An unlikely Internet frontier is Paris, Texas, population 26,490, where a defamation lawsuit filed by the local hospital against a critical anonymous blogger is testing the bounds of Internet privacy, First Amendment freedom of speech and whistle-blower rights
Apparently, SCO’s lawyers were working overtime last Sunday, because they wrote a quick plea to the bankruptcy court for permission to hire accounting temps. Why? Approximately half of SCO’s finance department has resigned or been fired. Two who resigned had over ten years of experience each. One can only assume that they know what’s about to happen to SCO — via Slashdot
A US federal court ordered the Chiquita banana company to pay $US25 million ($30 million) in fines for paying more than $US1 million in protection money to Colombian paramilitary groups between 1997 and 2004
First drug companies were caught deleting side effects about drugs on Wikipedia, now the big law firms working for the drug companies are getting caught deleting what they don’t want people to know about them
Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the Company to reclassify Zango’s programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab’s security software from blocking Zango’s potentially undesirable programs. In the important ruling for the anti-malware industry, Judge Coughenour of the Western District of Washington threw out Zango’s lawsuit on the grounds that Kaspersky was immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act — via Slashdot
Amazon will probably launch its DRM-free music store in the next few weeks, joining Wal-Mart and others in posing the first real threat to the iTunes Music hegemony. Amazon honcho Jeff Bezos adopted an MP3-only strategy so that the music Amazon sells can play on iPods any device
. Trouble is, it may be a half-assed music store, with Sony and Warner still mum on the subject of stripped DRM
Brazil’s government has promised to investigate allegations that its policy of settling landless communities in the Amazon is encouraging deforestation. Greenpeace has claimed that some of these areas are being exploited by logging companies, after what it says was an eight-month investigation. Brazil’s environment ministry says deforestation in those areas is falling but it will investigate the claims. The government says land distribution to the poor is an important objective. But Greenpeace says the implementation of the policy is encouraging uncontrolled logging and deforestation in some parts of the Amazon
Wal-Mart has hopped on the DRM-free bandwagon with the announcement that it will be participating in Universal’s DRM-free sales pilot. The quality looks good: 256Kbps MP3 for 94 cents apiece, but customers are likely to be turned off by the retail chain’s continued censorship — via Slashdot
Four journalists and one of their family members are suing Hewlett-Packard for obtaining their personal phone records. The journalists filed lawsuits in California this week. They claim that HP invaded their privacy. HP acknowledged in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing last year that it investigated journalists in order to find out who, inside the company, had been leaking information to the press. The actions of HP board members and contractors led to congressional hearings about pretexting, the use of deception to obtain confidential and detailed phone records. They also led to the resignations of Board Chairperson Patricia Dunn and lawyer and ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker
Forgent Networks, a patent troll, got the slap down by a TX jury in May when it invalidated a patent Forgent held regarding video teleconferencing over telephone lines, and today, its motion for a new trial against EchoStar was denied. In fact, the court awarded EchoStar $90k in costs. Forgent probably isn’t crying that much though, it already extorted $28m from other defendants. Forgent made a business out of cheating companies for jpeg use — ’til their patent was largely invalidated on that front as well — via Slashdot
A security expert hired by eleven Oklahoma State University students picked apart the testimony of the RIAA’s own expert witness, pointing out the oversimplifications made by the RIAA in its lawsuits against suspected file-sharers
Auction giant eBay has launched an online classifieds service that will compete with market pioneer, Craigslist. Kijiji, a site eBay has operated overseas for two years, is now available in about 220 cities across the United States
Warner Music Group, Sony BMG and the billionaire Len Blavatnik on Thursday announced the creation of a digital music venture in Russia to sell products in one of the world’s biggest markets for pirated content
Microsoft will begin selling PCs in India next month as part of its Unlimited Potential
program, an event that will mark the software giant’s first entry into the PC sales business. Dubbed the IQ PC, the machines will cost RS21,000 (about $525), are manufactured in partnership with Zenith, and will sport AMD Athlon CPUs. Aimed primarily at students, the desktop PCs will initially be made available in a limited number of retail outlets in Pune and Bangalore. After a three-month trial, the program will be expanded if sales are strong enough to warrant it
Banks in New Zealand are seeking access to customer PCs used for online banking transactions to verify whether they have enough security protection. Under the terms of a new banking Code of Practice, banks may request access in the event of a disputed transaction to see if security protection in is place and up to date. The code, issued by the Bankers’ Association last week after lengthy drafting and consultation, now has a new section dealing with Internet banking
After years of negotiations, the Tasmanian Government has persuaded US entertainment company Warner Brothers to help raise funds for research into tasmanian devil facial tumour disease. The Government has long argued that Warner Brothers should help fund the research, because it has made millions of dollars from the cartoon character Taz Devil
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to build a permanent natural gas terminal off the state’s coastline. In a letter to the US Maritime Administration, Mr Schwarzenegger agreed with earlier rejections of the proposal by the state Lands Commission and the California Coastal Commission. Under the proposal, BHP would have moored a massive floating terminal 22 kilometres off the coast of Malibu, west of Los Angeles, in order to unload liquefied natural gas and process it before pumping it ashore. But the plan met with furious opposition from environmentalists
An attempt to force Google to stop censoring its search results in repressive countries has been rejected by its shareholders. The office of the comptroller of New York City, which oversees New York City pension funds, proposed the motion at the search giant’s annual shareholder yesterday. It won support from Amnesty — one of many human rights groups who criticised the company in early 2006 for bowing to pressure from the Chinese government and censoring its search results in China. The motion also named Belarus, Burma, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam as countries where governments restrict access to Internet content. But Google’s top management, who cast 66% of its votes, did not support the plan, and thus it was rejected
Skyfacet, a site selling diamonds rings and other jewelery, dropped in Google’s rankings and saw a $500,000 drop in revenue in only three months after the site owner paid an SEO to improve the site. Google Hell is the worst fear of the untold numbers of companies that depend on search results to keep their business visible online. Getting stuck there means most users will never see the site, or at least many of the site’s pages, when they enter certain keywords. And getting out can be next to impossible — because site operators often don’t know what they did to get placed there
Google is having to search the United States for IT workers to staff the search engine’s growing operations in Australia. The Silicon Valley-based company will host an Australian-themed open day next Tuesday at its global headquarters in Mountain View, California. The session, branded G’day Google, will urge both American engineers and some of the 100,000 Australian expats in California to help address the chronic shortage of IT workers in Australia
RSS – Posts