Hawaii's legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit. The measure, H.B. 2288, says "Internet destination history information" and "subscriber's information" such as name and address must be saved for two years.
Caught in the crossfire of the nationwide fight over Internet sales taxes are a large but rarely examined part of the Internet economy, affiliate marketers. For example, last March, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois signed House Bill 3659, a so-called affiliate nexus tax that would require out-of-state retailers that advertise through Illinois-based Internet marketing “affiliates” like FatWallet to collect and remit Illinois sales tax.
Hackers have disrupted the websites of an Israeli hospital, a leading newspaper and Israel's official cultural festival, the latest in a series of politically motivated cyber attacks against Israeli sites. The Haaretz daily reported its site was hacked by a group calling itself Anonymous Palestine.
Motorola Mobility, which is seeking regulatory approval to be bought by Google Inc., has filed a new lawsuit against Apple Inc. accusing the iPhone maker of infringing its technology patents. The case filed in a Florida federal court is the latest turn in a bigger legal battle between Apple and Motorola Mobility, which runs its phones on Google's Android software -- the biggest rival of Apple's iOS mobile phone system.
Symantec Corp. took the rare step of advising customers to stop using one of its products, saying its pcAnywhere software for accessing remote PCs is at increased risk of getting hacked after blueprints of that software were stolen. The announcement is the company's most direct acknowledgement to date that a 2006 theft of its source code put customers at risk of attack.
Megaupload.com founder Kim Dotcom, accused of the biggest copyright infringement conspiracy in U.S. history, will remain in a New Zealand jail after a judge refused his bail request on concerns he would escape the country. The risk of Dotcom fleeing New Zealand to a jurisdiction such as his home country of Germany, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S., was too great to release him, North Shore District Judge David McNaughton wrote in a 20-page ruling released by e-mail.
Europe is considering a sweeping new law that would force Internet companies like Amazon.com and Facebook to obtain explicit consent from consumers about the use of their personal data, delete that data forever at the consumer’s request and face fines for failing to comply. The proposed data protection regulation from the European Commission, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, could have significant consequences for all Internet companies that trade in personal data, whether it is pictures that people post on social networks or what they buy on retail sites or look for on a search engine.
Google Inc. plans to unify its privacy policy and terms of service across its online offerings, including its flagship search, Gmail and Google+ products, to make them easier to use, but the move could attract greater scrutiny from antitrust regulators. In an online blog post, Google said it expects to roll out the revised guidelines in over a month's time, consolidating more than 60 separate privacy policies it uses for its online products. Read the article: Reuters
Hacking group Anonymous claimed credit for hacking a Federal Trade Commission website as part of a continuing attack on government and private industry sites in retaliation for possible anti-piracy legislation in Congress. The FTC-run site, OnGuardOnline.gov, aims to help users "be safe, secure and responsible online," according to an FTC-related blog.
Apple again lost a bid to have Samsung tablet computers banned in the Netherlands in a Dutch appeals case over infringing copyrights of its iPad tablet computer. Apple, which has been locked in legal battles with Samsung in almost a dozen countries involving smartphones and tablets, had appealed a Dutch ruling, which said last year Galaxy Tab 10.1 models were not a copy of Apple's iPad.
U.S. intelligence agencies have unique capabilities that can help protect American companies from cyber espionage and attack, but it will probably take a crisis to change laws to allow that type of cooperation, a former spy chief said. "Until we have a banking collapse or electric power goes off in the middle of a snowstorm for eight weeks, or something of that magnitude, we're likely just to talk about it and not do much," Mike McConnell, former director of national intelligence, said.
American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled in what could become a precedent-setting case. Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21 -- or face the consequences including contempt of court.
Sen. Chuck Grassley’s Twitter account was hacked by a person claiming to be in Osage and affiliated with the Internet hacker group Anonymous. The thrust of the hacking, besides having a little fun at the senator’s public expense, seems to be urging Iowans not to support several bills, notably the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP ACT, two controversial proposals on Internet regulation.
Polish officials vowed to stick to plans to sign an international copyright treaty that has outraged Internet activists and prompted an attack on government websites. A government minister, Michal Boni, defended the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA, and said that signing the international treaty would not hamper Internet usage and that Poland will sign it as planned.
Businesses collectively spend billions of dollars each year beefing up security on their computer systems and employee laptops, but rarely do they give much thought to the ease with which anyone can penetrate a videoconference room where their most guarded trade secrets are openly discussed.
The founder of file-sharing website Megaupload was ordered to be held in custody by a New Zealand court, as he denied charges of Internet piracy and money laundering and said authorities were trying to portray the blackest picture of him. Prosecutor Anne Toohey argued at a bail hearing that Kim Dotcom, a German national also known as Kim Schmitz, was a flight risk "at the extreme end of the scale" because it was believed he had access to funds, had multiple identities and had a history of fleeing criminal charges.
A consumer group penned a letter to European regulators asking them to block the pending merger of Google and Motorola Mobility on anticompetitive grounds. "The Internet is too important to allow an unregulated monopolist to dominate it," John M. Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project, wrote to the EU's competition commissioner, Joaquin Almunia.
In the summer of 2007, Apple's Steve Jobs received a note from then-Palm chief executive Ed Colligan, according to correspondence revealed in a lawsuit over employee poaching. "Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other's employees, regardless of the individual's desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal," Colligan wrote to the now-deceased Apple chief.
If Megaupload is guilty, then who among its brethren is innocent? Many companies have crowded into the online storage market recently, most of them aimed at consumers and businesses that want convenient ways to get big data files out of their teeming in-boxes, off their devices and into the cloud -- perhaps so that friends or co-workers can download them.
Social gaming giant Zynga Inc. may be getting ready to place a bet on Internet gambling. Zynga's exploration of online gambling comes amid growing belief that individual states will allow some forms of Internet betting.
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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.