The founder of the Drudge Report website has settled a copyright infringement lawsuit with a company that sued on behalf of the Denver Post newspaper over a photo showing an airport pat-down, federal court documents in Las Vegas showed. Righthaven LLC filed a notice of dismissal in U.S. District court in Nevada, saying a written agreement was reached with website operator Matt Drudge.
The FBI said that it's not calling for restrictions on encryption without back doors for law enforcement. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni told a congressional committee that the bureau's push for expanded Internet wiretapping authority doesn't mean giving law enforcement a master key to encrypted communications, an apparent retreat from her position last fall.
The Senate Judiciary Committee questioned company officials about legislation to combat online infringement and intellectual property theft. Executives representing Verizon Communications Inc., Go Daddy.com Inc., Rosetta Stone Ltd., The Authors Guild of America and Visa Inc. testified about the impact illegal Web sites have on their businesses and offered their ideas about how new legislation could help curb the problem.
A first-of-its-kind federal survey of online access found that Americans in lower-income and rural areas often have slower Internet connections than users in wealthier communities. The data, released by the Commerce Department, also found that 5 to 10 percent of the nation does not have access to connections that are fast enough to download Web pages, photos and videos.
The U.S. has defended its request for the personal details of three Twitter users, as part of its inquiry into Wikileaks. At a court in Virginia, the Justice Department said it was seeking the account information of three associates of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
When picking a jury, lawyers always try to stack the panel with people likely to take their side. Now, some are taking the vetting process to a new level: they're quietly trawling social networks and other sites to ferret out the most intimate details of potential jurors' lives, from their sexual orientation to their income level and politics.
Apple’s new subscription service for iPad and iPhone applications, which has drawn complaints from some publishers, has also drawn the attention of federal antitrust regulators, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter. The person, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because the government inquiries were confidential, said that the regulators' interest was preliminary and might not develop into a formal investigation.
House Republicans voted to prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from using funds to carry out net neutrality regulations created last December. The vote was on an amendment to the continuing resolution introduced by Communications and Technology subcommittee chairman Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.).
After several setbacks, Dunlap, Grubb & Weaver, the law firm that last year filed copyright suits against thousands of accused illegal file sharers on behalf of independent filmmakers, has made good on promises to push on with the cases. Dunlap has begun to refile lawsuits across the country against people accused last year of pirating movies via peer-to-peer networks.
The FBI is expected to reveal that because of the rise of Web-based e-mail and social networks, it's "increasingly unable" to conduct certain types of surveillance that would be possible on cellular and traditional telephones. FBI general counsel Valerie Caproni will outline what the bureau is calling the "Going Dark" problem, meaning that police can be thwarted when conducting court-authorized eavesdropping because Internet companies aren't required to build in backdoors in advance, or because technology doesn't permit it.
A day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's pledge to promote Internet freedom world-wide, Chinese censors tried to snuff out efforts by U.S. diplomats to generate debate on the issue on Twitter-like microblogs in the country with the world's most Internet users -- and its most sophisticated censorship system. The virtual tussle highlighted the growing importance of such microblogs in China as a new frontier for lively discussion and information sharing that is so fast-paced that censors often have difficulty keeping up.
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said they want Google to appear before them to discuss upcoming antipiracy legislation as well as complaints from some copyright owners that the search company is in a position to profit from the illegal sharing of copyrighted works. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's chairman, invited a Google, Verizon and The Authors Guild and other companies with a stake in the online copyright fight to appear to give their views about legislation Leahy is preparing to reintroduce in the Senate this year.
Facing pressure from Republican lawmakers who want to take away funding, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and his Democratic colleagues defended their controversial December Internet access rule known as net neutrality. In a hearing before the House Communications and Internet subcommittee, Genachowski stood by his first-time Internet rules and said a dispute between content delivery service Level 3 and Comcast over traffic delivery charges don't fall under the new rules.
White House cybersecurity coordinator Howard Schmidt said that policymakers and others should stop "conflating... cyberwar with cyber-espionage with cybercrime." Resolving online criminality like identity theft should be treated differently than protecting the electric grid from sabotage by foreign powers or online espionage, but war-like rhetoric may threaten the U.S.'s ability to deal with any of these issues effectively, he warned.
Apple Inc.'s new subscription service could draw antitrust scrutiny, according to law professors. Apple will allow magazines, newspapers and other publishers to sell subscriptions of varying lengths to users of Apple's popular iPad, iTouch and iPhone products. But there are several catches.
More than 130 companies, business groups and others signed a letter to members of Congress urging lawmakers to move legislation that would give law enforcement more tools to crack down on websites that offer pirated content and counterfeit products. "Legislation to disrupt these efforts is a major step to make the Internet safer and protect consumers from the dangers of buying in the online marketplace," according to the letter signed by such groups and companies as the Association of American Publishers, Ford Motor Co., the Motion Picture Association of America, Reed Elsevier, the Recording Industry Association of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen has launched an investigation into a Facebook scam that temporarily created a fake account in the name state representative from Milford. The scammer who stole Rep. Kim Rose's identity then asked for money through Facebook messages and was able to receive a payment from at least one person.
Days after Facebook and Twitter added fuel to a revolt in Egypt, the Obama administration announced a new policy on Internet freedom, intended to help people get around barriers in cyberspace while making it harder for autocratic governments to use the same technology to repress dissent. "The United States continues to help people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters, stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online," said Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, laying out the policy in a speech at George Washington University.
The group of anonymous "hacktivists" that made headlines for online cyberattacks in December just released a bombshell online: a decrypted version of the same cyberworm that crippled Iran's nuclear power program. The ones and zeroes that make up the code called the Stuxnet worm -- described as the most sophisticated cyberweapon ever created -- were reportedly found when the faceless group hacked into the computers of HBGary, a U.S. security company that the anonymous collective viewed as an enemy.
Technology communications company VoIP Inc. sued Google Inc. in New York Supreme Court, accusing the Internet giant of stealing its trade secrets related to online voice technology. The litigation stems from a September 2005 contract in which, according to the complaint, VoIP's Los Angeles-based subsidiary, VoiceOne Communications Corp, agreed to provide Google with its patented "Click to Call" technology that allows Internet users to place a call to advertisers or merchants simply by clicking a link on a website.
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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.