32277671
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Signaling the gravity of the government's antitrust investigation against Google, the Federal Trade Commission has hired a prominent Washington litigator — Beth Wilkinson, who successfully argued for the government in Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh case — to serve as its outside counsel in the case, the first time in at least five years the federal regulatory agency has taken such a step.
"This means, to me, that the FTC is quite serious about bringing a case against Google," said Samuel Miller, a San Francisco antitrust lawyer who was recruited by the Justice Department in 1993 to prosecute its first antitrust case against Microsoft. "The antitrust authorities don't bring in outside counsel unless they are very serious about bringing a case."
The F.T.C. has been conducting a wide-ranging investigation into Google’s search business for over a year. Mr. Leibowitz cautioned that this did not necessarily mean the F.T.C. would sue Google.
32244091
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Just as the House Rules Committee convened to weigh amendments to the measure, spearheaded by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), the administration released a formal policy statement that raised the stakes: It said President Barack Obama’s advisers would recommend that the president veto the bill unless there are significant changes to boost privacy protections, add new protections on users' personal information and alter its liability protection language. "This is just, I think, them kicking up some dust," said Rogers, who is backing a number of amendments that would try to address many of the issues raised by the administration.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it agreed with the Obama administration. “The White House is right: CISPA threatens fundamental notions of privacy and without a substantial rewrite should be voted down,” Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, said in an e-mail. “The Obama administration has endorsed the Patriot Act and other wiretapping laws. It speaks volumes that even they oppose this bill as a bridge too far.” Asked about Obama’s veto threat, House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, told reporters today that the president wants to put “the government in charge of the Internet.”
32202185
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Nokia and HTC won a key ruling by the European Patent Office that a patent used by German firm IPCom in legal battles against the two mobile phonemakers was invalid in its current form. Nokia said it meant it could continue selling products in Germany. IPCom acquired Bosch's mobile telephony patent portfolio, which was created between the mid-1980s and 2000 and includes about 160 patent families worldwide. Those patents, including 100A, include some key technologies for the wireless industry.
Several top phone makers have signed a licensing deal with IPCom, but HTC and Nokia have challenged IPCom's patents in courts across Europe.
32198925
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Last-minute opposition to the CISPA, which has been criticized as a "Big Brother" cybersecurity bill, is growing as the U.S. House of Representatives prepares for a vote this week. CISPA has 113 congressional sponsors. Instead of dropping off as criticism mounted, which is what happened with the SOPA protests in January, more continue to sign up, with six new sponsors adding themselves in the last week.
Rep. Ron Paul, the Texas Republican and presidential candidate, warned in a statement and YouTube video, that CISPA (PDF) represents the "latest assault on Internet freedom." Paul warned that "CISPA is Big Brother writ large," and said that he hopes that "the public responds to CISPA as it did to SOPA back in January."
CISPA would permit, but not require, Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the U.S. National Security Agency and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It's hardly clear, however, that this wave of opposition will be sufficient.
32198257
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Within hours of Google launching its new online storage service, the terms and service have come under heavy fire by the wider community for being able to potentially stifle innovation and harm the users' Google seeks to serve. While Dropbox and Microsoft's SkyDrive allow you to retain your copyright and IP rights to the work you upload to the service, but Google Drive takes everything you own. A quick analysis of Google's terms of service shows how the search company owns the files you upload the minute they are submitted, and can in effect do anything it wants to your files — and that's final. But there is a small catch. Here's what the Google Drive terms say:
"Your Content in our Services: When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide licence to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes that we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content.
The rights that you grant in this licence are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This licence continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing that you have added to Google Maps)."
The last sentence makes all the difference. While these rights are limited to essentially making Google Drive better and to develop new services run by Google, the scope is not defined and could extend far further than one would expect. Simply put: there's no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.
32114183
submission
suraj.sun writes:
A judge at the US International Trade Commission has just ruled that Microsoft's Xbox 360 infringes four of Motorola's patents. The ruling isn't unexpected, since many of the patent cover H.264 video encoding, which is a standard — the ITC wasn't persuaded by Microsoft's argument that Motorola will "kill video on the web" by failing its obligation to license the patents under fair and reasonable terms. In a statement, Microsoft said it "remains confident the Commission will ultimately rule in Microsoft's favor in this case and that Motorola will be held to its promise to make its standard essential patents available on fair and reasonable terms."
The ruling is preliminary and subject to review by a full panel of ITC judges, so there will be little immediate impact, but Motorola's strategy of litigating with standard-related patents seems to be paying early dividends even as it invites international scrutiny.
32105239
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Apple is being sued in federal court in San Francisco over allegations that every touch-based product the company makes infringes on a patent relating to touch-based interactive museum displays. According to the complaint, Professor Slavoljub Milekic conceived a system that used a touchscreen that allowed children to move virtual objects around the screen, which he used to build interactive displays for the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, KY, in 1997, and filed for a patent on his design that same year.
The patent in the suit, US Patent #6,920,619 named "User interface for removing an object from a display," was issued by the US Patent & Trademark Office in 2005. According to the lawsuit, Milekic formed FlatWorld Interactives in 2007 to "promote and commercialize" his invention. Curiously, FlatWorld was incorporated on January 2007, just weeks after Apple announced the original iPhone at Macworld Expo. In July 2007, just after Apple shipped the original iPhone, FlatWorld filed a reissue request for the patent, which appears to have been done in order to modify some of the patent's dependent claims.
32104771
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Today Microsoft has released SkyDrive preview for Windows 8, Windows 7, and Windows Vista users in 106 different languages worldwide, which was avilable for Windows Phone, iPhone and iPad since December 2011. The company has also provided a preview version for Mac OS X Lion users too, providing access to SkyDrive documents directly within Finder. SkyDrive for Windows will allow users to drag-and-drop files (up to 2GB in size) to and from SkyDrive folders. Similar to Dropbox, all files and SkyDrive content will be managed in one central folder that syncs with Microsoft's online cloud storage. There is also a new fetching files option that allows SkyDrive desktop users to access, browser, and stream files from a remote PC running the latest preview of SkyDrive desktop — handy if you forgot to sync a particular file from your desktop PC while you away from your PC.
Microsoft also announced changes to its free and paid storage plans up to 100GB. All new SkyDrive users will be offered 7GB of free space, a reduction from the usual 25GB of storage, while for a limited time, any registered SkyDrive user who has uploaded files to SkyDrive as of April 22nd can opt in to keep 25GB of free storage while still getting all of the benefits of the new service.
32090293
submission
suraj.sun writes:
One spark of hope to the people and organizations that oppose cyberspying bill CISPA was that in the list of 28 corporate sponsors (including Facebook), Google was nowhere to be seen. But now CISPA’s author Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) has bragged that Google had, in fact, quietly worked with the bill’s authors behind the scenes. According to Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and number-one fan for the execution of Wikileaks whisteblower Bradley Manning — Google is “very supportive” of CISPA.
CISPA has been nicknamed “SOPA 2 but is more accurately described as a setup to wipe out decades of consumer privacy protections, giving the US government unprecedented access to individuals’ online data and communications. Now it seems we know where Google stands, too. The bill primarily protects internet companies that share private data and communications with the government — it promotes digital spying on citizens without a warrant under the guise of cybersecurity. The bill’s vague language, in addition to the power it can give Homeland Security entities involved in domain shutdowns to go after sites such as Wikileaks, has had CISPA labeled as a relative to SOPA and PIPA.
31963361
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Workers at Apple, Google, Intel, Adobe Systems, Intuit, Pixar, and Lucasfilm can proceed with an antitrust case against the companies they say stifled lucrative job movement in Silicon Valley by agreeing not to raid their rivals for employees, a federal judge ruled this week. U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh rejected the companies' bid to dismiss the proposed class action lawsuit filed last year on behalf of five software engineers who allege there was a secret deal to ensure the tech rivals did not poach each others' coveted workers. Koh determined the claims could proceed in large part because of the appearance that the companies' leadership, including late Apple CEO Steve Jobs, orchestrated limits on cold-calling and recruiting employees from other tech competitors. "The fact that all six identical bilateral agreements were reached in secrecy among seven defendants in a span of two years suggests that these agreements resulted from collusion, and not from coincidence," the San Jose judge wrote.
31962595
submission
suraj.sun writes:
YouTube was told by a regional court in Hamburg on Friday not to display seven out of 12 contested clips without permission from the German copyright fee collecting society Gema. Gema claimed that its members were losing money every time their music was being displayed on YouTube. A proper licensing fee between the two sides expired in 2009. The Hamburg State Court ruled YouTube would in future have to install an efficient mechanism to filter out such content uploaded by users or face a fine of up to 250,000 euros ($330,000) for each case, or up to six months imprisonment. Knowing that a foolproof filter system looks next to impossible, Gema is now hoping that Google will finally agree to a new bilateral licensing treaty whereby the collecting society would not get an annual lump sum for the contested videos, but a fixed fee each time copyright-protected videos are watched.
31944795
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Ilya Segalovich, co-founder of Russia's leading search engine, Yandex, has accused Google of abusing its dominance to shut out competitors in cyberspace. Responding to comments made to the Guardian by Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder, about threats to the open internet, Ilya Segalovich described the US search giant's popular smartphone platform, Android, as a "strange combination of openness and not openness" and its Chrome web browser as anti-competitive. Segalovich said that Brin should explain Google's "semi-open" approach to search competitors before accusing others of endangering the unfettered internet, and suggested Google was guilty of foul play with its Chrome browser, which picks the company's own search engine as default for users, rather than offering a choice between rivals including Yahoo, Bing and Yandex. He added: "One of the things about Android which is especially bad for us is if you have the Market [app store] it's the only way to get advanced apps to work But the new remit on Android 4 is if you have this smart kit you have to have search of Google on top of the screen, it's a part of the contract. I don't think it's good. I think it's bad."
31937747
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Hacker group Anonymous and the People's Liberation Front have created a data-sharing site called AnonPaste.tk, meant to host pastes of code and other messages without any moderation or censorship of the information posted. The new site, which uses a free .tk web address, allows users to set a time for the paste to expire. It claims that data is encrypted and decrypted in the browser using 256 bit AES, so the server doesn't see any of the information included in the paste.The site says it's taking donations in the form of WePay or BitCoins.
AnonPaste is built using open-source software called ZeroBin, created by French developer Sebastien Sauvage. According to Infoweek Sauvage has experience in creating online authentication systems for French banks, suggesting the creator knows a thing or two about encryption of data. Still, on the software's information page, Sauvage reminds potential users that ZeroBin software can not protect against potential Javascript attacks. "Users still have to trust the server regarding the respect of their privacy," he says. "ZeroBin won't protect the users against malicious servers."
31937115
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Norway's alleged mass killer testified on Thursday that he played video games as a way to train for a shooting spree that killed 77 people last summer. In particular, Anders Behring Breivik said at his trial that he played "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" as a means of shooting practice, according to CNN's report. The confessed shooter also said he once played the online game "World of Warcraft," a role-playing adventure with multiple players from around the world, for as many as 16 hours a day. For people who have long suspected that there is some link between violent video games and real-world violence, the statement offered frightening new evidence for why the video-game industry should be more strictly regulated.
Whether shoot-'em-up video games can incite violence has been a long-running debate among the public as well as in clinical psychology. Perhaps the most memorable case study was the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado in 1999, during which experts speculated about the influence of the game "Doom" on the teenagers who carried out that crime. Ultimately, it seems like science should judge whether playing violent video games can lead to a propensity for violence in the real world. A number of recent studies have cast doubts about the link between video games and violence, but there's no definitive answer.
31909377
submission
suraj.sun writes:
Comic book hero superpowers may be one step closer to reality after the latest technological feats made by researchers at UT Dallas. They have designed an imager chip that could turn mobile phones into devices that can see through walls, wood, plastics, paper and other objects. The team’s research linked two scientific advances. One involves tapping into an unused range in the electromagnetic spectrum. The other is a new microchip technology. “We’ve created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications,” said Dr. Kenneth O, professor of electrical engineering at UT Dallas and director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence(TxACE). “The terahertz range is full of unlimited potential that could benefit us all.”
Using the new approach, images can be created with signals operating in the terahertz (THz) range without having to use several lenses inside a device which could reduce overall size and cost. “CMOS is affordable and can be used to make lots of chips,” Dr. O said. “The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cellphone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects.”
