Tag: LAW

If you like yourself some BitTorrent downloading action, we recommend you help Azureus fight BitTorrent throttling ISPs like Comcast, Adelphia, SusCom, and others by installing the Network Status Monitor plug-in for Azureus / Vuze. The plug-in monitors your network traffic for anything that might prohibit your computer from utilizing its broadband connection to the fullest. Lately, some ISPs ...

Due to another company trademarking "G-Mail" in Germany, similar to Google's "Gmail" in the US, the search engine giant lost an appeal to use "Gmail" in the European Union. G-Mail stands for "Giersch Mail" in Germany, where Daniel Giersch runs an electronic postal delivery service -- if that's not email, we couldn't say what it is. As a result, Gmail is now known as Google Mail in Europe. ...

When we first heard about the RIAA's recent filesharing suit victory and the 220k dollar judgment against the user in question -- we thought, "You'd have to be mad to share enough songs to rack up a judgment that large." Not so fast, jack. The offending copyright infringements totaled just 24--that's right, twenty-four copyright protected files on the user's drive. Breaking down to nearly 10 large ...

If you're a file pirate living in the EU, you may have reason to celebrate. Juliane Kokott, Advocate General to the European Court of Justice declared today that European ISPs cannot be forced to reveal the identity behind accounts identified for sharing copyright protected material. The statement was directed to a panel of judges mulling over the legality of a Spanish file-sharing case, and ...

Debbie Foster who recently went head to head with RIAA and then subsequently won a dismissal with prejudice in Capitol Records v. Foster is also getting the last laugh since her attorney's fees of $68,685.23 must be paid by RIAA. The saga began in November 2004 when Foster was sued by RIAA for copyright infringement. Rather than bowing down and taking it, Foster denied the allegations and began ...

If you ever needed proof that big media and big government are a big crock of... well, let's just say look no further than the SPY Act. The U.S. House of Representatives already sold you down the river but, the bill is currently making it's slimy way through the Senate. The EFF has an action alert on how you can tell your Senator exactly what you think of making it legal for the recording industry ...

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/linux_unix/Microsoft_Will_Not_Sue_Linux'; After Microsoft made the claim that Linux infringes on 235 of its patents, some folks became worried that the company might begin suing companies who use OSS. Even individual users have launched a 'Sue Me First' campaign, challenging the company to "put its lawyers where its mouth is" and prove the patent infringement. ...

In March, the state of Utah passed the Trademark Protection Act, designed to protect companies that register their trademarks in Utah. Essentially, the law creates a database of trademarked terms, and prevents online advertisers from using those terms as keywords. In other words, if you're Mazda, you can't buy paid advertisements from Google that will show up when users search for Pontiac. While ...

When politics and computing mix, the results aren't usually pretty. Politicians have fundamental misunderstandings about computing, the internet and how computers and people interact; a fault which often causes them to enact useless or even harmful legislation. Senator Sam Brownback is pushing a bill that would force the people who rate video games to play the full game in order to render a ...

Google has failed to win the Gmail name in a trademark battle in Europe. The name has been owned for over six years by a German entrepreneur that has founded a service called GMail, a same day mail delivery service. A body that is responsible for European community trademarks rejected the appeal from Google. Google had apparently tried to buy the rights for $250,000 but were shut down and saw to ...

This just in to our venerable news room here...the same guy who doesn't like bloggers (John McCain) is partially behind the legislation to stop Internet access from being taxed. Why, I have no idea. This legislation, if passed, would ensure that Internet access will remain cheaper and therefore more accessible to the American public. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would also allow a ...

Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment is getting mighty angry these days with all the hype over Google acquiring YouTube. Why, you ask? Well, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment's web site is at Utube.com, and it seems that they get hit with over 2 million people each month now, mistyping YouTube's URL. So what else comes with the increase from 1500 users a month to 2 million? Crashed ...

Lime Group LLC, the company behind peer to peer application LimeWire, sued today in federal court by the RIAA for damages including $150,000 per occurance of copyright infringing files. The complaint seeks damages on the grounds that LimeWire, and thus Lime Group LLC, facillitated the trade of copywritten music between users and profited as a result of LimeWire's failure to "block" copyright ...

In its famous cast against Google, claiming that Google dropped its PageRank down to zero, Kinderstart is out in the alley. They lost their case against Google claiming that Google manipulated search results, and took them out of the Google search results since they were a competitor. It's over, and from now on we never have to hear about Kinderstart again. Maybe next time they will try to get ...

We've spent quite a few keystrokes covering the development of Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage from fairly passive anti-piracy software to something a little more aggressive, and clearly we're not the only ones. This week Microsoft got hit with a lawsuit from LA resident Brian Johnson, who alleges that it violates anti-spyware laws by "phoning home" to Redmond without the user's knowledge or ...