The European Parliament has passed controversial net neutrality legislation that could lead to a two-tier Internet. The new legislation was originally designed to ensure an open and level-playing field to “protect the right of every European to access Internet content, without discrimination.”
The European Union said it had agreed in principle with the U.S. on a new trans-Atlantic data-transfer pact, as both sides race to complete the deal after the bloc’s highest court junked a previous framework used by thousands of firms. The European Court of Justice this month invalidated a 15-year old agreement, known as Safe Harbor, which allowed businesses to move Europeans’ data, such as payroll information, to servers in the U.S.
A 15-year-old boy has been arrested in Northern Ireland in connection with the TalkTalk hacking attack, Scotland Yard has said. The boy was arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences.
A U.S. judge expressed strong doubts that he had the legal authority to order Apple Inc. to access data on a locked iPhone that was seized as part of a federal investigation. "What you're asking them to do is do work for you," U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein told government attorneys at a hearing in Brooklyn federal court.
European Union regulators will actively pursue Google parent Alphabet Inc. on multiple fronts ranging from its contracts with advertisers to its Android mobile-operating system, the bloc’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said, in the clearest sign yet that the U.S. search giant is likely to face fresh competition charges in Brussels. A year after taking office as Europe’s most powerful regulator, Ms. Vestager has moved decisively on a number of major cases that had languished under her predecessor, Joaquín Almunia of Spain.
The New York attorney general is probing whether three major Internet providers could be short-changing consumers by charging them for faster broadband speeds and failing to deliver the speeds being advertised, according to documents seen by Reuters. The letters, which were sent to executives at Verizon Communications Inc, Cablevision Systems Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc, ask each company to provide copies of all the disclosures they have made to customers, as well as copies of any testing they may have done to study their Internet speeds.
Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict. The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.
A Florida couple is suing Apple for $5 million, claiming the company is misleading consumers about the data charges they’ll incur through the new Wi-Fi Assist feature that’s part of the latest mobile operating system. William and Suzanne Phillips filed suit Friday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, accusing Apple of deceptive business practices, false advertising and misrepresentation.
In 2013, Pinterest sued a much smaller company called Pintrips, whose travel-planning program monitors flight prices, saying it infringed Pinterest's trademark. After two years of litigation and a bench trial in May, Pintrips has come out on top.
Europe's top data privacy watchdog called on firms to limit transfers of Europeans' personal data to the United States, sounding a warning after a court struck down a pact between the regions over concerns about U.S. government surveillance. Yet Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin, who heads a working group of 28 European data protection regulators, also sought to reassure by saying companies would have three months' grace to comply with the court decision before countries begin enforcement actions.
The chief executive of TalkTalk, a British telecommunications provider, said that she had received a ransom demand from hackers who had claimed responsibility for stealing data on some of the company’s four million customers. TalkTalk, which offers cable and fixed-line services in Britain, said local authorities had opened a criminal investigation into the widespread data breach.
Internet radio company Pandora has agreed to pay the major U.S. record labels $90 million over streaming of pre-1972 songs, which aren't covered under federal copyright but are covered by state-level copyrights in areas including New York and California. It's the second big payment that will go to the Recording Industry Association of America, which has already won a $210 million settlement with SiriusXM satellite radio over the same issue.
A long-delayed bill that would make it easier for corporations to share information about cyber attacks with each other or the government without fear of lawsuits advanced in the U.S. Senate with strong support from members of both parties. Dozens of industry and business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, back the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), saying it would help encourage companies and the government to share information that might help thwart high-profile cyber attacks.
Bitcoin got a boost at the European Union’s top court after judges said exchanging virtual currencies should be exempt from value-added tax in the same way as traditional cash. In a ruling that puts Bitcoin on a more equal footing with mainstream money, the EU Court of Justice sided with Swede David Hedqvist who set up a service for the exchange of mainstream money for bitcoin and vice versa.
Amazon.com Inc did not violate the trademarks of a high-end watchmaker by offering alternative brands with similar styles in its search results, a federal appeals court ruled. In a rare move, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed its own opinion from July and said that a lower court correctly found in Amazon.com's favor because the search results would not likely confuse customers.
The small-town lawyer who sued Facebook Inc. over his client’s claim to own the social network has filed his own defamation suit against the company and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. Attorney Paul Argentieri sued in San Francisco claiming Facebook falsely accused him of fraud in a public statement about his representation of Paul Ceglia, the western New York man who fled to avoid criminal charges he faked the 2003 contract and e-mails on which he based his claim.
The New York federal prosecutor who shut down the U.S. online poker industry four years ago has now set his sights on the daily fantasy-sports business, according to people familiar with the matter. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s office in the Southern District of New York is investigating whether the business model behind daily fantasy-sports firms like DraftKings Inc. and FanDuel Inc. violates federal law, some of the people said.
Spotify’s U.S. service pulled down thousands of songs from Victory Records' catalog. The dispute between Spotify and Audiam/Victory came when Audiam identified 53 million streams from Another Victory which Spotify hadn’t made any payments on.
Apple Inc. told a federal judge that it “would be impossible” to access user data on a locked iPhone running one of the newer operating systems, but that it could likely help the government unlock an older phone. In a brief, the company said “in most cases now and in the future” it will be unable to assist the government in unlocking a password-protected iPhone.
Nearly a year after its devastating hack, Sony Pictures' settlement with former employees has been made public, offering as much as $8 million to resolve the ongoing lawsuit. According to documents, the company will commit $2 million to reimburse any expenses incurred by employees protecting themselves from identity theft in the wake of the hack.
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