App developers are concerned that Google is being too lax in its regulation of the Android Market, where apps are made available for download to the millions of Android phones now in use -- and allowing copyright infringements, as well as the risk of malware-laden apps, to flourish.
A federal magistrate said Sony may subpoena the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz, as the gamemaker ratchets up its civil lawsuit against the man who released the first full-fledged PS3 jailbreak in the console’s four-year history. The order came two weeks after Magistrate Joseph Spero in San Francisco granted Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who had visited Hotz’s website from January of 2009 onward.
House Republicans won another battle in their war on net-neutrality regulations in a highly partisan committee vote. A resolution to repeal the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules passed the Energy and Commerce Committee and is now headed to the full House.
The Federal Trade Commission announced that it has barred Chitika, an online advertiser, from misleading consumers about its privacy policy. The company allows Internet users to opt out of being monitored online when they clicked on ads that Chitika places on websites. But the FTC found that from May 2008 to February 2010, the promised opt-outs lasted only ten days, instead of the promised 10 years.
The wild popularity of Facebook and other social media sites has spawned a cottage industry of con artists promising average investors a chance to cash in on the frenzy through shares in the companies ahead of their initial public offerings. While the pre-IPO offerings may be real, investors must be aware that the people touting them may be frauds, the U.S. Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) said.
The Obama administration plans to ask Congress to pass a "privacy bill of rights" to protect Americans, amid growing concern about the tracking of Internet users. Lawrence E. Strickling, an assistant secretary of commerce, plans to call for the legislation at a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The National Federation for the Blind requested that the Department of Justice investigate Google for what it considers to be the discriminatory nature of its Google Apps product. The NFB contends that Google Apps "contains significant accessibility barriers for blind people utilizing screen access technology, which converts what is on the computer screen into synthesized speech or Braille."
WIPO is set to consider the protection of trademarks online, including recommendations for a harmonised dispute resolution procedure between mark owners and Internet service providers. The topic sits on the agenda for the upcoming meeting of WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Laws of Trademarks, Industrial Designs and Geographical Indications (STC) on March 28 to April 1.
Iran is gearing up for a cyberwar campaign after being hit with coordinated, sophisticated cyberattacks last year that reportedly crippled its Natanz nuclear enrichment facility. The Islamic Republic plans “to fight our enemies with abundant power in cyberspace and Internet warfare,” according to Brigadier Gen. Gholamreza Jalali, who leads the country’s Passive Defense Organization.
The White House proposed sweeping revisions to U.S. copyright law, including making "illegal streaming" of audio or video a federal felony and allowing FBI agents to wiretap suspected infringers. In a 20-page white paper, the Obama administration called on the U.S. Congress to fix "deficiencies that could hinder enforcement" of intellectual property laws.
A do-not-track tool that lets consumers keep their online habits from being monitored “probably will be” backed up by regulation, according to the CEO of Mozilla Corp., the company that makes the Firefox Web browser. Moves by Microsoft and Firefox indicate that browser makers are responding to a call by the Federal Trade Commission to develop such a system -- and that they are starting to compete on privacy protections.
A Welsh politician has become the first U.K. citizen to lose a 'twibel' libel case based on something posted on social media site Twitter. Trouble flared during a 2009 County Council by-election campaign when eventual winner, Plaid Cymru candidate Colin Elsbury, tweeted that leading rival Eddie Talbot had been removed from a polling station by police.
Following a recent blocking of LinkedIn in China, the social Internet network for professionals warned potential investors in its initial public offering that similar incidents in the future could hurt its value. In its latest filing with U.S. financial regulators, LinkedIn confirmed that the Chinese government had briefly blocked access to its site and said that such censorship by China or other governments or organizations could lead to the loss or slowing of growth in its member base or member activity.
A top executive of BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion Ltd. said Indian security agencies are making "rather astonishing" demands for increased powers to monitor email and other data traffic, raising serious privacy issues that threaten to harm the country's reputation with foreign investors. Robert Crow, vice president of industry and government relations for RIM, said India's Home Ministry, which oversees domestic security, wants the ability to intercept in real time any communication on any Indian network—including BlackBerry's highly secure corporate-email service -- and get it in readable, plain-text format.
Amazon's skirmishes with states over whether it should collect sales taxes have been an ongoing battle. But the fighting has recently escalated, coinciding with the economic woes that have left a number of states struggling with multibillion-dollar deficits, and looking for money wherever they can find it.
Unlike Egypt or Libya, where dictatorships found it all too easy to turn off the Internet, Japan's Internet has largely stayed up in the face of disaster. This is a credit to Japan's robust Internet that has managed to keep running despite a 8.9 Richter scale earthquake and numerous powerful aftershocks, tidal waves, and all the havoc that such natural disaster play on a modern society's infrastructure.
The Federal Trade Commission accepted a settlement with Internet messaging service Twitter Inc. to resolve charges that Twitter deceived consumers and put their privacy at risk by not safeguarding personal information. The settlement bars Twitter from misleading consumers about the extent to which it protects the security, privacy and confidentiality of non-public consumer information for 20 years, according to a statement posted on the FTC website.
A federal judge ruled that the government can obtain records from the online social networking site Twitter in its criminal investigation of WikiLeaks. Three key players in the probe had argued that handing over their Twitter account information violated their constitutional rights.
A vulnerability in the way Internet Explorer parses MHTML content -- a method for combining multiple file types and HTML content into a single file -- is now targeting users as part of a "drive-by" browser attack. It's called that due to the process by which attackers exploit the loophole: They'll create a malicious website, lure a user in, and then force the user's browser to run Javascript code.
Amazon.com Inc.'s battle with state governments over sales taxes is escalating. The online retailer took action in Illinois, as it had threatened to do, to counter a new law aimed at forcing online retailers to collect sales taxes in the state.
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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.