When Twitter announced that upon request, it would block certain messages in countries where they were deemed illegal, the move immediately prompted outcry, argument and even calls for a boycott from some users. Twitter in turn sought to explain that this was the best way to comply with the laws of different countries.
A leading lawmaker on privacy issues said he would ask for a probe into whether recently announced changes in how Google handles consumer data violated an agreement it made with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Representative Edward Markey was also one of eight U.S. lawmakers who sent a letter to Google expressing concern that a planned consolidation of user information may make it more difficult for consumers to protect their privacy.
Twitter said that it will withhold tweets from a country when there are local restrictions rather than having to block them globally. "As we continue to grow internationally, we will enter countries that have different ideas about the contours of freedom of expression," the company wrote on its blog.
Federal regulators announced settlements with six online marketers who were accused of using fake news sites on the Internet to entice customers to buy acai berry weight-loss products. They promised rapid and substantial weight loss, sometimes claiming people could lose 25 pounds in four weeks without changing their diets or exercising.
The British judge presiding over a wide-ranging inquiry into media ethics and practices has suggested that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter should be seen differently than traditional publishers. Lord Justice Brian Leveson said that there was a distinction between what he described as "pub chatter" between friends on such sites and organizations which publish material for public consumption.
The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations. This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a "Social Media Application."
Software company RealNetworks Inc. said it agreed to sell a significant number of its patents and its next generation video software to Intel Corp. for $120 million. RealNetworks Chief Executive Thomas Nielsen said the patent sale helps his company unlock some of the substantial and unrealized value of its assets and gives it an opportunity to generate additional capital to boost investments in new businesses and markets.
Facebook Inc. and the state of Washington sued spammers who target social media users with videos and reap millions of dollars from advertising commissions.
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.
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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.