Tech Law

Microsoft is once again being challenged in Europe over alleged anti-competitive practices. A group representing Linux developers in Spain has filed a complaint with the European Commission charging that Microsoft's desktop operating system, Windows 8, supports technology that makes it difficult for...

At long last, China and the United States are on the same cyberpage. A U.S. district judge in Manhattan dismissed a lawsuit brought by activists who claimed that Baidu, China's largest search engine, should be punished -- along with China itself -- for censoring them on the Web. First filed in May 2...

TECH TREK

Beyond the Grave, Onto the Smartphone

A cemetery in Shenyang, the capital of China's Liaoning Province, will become, for lack of a better term, interactive. With mobile devices, people will be able to scan a quick response code on graves of people whose relatives have requested the feature. Scanning this code will allow visitors to lear...

No, this isn't the Catholic Church's way of appealing to comic book fans. On Thursday, the website of the Vatican communications office and Vatican Twitter account ran stories on Batman. While some initially suspected hacking, Vatican officials are instead saying that there was an "internal system f...

Two federal agencies are reportedly probing the relationship between Microsoft and business partners in China, Italy and Romania that allegedly bribed foreign officials to land software contracts. Lawyers at the U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating accusat...

Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have introduced legislation to provide stronger privacy guarantees to email. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2013 calls for the government to get a search warrant before gaining access to email or other digital communicati...

Google Street View has unveiled shots from some of the world's highest mountains. In addition to Argentina's Mount Aconcagua, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro and Russia's Mount Elbrus, Google has now also captured photos from Everest Base Camp in Nepal. Because Street View's camera-equipped vehicles we...

TECH TREK

Bribery Investigation Rumors Haunt ZTE

Chinese telecom ZTE may have ended 2012 in the red, but a new report alleges there was enough in the coffers for bribes. ZTE's Mongolia office is being investigated for bribery, according to China's IT Business News. The outlet is also reporting that Mongolian anti-corruption officials have alread...

Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker known as "Weev," was sentenced Monday to 41 months in prison for obtaining the personal data of more than 100,000 iPad owners from AT&T's publicly accessible website and sending the information to the media. The ruling immediately sparked an outcry from a digital rig...

A U.S. District Court judge from the Ninth Circuit found that the government's controversial use of so-called National Security Letters violates the First Amendment and the concept of separation of powers. U.S. District Judge Susan Illston ordered the government to stop issuing the National Security...

The case of a journalist charged Thursday with aiding the hacker group Anonymous is sending up red flags in two camps: employers who must worry about security threats from disgruntled ex-workers; and a digital rights group that is finding troublesome parallels with the prosecution of the late Aaron ...

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard is taking flak from the nation's tech industry for accusing IT firms of abusing the nation's skilled migration program. The "457 visas" program is designed to facilitate the immigration of skilled overseas workers to fill voids in the labor force. Gillard, how...

Printers aren't typically linked with the word "subversive," but that's the mission of a new site for 3D printer files. Defcad was announced Tuesday at the South by Southwest Interactive conference. It is designed to give 3D printer enthusiasts access to files that allow them to create objects with ...

TECH TREK

China Starts Arm Wrestling Android

Android -- and, by extension, Google -- has too much control over China's smartphone industry, according to a white paper from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Android is used by handset manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE, as well as Samsung, which has a solid footprint in ...

After Denmark announced it was seeking US$1 billion in back taxes from Microsoft, the tech giant was hit with a $731 million fine from the European Union. The fine is for Microsoft's failure to promote a range of Web browsers, not just Internet Explorer. Complaints about Microsoft's favoritism towar...

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