Company Settles with Worker Fired After Facebook Posting

A company that fired a worker after she posted negative remarks about her boss on Facebook has settled a complaint brought by the National Labor Relations Board by agreeing to revamp its rules to ensure they don't restrict workers' rights, the NLRB said. A separate, private settlement was reached between the employer -- ambulance service American Medical Response of Connecticut Inc. -- and the employee, though terms of that agreement weren't immediately available.

$10 Million in Fake Apple Products Seized in L.A.

More than $10 million in counterfeit iPods, iPhones and other items have been seized from a sophisticated downtown warehouse operation in a theft case begun by Los Angeles Port Police. Investigators said they thought that the shipment was designed to get Apple Inc. lookalike products into the market during the recent buzz over the Consumer Electronics Show.

Security Firm in WikiLeaks Probe Hacked

Anonymous hacked security firm HBGary Federal in retaliation for the company's efforts to track the people behind a spate of denial-of-service attacks. "Anonymous" launched an attack against security firm HBGary Federal, taking down its website and stealing corporate e-mail in retaliation for the company's efforts to track down "hacktivists" tied to cyber-attacks conducted in support of WikiLeaks.

  • Read the article: eWeek

U.S. Government Seeks Veto Power Over New Domains

The Obama administration is quietly seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a move that raises questions about free expression, national sovereignty, and the role of states in shaping the future of the Internet. At stake is who will have authority over the next wave of suffixes to supplement the venerable .com, .org, and .net. At least 115 proposals are expected this year, including .car, .health, .nyc, .movie, and .web, and the application process could be finalized at a meeting in San Francisco next month.

Judge Refuses to Dismiss Craiglist's Suit Against eBay

EBay Inc. must face a lawsuit claiming it fraudulently hid its intention to start a competing classified advertising site during negotiations to buy a stake in Craigslist Inc., a judge tentatively ruled. Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer in San Francisco rejected eBay's argument that Craigslist's lawsuit should be dismissed because shareholder agreements between the companies allowed them to compete.

FCC Plans to Revise Rural Broadband Funding

Federal regulators plan to launch a new effort to overhaul an $8 billion subsidy program to fund new broadband lines in rural America instead of phone service. The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to kick off its efforts to overhaul the program during a meeting, when it asks for comments on how to chart a new course for the Universal Service Fund, or USF, which subsidizes phone lines in rural areas and for low-income Americans.

Nasdaq Says Hackers Breached Computer Systems

Computer hackers have breached the systems of the company that runs the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York but did not penetrate the part of the system that handles trades, Nasdaq said. The exchange's operating company, Nasdaq OMX, said in a statement that it had discovered suspicious files on its United States servers, and that it immediately began conducting an investigation in conjunction with outside firms and federal law enforcement agencies.

Former FCC Chair Defends Net Neutrality Rules

Former Federal Communications Chairman Kevin Martin said he still believes the FCC had the legal authority to enforce network neutrality rules and that he would have appealed a court decision last year that ruled otherwise. Speaking after his keynote question-and-answer session at last week's ITExpo conference in Miami, Martin said that the FCC's 2008 order telling Comcast to stop throttling peer-to-peer protocols was on solid legal footing.

White House E-mail Accounts Suffer Outage

An outage affecting unclassified White House e-mail accounts began at around 7:45 a.m. Thursday and stretched well into the afternoon, which meant the most tech-savvy administration in history spent most of the day relying on papers, pens and landlines. President Obama, who carries a BlackBerry, was cut off from e-mail as well during his trip to State College, Pa.

Senator Questions Government's Seizure of Domain Names

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is concerned about an effort by the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Justice Department to combat online piracy and counterfeiting by seizing Internet domain names. Wyden wrote Attorney General Eric Holder and ICE Director John Morton seeking more information about their "Operation In Our Sites" crackdowns, saying they represent a "major shift" in how the United States combats online infringement.

Microsoft Lawyers Push for Changes at Patent Office

In a post by Microsoft Senior VP and General Counsel Brad Smith and VP and Deputy General Counsel Horacio Guitierrez on the company's Issues blog, the pair outlined some things about the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) that the company believes could use some work. "In our view, the time has arrived to move beyond old controversies and focus on ensuring that the USPTO has the resources and tools it needs to improve patent quality and continue its efforts to tackle the enormous backlog it faces today," the post said.

Canada Requires New Ruling for ISP Downloads

A Canadian regulatory ruling that effectively stops small Internet providers from offering unlimited downloads must be revised, Industry Minister Tony Clement said on the social networking site Twitter. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, or CRTC, ruled last week that BCE Inc., the parent of Bell Canada, could charge wholesalers that lease bandwidth on its network on the same usage basis it charges its own customers, minus a 15 percent discount.

Facebook Cautious About Its Role in Egypt's Unrest

Facebook, whether it likes it or not, has been thrust like never before into a sensitive global political moment that pits the company's need for an open Internet against concerns that autocratic regimes could limit use of the site or shut it down altogether. The recent unrest in Egypt and Tunisia is forcing Facebook officials to grapple with the prospect that other governments will grow more cautious of permitting the company to operate in their countries without restrictions or close monitoring, according to David Kirkpatrick, author of "The Facebook Effect," an authorized biography of the company's history.

Court Rejects Verizon Request in Net Neutrality Suit

A U.S. appeals court has rejected Verizon Communications's request for a specific panel of judges to hear its challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's new Internet traffic rules. Verizon had asked for the same judges who last year decided the FCC lacked the authority to stop Comcast Corp from blocking bandwidth-hogging applications on its broadband network, spurring the agency's most recent rulemaking effort.

'Anonymous' Claims to Take Down Official Egypt Websites

The online group Anonymous said that it had paralyzed the Egyptian government's Web sites in support of the antigovernment protests. Anonymous, a loosely defined group of hackers from all over the world, gathered about 500 supporters in online forums and used software tools to bring down the sites of the Ministry of Information and President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party, said Gregg Housh, a member of the group.

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.