Archive for the ‘Policy & Law’ Category

Apple levels its latest patent complaints at Samsung’s Galaxy S4

Apple is yet again pursuing patent infringement claims against Samsung (and Samsung is counter-suing Apple too). [......]

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RIAA pulls 20 million links off Google, but “system isn’t working”

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave up on its plan to sue piracy out of existence years ago. Instead of mass-copyright lawsuits, the group is embracing a mass-takedown strategy, sending notices[......]

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Patent troll that wants $1,000 per worker gets sued by Vermont A-G

Aurich Lawson / Thinkstock Late last year, a vigorous and secretive patent troll began sending out thousands of letters to small businesses all around the country, insisting that they owed between $900 and $1,200 per worker just for using scanners. The brazen patent-trolling scheme, carried out by a company called MPHJ technologies and dozens of shell companies with six-letter names, has caught the attention of politicians. [......]

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Prenda blows sanctions deadline, ordered to pay an extra $1,000 per day

The four lawyers linked to the Prenda Law copyright-trolling organization were slapped with an $81,000 sanctions order , which as of today, they have missed the deadline to pay. [......]

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Reporters use Google, find breach, get branded as “hackers”

TerraCom's website offers free cell phones to low income customers; its call center company gave customers' personal data away. [......]

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Tim Cook tells Congress why Apple won’t move $100 billion back home

Apple CEO Tim Cook. Chris Foresman There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate see it. [......]

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Airbnb host gets fined $2,400 for breaking hotel laws

A much-publicized legal case involving a New York Web designer who faced thousands of dollars in fines after renting out his East Village apartment for a few days has been resolved. The designer, Nigel Warren, will have to pay a $2,400 fine for renting out his place to a visitor from Russia. The decision is a disappointment to both[......]

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Senate report shows Apple avoided billions in taxes on foreign income

A new Senate report (PDF from The New York Times ) shows that Apple has been employing potentially sketchy business methods to avoid heavier tax burdens. According to the investigation, the company dodged billions in potential taxes on $44 billion in foreign income during the past four years. Some of the interesting bits from the Senate's report: three Apple subsidiaries in Ireland claim no responsibility to pay income taxes to any country. [......]

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Brocade and A10 settle patent case one hour before a jury hears it

One of the longer-running, and higher stakes, high-tech patent disputes has been laid to rest. Brocade and A10 Networks settled their patent and copyright dispute over their competing application delivery controllers today[......]

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Chinese hackers who breached Google reportedly targeted classified data

Josh Chin The Chinese hackers who breached Google's corporate servers 41 months ago gained access to a database containing classified information about suspected spies, agents, and terrorists under surveillance by the US government, according to a published report. The revelation came in an article published Monday by The Washington Post,[......]

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Larry Page wants you to stop worrying and let him fix the world

During a Q&A following a rambling conclusion to Google I/O's marathon keynote, Google CEO Larry Page said a few things that hinted at his frustrations with the one platform he can’t seem to find the right interfaces for: government. [......]

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Prenda lawyer gets kicked off 9th Circuit case

Earlier this month, four Prenda-linked lawyers were hit with serious sanctions by a Los Angeles federal judge. [......]

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Alaskan villages try “climigration” in the face of climate change

Some Alaskan permafrost tumbles into the ocean. [......]

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Think your Skype messages get end-to-end encryption? Think again

If you think the private messages you send over Skype are protected by end-to-end encryption, think again. The Microsoft-owned service regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely, Ars has confirmed. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will[......]

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Chinese army hackers return from vacation, renew attacks on US

After being publicly exposed in February as the source of a long list of cyberattacks on US companies and media organizations, the Chinese People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Unit 61396 largely pulled back from the networks the unit had infiltrated. But now, the New York Times reports , the hackers are back in action using new techniques to go after many of the same corporate and government targets they had infiltrated before[......]

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