The court ruled that Google is not a publisher and is not responsible for the results of searches based on content on websites. Website owners themselves are responsible for their content. If it exists somewhere on their website, there is a chance that it will end up in Google search results. As a result, the judge threw out the case.

Google has come under fire from other website owners in the past in France, the Netherlands, and Spain, all with similar claims that the search engine company should not allow certain words or phrases to appear in the website description area.

“When a snippet is thrown up on the user’s screen in response to his search, it points him in the direction of an entry somewhere on the Web that corresponds, to a greater or lesser extent, to the search terms he has typed in,” [Judge] Eady said. “It is for him to access or not, as he chooses.”

Source: MSNBC

Ultimately, if a year passes without a cease of pirating activities, Ofcom would have the authority to order ISPs to cap the user’s Internet usage. The film and music industries around the world has long called for stricter measures to stop piracy, particularly with the advent of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing system without any centralized servers. The law still has to pass through Parliament, and there will undoubtedly be serious concerns about privacy.

This move is part of a larger £200 million plan being initiated to connect everyone in the UK to high-speed Internet access by 2012. In the United States, bandwidth capping has been met with staunch opposition, forcing service providers to change their planned restrictions. A law is now moving through U.S. Congress that would place regulations on capping. France has announced plans to completely ban Internet pirates from access after three offenses. In Sweeden, owners of the popular torrent sharing site The Pirate Bay were convicted of copyright infringement and sentenced to prison, pending appeal.

Source: Wall Street Journal
Photo: Flickr

The company, Triple Fiber Network, hosted some 15,000 websites at a data center in San Jose, California. The sites were taken offline Tuesday after the FTC told its bandwidth provider to stop routing the host’s traffic.

Triple Fiber allegedly hosted all sorts of illegal content, including malware and child pornography. “Anything bad on the Internet, they were involved in it,” FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz said. “We’re very proud, because in one fell swoop we’ve gone after a big facilitator of some of the utterly worst conduct.”

The FTC stated:

[Triple Fiber Network] hosts very little legitimate content and vast quantities of illegal, malicious, and harmful content, including child pornography, botnet command and control servers, spyware, viruses, trojans, phishing related sites, illegal online pharmacies, investment and other Web-based scams, and pornography featuring violence, bestiality, and incest.

The black market provider also hosted the control servers for one of the world’s largest botnets, “Cutwail.” According to the government agency, the host marketed itself to overseas criminals by placing ads in the “darkest corners of the Internet.”

Most of the host’s personnel work overseas. In a message to customers, Three Fiber promised to be back up within days in another location. Meanwhile, some of its customers have already found other hosts and have placed their illegal content back online.

Source: Washington Post
Photo: Flickr

In the U.S. case, the court settled, allowing Microsoft to continue integrating IE into its operating system while providing competitors with the API. What resulted was a decade of poorly developed websites catered to Internet Explorer’s failure to adhere to web standards. The EU seems poised to avoid a similar mistake and may insist that Microsoft bundle competing browsers, of which there are many more than there were in 1998.

In 2004, the EU tried to get Microsoft to unbundle Windows Media Player from Windows, issuing fines in the tens of millions of dollars, but the corporation did not budge. The latest incarnation of the OS, Windows 7, gives users the ability to disable Internet Explorer and other built-in applications. They may see this as an effort to silence EU complaints.

Source: ChannelWeb
Photo: Flickr

“Our technological advantage is a key to America’s military dominance,” he added. “But our defense and military networks are under constant attack. Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups have spoken of their desire to unleash a cyber attack on our country — attacks that are harder to detect and harder to defend against.”

Obama insisted that, while there are plans to increase cyber security and ensure that American infrastructure is safe, the plans do not include domestic spying, a subject that made Americans very uncomfortable under the Bush administration’s security policies. The U.S. military is also creating a new division called Cyber Command to protect U.S. government and private networks.

This announcement comes after a 60-day review of government cyber security, which was published earlier this week and made available on the White House website. President Obama will personally select the new cyber security coordinator.

Source: CNN
Photo: Flickr

According to Wired Magazine, she has made rulings on copyright of digital material, Internet privacy, disputes between Netscape and its customers, and many others.

“If confirmed, she will be the first justice who has written cyberlaw-related opinions before joining the court,” the TechLaw blog wrote.

Later today, Obama is expected to announce who will take the position of “cyber czar” to head his new task force that will deal with network security. The appointment of Sotomayor will undoubtedly play a role in pushing through whatever agenda Obama has planned for the U.S. cyber relations with the rest of the world, especially with the latest developments in the ICANN oversight dispute.

Source: Wired
Photo: Whitehouse.gov

Latham is not only a surname, but also the name of several towns and cities across the world. There is also a large law firm by the name of Latham & Watkins. It is unclear if the law firm has attempted to buy the name in the past.

A quick look at Archive.org shows the name has been in use since 1998. There are 38 links pointing to the domain from law sites, so the name was obviously used for a law website at some point.

Then there was the group that attempt to transfer $347 million from Sumitomo Matsui Banking Corporation. SOCA thwarted this attempt, which was the largest attempt at bank theft in the UK. SOCA also worked with Nigerian authorities to intercept email containing Nigerian 419 scams.

SOCA underwent a complete IT overhaul, replacing an aging system with newer, more advanced technology. With these advancements, telephone conversations, emails, and even web browsing sessions can be intercepted and stored for surveillance. This has raised concerns over the right to privacy by ordinary citizens in the UK. It is a highly secretive organization that is exempt from the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. UK officials claim this is necessary in order to fight organized crime effectively.

Source: ZDNet Asia
Photo: SXC

Under the new system, companies would be allowed to register their own gTLD. For example, Microsoft could register .msn and then have a series of domains such as windows.msn, live.msn, and office.msn. Similarly, a city such as New York City, could apply for .nyc. Any applications must be approved by a special committee that will be appointed by the ICANN board.

Companies can begin submitting applications sometime in Q1 of 2010. Those wishing to be evaluators who will review the applications, must apply by July 11.

The original most widely-used gTLDs were .com, .net, and .org. In 2000, several new gTLDs were initiated, including .aero, .biz, .museum, .name, .info.

This change has brought both praise and concern, and because of this, ICANN has setup many avenues for discussion with concerned parties.

Source: lawdit, ICANN

The UK government has decided to increase the maximum fines in all copyright and IP cases to £50,000, an increase from £5,000 in England and Wales and £10,000 in Scotland. According to the report, this is all in response to consultation and suggestions from the public.

“On the introduction of an exceptional statutory maxima [higher fine caps], responses were generally positive, believing it would serve as a deterrent for would-be offenders,” said the IPO’s report on the consultation.

“There was concern that this level of penalty should be used with care and only when the case required it,” said the IPO’s report. “A few responses thought that exceptional statutory maxima should be set in accordance with the seriousness of the offence and the profit gained. Several noted that the courts would need to set a fine appropriate to the circumstances for each case.”

Source: The Register
Photo: Flickr