Facebook just released a 26-page retort to the Federal Trade Commission's preliminary report on privacy regulation -- a report that social media firms see as an ominous approaching storm of chaotic bureaucracy. In summary, Facebook fears that government meddling could stifle both its ability to profit and smother the industry's progress on yet-unknown technological advancements.
A Texas man has admitted hacking into servers owned by an e-commerce company and making off with about $275,000. Jeremey Parker of Houston also copped to charges of breaking into servers maintained by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and causing some $43,000 of damage.
The Federal Trade Commission has filed a complaint against a Huntington Beach man who it says sent millions of illegal text spam messages advertising a mortgage modification website that claimed to offer government-affiliated services. The FTC said in the court document that Phillip A. Flora sent out text messages at a "mind boggling" rate of about 85 messages a minute, every minute of every day for a 40-day period that began on Aug 22, 2009.
With smartphones outselling PCs for the first time -- 421 million of the hand-held computers are expected to be sold worldwide this year, according to market analysts at IDC -- the long-predicted crime wave on hand-held devices appears to have arrived. According to the mobile-security firm Lookout, malware and spyware appeared on 9 out of 100 phones it scanned in May, more than twice the 4-in-100 rate in December 2009.
A federal judge in New York ordered Internet TV service Ivi to shut down, finding that it violated the copyrights of a group of broadcasters and Major League Baseball. It was yet another example of a tech company trying in vain to stretch the boundaries of copyright law to avoid paying as much for content as its more conventional competitors.
The Federal Trade Commission said it will review the marketing and delivery of mobile applications that charge users for products and services, such as through Apple's iTunes store. FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz wrote in a letter to Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that the practice of "in-app purchases" for certain applications on Apple iPhones, iPads and iPods raised concerns that consumers may not fully understand the ramifications of those charges.
The Xinhua News Agency, China's main government news agency, launched its own Internet search site. The site will offer a state-approved version of the Internet in the wake of Google's closure of its China-based search engine last year.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's deputy blamed Google Inc. in an interview published for stirring up trouble in the revolution that ousted Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak. "Look what they have done in Egypt, those highly-placed managers of Google, what manipulations of the energy of the people took place there," Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin told the Wall Street Journal.
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.
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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.