U.S. lawmakers will delve into an international debate on whether to hand more control of the Internet to the United Nations, a move many fear would turn it into a political bargaining chip for censorship and global taxes on Web companies. U.S. government officials are gearing up for a December meeting in Dubai where delegations from 193 countries will discuss whether the UN should have more say over how the Internet is organized and controlled.
Internet-service providers and financial-services companies would share data about networks of infected computers known as botnets under a pilot program announced by the Obama administration. The White House also unveiled a voluntary set of principles developed by an industry group to prevent and detect botnets and a consumer-education campaign about the computer viruses.
Facebook has received notice that U.S. antitrust regulators will give its proposed purchase of the popular photo-sharing app maker Instagram a lengthy investigation, an industry source said. Facebook has received a "second request" from the Federal Trade Commission, essentially a request for relatively large amounts of data that the regulators will sift through to ensure that the deal complies with antitrust law.
A Thai web editor is due to hear whether she will be jailed for hosting defamatory postings about the monarchy on her website, amid a growing clamour for the law to be changed. The case has stirred fierce debate in Thailand, where strict laws against defaming the royal family have prompted accusations that authorities are trampling on free speech.
A United Nations agency charged with helping member nations secure their national infrastructures plans to issue a sharp warning about the risk of the Flame virus that was recently discovered in Iran and other parts of the Middle East. "This is the most serious (cyber) warning we have ever put out," said Marco Obiso, cyber security coordinator for the U.N.'s Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union.
A French court ruled that Google is not responsible for filtering content on YouTube, dealing a blow to French broadcaster TF1 which sought damages for copyrighted sports and movies which ended up on the video-sharing website. TF1 claimed 141 million euros in damages but was ordered to pay 80,000 euros of Google's legal fees.
Arizona man David Elliott wants a court to declare that “google” is a word that means “search on the internet” and to cancel Google’s trademarks for the term. Elliott filed the complaint after Google won a ruling this month that forced him to hand over more than 750 website names such as “googlegaycruises.com” and “googledonaldtrump.com.”
Months after the success of the virtual protests against the SOPA online piracy bill, the nonprofit group Fight for the Future is forming the Internet Defense League -- an organization of people who support Internet freedom and have pledged to fight for it using whatever powers they have. "The Internet Blackout was just the beginning," the league founders write on a Web page announcing the project.
One of China’s largest hosts of Twitter-like microblogs decreed new punishments for users who post comments that its editors -- and by extension, China’s government censors -- deem inappropriate. The service, Sina Weibo, imposed “user contracts” that award each of its 300 million microbloggers a starting score of 80 points.
Security experts said a highly sophisticated computer virus is infecting computers in Iran and other Middle East countries and may have been deployed at least five years ago to engage in state-sponsored cyber espionage. Evidence suggest that the virus, dubbed Flame, may have been built on behalf of the same nation or nations that commissioned the Stuxnet worm that attacked Iran's nuclear program in 2010, according to Kaspersky Lab, the Russian cyber security software maker that took credit for discovering the infections.
Google released a new picture of the millions of links it scrubs from its search results in response to requests from Microsoft, movie studios and other content owners. In a reflection of the evolving nature of anti-piracy enforcement, the company revealed that it takes down 250,000 search links each week over copyright concerns, a figure that exceeds the total number it removed in all of 2009.
Telecoms equipment maker Huawei has called for EU antitrust regulators to intervene in a dispute with InterDigital, saying the U.S.-based firm is demanding "exploitative" fees for use of its 3G mobile phone patents. Huawei filed a complaint with the European Commission, after failing to reach a deal with the wireless technology patent holder, making it the latest company to take a patent grievance to the EU watchdog.
A German regional court ruled in a hearing that Motorola Mobility infringed Microsoft patents by offering the option on its mobile phones to send a longer text in a batch of several messages. "We're pleased the court agreed today that Motorola has infringed Microsoft's intellectual property, and we hope Motorola will be willing to join other Android device makers by taking a license to our patents," Microsoft said in a statement, referring to Google's Android operating system for mobile phones.
Already facing scrutiny from antitrust authorities and privacy regulators on a variety of fronts, Google was criticized by French data protection authorities, who accused the company of being insufficiently forthcoming in an investigation of its new privacy policy. On behalf of the 27 member states of the European Union, the French data protection agency, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties, known as C.N.I.L., is investigating a privacy policy that Google instituted across the range of its online services this year.
Apple Inc. is rejecting charges that it conspired to fix prices of electronic books, calling the U.S. government's antitrust lawsuit a "fundamentally flawed" endeavor that could discourage competition and harm consumers. In a filing in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Apple said it has not conspired with anyone or fixed prices for e-books in an effort to thwart Amazon.com Inc.'s dominance of that fast-growing market.
Google did not infringe on any Oracle patents when it used Java software in the Android operating system, a federal jury said. The verdict, reached in Federal District Court in San Francisco, leaves Oracle with a relatively small claim of copyright infringement, making it almost certain that the judge will not demand a harsh penalty from Google.
Not surprisingly, settlement talks between Apple and Samsung over their patent dispute have reportedly not resulted in any agreement. Instead, both sides are back in court arguing over proposed sanctions.
The FBI has recently formed a secretive surveillance unit with an ambitious goal: to invent technology that will let police more readily eavesdrop on Internet and wireless communications. The establishment of the Quantico, Va.-based unit, which is also staffed by agents from the U.S. Marshals Service and the Drug Enforcement Agency, is a response to technological developments that FBI officials believe outpace law enforcement's ability to listen in on private communications.
In an attempt to combat cyberbullying, some New York state legislators want people who post mean-spirited personal attacks online to be prepared to identify themselves. The bill, known as The Internet Protection Act (IPA), wouldn't stop with cyberbullying. If it became law, the legislation would also prevent people from posting anonymous criticism of local businesses or those who make "baseless political attacks," wrote James Conte, a member of New York's state assembly and one of the bill's sponsors.
Aereo, a startup that takes live TV broadcasts and sends them to mobile devices in New York for a monthly fee, has won a partial victory in court over the media companies that are suing it. U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan in New York dismissed one of three claims made by a group of broadcast companies, including News Corp.'s Fox, PBS and others in a ruling.
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