Spotify Settles Licensing Lawsuit from Wixen Music Publishing

Spotify and Wixen Music Publishing — which sued the streaming giant late last year for a headline-grabbing $1.6 billion — announced that they have settled the lawsuit. According to the announcement, “The conclusion of that litigation is a part of a broader business partnership between the parties, which fairly and reasonably resolves the legal claims asserted by Wixen Music Publishing relating to past licensing of Wixen’s catalog and establishes a mutually-advantageous relationship for the future.”

FBI Seizes 15 Websites Offering Distributed Denial-of-Service Attacks

The FBI has seized the domains of 15 high-profile distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) websites after a coordinated effort by law enforcement and several tech companies. Several seizure warrants granted by a California federal judge went into effect, removing several of these “booter” or “stresser” sites off the Internet “as part of coordinated law enforcement action taken against illegal DDoS-for-hire services.”

Citing Sanctions, Slack Deactivates Accounts for Users with Ties to Iran

Many Slack users with ties to Iran discovered their accounts had been abruptly deactivated. The bans affected users living as far as Finland, Canada and the United States, many with few remaining ties to Iran in either citizenship or physical presence. “In order to comply with export control and economic sanctions laws… Slack prohibits unauthorized use of its products and services in certain sanctioned countries,” the notice from Slack read.

Amazon Error Sends 1,700 Audio Files from Stranger to Alexa User

A user of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant in Germany got access to more than a thousand recordings from another user because of “a human error” by the company. The customer had asked to listen back to recordings of his own activities made by Alexa but he was also able to access 1,700 audio files from a stranger when Amazon sent him a link, German trade publication c’t reported.

U.S. Indicts Two Chinese Hackers for Stealing Government, Corporate Data

The Justice Department unveiled indictments of two Chinese hackers who allegedly pilfered vast amounts of valuable confidential data from U.S. government agencies and corporate computers in 12 countries. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused Zhu Hua and Zhang Shilong of conspiracy to commit computer intrusions in a more than decade-long campaign to gain access to corporate and government secrets to aid China’s rise to global prominence.

EU Investigating Report That Hackers Breached Diplomatic Communications

The European Union is investigating "a potential leak of sensitive information" following a report that hackers breached the bloc’s diplomatic communications network. Using techniques similar to those used by an elite unit of China’s People’s Liberation Army, hackers downloaded cables over a period of three years, according to the report by the New York Times.

D.C. Attorney General Sues Facebook Over Cambridge Analytica Relationship

The attorney general for the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Facebook for allowing Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, to gain access to the names, "likes" and other personal data about tens of millions of the social site's users without their permission. The lawsuit filed by Karl Racine marks the first major effort by regulators in the United States to penalize the tech giant for its entanglement with the firm. It could presage even tougher fines and other punishments still to come for Facebook as additional state and federal investigations continue.

Facebook Provided More User Data to Tech Firms Than Previously Disclosed

For years, Facebook gave some of the world’s largest technology companies more intrusive access to users’ personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews. The special arrangements, detailed in hundreds of pages of Facebook documents obtained by The New York Times, underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

Facebook Removes 425 Hate Pages 'Linked to the Myanmar Military'

Facebook has discovered and removed another coordinated hate campaign operated by the Myanmar military, which has used the service to spread false news and insults about the Rohingya people, Myanmar’s mostly Muslim ethnic minority. In a blog post, Facebook said it took down 425 Pages and 150 additional Facebook and Instagram accounts “linked to the Myanmar military.”

EU Court Issues Ruling for Google in Yelp's Antitrust Lawsuit

Google won a European Union court order that prevents local search service Yelp Inc. and advocacy group Consumer Watchdog from teaming up with the EU at a legal challenge of a 2017 antitrust fine. The EU’s General Court said Yelp "cannot be directly affected" by the EU’s ruling over Google’s comparison-shopping search service, according to a filing published on its website.

Charter Communications Settles Internet Speed Charges for $174.2 Million

After being accused of defrauding its Internet subscribers, Charter Communications agreed to a whopping $174.2 million settlement with New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood, the Daily News has learned. In February 2017, the AG charged in a civil lawsuit that Charter Communication, and its predecessor Time Warner Cable, knowingly delivered since 2012 slower internet speed to customers than promised.

French Government Moves Forward with Plan to Tax U.S. Tech Giants

With the so-called Yellow Vest movement forcing concessions that have widened the country’s budget shortfall, the French government is accelerating a plan to place hefty taxes on American technology giants that have long maneuvered to keep their bills low while reaping huge sums of money. France has been working with other countries on a European Union-wide digital tax on companies including Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google, but some members of the bloc have balked at the proposal.

Sandberg Promises Facebook Will Do More to 'Advance Civil Rights'

Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said the company needs to do more to protect its users from disinformation efforts, after researchers found Russian trolls attempted to suppress African-American voter turnout during the 2016 election. “Facebook is committed to working with leading U.S. civil rights organizations to strengthen and advance civil rights on our service,” Ms. Sandberg wrote on her Facebook page.

Security Researchers Find Malware That Uses Code in Twitter Memes

Security researchers said they’ve found a new kind of malware that takes its instructions from code hidden in memes posted to Twitter. The malware itself is relatively underwhelming: like most primitive remote access trojans (RATs), the malware quietly infects a vulnerable computer, takes screenshots and pulls other data from the affected system and sends it back to the malware’s command and control server.

Senate Committee Report Says Social Media Firms Impeded Probe

A report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee's probe into Russia's online disinformation campaigns aimed at U.S. voters accused Facebook, Google and Twitter of impeding the investigation. The analysis, prepared by researchers with the firm New Knowledge, said the internet giants submitted incomplete datasets to the panel and may have misled lawmakers about the efforts of the Russian troll farm known as the Internet Research Agency.

Google Shuts Down Project for Censored Search Engine in China

Google has been forced to shut down a data analysis system it was using to develop a censored search engine for China after members of the company’s privacy team raised internal complaints that it had been kept secret from them, The Intercept has learned. The internal rift over the system has had massive ramifications, effectively ending work on the censored search engine, known as Dragonfly, according to two sources familiar with the plans.

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.