Viacom says newly released documents in its copyright fight with Google over its YouTube subsidiary help prove its case against the search engine. Viacom said in a statement that the newly released documents show Google "made a deliberate, calculated business decision not only to profit from copyright infringement, but also to use the threat of copyright infringement to try to coerce rights owners like Viacom into licensing their content on Google's terms."
Illegal drugs-on-demand operations in seven states and Puerto Rico that made use of the Internet and phony prescriptions have been broken up in a federal bust, authorities announced. The busts represent a major federal initiative against "pill mills" that illegally deal in prescription drugs, U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said. He said the operations netted millions of dollars in profits and led to countless illegal drug buys.
The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission told a Congressional panel that a recent court ruling that the agency lacked authority to regulate the Internet should not prevent it from carrying out its plan to broadly expand the country’s high-speed Internet service. But the chairman refused to say if the commission would try to reclassify Internet service as a utility similar to telephone service to overcome the court decision, a move that some Democratic senators supported but that several Republican senators strongly warned against.
Financial news service Theflyonthewall.com has urged a Manhattan federal judge to lift a ban on its quickly reporting "hot news" about analyst research from three Wall Street banks, saying the ban has cost it subscribers and could threaten its survival. The company made its request to U.S. District Judge Denise Cote, who last month issued an injunction requiring it to wait two or more hours before publishing research from Bank of America Corp's Merrill Lynch unit, Barclays Plc and Morgan Stanley.
Adobe intends to sue Apple over the recent SDK change that bans iPhone and iPad applications translated from languages Steve Jobs doesn't like, according to a report citing sources close to Adobe. IT World reports that Adobe will sue Apple "within a few weeks," after the Jobsian cult not only barred native Flash from the iPhone and iPad, but also put the kibosh on Flash apps repackaged for use with Apple's APIs.
The Army intelligence officer nominated to lead the Pentagon’s new command devoted to warfare in cyberspace has warned Congress of a gap between the military’s technical capabilities and legal controls over digital combat. The officer, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wrote to members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that computer network warfare is evolving so rapidly that there is a “mismatch between our technical capabilities to conduct operations and the governing laws and policies.”
An increasing number of politicians, concerned with shrinking budgets and eyeing continuing growth in e-commerce, want to force out-of-state retailers like Amazon.com, Overstock.com, and Blue Nile to tattle to tax collectors about how much in sales taxes their customers have avoided paying.
Google and an alliance of privacy groups have come to Yahoo's aid by helping the Web portal fend off broad requests from the U.S. Department of Justice for e-mail messages. In a brief, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages -- a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski will soon have to make a wonky but controversial decision that could have a profound impact on how much consumers pay for broadband, how fast their services will be -- and possibly whether millions of people will be able to get it at all.
Facebook is unveiling a revamped internal site designed to help people stay safe while surfing online. Facebook's "Safety Center," which features new tools for parents, teachers, teens and law enforcement, is the first major endeavor from the social networking site and its four-month-old global safety advisory board.
A milkman has criticized Google's Street View website, claiming burglars targeted his garage three times after spotting its door open online. Gordon Rayner said he believed criminals could have been using the service after he was alerted to the image, which clearly shows him standing next to his house in front of an open garage door.
An Italian judge convicted three Google employees in February of violating privacy laws because the Internet company had sought to profit from a video of an autistic boy being bullied by classmates, according to a judicial reasoning in the case. That verdict was the first to hold the company’s employees criminally responsible for content posted on its system.
In a 32-page report, the Government Accountability Office said that most of the published information, anecdotal evidence and records show that piracy is a drag on the U.S. economy, tax revenue and in some cases potentially threatens national security and public health. But the problem is, according to the GAO, the data used to quantify piracy isn't reliable.
Facebook executives are due to meet the head of a British child protection agency in Washington to discuss safety measures on the social networking site. It has been criticized by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) center for not installing "panic buttons" on every page.
Administrators at web host Network Solutions say they've closed a hole that allowed attackers to commandeer a large number of sites so they tried to infect visitors with malware. The mass hack caused Network Solutions customers running WordPress to silently redirect visitors to a site that attempted to perform malicious drive-by downloads.
The Internet Crime Complaint Center warned Americans to be careful about potential Web and other scams related to the 2010 census. The center, a joint venture between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, warned that census takers will not contact U.S. residents seeking census information via e-mail or seek donations.
Since late March, when Google moved its search operations out of mainland China to Hong Kong, each response to a Chinese citizen’s search request has been met at the border by government computers, programmed to censor any forbidden information Google might turn up. In the new networked China, censorship is a major growth industry, overseen -- and fought over -- by no fewer than 14 government ministries.
The Department of Transportation stepped up its campaign against distracted driving, announcing its first pilot program to study whether increased law enforcement would reduce distracted driving in two East Coast cities. The $600,000 program, modeled on previous safe-driving programs to curb drunk driving and improve seat belt usage, also involves a paid advertising campaign aimed at men and women up to age 49.
The case of a teenager in Massachusetts who killed herself after a relentless, months-long bullying campaign shows how the common schoolyard behavior is evolving in dangerous new ways online. Six students face felony charges in the death of Phoebe Prince, 15, who hanged herself in January after being subjected to verbal assault and threats of physical harm.
New regulations issued aimed at removing obstacles to using Internet-based tools for transparency are long overdue, said accountability groups and privacy advocates, but they pointed out a promised revision to an outdated ban on cookies was conspicuously absent. In accordance with a December presidential directive, agencies released plans to weave transparency, public participation and collaboration with the private sector into daily operations.
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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.