Libya is the latest North African country to experience internet trouble as democratic protests continue to sweep the region. The massive Saharan country, long controlled by the dictator Moammar Gadhafi, has suffered "rolling blackouts" of its Internet connections during the regime's ongoing violent crackdown on protestors, according to the internet traffic monitor Renesys.
Google Inc., the world's leading search engine, blocks smaller competitors from generating advertising revenue, a competitor said in a complaint to European Union regulators. 1PlusV sent a complaint to the European Commission claiming Google refused to allow so-called vertical search sites to use its advertising service, the French web publisher said.
The Internet Music Score Library Project -- which claims to have 85,000 scores, or parts for nearly 35,000 works, with several thousand being added every month -- has trod in the footsteps of Google Books and Project Gutenberg and grown to be one of the largest sources of scores anywhere. More than a business threat to traditional music publishers, the site has raised messy copyright issues and drawn the ire of established publishers.
Facebook is increasingly being used in courts to decide who is -- and who isn't -- suitable to serve on a jury, the latest way in which the social-networking site is altering the U.S. court system. Prosecution and defense lawyers are scouring the site for personal details about members of the jury pool that could signal which side they might sympathize with during a trial.
China's domestic security chief, Zhou Yongkang, added his voice to calls for tighter Internet controls as censors ratcheted up temporary online restrictions, a day after a failed attempt to use social-networking sites to start a "Jasmine Revolution" in China. Mr. Zhou, one of the nine members of the Communist Party's Politburo Standing Committee, the country's top decision-making body, was quoted in official media as saying Chinese officials needed to find new ways to defuse social unrest.
You may think the only people capable of snooping on your Internet activity are government intelligence agents or possibly a talented teenage hacker holed up in his parents’ basement. But some simple software lets just about anyone sitting next to you at your local coffee shop watch you browse the Web and even assume your identity online.
Westboro Baptist Church faked a letter threatening a DDoS attack, according to people associated with Anonymous. The controversial Westboro Baptist Church is in the middle of a row with Anonymous.
In a major change in policy, Microsoft has decided to allow marketers to use other companies' trademarks to trigger search ads. "To come in line with search industry practices, as of March 3rd, Microsoft will cease editorial investigations into complaints about trademarks used as keywords to trigger ads on Bing & Yahoo Search in the United States and Canada," the company says.
Twitter announced that it had cracked down on several third-party apps, including UberTwitter, UberCurrent, and Twidroyd -- all of which, Twitter reps alleged, "have violated Twitter policies and trademarks in a variety of ways." Twitter reps have remained vague on the specific nature of the infringements, saying only that "the violations include, but aren't limited to, a privacy issue with private Direct Messages longer than 140 characters, trademark infringement, and changing the content of users' Tweets in order to make money."
The New York Academy of Art, a graduate university that has been teaching figurative art since 1982, is not the kind of institution you would expect to get into trouble for mischief on Facebook. Yet Facebook apparently had determined that an image the academy had uploaded to its Facebook page ran afoul of its ban on nudity.
Internet service has been cut off in Libya for a second consecutive day as protesters step up demonstrations against longtime leader Muammar Gaddafi, a U.S. company that monitors Internet traffic said. Massachusetts-based Arbor Networks said data collected from 30 Internet providers around the world showed that online traffic in and out of Libya was disconnected abruptly at 7:15 p.m. EST on Friday after two partial interruptions earlier that day.
As protests have erupted in Bahrain over the last several days, the government has severely restricted the access of its citizens to the Internet, new data from an organization that monitors Internet traffic strongly suggests. The data, collected by Arbor Networks, is the first quantitative confirmation that Internet traffic into and out of Bahrain has suffered an anomalous drop over the past days.
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.).
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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.