Pfizer Inc. and Microsoft Corp. said on Thursday they filed parallel lawsuits against Web site operators and spam advertisers that they say sell illegal cheap versions of Pfizer's erectile dysfunction drug Viagra.
The companies said the lawsuits follow a seven-month investigation to discover the identity of two Web site operators together with those advertising them via spam e-mails.
The federal judge overseeing the SCO Group's suit against IBM regarding Unix and Linux has thwarted an IBM attempt to defang SCO's claims, but he voiced loud skepticism about SCO's case.
IBM in 2004 sought a declaration through that its Linux activities hadn't violated SCO's purported Unix copyrights, as SCO had claimed publicly and in its lawsuit. Although U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball didn't grant that declaration, called a partial summary judgment, he sharply criticized of SCO for not producing evidence for its case in a court filing Wednesday.
In the first case of its kind, a California video game maker is suing an entire community of software tinkerers for reverse engineering and modifying Xbox games that they legally purchased.
Tecmo, Inc., a subsidiary of a Japanese company, announced a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Mike Greiling of Eden Prairie, Minn., and Will Glynn from Davie, Fla, for alleged violations of U.S. copyright law and the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
WE REPORTED last week on the problems that many people are having connecting to the Steam servers to play Half-Life 2. We had lots of people emailing the INQ to say that you could always use offline mode to play without a net connection, but these people seem oblivious to reports online that many people are unable to get this mode to function properly.
Death is no obstacle to feeling the long arm of the Recording Industry Ass. of America.
Lawyers representing several record companies have filed suit against an 83 year-old woman who died in December, claiming that she made more than 700 songs available on the internet.
"I believe that if music companies are going to set examples they need to do it to appropriate people and not dead people," Robin Chianumba told AP. "I am pretty sure she is not going to leave Greenwood Memorial Park to attend the hearing."
A 24-year-old former American Online software engineer has pleaded guilty to stealing 92 million screen names and e-mail addresses and selling them to spammers, setting off an avalanche of up to seven billion unsolicited e-mails.
The soft-spoken Jason Smathers of Harpers Ferry, W. Va., entered the plea to conspiracy charges on Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, where he was likely to face from 18 months to two years in prison at a May 20 sentencing.
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision last month giving judges more leeway in deciding federal prison terms could be good news for computer intruders who don't fit the classic criminal mold, legal experts say.
In U.S. v. Booker, decided January 12th, the court ruled 5-4 to overturn part of a 1984 law that required judges to sentence offenders strictly by a book of written guidelines produced and periodically revised by a seven-member, presidential appointed commission.
A man charged with stalking his ex-girlfriend by attaching a global positioning system to her car was sentenced to 16 months in state prison, prosecutors said.
Ara Gabrielyan, 33, of Glendale, was sentenced Friday after pleading no contest to one count of stalking and two counts of making criminal threats, said Deputy District Attorney Debra Archuleta.
Police said Gabrielyan tracked the woman, who was not identified, after she ended their relationship. He showed up unexpectedly at a book store, an airport and dozens of other places.
A teenager was sentenced Friday to 11/2 years in prison for unleashing a variant of the "Blaster" Internet worm that crippled 48,000 computers in 2003.
Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, of Hopkins, Minnesota, will serve his time at a low-security prison and must perform 10 months of community service. He had faced up to 10 years in prison, but the judge took pity on the teen, saying his neglectful parents were to blame for the psychological troubles that led to his actions.
The Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) is suing 717 file sharers who it alleges are infringing copyright laws. This follows on from them suing 754 individuals only last month.
The RIAA, despite fierce criticism, are not showing any signs of relenting in their pursuit of those they believe to be breaking copyright law, even though studies have shown that online file sharing may not be impacting the industry to any great amount.
