A federal magistrate judge has recommended that Microsoft be given ownership of 276 Internet addresses used to control "Waledac," a massive botnet that the software company has been working to bring down. The recommendation by Magistrate Judge John F. Anderson of the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia is a victory in Microsoft's experimental campaign to wrest control of one of the Net's biggest menaces.
Jack Thompson, a disbarred lawyer who has vocally decried violence in video games, said he will try to stop the release of Electronic Arts' upcoming video game, "Medal of Honor Limited Edition". Thompson said he sent a letter via fax outlining his opposition to the game to Robert Gates, the U.S. Secretary of Defense.
Police have conducted a series of raids across Europe in one of its biggest crackdowns on file-sharing. Police targeted 48 sites in countries including the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Hungary.
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal wants Craigslist Inc. to confirm that it has permanently closed its controversial adult-services section after the company removed those ads from its Web site and replaced it with the word "censored." In a statement, Mr. Blumenthal said he sent a letter to the company seeking confirmation the section has been closed and asking the company to explain what other steps it has taken to block advertisements for prostitution in other parts of its Web site.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers is among the plaintiffs in a new lawsuit that seeks to restrict airport searches of laptops and other electronic devices. The association -- as well as a group of photographers and a doctoral student -- says the searches as they are done now violate the Fourth Amendment because customs officials are not required to have suspicion of wrongdoing before searching and copying electronic information.
Facebook said it has fixed the bug that allowed a spamming worm to automatically post messages to users' walls. The flaw was the second in the past week that let spammers flood the service with messages promoting scams.
In a decision that could affect the financial relationships between record labels and performers, a federal appeals court in San Francisco on ruled that songs downloaded from Apple's iTunes store are not actually purchased, but are rather "licensed" by the ostensible buyer.
Hewlett-Packard filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California in Santa Clara against its former chief executive, Mark V. Hurd. The suit accused Mr. Hurd of violating his severance agreement to protect HP's confidential information by taking a job as co-president of Oracle, an HP rival and partner.
The Texas attorney general has opened an antitrust investigation into how Google ranks search results, the first United States case to strike at the heart of the company’s main search business. The issue at hand -- referred to as search neutrality -- is whether Google manipulates results to thwart competitors and advance its own businesses.
Online classified service Craigslist's decision to censor its adult services section could be a model for other websites, a leader in the fight against prostitution ads said. "This step is very much in the right direction," said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, who spearheaded a letter from 17 attorneys general who recently banded together to urge Craigslist to discontinue its adult services section.
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."
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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.