Nations need to define the rules of engagement for acts of cyber terror. The call for clarity was issued by Michael Chertoff, former head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, at the RSA security conference in London.
A new fund could help bring high speed Internet to unserved and remote areas of the United States, U.S. telecommunications regulators said. The Federal Communications Commission proposed allocating universal service funds -- fees consumers pay telephone companies to subsidize landline phone services for low-income and rural families -- to create a "mobility fund" to expand broadband Internet to areas without service.
North Carolina tax collectors say they want Amazon.com to turn over the names and addresses of customers in their state and a description of all purchases so they can get the sales-tax money they're owed. But the American Civil Liberties Union argues that if Amazon is forced to comply with North Carolina's data demands, Internet users would start to think twice about buying controversial books, music and movies, violating their constitutional rights to free speech.
The U.S. leads the world in numbers of Windows PCs that are part of botnets, reveals a report. More than 2.2 million U.S. PCs were found to be part of botnets, networks of hijacked home computers, in the first six months of 2010, it said.
President Barack Obama's administration announced steps to boost civil-military coordination against cyber threats said to be mounting against sensitive U.S. computer networks. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spelled out fresh arrangements between their departments to synchronize their response to a wide range of threats.
When it comes to fighting online piracy, some music and film industry executives think Google could be doing more to help. At a time when Google is negotiating with television, movie, and music producers for the recently launched GoogleTV and an upcoming digital music service, the company has been sending mixed messages about how much help it will provide in removing links to pirated songs from its search index.
Apple has been awarded a patent that can keep you from sending or receiving "objectionable" text-messages. The patent will allow certain content to be filtered, based on parental controls. The description of the patent doesn't mention sexting, although that may be the main thing many parents would want to forbid.
A suburban Pennsylvania school district accused of spying on students using school-issued laptops has agreed to pay $610,000 to settle litigation stemming from its controversial practice. Under the proposed settlement, the Lower Merion School District will pay $185,000 to two high school students who had sued the district earlier this year for allegedly snooping on them.
Microsoft issued its biggest-ever security fix, including repairs to its ubiquitous Windows operating system and Internet browser for flaws that could let hackers take control of a PC. The new patches aim to fix a number of vulnerabilities including the notorious Stuxnet virus that attacked an Iranian nuclear power plant and other industrial control systems around the world.
Meizu CEO Jack Wong posted on a Meizu forum that Apple's lawyers have convinced China's intellectual property office to shut down production of the M8 and ban the sale of existing devices because they bear too much similarity to Apple's phone.
Criminals who use the Zeus banking malware may be working on an new angle: corporate espionage. That's what worries Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who has been closely monitoring the various criminal groups that use Zeus.
Online health information and disease-risk tests can mislead, confuse and create needless anxiety, and governments should do more ensure the people who use them know what they are buying, experts said. A report by a British medical ethics group said private DNA tests may be "medically or therapeutically meaningless" and could give false results or information that is "unclear, unreliable or inaccurate."
The market for personal data about Internet users is booming, and in the vanguard is the practice of "scraping." Firms offer to harvest online conversations and collect personal details from social-networking sites, résumé sites and online forums where people might discuss their lives.
Apple’s “There’s an app for that” slogan is so catchy that it’s endlessly parroted by the media, so it’s understandable why the company would request a trademark for the phrase. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently complied.
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."
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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.