A conversation on Facebook has led to criminal charges against two 13-year-old students in New Milford, Conn. An 8th-grade boy at Schaghticoke Middle School threatened an administrator on Facebook, then a female student responded by suggesting they bomb the school, police told the Danbury News-Times.
When Europe settled an antitrust case over Web browsers with Microsoft in December 2009, it hoped to dislodge the world’s biggest software maker from its dominant position in the market by requiring it to offer rivals’ products. Six months into the process, the initiative appears to be having only a minor influence on consumers, prompting a renewed debate about the effectiveness of such antitrust remedies.
President Obama signed the 21st Century Communication and Video Accessibility Act into law. The legislation modernizes disability accessibility requirements in the Communications Act, updating existing mandates as TV and phone services connect via the Internet and use new digital and broadband technologies.
A host of major American companies that operate websites have defended their online privacy practices in letters to Congress, saying their consumer protections are robust while asserting that some collection of information is essential to their business model.
A Duke University graduate student has become a much-discussed topic on blogs, Web sites and even morning shows after her so-called thesis, chronicling her sexual escapades during her undergraduate years at Duke, went public on the Internet. "Our foremost concern is to provide for the well-being of our students, and to respect their privacy," said Duke's Vice President for Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld in a statement.
Following a deal with the United Arab Emirates to avert a ban of key BlackBerry services, Research In Motion Ltd. said that it can't discuss the details of confidential regulatory matters in specific countries. The U.A.E. government said that Blackberry services "are now compliant with the U.A.E.'s telecommunications regulatory framework," and that a "regulatory compliant solution" has been "applied."
Three prominent tech companies have come out in support of privacy legislation offered by a key House lawmaker, saying the bill provides "the appropriate balance." Intel, eBay and Microsoft wrote Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, voicing support for his privacy legislation, which was introduced in July.
Many e-mail users around the world have been unable to send messages because of ongoing technical problems with a popular service designed to prevent spam from reaching its intended destination. As a result of the problems at SORBS -- short for the Spam and Open Relay Blocking System -- messages sent from a huge number of legitimate mail servers were labeled as junk mail and returned to sender.
Microsoft Corp has licensed some technology relating to rival Palm Inc's smartphones, the latest move in a complex web of deals and litigation in the fast-growing phone sector. The world's largest software company, which is about to launch its new range of smartphones, licensed the patents from ACCESS Co Ltd and a unit of Acacia Research Corp.
After taking a beating from users over privacy issues this year, Facebook got the message and gave users more control over their information. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced several new tools for the social networking site, including one designed to enable users to download any of their information from the site. Another new tool is a dashboard that allows users to monitor what applications they've used on Facebook and delete them more easily.
A school bus driver had no idea she was risking her job with Buford (Ga.) City Schools when she posted a link to a local newspaper article in March. She was shocked when administrators fired her on the last day of the 2009-10 school year -- an act she believes was in retaliation for the Facebook post.
Following a growth in the number of Web addresses that include the word "Bing," Microsoft has filed three lawsuits in the past two weeks that claim their targets infringed on the Bing trademark through cybersquatting. The cases, all filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, allege the defendants bought the domains to capitalize on Web users who look for Microsoft's Bing search engine.
TiVo Inc. said the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has reaffirmed the validity of all its patent claims for its "time-warp" digital video recorder technology in the second re-examination of the patent at EchoStar Corp.'s request.
The GAO said that the White House has made slow progress in fully implementing a set of recommendations included in a cybersecurity review released by the Obama administration in May 2009. The GAO report says the White House has fully implemented only two of the 24 recommendations in the 2009 report, while 22 have been partially implemented.
Motorola said its cellphone business has filed complaints with U.S. courts and regulators accusing Apple of infringing 18 patents with its iPhone, iPad, iTouch and some of its computers. The complaints follow a Microsoft lawsuit against Motorola and are the latest in a flurry of suits involving Apple and mobile phone vendors including Nokia and HTC and mobile software provider Google.
Countries negotiating a treaty to fight global trade in pirated goods released the text of a 99-percent complete draft of the pact. "We are at the final stage -- about to cross the finishing line," said a European Union official close to the talks, who asked not to be named.
What was once "the Internet's first and only sex-positive URL shortener" is no more, thanks to a conflict with Libyan law. The Vb.ly service combined the initials of blogger and sex columnist Violet Blue and the .ly country-specific Internet domain associated with Libya.
Internet forumware giant vBulletin has sued three former employees, a day before they were due to launch a competing forum-software platform via their new company, the UK-based XenForo. The move has sparked page after page of complaints on the, well, forums run by both vBulletin and XenForo, and though XenForo has delayed the launch of its software, it indicates the launch will indeed go ahead.
BT is seeking a moratorium on legal applications to obtain details of its customers who are alleged to have illegally shared files online. The firm outlined its stance following a high-profile data breach at London law firm ACS:Law.
A security loophole in Twitter can give website developers easy access to users' private direct messages, messages that are exchanged between two people and not meant to be shared on Twitter or with anyone else, according to a report. Search engine and security specialist Gary-Adam Shannon writes on SearchEngineWatch.com that "worries" about such access "have been floating in the Twitter streams of late.
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