The small Hollywood studios that make up the Internet Security Task Force say the Copyright Alert System -- which issues warnings and sanctions to suspected file-sharers is a “sham”, Techdirt reports. The ISTV says that the five broadband companies participating in the Copyright Alert System -- AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon -- saw a 4.54% increase in copyright infringement during the last three months of 2014.

Several days after the music service Grooveshark shuttered to settle a legal battle with the record labels, someone named Shark launched a new online music service with the same name. The record industry sued that new site and obtained a court order requiring domain registrar NameCheap to take down the site, TorrenFreak reports. But Shark launched a new site, also named Grooveshark, from the new domian name Grooveshark.vc. “The harder you come at us the stronger we’ll fight, and now after this hit we’re more determined than ever to keep Grooveshark alive and kicking,” Shark says, according to TorrentFreak.

Cox Communications intends to start charging some broadband customers who exceed their data caps $10 for every 50 GB over their allotments, according to DSLReports. The company will inform subscribers in Cleveland, Ohio next week about the program, but won't begin imposing the surcharge until October. Cox's current data caps vary from 150 GB per month to 2 TB per month, depending on subscribers' plans.

In the year since the European Court of Justice ruled that search engines must honor the “right to forget,” Google has removed 322,601 links from its search results. But the company has rejected requests to take down an additional 457,958 links. Ars Technica says the numbers show that Google and other search engines have “wide discretion” to decide how to respond to removal requests.

Verizon will pay $90 million and Sprint will pay $68 million to resolve charges that they crammed charges onto consumers' phone bills, the Federal Communications Commission said on Tuesday. The companies allegedly charged thousands of customers for unwanted ringtone subscriptions, horoscopes and other messages. Both carriers allegedly gleaned more than 30% of every charge. The settlement provides for refunds to customers.

Sony executives were never able to reach a consensus about what to tell the Federal Communications Commission regarding net neutrality, leaked emails reveal. One contentious issue involved fast lanes: Some executives at the company didn't favor the ban on fast lanes, because they didn't want traffic from Sony's Crackle to be treated the same as traffic from smaller services, The Verge reports. The company ultimately didn't file net neutrality comments with the Federal Communications Commission.

Yahoo has sued former employee Cecile Lal for allegedly leaking information about the company to journalist Nicholas Carlson, who wrote the book "Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!" The lawsuit alleges that Lal, a former chief of staff to a company vice president, violated her employment agreement.

Lawmakers in Connecticut voted this week to prohibit employers from demanding their employees' social media information, including Facebook passwords, the Hartford Courant reports. The measure, which awaits the governor's signature, also prohibits employers from demanding a job applicant's social media user name or password.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association is trying to vacate the new net neutrality rules, but executives for Comcast, Time Warner Frontier, T-Mobile, and Cablevision are publicly saying that the regulations won't harm them, DSLReports says. Comcast CEO Neil Smith recently said that that reclassifying broadband as a utility service won't have any impact at all on the business, while Time Warner CEO Rob Marcus said that the company's “normal business practices comply entirely with the notion of the open Internet.”

A Comcast customer who complained about being overcharged by $600 says the company offered to issue her a credit for the money -- provided she signs a nondisclosure agreement, Consumerist reports. The customer says the charge was for equipment that she returned five years ago.