• Authors Guild Wins Round In Class-Action Against Google
    In a defeat for Google, a federal judge ruled today that the Authors Guild can continue with its lawsuit accusing the search giant of infringing copyright by digitizing books and displaying snippets of them.
  • N.C. Blogger Says Doesn't Need License To Dispense Diet Advice
    A blogger in North Carolina who advises diabetics to follow a high-fat, low-carb "caveman" diet has landed on the wrong side of state regulatory authorities.
  • Megaupload User Blasts Feds' 'Indefensible' Refusal To Return Files
    Kyle Goodwin owns the business OhioSportsNet, which covers local high school sports in Ohio. He and his employees travel throughout the state, take videos of various high school games, and offer them online. Goodwin had the misfortune of storing backup copies of his videos on the cyberlocker Megaupload, which was shut down by the feds in January. In another stroke of bad luck, his own servers crashed shortly before Megaupload was taken offline. The upshot is, Goodwin has no way of accessing the only copies of the videos he created.
  • NJ Mayor Charged With Hacking For Allegedly Taking Down Recall Site
    Felix Roque, the mayor of West New York, N.J., isn't the first politician to dislike posts made by critics. But he might well have been the first to resort to hacking to take down a negative site.
  • Apple: 'Government Sides With Monopoly' In Antitrust Lawsuit
    Far from harming consumers, Apple's entry into the sale of digital books offered people "a new outstanding, innovative eBook reading experience, an expansion of categories and titles of eBooks, and competitive prices," the company contends in court papers.
  • Consumer Advocates Side With Aereo Against TV Networks
    The digital rights groups Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge are siding with Barry Diller's online video start-up Aereo in its dispute with the TV networks. In court papers filed today, the groups asked U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan in New York to deny the networks' request for a preliminary injunction shuttering the start-up.
  • FCC Chair Gives Another Thumbs-Up To Tiered Pricing, Aggravating Consumer Advocates
    Consumer advocates aren't happy with comments made today by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski, who reiterated his support for pay-per-byte pricing during a speech at a cable industry event.
  • FTC Taps Privacy Scholar Who Blasted Netflix, Carrier IQ
    The Federal Trade Commission has tapped privacy expert Paul Ohm to serve as senior policy adviser for consumer protection and competition issues. Currently a law professor at the University of Colorado, Ohm will begin work at the FTC in August, he said Monday on Twitter.
  • Facebook Users Press Forward With Privacy Claims
    Last September, Australian developer Nic Cubrilovic reported on his blog that Facebook was able to identify users when they visited sites with the "like" button or other social widgets -- even when those users were logged out of the social networking service. The news proved embarrassing for the social networking site, which quickly rolled out a fix while downplaying Cubrilovic's findings as a coding bug. But that didn't stop consumers from suing.
  • Comcast To Test Pay-Per-Byte Pricing
    Comcast said today that it will shift to a pay-per-byte pricing model for broadband, meaning that the company will charge users based on how much data they consume. But the company also says that all subscribers will be able to consume at least 300GB of data per month before incurring overage charges.
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