Tech Law

A comedy film called Pulp will skip theaters and DVDs and instead premiere on the Xbox 360 -- the first time a feature-length film has ever been distributed exclusively on the video game console. The film, which chronicles the adventures of a comic book publisher recruited by police to stop a crime ...

What, China was just going to say nothing? On the heels of a report that China's military has for years been engaging in cyberespionage against the U.S., China's Ministry of Defense claimed that a pair of its military websites were attacked more than 100,000 times per month in 2012 -- and that more ...

Europol announced Wednesday the breakup of a gang of cybercriminals who allegedly ran a ransomware scheme to extract money from online users in 30 countries. Spanish police, working alongside Europol's European Cybercrime Center, made 11 arrests in an action dubbed "Operation Ransom." The cyberthiev...

Apple, Microsoft and Adobe reportedly have been summoned by the Australian Parliament to explain why their products cost so much more in Australia than elsewhere. The tech trio was called by the House Committee on Infrastructure and Communications, which is overseeing an inquiry into why hardware an...

A court in Australia has ruled in favor of Google in its lengthy legal fight with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The case, which lasted six years, concerned search results from 2006-07. The Commission claimed that sponsored links publish...

Microsoft announced Monday that it is teaming up with Chinese telecom Huawei to sell a low-cost, Windows-powered smartphone in Africa, which according to The New York Times is the world's fastest-growing smartphone market. The phone, which will initially cost around $150, is called the "Huawei 4Afri...

President Obama can order a preemptive strike if there's credible evidence of a pending major cyberattack from abroad, a secret legal review reportedly has found. New policies will dictate how intelligence agencies can monitor remote computer networks elsewhere for signs of potential attacks on the ...

Looks like Antigua's gamble paid off. The World Trade Organization OK'd Antigua's request to suspend U.S. copyrights, which will allow the country to move forward with a government-run download portal that offers *copyrighted* movies, music, TV shows and software. Antigua, an island located in the C...

A French court has ordered Twitter to hand over data that could help identify users who posted racist messages on the service's website, acting on a complaint filed in October by the Union of French Jewish Students. The 17th Chamber of the Paris Criminal Courts also wants Twitter to make it easy for...

Governments around the world peppered Google with 21,389 information requests on about 33,634 users from July through December 2012. That represents a 2 percent year-over-year increase, according to Google's latest Transparency Report, released this week. The U.S. led the barrage, with 8,476 reques...

A court in Saudi Arabia reportedly has declined to hear the case of Raif Badawi, a liberal blogger who was accused of apostasy. Apostasy,defined as the abandonment of one's faith, is a particularly grievous charge in Islam. Had it been so inclined, the court that turned down the case could have sent...

The U.S. State Department gave a measured but clear rebuke of Google Chairman Eric Schmidt's upcoming trip to North Korea. News broke this week that Schmidt will join former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson on a humanitarian mission to the impoverished nation. The itinerary and exact purpose of t...

A Chinese court fined Apple 1 million yuan, or roughly $160,000, because its App Store hosted third-party applications that were peddling pirated e-books. The ruling stems from a suit brought by a group of Chinese authors earlier this year. The group originally was seeking 10 million yuan. There is ...

Legislation that would allow services such as Netflix to facilitate "frictionless sharing" of a user's viewing history via Facebook or other online services is awaiting President Obama's signature. The U.S. Senate passed the update to the 1988 law late last week; the same bill cleared the House days...

Lonely Planet, the travel guide and guidebook giant, has temporarily closed Thorn Tree, a popular online travel forum, because of pedophilia-related posts. The BBC, which bought out Lonely Planet in 2011, made the decision to take Thorn Tree offline. BBC executives, who were reportedly tipped off by...

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