Items tagged with Legal
Nope! That's the answer given to Apple by the International Trade Commission, shutting down its hopes for an emergency ban against HTC products. It's actually one of only a few "No!" responses heard on the legal front lately, as Judge Koh managed to give Apple the ability to halt sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the...
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A disturbing stream of reports have been circulating concerning employers demanding the Facebook passwords of potential employees before hiring them. Aside from the fact that such a demand is a gross breach of privacy and frankly opens those employers up to legal liability for all sorts of reasons, it’s just a crappy thing to do. The...
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A few weeks ago, Amazon.com dropped associates in California due to a new sales tax law. Needless to say, this action made many loyal Amazon users and sellers unhappy. Many people blamed the state of California while others placed blame on Amazon. Regardless of which party you chose to blame, the fact is, the accounts for Amazon associates...
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Performing certain actions will get you sent to the 'Big House' no matter where you live. Taking another person's life, for example. Robbing a bank. Stampeding across town in a drunken stupor without your clothes on at three o'clock in the afternoon (trust us on this one). But in Tennessee, you could be locked up for...
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Nokia has been under a great deal of pressure lately to perform strong. The company has lagged behind major smartphone vendors, and they're starting to lose their massive grip on the worldwide cellphone market. Their low-end phones still dominate sales in many developing nations, but in North America, the iPhone and lots of Android phones...
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When we first caught wind of this story, we thought maybe there was some kind of bizarre oral fixation that prompted a New York resident to toss a perfectly good USB thumb drive into his mouth and swallow it like a Tylenol. As it turns out, Florin Necula was simply trying to destroy evidence seized during a federal...
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Thinking of using those newfound hacking skills to engage in nefarious behavior? Think again. Albert Gonzalez is a name that'll go down in hacking history, but it's not for anything positive. After being charged with stealing some 130 million credit and debit card numbers, Albert plead guilty to previous data-theft...
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Seriously folks, we couldn't make this stuff up if we tried. In fact, this is the stuff that pure comedic gold is made of. Duke Nukem Forever, which is arguably the most highly hyped game to never emerge in official fashion, was thought to extinguished forever when 3D Realms (its developer) went under earlier this month. Weeks later, the game...
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We feel like we've been here before, and in fact, we have. Sort of, at least. The same hotly debated video game law in California has come to the forefront of attention once more, with a federal appeals court striking down the law that sought to bar minors from purchasing or renting games that were deemed too violent. The 9th United States...
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While we're hardly in favor of the Senate's approval of a four month delay on the has-to-happen-sometime digital TV transition, this is one political agenda we can definitely stand behind. Reportedly, United States lawmakers are mulling a plan that would provide tax credits for Internet and wireless companies as part of a "broad stimulus package...
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MP3 is a lossy format - meaning you lose quality from the original. Because of that fact, wording in a recently passed Italian law may have just made trading MP3 files legal.The law states that music or images that are at "degraded or low resolution" can be distributed on the Internet "for scientific or educational use, and only when such...
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Despite being able to buy unlocked iPhones in many cities at third party importers, it seems that there will be no official iPhone for China at this time. This could be the product of putting a partially government owned telecom in the same room with a reportedly stubborn electronics dealer and expecting them to hammer out an agreement.The...
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We're not referring to just any keyword ad. But 1-800-Contacts is suing Lensworld for buying search link advertising using the keyword: 1-800-Contacts. The downstream effect of a win for 1-800-Contacts would essentially make buying keyword ads that feature things like your competitor's name or trademarks illegal. Google, call your lawyers....
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We haven't been shy about our love for ASUS's new ultra-portable laptop, the Eee PC. Thus we were a bit surprised to hear that new Eee PC purchaser Cliff Biffle is threatening legal action over the alleged inclusion of proprietary software and hardware that may be in violation of the GPL.“Biffle decided to disassemble the software --...
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How many times have you been annoyed by a cell phone user, practically shouting into his or her phone on a bus or subway? Or been annoyed by someone's phone ringing in the theatre? More than you can count, right? Unless, of course, you are of the offenders. Ever wish you could rip the phone out of their hands, or just...
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Sony’s PlayStation 3 has experienced a huge problem with sales ever since its release in late 2006. Just when things were starting to look up with the price cut on the PS3 and the widespread backing of Blu-ray technology, the PS3 has managed to get itself in a bind again. U.S. company Parallel Processing has filed a lawsuit against Sony on...
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For years people have used the internet to pirate all kinds of things, and until fairly recently the pirates rarely got in any serious trouble despite all the new anti-piracy laws passed in dozens of countries. It seems like all of that is starting to change and it's hard to go a week without hearing about some new high profile case against...
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Major League Baseball is joining the growing ranks of companies who are less than enthusiastic about the "placeshifting" feature. Here's a tidbit from Ars Technica: "Like other professional sports leagues, Major League Baseball is jealous of its content. The latest company to come under its scrutiny is Sling Media, makers of the Slingbox...
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Apparently, a new licensing agreement is being finalized that could make it legal for consumers who have already purchased a HD DVD or Blu-Ray disc to make a bakcup copy... "Under a licensing agreement in its final stages, consumers may get the right to make several legal copies of HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc movies they’ve purchased, a concession...
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BitTorrent, the peer to peer file sharing giant, is launching a download service that offers licensed, legitimate versions of TV and movie downloads. Cue the mass hysteria. The San Francisco-based company is betting that at least one-third of the 135 million people...
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It looks like NVIDIA's lack of drivers for the GeForce 8 series may result in some legal troubles for the company. A class action lawsuit has been filed against NVIDIA by customers who claim that the company's use of the phrase "Vista Ready" in their advertising campaign was misleading since there are no WHQL Windows...
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"DVD Jon" is back at it. Already a hero with the Pringles and Jolt Cola hacker community-- at age fifteen, no less -- for unscrambling the DVD Content Scrambling System, Jon Lech Johansen returns at age twenty-two with a way to get around the playback restrictions on Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes music products:...
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