Google and Microsoft's Bing have agreed to crack down on piracy sites in the UK after years of wrangling with film and music rights holders. The tech giants have inked a voluntary code of practice with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and Motion Picture Association following a series of talks overseen by the UK's copyright watchdog and steered by the department for culture, media, and sport.
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee requesting an investigation into President Trump’s phone and general cybersecurity practices, co-signed by 14 other members of Congress. “The device President Trump insists on using — most likely the Samsung Galaxy S3 — has particularly well-documented vulnerabilities,” the letter reads.
The head of the Federal Communications Commission is promising Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) that he will work to preserve a “free and open” internet amid a possible reexamination of net neutrality rules. Franken had sent a letter to Ajit Pai last month shortly after the FCC commissioner, who voted against the regulations, was tapped by President Trump to lead the agency.
European lawmakers called for EU-wide legislation to regulate the rise of robots, including an ethical framework for their development and deployment and the establishment of liability for the actions of robots including self-driving cars. But they rejected a proposal to impose a so-called robot tax on owners to fund support for or retraining of workers put out of a job by robots.
A talking doll named Cayla has been banned by German authorities because the software inside her could be hacked, posing a security risk and allowing personal data to be revealed. Germany's Federal Network Agency, the country's telecommunications watchdog, advised parents who had bought Cayla to deactivate it because the doll's features might carry the potential for espionage.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation. While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.
Twitter is temporarily decreasing the reach of tweets from users it believes are engaging in abusive behavior via a new protocol. The protocol temporarily prevents tweets from users Twitter deems abusive from being displayed to people who don’t follow them, effectively reducing their reach.
China is moving to rein in the freewheeling world of live online video, and one of its first initiatives is to impose more oversight on foreigners who live-stream on Chinese apps. Under recently adopted regulations, foreigners posting videos from their smartphones and webcams are required to first submit a formal application with the Ministry of Culture.
More than 40,000 attendees are expected to come through the doors of RSA, one of the nation's largest computer security conferences, now underway in San Francisco. But one group is markedly absent — officials from the Trump administration.
European Union data privacy watchdogs will seek assurances from U.S. authorities that a move by U.S. President Donald Trump to crack down on illegal immigration will not undermine a transatlantic pact protecting the privacy of Europeans' data. European concerns have been raised by an executive order signed by Trump on Jan. 25 aiming to toughen enforcement of U.S. immigration law.
A former Justice Department official who served in the Obama administration said European countries must be willing to respond forcefully to efforts by Russia or others to use cyber attacks to meddle in their elections, saying the U.S. response fell short. Former Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, who ran the national security division at the Justice Department and oversaw the pursuit of cyber criminals, said the United States did not do enough to deter the hacking and leaking of Democratic Party emails during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) confirmed that he plans to introduce a resolution that would roll back the FCC’s broadband privacy rules via the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to eliminate agency rules with a simple majority vote. What’s not clear is whether Congress or the FCC will act first, but momentum to do away with the privacy provision is building.
BlackBerry Ltd. filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Nokia Oyj, demanding royalties on the Finnish company’s mobile network products that use an industrywide technology standard. Nokia’s products including its Flexi Multiradio base stations, radio network controllers and Liquid Radio software are using technology covered by as many as 11 patents, BlackBerry said in a complaint filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Some members of Congress are demanding an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's use of texting and encrypted chat apps like Signal. Federal employees, worried about the impact of President Donald Trump, have turned to encrypted messaging apps, new email addresses and other ways to coordinate their strategy toward the new administration.
Yahoo is warning users of potentially malicious activity on their accounts between 2015 and 2016, the latest development in the internet company's investigation of a mega-breach that exposed 1 billion users' data several years ago. Yahoo confirmed that it was notifying users that their accounts had potentially been compromised but declined to say how many people were affected.
Apple has lost a patent lawsuit against a U.S.-based technology company after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated an earlier decision by the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The case concerns U.S. patent number 7,802,310, called “Controlling access to data in a data processing system.”
Democrats in Congress are questioning the new FCC chief over his decision to slow the expansion of broadband subsidies for low-income households. In a letter, 41 House Democrats write that the commission’s actions have the effect of “reducing, not expanding, internet access” and “will hurt those in our country that need the most help.”
Microsoft President Brad Smith pressed the world's governments to form an international body to protect against nation-state hacking, saying recent high-profile attacks showed a need for global norms that police government activity in cyberspace. Smith's call for a "Digital Geneva Convention" followed a 2016 U.S. presidential election marred by the hacking and disclosure of Democratic Party emails that U.S. intelligence agencies concluded were carried out by Russia in order to help Republican Donald Trump win.
Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has redoubled its efforts to reach a broad accord with the music industry, according to interviews with negotiators at labels, music publishers and trade associations. Music executives have long assailed what they say is YouTube’s lax approach to copyright enforcement -- even though the video-sharing website is the most popular in the world for music, has catapulted many young artists to stardom and delivered $1 billion in ad revenue to the industry last year.
Oracle has appealed a May ruling that favored Google’s use of software that Oracle claimed did not fall under fair use. The appeal drags out a dispute that has roots going back to 2010, when Oracle first sued Google for using the software, which Oracle owns.
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