Google has reached a settlement on a class-action suit regarding its Buzz social-networking feature. The company agreed to pay $8.5 million, which -- after attorneys' fees and expenses are covered -- will be donated to Internet privacy and education organizations.
Google said that it is "simplifying and updating" its privacy policies to make them more understandable for users. The Internet giant said while most of its products and services are covered by Google's main privacy policy, some fall under supplemental invididual privacy policies.
Producers of "The Hurt Locker" are finally moving to acquire the names of people they accuse of sharing this year's "Best Picture" winner on peer-to-peer sites. Qwest Communications notified a customer in Denver that the Internet service provider has received a subpoena from lawyers representing Voltage Pictures, the production company that made the movie.
Google Inc.'s YouTube video service lost a Hamburg court ruling over copyrighted material that was posted online without permission for rebroadcast. YouTube may be liable for damages involving video shown in violation of copyright law, the Hamburg Regional Court said in an e-mailed statement.
In the past, the owners of rights to movies and TV shows might have requested that versions on YouTube be taken down. But some of them have decided to leave clips up, and in return, YouTube runs ads with the video and splits the revenue with the rights owners.
In a lawsuit, Las Vegas-based Righthaven LLC says Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharron Angle has violated copyright laws by posting two newspapers stories in their entirety on her campaign website. Righthaven is asking a federal district judge for statutory damages for willful infringement of the two articles, attorneys' fees and control of Angle's domain name, sharronangle.com.
Apple cleared the use of the word Ping with golf company PING before using the name for its new Web2.0 music look-up feature in iTunes. Apple inked a trademark agreement with PING because the golf vendor owns trademark rights on the word for social networking and other online services.
Rosetta Stone Inc. appealed a judge's ruling that Google Inc. didn't infringe its trademarks by selling the language-software maker’s marks to rivals for use as search keywords. Rosetta Stone asked the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia to review the summary judgment ruling by U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee, according to a filing.
Mocking officials online, exposing high-level corruption and discussing political tension could land journalists in many autocratic Middle East states in jail. Unlike neighboring Syria or Saudi Arabia, where access to the Internet is restricted and some bloggers and cyber journalists have been jailed, Jordan's independent Internet sites have been relatively free.
A Detroit-area woman who was removed from a jury for commenting about the ongoing case on Facebook has a longer writing task ahead: a five-page essay about the constitutional right to a fair trial. A judge ordered the essay for Hadley Jons, three weeks after she wrote on Facebook that it was "gonna be fun to tell the defendant they're GUILTY."
The White House has called a meeting for later this month with the group that manages the Internet's domain name system to discuss ways to crack down on illegal online pharmacies. The meeting with officials from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will take place Sept. 29 with White House Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Victoria Espinel and other White House and agency officials, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget confirmed.
India added Google and Skype to its electronic security crackdown and began accessing some of the traffic carried on its initial target, Research In Motion's BlackBerry. In the latest salvo of a campaign driven by fear that unmonitored email puts Indian security at risk, Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said notices were being sent to Google and Skype asking them to set up servers in India and allow officials access to web data that militants could misuse.
U.S. communications regulators said they are considering whether wireless devices should be subject to different Internet traffic rules than telephone and cable lines, in a potential victory for carriers. At issue is net neutrality, a term that means high-speed Internet providers should not block or slow information, or make websites pay to reach users more quickly.
The CEO of the online classified site Craigslist blasted an interview request from the CNN reporter who accused the site of profiting from the sex trade. Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster posted a public response to CNN reporter Amber Lyon's request for an interview with the company, noting the request came 90 days after Lyon "ambushed" Craigslist founder Craig Newmark at an event in Washington and accused him of profiting off the exploitation of women and children in the site's "adult services" section.
Mike Wise, a sports columnist at The Washington Post, published to his Twitter account that the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger would be suspended for five games. Now Mr. Wise himself is suspended, because the information he published about Mr. Roethlisberger was made up -- a test, he said, of how fast a piece of misinformation could spread online.
AT&T said that any Net neutrality plan restricting its ability to engage in "paid prioritization" of network traffic would be harmful and contrary to the fundamental principles of the Internet. Telecommunications providers need the ability to set different prices for different forms of Internet service, AT&T said, adding that it already has "hundreds" of customers who have paid extra for higher-priority services.
Security experts say that car hacking is starting to move from the realm of the theoretical to reality, thanks to new wireless technologies and evermore dependence on computers to make cars safer, more energy efficient, and modern.
The Pentagon is contemplating an aggressive approach to defending its computer systems that includes preemptive actions such as knocking out parts of an adversary's computer network overseas -- but it is still wrestling with how to pursue the strategy legally.
Research In Motion, the maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, has averted yet another ban of its e-mail and messaging service, according to news reports. The Indian government said it will not shut down the service for at least another 60 days as it evaluates proposals RIM has offered that would allow the government to monitor wireless subscribers' communications.
A Las Vegas company established to sue bloggers who clip news content is expanding its operations to a second newspaper chain. Righthaven, LLC has struck a deal with Arkansas-based WEHCO Media to expand its copyright litigation campaign, in which bloggers and aggregators across the country are being sued on allegations of infringement.
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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.