As concern increases in Washington about the amount of private data online, and as big sites like Facebook draw criticism that they collect consumers' information in a stealthy manner, many Web start-ups are pursuing a more reciprocal approach -- saying, in essence: give us your data and get something in return. Influenced by consumers' willingness to trade data online, the sites are pushing to see how much information people will turn over.
If cloud computing is going to continue to grow and provide the cost savings and technology benefits its backers tout, Congress must move to update two key laws adopted in the 1980s governing communications law, Microsoft Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith said. Microsoft is part of a coalition that is pushing Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which governs government access to electronic communications.
Bangladesh has blocked the Facebook social networking site because of "objectionable" materials it contained about the Prophet Mohammad and the country's political leaders, a telecoms regulatory official said. The government move followed publication of caricatures of the Prophet deemed hurtful to the religious sentiments of the country's majority Muslim population, the official said.
Lists of Britons who infringe copyright are to be drawn up by the UK's biggest ISPs, under proposals from the regulator Ofcom. The plan is contained in a draft code of practice it hopes will curb copyright infringement.
One-hundred seventy-one House Republicans signed a letter addressed to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski urging him to stop the FCC's plans to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service. The reclassification would subject broadband services to many of the same rules applied to traditional telephone services.
Producers of Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker" have made good on a promise to file copyright lawsuits against people who illegally shared the movie via peer-to-peer networks. Voltage Pictures, an independent production company, filed a copyright complaint against 5,000 John Does in federal court in Washington, D.C.
The Justice Dept.'s probe into Apple is expanding to include how the iPhone and iPad maker does business with media outfits in areas beyond music, The New York Post has learned. According to several sources, the Justice Dept. has contacted a handful of the country's biggest media and technology companies to get their views on Apple, which, after years of casting itself as the tiny outsider, has become an 800-pound gorilla calling the shots in several arenas.
A judge has convicted an Arkansas woman who locked her son out of his Facebook account and posted her own items there of misdemeanor harassment. Clark County District Judge Randy Hill ordered Denise New not to have contact with her 17-year-old son. The boy lives with his grandmother.
Despite an initially positive response to Facebook's updated privacy policies, several consumer groups that filed a Federal Trade Commission complaint about the social networking site in December said that they still want a completely opt-in approach, and called for regulatory intervention. Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, said during a call with reporters the update had some "positive changes, but much more is needed.
Yahoo, Facebook and eBay filed a friends-of-the-court brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, where Viacom, parent company of MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures, filed a $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google in March 2007. The three companies have urged District Judge Louis Stanton to dismiss Viacom's suit, arguing that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act protects Internet service providers from liability for copyright violations committed by users.
More than 50 people have been arrested and 16 child victims identified in a two-year investigation of a global child pornography ring, U.S. officials said. Known as Operation Nest Egg, the investigation focused on a password-protected Internet bulletin board group that traded pornographic images of children.
Germany's national consumer-protection agency may take legal measures against Facebook if it finds that the social network's new privacy controls do not meet German data-protection standards. Carola Elbrecht, head of digital projects at the VZBV agency, welcomed the changes to privacy settings announced by Facebook but expressed concern that users would still have to actively opt out of default settings making their data public.
A federal judge in Oregon has slapped a restraining order on Google, barring the Internet firm from destroying data it says its Street View cars mistakenly collected from private Wi-Fi networks. The judge's order requires Google to turn over two copies of the hard drive containing the data collected from home Wi-Fi networks.
Along the beleaguered Gulf Coast, the emergency measure known as "top kill" appears to have halted the flow of oil from a ruptured offshore BP well -- but the bogus Twitter sensation known as @BPGlobalPR continues to gush out black comedy gold.
A panel of European Union data protection authorities has told Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! that their data retention policies still do not comply with EU law. The Article 29 Data Protection Working Party -- an independent advisory body on data protection and privacy -- sent public letters to the three major search engines saying that although it welcomes their efforts to bring their data retention policies in line with the law, they haven't gone far enough.
Amazon.com Inc. and Pearson PLC's Penguin Group (USA) have resolved their differences over the book-pricing model that enables publishers to set their own retail prices. A spokesman for Amazon confirmed that the company had an agreement with Penguin and that it would soon be offering their complete selection of digital books to Kindle customers.
The company behind the file sharing software LimeWire is considering aggressively filtering out pirated content and is hoping to strike a deal with the music industry in which it would be permitted to live on as a for-pay music download service, a company executive said. “The biggest challenge right now is changing the behavior of a generation of Internet users to get them to pay for music,” said Zeeshan Zaidi, LimeWire’s 35-year-old chief operating officer, in an interview two weeks after suffering a crushing defeat in a copyright lawsuit that threatens to leave the company insolvent.
Facebook's founder presented new, one-click options to help subscribers protect their privacy, responding to a torrent of complaints that it had become far too hard to determine and control levels of protection. In a news conference, Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg chalked up recent stumbles to growing pains.
The U.S. Department of Justice has begun asking questions about what Apple's role was in the recent scaling back of special music discounts and promotions at Amazon, according to two high level music industry sources. The sources said investigators have begun speaking to a number of digital music retailers and top record labels about Apple's response to Amazon's "MP3 Daily Deal" a promotional offer created around newly released singles or albums.
Two top Democratic legislators said that they would begin a process to modernize telecommunications laws that were last overhauled in 1996 but barely mention the Internet. Two top Democratic legislators said that they would begin a process to modernize telecommunications laws that were last overhauled in 1996 but barely mention the Internet. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, and Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, said in a joint statement that they would hold meetings in June to examine how the Communications Act meets the current needs of consumers, the telecommunications industry and the Federal Communications Commission.
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