 2008 by Integra, which provides phone, Internet and other telecom services to small and midsized businesses.
The U.S. Federal Communication Commission's national broadband plan received generally positive reviews, with some groups calling the plan ambitious and necessary. Other groups suggested the broadband plan would lead to more regulation of the Internet and huge new government programs.
A Web site that satirizes news can run a fictional story about a giraffe attack at Global Wildlife Center, a state district judge ruled. After a two-hour hearing, state District Judge Beth Wolfe struck down a temporary restraining order signed March 2 that had called for the removal of the story from the site, Hammond Action News.
Google should obey Chinese government rules even if it decides to retreat from the country over hacking and censorship complaints, a Chinese government spokesman said. "On entering the Chinese market in 2007, it clearly stated that it would respect Chinese law," the spokesman, Yao Jian, told reporters in answer to a question about Google.
Apple's decision to limit nudity in iPhone apps worries some German publishers. Why should a technology company in California be allowed to decide what is objectionable to the rest of the world, they ask.
The FBI and other federal agencies are going undercover on Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and other social networks with phony profiles to gather information and communicate with suspects, according to an internal Justice Department document. The document says Facebook is "often cooperative with emergency requests" from federal investigators while Twitter's lawyers demand a warrant or subpoena before it will turn over customer information.
Copyright holders have given up legal efforts to force Norwegian ISP Telenor to block file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, one of the parties to the case said. The copyright holders, led by Norway's performing rights society TONO and by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry Norway (IFPI Norge) Norway have lost two rounds in the Norwegian court system, and have now decided against appealing the case to Norway's supreme court, the organizations said.
The use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube by militant and hate groups grew by almost 20 percent in the past year, a report by the Simon Wiesenthal Center found. The study, using research by the center and tips from the public, found more than 11,500 social networks, websites, forums and blogs promoting violence, anti-Semitism, homophobia, hate music and "terrorism," an increase from 10,000 last year.
At a time when Classmates.com and parent company United Online are already mixed up in a congressional investigation, Classmates.com is attempting to settle a lawsuit that accuses the company of sending e-mails that duped users into believing the messages had come from old high school chums. E-mail recipients only learned the truth after paying for upgrades to their membership, according to court documents.
The Federal Communications Commission released a set of goals to modernize high-speed Internet access for Americans, including plans to free up more airwaves for mobile services. The plan aims to have 100 million American households get Internet speeds of 100 megabits per second (Mbps) by 2020, compared with the current average speed of less than 4 Mbps.
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.
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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.