Law and Order

Adult magazine publisher Perfect 10 is suing Amazon.com, alleging that the e-tailer's search engine is violating copyright law by displaying thousands of images from its Web site without permission.

"It is Perfect 10's contention that 'search engines' such as A9.com and Google are displaying hundreds of thousands of adult images, from the most tame to the most exceedingly explicit, to draw massive traffic to their Web sites, which they convert into ad revenue or sales revenue," the publisher said in a statement.

The federal court has ruled two systems administrators from Internet service provider (ISP) Swiftel can be sued for alleged music piracy, overriding an earlier decision.

Perth-based Swiftel has been accused of copyright infringement by major record labels -- which claim the ISP's employees and customers created a BitTorrent file-sharing hub for hosting thousands of pirated sound and video recordings.

A California man was sentenced to four months in federal prison for hacking government computers, including two agencies within the Defense Department, and defacing government Web sites, the U.S. attorney's office said on Friday.

Robert Lyttle, of Pleasant Hill, east of San Francisco, pleaded guilty to five counts of unlawfully accessing computer systems of the Defense Department's Defense Logistic Information Service and Office of Health Affairs and NASA's Ames Research Center in April 2002.

Charges were dismissed on Thursday against a 19-year-old Inlet Grove High student charged with hacking the Palm Beach County School District's computers.

Ryan Duncan, of Palm Beach Gardens, has agreed to pay $2,025 in investigative costs and complete 100 hours of community service. He also has to write a letter of apology to the district. Under the agreement overseen by Circuit Judge Lucy Chernow-Brown, the 100 hours of community can be waived if Duncan agrees to work with the school district and a create a program on the seriousness of computer crime.

A lawyer accused of hacking into the computer of a woman he was seeing and those of men with whom she was corresponding was indicted by Nazareth Magistrate's Court. The indictment against attorney Yossi Nakar, 35, of Yokne'am, was issued in April, but the court lifted the gag order on his identity only yesterday.

According to the prosecution, in April 2002, Nakar began seeing a woman he met through the Internet. The woman, who had been corresponding at the same time with two other men, told Nakar five months after they met that she wanted to break off the relationship.

The domain name AirFranceSucks.com will be transferred to Air France. But the airline's victory at arbitration was not without controversy: panellists disagreed about what the word 'sucks' really means to internet users.

amigo: The original article on McKinnon's hearing is here .

A Briton wanted in the United States for what U.S. authorities call the largest successful hacking effort against American military networks in history was freed on bail Wednesday following a court appearance.

The court heard allegations that Gary McKinnon, 39, illegally accessed 97 U.S. government computers between February 2001 and March 2002, causing a total of US$700,000 in damages.

NTL is not known for its customer service. Actually that's not fair, it has a reputation for appalling customer service.

Security firm Symantec has launched a legal battle against a web browser tool company in a bid to label them as adware promoters. The antivirus giant, which denied it was seeking damages, is asking a court in California for the right to call programs from Hotbar.com 'adware'.

Symantec has argued that the programs are a threat to the internet and that a ruling against Hotbar would allow customers to uninstall the programs with the security firm's software.

Ohio's attorney general sued DSW Shoe Warehouse on Monday to force it to do something it says it can't do. Attorney General Jim Petro's lawsuit seeks to force the Columbus-based shoe retailer to personally contact every consumer affected by a recent case of identity theft. Computer hackers accessed customer data from 111 DSW stores between November and February. Petro estimates more than 1 million customers were affected and around 700,000 have not been contacted.