Law and Order

"[On Tuesday,] the AFP arrested and charged a self-proclaimed Australian leader of the internationally renowned computer hacking collective known as LulzSec," said Commander Glen McEwen, the Australian Federal Police's manager for cybercrime operations, kicking off a press conference full of stern warnings.

Matthew Flannery, aka "Aush0k", was charged with three offences relating to his alleged hack of a government computer less than two weeks earlier — a remarkably quick result.

Culminating a two-week trial in which no hacking in the traditional sense occurred, a California man was convicted Wednesday under the same hacking statute internet sensation Aaron Swartz was accused of before he committed suicide in January.

Defendant David Nosal was convicted by a San Francisco federal jury on all six charges ranging from theft of trade secrets to hacking, despite him never breaking into a computer. Nosal remains free pending sentencing later this year, when he faces a potential lengthy prison term.

Given how badly things have been going, it seems like the copyright-lawsuit factory that is Prenda Law should be on the verge of shutdown. The lawyers behind the operation were hauled into federal court in Los Angeles, and questioned about possible "fraud on the court." Instead of talking about their litigation tactics, they chose to clam up and plead the Fifth Amendment. Meanwhile, they're dismissing their copyright cases as fast as they can.

 The Australian Federal Police have arrested a Sydney-based IT security professional for hacking a government website.

The self-proclaimed 'leader' of hacker movement LulzSec was arrested by police at his office in Sydney late yesterday and charged with three counts of unauthorised access to a computer system.

News agency Thomson Reuters has fired Matthew Keys a month after federal prosecutors accused the social media editor of conspiring with the hacktivist group Anonymous to break into the Los Angeles Times Web site.

Keys announced the development Monday morning on his Twitter account, saying he had just learned of his dismissal and that his union would file a grievance:

A hacker who pleaded guilty last year to taking part in an extensive computer breach of Sony Pictures Entertainment was sentenced on Thursday in Los Angeles to a year in prison, followed by home detention, federal prosecutors said.

Cody Kretsinger, a LulzSec hacker who used the online moniker "Recursion," pleaded guilty in April 2012 to one count each of conspiracy and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer as part of a plea agreement with prosecutors.

The US House of Representatives has scheduled to vote on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) for Wednesday or Thursday, and the pro and anti camps are marshaling their forces to try and sway the result.

Gottfrid Svartholm, one of the co-founders of the file-sharing website, The Pirate Bay, has been charged with several cases of fraud by a Swedish prosecutor, who alleges that Svartholm hacked several companies and a bank to illegally transfer money.

Svartholm and other founders of The Pirate Bay were found guilty by the Swedish government in 2009 for facilitating the illegal downloading of copyrighted materials. He has served a one-year prison sentence in Sweden since September 2012, and will likely remain in prison while facing these new charges.

Until recently, Prenda Law was a lawsuit factory, suing thousands of "John Doe" defendants for allegedly violating copyright by downloading pornographic films on BitTorrent. But late last year, when a Minnesota man named Alan Cooper accused the firm of using his name without permission as the head of one of its shell companies, the firm was forced into damage control mode. At a hearing last week, the firm's senior officials invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions about Cooper's allegations.

Lodsys got attention back in 2011 when it went after small app developers, demanding about one half-percent (.0575 percent, to be exact) of their revenue if they use in-app purchases. By May of that year, Apple intervened in the legal action, arguing that since it had already licensed the Lodsys patents, developers should be protected.