As the tsunami of DMCA takedowns sent to Google breaks yet another record, there are signs that the search engine is beginning to make rightsholders who have their requests denied a little more visible. As it reinstates Torrentz’s homepage after an earlier takedown against content that doesn’t exist, Google is now actively highlighting takedowns they refuse to process. While some are of minor interest, some reveal a comedy of errors.
A computer hacker has landed in jail for three years and five months after stealing data from iPads belonging to approximately 120,000 users.
hacker us sentence ipad users
Apple's iPad found itself the hacker's target through infiltrating the AT&T network, Reuters reports. Not only were normal United States citizens affected, but New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Harvey Weinstein and TV news anchor Diane Sawyer also bore the brunt of the attack.
A Reuters.com editor maintained his innocence after being suspended with pay on Friday following a US federal indictment on charges he aided members of the Anonymous hacking collective.
Matthew Keys, 26, a deputy social media editor, was indicted on Thursday by a federal grand jury in Sacramento, California, on three criminal counts. The alleged events occurred before he joined Reuters, the indictment indicated.
Two California men have been indicted for allegedly hacking point-of-sale terminals at Subway shops to steal at least $40,000.
Prosecutors accused Shahin Abdollahi, aka "Sean Holdt," and Jeffrey Thomas Wilkinson of hacking at least 13 point-of-sale (POS) terminals to install software that fraudulently loaded at least $40,000 onto Subway gift cards, according to an indictment unsealed in Boston on Friday (see below). The pair then allegedly used the cards to make purchases at Subway shops and sold them on eBay and Craigslist.
The lawyer who represented Aaron Swartz in his fight against computer fraud charges, has filed an official complaint against Stephen Heymann, the DOJ prosecutor who went after Swartz.
The complaint letter, which is dated January 28 but was just published this afternoon by The Huffington Post, accuses Heymann of withholding key evidence, as well as abusive behavior related to plea bargaining. The letter was sent to the Office of Professional Responsibility, a part of the Department of Justice tasked with overseeing its lawyers.
In a Los Angeles federal courtroom on a blindingly sunny Monday afternoon, US District Judge Otis Wright expressed incredulity at the sheer gall of the Prenda porn copyright trolling firm.
There was some brief rejoicing around Washington on March 11, when Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced legislation that would order the Librarian of Congress to reconsider the decision that makes it a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to unlock a cell phone without the permission of the carrier. Previously, the Librarian had exempted cell phone unlocking from the DMCA, but in January made a puzzling ruling that changed all that.
Officers from the cyber crime unit of the Royal Malaysian Police arrested a 27-year-old man on Wednesday for hosting links to illegal downloads on the popular local message board and file-sharing site, SYOK.org.
According to the police, the suspect, who is from the city of Kulim, is believed to be the operator of SYOK.org, which counts registered users in the hundreds of thousands (according to the website’s own Facebook page). In order to participate on the forum, users must register a username and password.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is joining with attorney Charles Lee Mudd Jr. to represent two blogs caught up in a bizarre lawsuit filed by Paul Duffy and Prenda Law LLC, Duffy's copyright troll law firm.
Copyright trolls try to make money by suing Internet users under various copyright laws. Their tactics include targeting large groups of anonymous "John Doe" defendants for downloading files on BitTorrent, seeking their identities, and exploiting the massive damages in copyright law in order to pressure defendants into settling quickly.
Google is nearing a US$7 million (A$6.9 million) settlement with some 30 US states over a 2010 incident in which its Street View mapping cars collected passwords and other personal data from home wireless networks, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The announcement of the settlement is expected to be made by the states early this week, according to the person, though some of the final details of the deal were still being hammered out last Friday.
