Without comment, Judge Gerald Lee of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia threw out a lawsuit filed by language software company Rosetta Stone in a victory for Google before it ever came to trial. Rosetta Stone had originally filed suit hoping to stop Google from selling trademarked keywords to companies that did not hold the rights to those trademarks, a practice which Rosetta Stone argued has confused consumers and harmed its brand.
Google’s plan to offer Street View photo mapping in Germany, which has bumped up against the country’s strict privacy laws, has come in for renewed criticism after regulators learned that the company, a search engine giant, was also archiving the locations of household wireless networks. Google’s Street View technology has been accepted in countries like Britain and France, but has encountered greater resistance in Germany and Switzerland, where data privacy laws are stricter than in the rest of Europe or in the United States.
Industry leaders cautioned federal lawmakers during a hearing not to seek too drastic changes to long-standing rules that govern how websites safeguard children's privacy. While both Microsoft and Facebook argue that recent technological advances, including the rise of the mobile Web, necessitate new protections for children under 13, they signaled that aggressive changes to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) would harm innovation and perhaps even the law's original intent.
Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., attempted to assuage industry concerns over the scope of his panel's cybersecurity bill, saying the legislation does not seek to give the government new emergency powers or the authority to dictate business operations.
Dwight Howard became the latest victim of the National Basketball Association's tough stance against criticizing game officials as the league handed the Orlando Magic center a $35,000 fine. Howard, a four-times All-Star and the first overall pick by Orlando in the 2004 draft, was fined for public criticism of officiating that appeared on his personal blog on April 27, the league said in a statement.
A former San Francisco network engineer was convicted of felony computer tampering after a trial in which prosecutors portrayed him as bent on protecting his "kingdom" -- the city system he created -- by refusing to surrender passwords to his bosses. Terry Childs, 45, of Pittsburg, was found guilty of a felony charge of denying computer access.
Will the next big legal battle be Microsoft vs. Google regarding the search engine giant's Android mobile operating system? Microsoft signed a patent agreement with HTC that provides broad coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio for Android-based HTC phones, but media reports suggest that Microsoft is now publicly asserting that Android infringes on Microsoft intellectual property.
A lawyer for Gizmodo says the gadget blog could sue the sheriff's office in San Mateo County, Calif., for raiding an editor's home as part of a criminal probe into an errant iPhone prototype. The option of a lawsuit "is available because search is not the appropriate method in this situation," said Thomas R. Burke, a media lawyer and partner in the San Francisco offices of Davis Wright Tremaine.
U.S. lawmakers told Facebook they were concerned about changes in its privacy policy that would allow personal information to be viewed by more than friends, and options on other websites that would allow third parties to save information about Facebook users and friends. In a letter to Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg dated April 27, Senators Charles Schumer, Michael Bennet, Mark Begich and Al Franken objected to changes that made a user's current city, hometown, likes, interests and friends publicly available, where they were previously only seen by friends.
The socially conservative Parents Television Council thinks a wealth of salacious apps are currently available for iPhone users -- things like "My Vibe," which converts the iPhone into a vibrator, and "Love Positions Free," which has drawings of couples having sex. The group has publicly demanded that Apple stop providing porn to children -- and clean up its act.
South Korea's communications regulator said it wouldn't stop people from importing Apple Inc.'s iPad for personal use, ending a ban that early adopters in this tech-savvy country dubbed unfair. Some Korean tech Web sites had even started to publicly expose famous Koreans who had the gadget in apparent violation of the ban.
A rise in fake antivirus offerings on Web sites around the globe shows that scammers are increasingly turning to social engineering to get malware on computers rather than exploiting holes in software, a Google study indicates. Fake antivirus -- false pop-up warnings designed to scare money out of computer users -- represents 15 percent of all malware that Google detects on Web sites, according to 13-month analysis the company conducted between January 2009 and February 2010.
Visa, one of the world's largest credit card companies, is taking aim at "scam" marketing practices that were quietly used by some of the Internet's largest retailers in recent years. Retailers will no longer be able to allow third parties to charge a customer's card without the card owner re-entering credit card information, Visa said.
Just three weeks after the global launch, bootleg versions of Apple's hot-selling iPad tablet PCs have begun showing up on the shelves of online and real-world shops in piracy-prone China. Apple recently delayed the iPad's international launch after huge demand in the United States caught the maker of trendy iPhones and MacBooks off guard.
New York Senator Charles Schumer has come out swinging against new announcements by Facebook that modify how much member data is shared with third-party companies, suggesting that the Federal Trade Commission needs to promptly address the issue of social-network privacy. A press release from Schumer's office announced that he has written to the FTC to ask that the agency "examine the privacy disclosures of social-networking sites to ensure they are not misleading or fail to fully disclose the extent to which they share information... (and) provide guidelines for use of private information and prohibit access without user permission."
Gawker Media said that computers belonging to one of its editors, Jason Chen, were seized from his home as part of an apparent investigation into the sale of a next-generation iPhone. One of Gawker’s blogs, Gizmodo, published articles last week about the future phone after purchasing the device for $5,000 from a person who found it at a bar in California last month.
Malware scammers are trying to trick early iPad buyers into installing backdoor software on Windows machines, according to a security firm. The miscreants are punting emails claiming that the bigphone needs an iTunes update for "best performance, newer features and security", to be installed via their PC.
A class action lawsuit against Apple is alleging that the company relies on a faulty technology in its iPhones and iPods to determine whether a device has been exposed to liquid and can be repaired under warranty. Filed in the Northern District of California by Charlene Gallion on April 15, the class action lawsuit claims that the Liquid Submersion Indicators technology that Apple uses is inaccurate, which could lead to false positive results.
Faced with stricter Internet security measures, some spammers have begun borrowing a page from corporate America’s playbook: they are outsourcing. Faced with stricter Internet security measures, some spammers have begun borrowing a page from corporate America’s playbook: they are outsourcing.
Inventor Judah Klausner added HTC Corp to the list of big phone makers against which he has filed lawsuits alleging infringement of technology patents related to visual voicemail.
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