As governments throughout Europe seek to close gaping holes in their budgets, they are taking aim at United States multinational companies, especially Internet giants like Google and Amazon.com, which pay little or no taxes in Europe, despite generating billions of dollars in revenue on the Continent. Google, Amazon, Starbucks and other American companies facing tax scrutiny say they are doing nothing wrong.
A federal judge has approved a $22.5 million fine to penalize Google for an alleged privacy breach, rejecting a consumer-rights group's plea for tougher punishment. The blessing from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston came a few hours after a hearing in San Francisco for final arguments about a fine that's the cornerstone a settlement reached three months ago between the Federal Trade Commission and Google Inc.
The Justice Department and the state of California sued e-commerce company eBay Inc. over what they called an illegal agreement with Intuit Inc. not to recruit Intuit's employees. The agreement eliminated competition for workers, depriving them of access to better job opportunities, the Justice Department and California Attorney General Kamala Harris said in simultaneous news releases.
Anonymous is in the midst of a hacking campaign against a number of Israeli sites in protest of attacks taking place on Gaza. The hacking spree, dubbed OpIsrael, has resulted in so many Israeli Web sites being defaced or shut down through methods including denial of service (DoS) attacks, that it's hard to keep count.
Recent intrusions by the FBI into e-mail correspondence between former CIA Director David Petraeus and his mistress and biographer, Paula Broadwell, have raised a lot of questions and concerns about the government’s ability to access private e-mails. Now, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it will be voting Nov. 29 on whether to advance legislation that would require authorities to obtain a probable-cause warrant to get access to all e-mail and other content stored in the cloud, just as a warrant is required to search a car or house.
A pair of brazen crooks punched another hole in the lax JFK security when they stole a trove of new Apple iPad minis -- worth $1.5 million -- from the same cargo building that was the site of the 1978 Lufthansa heist featured in “GoodFellas.” The crooks struck shortly before midnight and used one of the airport’s own forklifts to load two pallets of the tablet computers into a truck, according to law-enforcement sources.
Apple has quietly snapped up more than a thousand patents in the past six months from Rockstar Consortium, a move that helps bolster it as it battles Google, Samsung, and other Android backers in the mobile-device market. Apple's action came to light after a Korean regulator reported the transfer of 1,024 patents or patent applications from Rockstar to Apple, according to Yonhap News.
Apple Inc. can add patent- infringement claims against the Samsung Galaxy Note, the U.S. version of the Galaxy S III and the Jelly Bean operating system, and Samsung Electronics Co. can add the iPhone 5 to its infringement claims against Apple, a federal judge ruled. The addition of the Jelly Bean operating system is limited to the software for Samsung’s Galaxy Nexus, U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal ruled.
Verizon and Time Warner Cable said they won't pull the plug on customers accused of piracy through a forthcoming "six strikes" program. Link Hoewing, Verizon's vice president, and Fernando Laguarda, Time Warner Cable's vice president, said at a forum organized by the Internet Society that after they repeatedly inform customers that that their activities appear to violate copyright law, the companies' obligation is fulfilled -- and no account termination will take place.
U.S. Senate Republicans killed cybersecurity legislation backed by President Barack Obama, increasing prospects the White House will implement some of the bill’s provisions through an executive order. Republicans blocked the same measure in August, saying it would lead to more government regulation of business.
Apple is reportedly warning developers of iOS games with the word "memory" in the title that unless they change their app's name, it will be removed from the Apple Store. The notices are being sent at the behest of Ravensburger, a German game maker that sells a popular series of board games under the brand "Memory" and claims to hold the trademark for the word "memory" in game titles in some 42 countries, according to a report in Gamasutra.
A California lawyer is suing Microsoft Corp., claiming the Surface tablet he bought doesn't have all the storage space the company advertised. Andrew Sokolowski, a lawyer in Los Angeles, claims that he bought a Surface with 32 gigabytes of storage, but he quickly ran out of space after loading it with music and Microsoft Word documents.
Adobe Systems Inc shut down a website where customers share information about using its Connect online conferencing service after the software maker discovered it had been compromised in a data breach. The company, whose software is frequently targeted by computer hackers because it is widely used to publish digital documents, said that it would reset passwords of the approximately 150,000 members of the site, Connectusers.com.
Banning anyone from the Internet is an "unreasonable" restriction, two appeal court judges have ruled, suggesting that access to a computer at home has become a basic human right. The decision by Mr Justice Collins and Judge Nicholas Cooke QC signals judicial recognition of how pervasive digital communications are in an era when a multitude of services can be obtained online.
President Obama has signed a secret directive that effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks. Presidential Policy Directive 20 establishes a broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies in confronting threats in cyberspace, according to several U.S. officials who have seen the classified document and are not authorized to speak on the record.
Those of you who thought Samsung might take a cue from HTC and settle its patent differences with Apple can think again. Samsung vs. Apple is moving full steam ahead. Shin Jong-kyun, head of Samsung's mobile and IT division, told reporters in Seoul recently that the company has no plans to settle, according to Yonhap News.
As the Chinese cyberpolice stiffened controls on information before the Communist Party leadership transition, some companies in Beijing and nearby cities received orders to aid the cause. Starting earlier this year, Web police units directed the companies, which included joint ventures involving American corporations, to buy and install hardware to log the traffic of hundreds or thousands of computers, block selected Web sites, and connect with local police servers, according to industry executives and official directives obtained by The New York Times.
The United Arab Emirates government made sweeping changes to the laws that govern what the country's citizens can and can't do on the Web, according to the UAE state news agency WAM. The most drastic of the changes is jail time for anyone who imitates or pokes fun at the country's leaders.
Popular U.S. pizza chain Papa John's faces a $250 million class-action lawsuit for blasting customers with illegal text messages. The spam texts offered deals for pizza, and some customers complained they were getting 15 or 16 texts in a row, even during the middle of the night, according Donald Heyrich, an attorney representing the class.
In its sixth semiannual government Transparency Report, Google noted that one trend is clear: "Government surveillance is on the rise." In a blog post, Google senior policy analyst Dorothy Chou says, "[G]overnment demands for user data have increased steadily since we first launched the Transparency Report."
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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.