Google was ordered by a Japanese court to take down anonymous negative business reviews of a medical clinic, written by people who said they were former patients. The decision is the latest sign of the spread of the “right to be forgotten” concept from Europe to Asia.
Behind the scenes, the podcasting world has been living in fear of one particular patent that threatens to force many independent producers out of business. Now, a government board has revoked key parts of that patent, handing a huge victory to podcasters.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is asking the U.S. and Canadian governments to determine whether the private company that manages .sucks is breaking the law by jacking up the prices brand owners must pay for their own .sucks sites. In a letter to the Federal Trade Commission and Canada's Office of Consumer Affairs, ICANN's top lawyer John Jeffrey said the organization "may seek remedies against Vox Populi if the registry's actions are determined to be illegal" by federal authorities.
Amazon.com sued three websites it accuses of purveying fake reviews, demanding that they stop the practice. The suit alleges that the glowing product evaluations they provide deceive consumers and harm the sellers on Amazon’s site who don’t game the system.
A class-action lawsuit over alleged breaches of EU privacy law, mass surveillance and involvement in the NSA’s Prism snooping program has been filed against Facebook in Vienna. The lawsuit, which was officially filed in a Vienna court, is being spearheaded by 27-year-old Austrian law graduate and privacy campaigner Max Schrems.
The FBI and an international coalition of law enforcement officials have taken down a ring of at least 12,000 hijacked computers worldwide, which cyber crooks used to launch cyberattacks and steal sensitive data. The connected computers are known as the Beebone botnet.
U.S. officials are blocking technology exports to facilities in China associated with the world’s fastest supercomputer, a blow to Intel Corp. and other hardware suppliers that adds to the list of tech tensions between the two countries. Four technical centers in China associated with the massive computer known as Tianhe-2 have been placed on a U.S. government list of entities determined to be acting contrary to U.S. national security or foreign-policy interests.
Eleven channels associated with the French-language global television network TV5Monde went black due to an "extremely powerful cyberattack," the network's director said. In addition to its 11 channels, TV5Monde also temporarily lost control of its social media outlets and its websites, director Yves Bigot said in a video message posted later on Facebook.
Rand Paul's presidential announcement on YouTube was blocked by the video streaming site, thanks to a copyright claim from Warner Music Group. During his announcement on Tuesday, Rand Paul entered and left to the song, "Shuttin' Detroit Down," as Business Insider notes.
A U.S. appeals court appeared skeptical toward Google Inc's bid to charge Microsoft Corp a high royalty rate to use some of the Internet search provider's Motorola Mobility patents. Microsoft sued Motorola in 2010, alleging Motorola breached its commitment to license some of its industry standard patents on fair terms.
Hacking attacks that destroy rather than steal data or that manipulate equipment are far more prevalent than widely believed, according to a survey of critical infrastructure organizations throughout North and South America. The poll by the Organization of American States found that 40 percent of respondents had battled attempts to shut down their computer networks, 44 percent had dealt with bids to delete files and 54 percent had encountered “attempts to manipulate” their equipment through a control system.
Russian hackers behind the damaging cyber intrusion of the State Department in recent months used that perch to penetrate sensitive parts of the White House computer system, according to U.S. officials briefed on the investigation. While the White House has said the breach only ever affected an unclassified system, that description belies the seriousness of the intrusion.
Getty Images has dropped its lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged “massive” copyright infringement, announcing a plan to amicably bring Getty’s photos to Microsoft’s Internet search engine and devices. Getty sued Microsoft last September in federal court in Manhattan, claiming the software company’s online photo tool, the Bing Image Widget, displayed copyrighted photos supplied by its Bing search engine without payment or attribution.
Two Turkish academics appealed a court order that allowed authorities to block access to Twitter and YouTube for several hours this week, a crackdown they say reflects Ankara's growing authoritarianism. Turkey has taken a tough stance on social media under President Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling AK Party he founded.
Prominent consumer and child advocacy groups will ask the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google's new YouTube Kids application, arguing that the search engine giant is unfairly and deceptively targeting toddlers with advertising on tablets and smartphones. "This is the opening shot in a new battle with Google, Nickelodeon, Amazon, Netflix, Cartoon Network and others that are trying to cash in on this generation of young children," said Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy.
The U.S. Department of Justice's antitrust division announced its first prosecution specifically targeting Internet commerce, saying a man has agreed to plead guilty to conspiring to illegally fix the prices of posters he sold online. David Topkins was accused of conspiring with other poster sellers to manipulate prices on Amazon.com Inc's Amazon Marketplace, a website for third-party sellers, from Sept. 2013 to Jan. 2014, according to papers filed in San Francisco federal court.
For those who have spent more than a decade fighting for stricter regulation of the Internet, the official publication of the rules in the Federal Register will give reality to their latest victory. For those opposed, it is likely to touch off a flurry of lawsuits.
Twitter has complied with Turkey's request to remove photographs of an Istanbul prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants, an official said, and a ban on the micro-blogging site was lifted, several hours after it was imposed. Turkish authorities banned access earlier on Monday to Twitter and YouTube after an Istanbul judge imposed a block on access to social media sites showing photographs of slain prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz held at gunpoint by far-left militants and taken hours before he was killed in a shootout last week.
A Brooklyn woman scored a judge’s approval to legally change her relationship status to “single” via Facebook. In a landmark ruling, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Matthew Cooper is allowing a nurse named Ellanora Baidoo to serve her elusive husband with divorce papers via a Facebook message.
Jay Edelson's class-action law firm started suing technology companies in the early 2000s, before data privacy was a national debate. Mr. Edelson claims to have won more than $1 billion in settlements in all, a number that is difficult to confirm because many of those agreements are private.
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