Law and Order

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed a suit against British twin brothers alleging a cunning variation on the classic 'pump and dump' stock fraud that used the prowess of a non-existent computer program to con over $3 million from eager investors. 

Extraordinarily, the pair, Thomas and Alexander Hunter from seaside town Whitley Bay near Newcastle, are said to have set up the fraud in 2007 when they were only 16 years old, not even young enough to vote or legally drink alcohol.

After filing a lawsuit against 24,583 individuals who allegedly downloaded the Oscar-winning film "The Hurt Locker," movie studio Voltage Pictures is at it again. This time, in a new lawsuit, they've added about 2,500 other alleged BitTorrent users to its list, according to TorrentFreak.

A jilted boyfriend who put nude pictures of his former lover on Facebook has been sentenced to six months' jail - the first social networking-related conviction in Australian history and one of just a handful in the world.

Ravshan ''Ronnie'' Usmanov told police: ''I put the photos up because she hurt me and it was the only thing [I had] to hurt her.'' The six pictures, according to court documents, showed his ex-girlfriend ''nude in certain positions and clearly showing her breasts and genitalia''.

The criminal charges against Kim Dotcom in the United States may never get to trial, the judge overseeing the case has told the FBI.

United States district court judge Liam O'Grady said he didn't know if "we are ever going to have a trial in this matter" after being told Dotcom's file-sharing company had never been formally served with criminal papers by the US.

YouTube must filter content uploaded by users, a German court ruled Friday.

YouTube was taken to court for copyright infringement in uploaded videos by German music royalty collecting society GEMA, which said that the Google-owned video site isn't doing enough to block copyright-protected music videos.

Yesterday, EFF participated in a panel discussion about CISPA moderated by CNET's Declan McCullagh and put on by Hackers and Founders. We were happy to have the opportunity to do so, and although we disagreed quite a bit with a key proponent of the bill, House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee staffer Jamil Jaffer, one area where we agreed is that more people should read the text of the bill.

According to the Montreal Gazette, a local lawyer has seized an opportunity to sue Apple on behalf of any Canadian citizen who has purchased an e-book over the last two years, piggybacking on the U.S. Department of Justice's recent lawsuit (video), claiming Apple and its publishing partners colluded to fix the prices of e-books and drive down competition. 

Nokia has suffered a defeat against IPCom after a German court ruled it had infringed IPCom's patents.

IPCom accused Nokia of infringing patents that cover technology for allowing mobile phones to connect to 3G networks. Nokia had failed to get the patents thrown out and a Mannheim court has ruled Nokia infringed IPCom's patents.

A senior U.S. House of Representatives aide said at an event held this evening at CNET's headquarters that he was astonished by the recent groundswell of opposition to a cybersecurity bill expected to be voted on next week.

"I'm really astounded to keep hearing this drumbeat that it's vague," Jamil Jaffer, senior counsel to the House Intelligence Committee, said during a roundtable on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA (PDF), moderated by CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh.

An Estonian man has been extradited to New York to face charges he was part of a hacking gang that infected more than 4 million computers with malware as part of a massive click-fraud scheme.