The Supreme Court of the Philippines suspended a new Internet law that critics had said could lead to imprisonment for sharing posts on social media. Fifteen petitions were filed with the court opposing the law, the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which took effect Oct. 3.
A malicious worm spreading through Skype instant messages threatens to take control of a victim's machine and hold its contents for ransom. The issue, which was first brought to light by GFI, tricks users into downloading a ZIP file by displaying the socially-engineered message, "lol is this your new profile pic?" along with a link that also spreads the message to other Skype users.
Apple Inc's antitrust case with the European Union over e-book publishing could be settled in a couple of months, European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said. Almunia, the EU's antitrust chief, said he hoped to resolve soon an investigation into Apple and four publishers over deals setting e-book prices.
Facebook Inc has proposed a revised $20 million settlement in a class action lawsuit accusing it of violating the rights of users through its "Sponsored Stories" advertising feature after a U.S. judge rejected an earlier accord. The new settlement agreement, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, drops provisions setting aside up to $10 million for plaintiffs lawyers' fees and allows users to apply for a cash payment of up to $10 each.
The House Intelligence Committee recommended that American companies should be blocked from carrying out mergers and acquisitions involving two Chinese telecommunications firms, saying their equipment could be used for spying in the United States. The recommendations, the result of a yearlong investigation, also said the United States government should not use equipment from the companies, the giant Huawei Technologies and ZTE Inc., and that American companies should find alternative suppliers as well.
World of Warcraft just got hit with the gaming world’s equivalent of World War III. Some thousands of players’ avatars suddenly dropped dead across the massive multiplayer game’s virtual cities as a result of what the game’s maker, Blizzard Entertainment, claims was a hacker’s attack.
The best solution to improving oversight of the Internet may be to do nothing at all, a senior U.S. official said while briefing reporters on a conference in December that could decide to consolidate control within a U.N. body. The International Telecommunication Union, the U.N. body convening the conference, has said there is broad consensus that the treaty governing the way international voice, data and video traffic is handled needs to be updated after 24 years.
Canada Drugs, an Internet pharmacy and drug wholesaler that sold counterfeit cancer medicines to U.S. doctors, switched to a new Internet vendor. The move could thwart efforts by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to shut down the company's websites.
Facebook Inc. said a $15 billion lawsuit accusing the company of secretly tracking the Internet activity of its users after they log off should be dismissed because the subscribers didn’t specify how they were harmed. The complaint suffers from an “utter lack of allegations of any injury to these particular named plaintiffs,” Matthew Brown, a lawyer for Facebook, told U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose, California.
The Swedish central bank’s website was probably attacked again by hackers who forced it to shut for a second day. The site has been under intermittent disruptions since noon likely as a result of an “overload attack,” Fredrik Andersson, a Riksbank spokesman, said today by phone in Stockholm.
Mobile phone maker Motorola achieved a rare victory against software giant Microsoft in a patent case before a German court, the latest in a wave of patent lawsuits by technology firms fighting over market share. The regional court in Mannheim ruled that Motorola Mobility, part of Google, did not infringe a Microsoft patent which enables applications to work on different handsets.
Google's YouTube has revised its Content ID system to recognize content more accurately, to reduce the incidence of mistakes, and to force copyright holders to either drop a claim or file a formal DMCA notification when a user appeals a rejected Content ID counter-claim. YouTube rights management product manager Thabet Alfishawi in a blog post said that although the company still has work to do to improve the way Content ID works, these changes will help ensure that "the rights of both content owners and users are protected and everyone can control their original content and make money from it."
As part of an ongoing effort to combat online counterfeiting and piracy, federal authorities announced a major crackdown on websites allegedly engaged in selling counterfeit drugs. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, working with other federal agencies and Interpol, seized 686 websites for allegedly selling counterfeit pharmaceuticals.
Google Inc and a group of publishers have agreed to a settlement over making digital copies of books, capping seven years of litigation involving the search giant's mission to become the world's library. Google and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) said that U.S. publishers can choose to make available or choose to remove their books and journals digitized by Google for its Library Project.
The Federal Trade Commission announced a multinational crackdown on so-called tech support scams, in which a caller fools a consumer into believing Microsoft or a computer security company has discovered that a PC is infected with harmful software. In six cases filed in federal district court in Manhattan, the commission named 17 individuals and 14 companies, most in India, as participants in the operations, including many with legitimate-sounding names like Virtual PC Solutions and Zeal IT Solutions.
The company that makes fan websites for such tween favorites as Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez and Rihanna has agreed to pay $1 million to settle charges that it illegally collected data about more than 100,000 children. The Federal Trade Commission, in a complaint filed in a New York district court, had accused Artist Arena LLC of failing to get parental consent before collecting data like names and email addresses of children.
A judge denied Google Inc. a motion for summary judgment in a patent dispute with Mobile phone software maker Vringo Inc. Google was sued by Innovate/Protect Inc, which was acquired by Vringo. Vringo is seeking an award of at least $696 million from Google, financial website iStockAnalyst reported.
Mike Wiacek, a manager on Google’s information security team, said in an interview that since Google started to alert users to state-sponsored attacks three months ago, it had gathered new intelligence about attack methods and the groups deploying them. He said the company was using that information to warn “tens of thousands of new users” that they may have been targets.
Apple is in the middle of another lawsuit, this one over charges that its Passbook app violates several patents of software developer Ameranth. In the court document, Ameranth, which sells software and services to the hospitality and gaming industry, claims that Passbook violates four of its U.S. patents.
Microsoft reached a settlement in its legal case against a Web site that has been linked to malicious activity, with the Chinese company agreeing to block malware tied to its domain. The software giant, which originally filed the suit about two weeks ago, said that the operator of 3322.org, Peng Yong, has agreed to work with Microsoft and the Chinese Computer Emergency Response Team to block all malicious connections to the 3322.org domain and prevent malware infections associated with the site.
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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.