The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit said the FCC's rules on indecency are too vague and violate the First Amendment, undermining the government's primary tool for policing civility over the airwaves. The ruling questioned how the FCC can single out broadcast TV while most American families subscribe to cable or satellite TV, watch Internet video on cellphones, and play lifelike video games with few standards of decency.
Google broke Australia's privacy law when it collected private information from wireless networks, the country's privacy commissioner said, following an investigation into the Internet giant's "Street View" mapping service. Several other countries are investigating Google over the data collection, and there are growing concerns from regulators and consumer watchdogs worldwide that Google isn't serious enough about people's privacy -- a charge the company denies.
A company called XPRT Ventures says transaction system PayPal knowingly incorporated XPRT's e-commerce technology, for which it had filed for U.S. patents, into its own patent applications back in 2003 -- and has served parent company eBay with a $3.8 billion lawsuit.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts says it's joining a group of other organizations in a legal challenge to a new state law that was intended to ban distribution by the Internet of "matter harmful to minors." The plaintiffs said the law may have been intended to protect children from sexual predators on the Internet, but its effect was much broader, effectively banning from the Internet anything harmful to minors, including material that adults have a right to view.
The U.S. Defense Department and State Department are allowing greater use of Facebook and Twitter, while warily noting that social media can be a boon for spies and "compromise operational security." The State Department released a manual saying that personal use of Facebook and Twitter is permitted on work computers, and the agency "will not arbitrarily ban access to or the use of social media."
A now-defunct Web site that catered to gay youth is now ensnared in a federal bankruptcy proceeding that the founder says could result in as many as 1 million profiles being sold to creditors, putting its former subscribers' privacy at risk.
A New York judge has issued a temporary restraining order restricting the transfer of Facebook Inc.'s assets, following a suit by a New York man who claims to own an 84% stake in the social-networking company. Paul D. Ceglia filed a suit in the Supreme Court of New York's Allegany County on June 30, claiming that a 2003 contract he signed with Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg entitles him to ownership of the company and monetary damages.
A federal judge will allow a lawsuit filed against Apple and iPhone wireless carrier AT&T to proceed as a class action. At issue is Apple's control over what applications can be installed to the iPhone as well as their exclusivity deal with AT&T.
Though it has successfully resisted pressure to install a mandatory "panic button" on users' home pages, Facebook has permitted the U.K.'s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) to build an app for its platform that members of the social-networking site can use to report online abuse directly to CEOP or seek advice about potential dangers of the Web.
Europe's highest court confirmed an earlier ruling that companies using the names of their competitors as Internet advertising keywords are not infringing European trademark laws. The case involved temporary cabin maker Portakabin, which accused its competitor Primakabin of infringing its rights as trademark owner of the Portakabin name by using it as an ad keyword.
Apple has filed a lawsuit against three companies it alleges are selling knockoff power adapters for MacBooks and MacBook Pros, according to court filings. The lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, names Brilliant Store, Sunvalleytek International, and Hootoo.com as defendants.
The Department of Homeland Security will, effective immediately, assume primary responsibility for making sure agencies comply with federal information security requirements, sidelining the Office of Management and Budget from administrative duties, according to a memo OMB and the White House cybersecurity coordinator released.
In a major setback for the recording industry, a Boston judge slashed by 90 percent a $675,000 damages award that a Boston University graduate student had been ordered to pay to four record labels for illegally downloading 30 songs and sharing them online. U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the amount a federal jury ordered Joel Tenenbaum to pay last July was "unconstitutionally excessive" in light of what she described as the modest harm caused to the record labels.
A recent vote in the U.S. House of Representatives seemed straightforward enough: government computers must block viewing or downloading porn.
A Google official said China has renewed the search engine's license to operate its website in China, a move that comes as a surprise after the company engaged in a contentious spat with authorities over censorship.
It's unlikely that consumers' iTunes accounts were hacked by a Vietnamese iPhone developer, a security researcher said. Instead, it's more probable that users' credit cards were obtained through standard phishing tactics or keyloggers that were secretly installed on people's machines, or that iTunes accounts were accessed because of poor password practices.
Microsoft is seeking to patent the animation of a page-flip when a user makes the appropriate gesture on an ebook's touchscreen. The patent application, which was originally filed in January 2009 but just published, may have been an outgrowth of Microsoft's work on its Courier foldable tablet, which Redmond killed this April. Read the article: The Register
A Toronto-based law firm with a history of targeting litigation at corporations as varied as chocolate companies and silicone breast implant manufacturers has a new company in the crosshairs: Facebook. Merchant Law Group, which has offices in 10 Canadian cities, launched litigation seeking class action status against the massive social-networking site, alleging the mishandling of sensitive user data -- the latest development in a resurgence of action against the social network's privacy policies, after it looked for a while as if all the fuss had calmed down.
A bill in the U.S. Congress that would require Internet sellers in many states to collect sales tax would hurt small businesses online, a tech trade group said. The Main Street Fairness Act, introduced by Representative Bill Delahunt, would allow states to force online sellers to collect sales tax, even if the seller has no physical presence in the state.
Data protection officials in Germany announced the launch of a formal investigation into Facebook, saying they believe some of its much-maligned privacy policies are illegal. It's given Facebook until August 11 to respond formally.
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