China's Commerce Ministry expressed opposition to the U.S. Trade Representative's recent inclusion of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s Taobao e-commerce operation on a list of "notorious markets" for piracy. The ministry also called for the U.S. to be more objective in judging China's record on intellectual-property rights.
Online protests quickly cut into Congressional support for online antipiracy measures as lawmakers abandoned and rethought their backing for legislation that pitted new media interests against some of the most powerful old-line commercial interests in Washington. Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and one of the Senate bill’s original co-sponsors, called it “simply not ready for prime time” and withdrew his support.
Suspicion is growing that operatives in China, rather than India, were behind the hacking of emails of an official U.S. commission that monitors relations between the United States and China, U.S. officials said. News of the hacking of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission surfaced earlier this month when an amateur "hacktivist" group purporting to operate in India published what it said was a memo from an Indian Military Intelligence unit to which extracts from commission e-mails were attached.
Prosecutors charged a computer programmer with stealing software code valued at nearly $10 million from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They charged Bo Zhang, who worked as a programmer at the bank, with illegally copying software to an external hard drive, according to a criminal complaint filed in District court.
New international laws are not needed to protect human rights online, even as they are increasingly under attack, a top State Department official said. Kicking off the annual State of the Net Conference, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor Michael Posner said governments should not feel entitled to repress human rights.
U.S. legislation aimed at curbing online piracy, which had appeared to be on a fast track for approval by Congress, appears likely to be scaled back or jettisoned entirely in the wake of critical comments from the White House, people familiar with the matter said. The legislation, known as SOPA in the House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate, has been a major priority for entertainment companies, publishers, pharmaceutical firms and many industry groups, who say it is critical to curbing online piracy that costs them billions of dollars a year.
Israeli hackers claim to have opened a new front in the escalating cyber war with their Arab rivals, by launching an attack on the websites of stock markets in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi. The attack, carried out by a group calling itself IDF Team, came in reply to a similar hacking assault that targeted the websites of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and of El Al, the Israeli national airline.
Several states are thinking about trying to plug budget gaps by profiting again from the optimism of their residents -- by legalizing, licensing and taxing Internet gambling. But as desperate as states are for new revenue, after four years of often-painful austerity, there are questions about just how big a jackpot they can expect from online gambling.
Apple Inc. filed another suit in Germany, seeking to ban sales of Samsung Electronics Co.’s smartphone models, including the Galaxy S Plus and the S II. The suit targeting 10 smartphones was filed in the Dusseldorf Regional Court and is based on Apple design rights Apple in Europe, court spokesman Peter Schuetz said.
Google confirmed that a Kenyan-based Google team tasked with helping get local businesses online had improperly mined the customer database of a Kenyan online business directory and, in some cases, misled customers. The news came to light after the CEO of the business directory company published “Google, What Were You Thinking?” a blog post detailing a months-long company investigation into strange traffic spikes on its business profile pages and complaints from some of its customers.
Five men believed to be responsible for spreading a notorious computer worm on Facebook and other social networks — and pocketing several million dollars from online schemes — are hiding in plain sight in St. Petersburg, Russia, according to investigators at Facebook and several independent computer security researchers. The men live comfortable lives in St. Petersburg — and have frolicked on luxury vacations in places like Monte Carlo, Bali and, earlier this month, Turkey, according to photographs posted on social network sites — even though their identities have been known for years to Facebook, computer security investigators and law enforcement officials.
The maker of a controversial Steve Jobs doll is ceasing production and sales of the 12-inch figure in response to "immense pressure" from Apple and Jobs' family. "Though we still believe that we have not overstepped any legal boundaries, we have decided to completely stop the offer, production and sale of the Steve Jobs figurine out of our heartfelt sensitivity to the feelings of the Jobs family," Tandy Cheung, head of the Hong Kong-based In Icons, said in a statement announcing the decision.
Microsoft Corp. said it has sued Chinese electronics retailer Shanghai Gome Electrical Appliances Co. and a Beijing computer market over alleged software copyright infringement. Microsoft filed the lawsuits in Shanghai Huangpu District People's Court and Beijing Second Intermediate People's Court, it said in a statement.
Popular online shoe retailer Zappos.com said that hackers had accessed its network, stealing customer account information from as many as 24 million customers. Credit card information was not stolen, company CEO Tony Hsieh said in a statement sent to users, but email addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits from credit cards -- and more -- may have been compromised.
U.S. regulators looking at whether Google manipulates its search results to favor its own products have expanded the probe to include Google+, the search giant's new social networking tool, a source familiar with the probe said. Google+, which was launched in June, offers many of the capabilities available on Twitter and on Facebook.
A hacker who goes by the name of 'Yama Tough' threatened to release the full source code for Symantec Corp's flagship Norton Antivirus software. "This coming Tuesday behold the full Norton Antivirus 1,7Gb src, the rest will follow," Yama Tough posted via Twitter.
Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. said it has received a favorable initial determination in patent infringement litigation filed by Apple Inc. According to Motorola Mobility, an administrative law judge in the U.S. International Trade Commission issued an initial determination finding no violation for any of the three Apple patents listed in Apple's suit, which was filed in October 2010.
The Obama administration said that it strongly opposed central elements of two Congressional efforts to enforce copyrights on the Internet, all but killing the current versions of legislation that has divided both political parties and pitted Hollywood against Silicon Valley. The comments by the administration’s chief technology officials, posted on a White House blog, came as growing opposition to the legislation had already led sponsors of the bills to reconsider a measure that would force Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that offer or link to copyrighted material.
Internet giants including Google and Facebook are embroiled in a growing battle in India over offensive content with a judge warning websites may be blocked "like in China," stoking worries about freedom of speech in the world's largest democracy. The Delhi High Court resumes a hearing of an appeal by Google, Facebook and others against a lower court case by a private petitioner seeking to remove images considered offensive to Hindus, Muslims and Christians from websites.
The lawmaker behind a bill to combat online piracy vowed to press ahead in the face of fierce criticism from Internet giants such as Google and Facebook. "It is amazing to me that the opponents apparently don't want to protect American consumers and businesses," Republican Representative Lamar Smith told Reuters in a telephone interview.
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