Under Indonesia’s Information and Electronic Transactions Law, users can face between seven and 12 years behind bars if their tweet is found to be conveying any of the following: pornography, threats, fraud, gambling, and blasphemy. “If they violate the laws, they will be punished. Principally, every account user could be held responsible by tracing his position and device,” the country’s minister Tifatul Sembiring was quoted as saying.

It seems a bit crazy, but then again Indonesia isn’t the only country to treat Twitter as a public forum that is no different than something you would do or say in the real world. In fact, there have even been cases in the US where tweets led to governmental action. Earlier this year, a British tourist who tweeted that he wanted to “destroy” America (using the word to mean he’d “tear it up,” etc) was denied entry into the country and detained by federal agents. The moral of the story? Be careful what you tweet.

[via VentureBeat]

Those of you looking for the file do download, you can head on over to FBI.gov and grab a copy for yourself – load it on up to your reader tablet! Then check it out – with the tool known as MuckRock and some well written paragraphs addressed to the FBI, mister Michael Morisy was able to request the file in question with only one initial letter and a few follow-up letters to remind them of the request. Because of the Freedom of Information Act’s rules, the FBI was required to pull the file and send it over to Morisy in full.

Of course the PDF does have personal information knocked out of it, as it should, and there are some rather lengthy blocks whited out in what we must assume is an effort to keep the still living associates of Steve Jobs private as they were promised they’d be in the original interviews. Odd bits you can find though are the following: Steve Jobs Social Security Number, admissions by several colleagues that Jobs may very well have done his fair share of illegal substance consumption, and ideas along the lines of Jobs being satisfied only when he got his own way — these are, of course, all marks of a champion. And a champion we all knew Jobs to certainly be.

Check the file out then see if the FBI has anything else of interest you’d want to check out – there’s more files in their repository than anyone could ever possible read in a lifetime!

[via MuckRock]

Anonymous also had a news tip pop up this morning on how they’d intercepted a phone call between Scottland Yard and the FBI, this racking them up another notch in their belt for impressive cuts in the hacking world against major targets. What we’ve got here is what Anonymous billed as “Anonymous hacks Boston Police website in retaliation for police brutality at OWS.” The hack project in this case appears to also have resulted in personal information of confidential informants and tipsters was accessed, as as sensitive data surrounding citizen complaints about drug crimes.

“Statement from BPD regarding BPDNews.com hacking incident: The Boston Police Department is working diligently to restore the function of BPDNews.com, the department’s public safety blog. It is unfortunate that someone would go to this extent to compromise BPDNews.com, a helpful and informative public safety resource utilized daily by community members seeking up-to-date news and information about important safety matters. Our skillful technical staff is focused on rectifying this issue. Detectives continue their investigation into individuals engaging in this type of disruptive and criminal activity.” – Boston Police Department

What Anonymous is noting instead is that this attack comes in part because of what they called brutality against Occupy Boston, and part because of an anti-graffiti paraphernalia bill nearly passed in Boston state senate. This bill would have made it illegal not just to perform vandalism in the state, but to possess any instrument, tool, or device with intent of vandalizing – broadness will get you hit!

Interestingly, the VPPA came about after a Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, found a list of his video rental records printed in a news publication. Let’s just say they weren’t all Disney flicks, and Bork didn’t receive approval for the nomination. So its origins are about keeping politicians protected from their own personal lives, which is why you can imagine there is some resistance to change.

The House of Representatives passed an amended version of the law last month, giving users the ability to consent to having their information shared. This would make the Netflix Facebook app legal. But on the Senate side of things, there’s a different story. Democrats are poised to block the new law from being enacted because they call it too much of an invasion of privacy. “A one-time check off that has the effect of an all-time surrender of privacy does not seem to me the best course for consumers,” said Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy. In other words, these guys don’t get it.

[via Venture Beat]

The size here in these drones used by the Miami police force is vital as in the past in these standoff situations they’d be using helicopters, which are certainly larger targets than they’d like to be presenting. A standoff, as they’re mentioning here, is one in which there’s a single person or a set of people on the opposing side with weapons, perhaps firing them off, perhaps just threatening violence, but certainly not suspecting there’ll be a tiny flying robot hovering over their heads. The T-Hawk Micro-Air Vehicle looks like a small vacuum cleaner and sounds like a weedwhacker – certainly not threatening to anyone either.

Again these drones have no payload capability, no cargo bay as it were, and they’re completely remotely controlled from a station on the ground which can also see what the camera on the device sees in real time. The cost of one of these drones is about $200,000, which compared to the massive price of a helicopter unit will certainly be enticing to police forces with a need but not a whole lot of cash. The program that launched these two drones was funded by a 2008 federal grant, costing county taxpayers then just $1 total.

[via TheDaily]

What Blackburn is saying here is that forcing a defendant to decrypt a laptop so its contents can be inspected is essentially the same as producing any other bit of evidence. If a law enforcement agent has a warrant, they can force you to open up your trunk, your home, and of course your person – and now your hard drive as well. In this particular case, the defendant was also recorded speaking about how she owned the laptop and that it contained incriminating evidence, so that’s not doing her any favors either.

So know this, folks who do things so illegal they’ll certainly be caught eventually: your hard drive passwords will not save you. Should you get in trouble with the cops for digital crimes, you’ve got only one course of action available to you: trash it all. Smash your computer into little bits and destroy everything. But then there’s another factor in play: willful destruction of evidence. Instead just play it safe and don’t do anything illegal ever – sound good?

[via Cnet]

What this ruling does is take GPS devices and place them in the same category as a Police officer demanding that a person empty their pockets if they’ve got no real reason to do so. The word “search” is what’s important here, and the Supreme Court has found it unreasonable to search a person, or track a person, as it were, without justifiable intent. Have a peek at some important bits from the ruling here:

The Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle,
and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment.

(a) The Fourth Amendment protects the “right of the people to be
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” Here, the Government’s physical intrusion on an “effect” for the purpose of obtaining information constitutes a “search.” This type of encroachment on an area enumerated in the Amendment would have been considered a search within the meaning of the Amendment at the time it was adopted.

You can check out the entire ruling in PDF form if you wish, noting especially how the addition of a whole new category of search is important to us all when speaking about privacy in our country. The image you see above comes from Jon Snyder and Wired, Snyder being the fellow on trial here as his movements were tracked by the government for 32 days without his consent via his car and a couple of GPS devices, one of them being the one you see in the image above.

[via Wired]

It’s not that these kinds of bills won’t ever crop up again, because they certainly will, but it is nice to see that these Senators and representatives can be influenced by the public rather than by those dropping cash on their re-election campaigns. Of course it’s not as simple as all that, but there it is – these bills are essentially toast! The next thing that’ll happen is they’ll be re-written and tried for passage with much less media attention – we can’t let that happen. That said, Lamar Smith had the following to say on the subject today:

“I have heard from the critics and I take seriously their concerns regarding proposed legislation to address the problem of online piracy. It is clear that we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem of foreign thieves that steal and sell American inventions and products. The Committee will continue work with both copyright owners and Internet companies to develop proposals that combat online piracy and protect America’s intellectual property. We welcome input from all organizations and individuals who have an honest difference of opinion about how best to address this widespread problem.” – Smith

Certainly that would be a problem if that were the case, mister Smith, but you and I know that this is not why the bill has failed you. Former Senator Chris Dodd, in the wake of this decision and certainly in the wake of yesterday’s events with Anonymous, had a bit to say on the subject as well:

“With today’s announcement, we hope the dynamics of the conversation can change and become a sincere discussion about how best to protect the millions of American jobs affected by the theft of American intellectual property. It is incumbent that they now sincerely work with all of us to achieve a meaningful solution to this critically important goal.” – Dodd

This isn’t the last we’ve heard of this subject, I assure you.

[via Ars Technica]

The indictment was unsealed Thursday, January 19th, 2012, not one day later than a multitude of sites shut themselves down for a 24 hour period to protest laws relatively similar to the ones being used to knock out Megaupload now. The difference here is that Megaupload is local while SOPA and PIPA work to snuff out USA access to international sites with pirated material. Megaupload has noted that they’ve always been diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material, but it seems to have done them no good in this situation.

Until we find out more, you can feel free to go to other sites to upload content, as there are an insurmountable amount of them, but remember this: these folks CAN get stomped on by the federal authorities. It is a real situation, and the consequences are real, so tread lightly, my friends. Unless of course you’ve got a way to help Megaupload or to stop piracy altogether, those would be great goals, of course.

[via XDA]

What Shirky says here is that this isn’t the first time the big names in the media industry have tried to stop us, the public, from sharing and creating our own media. What they’d like, and that these bills and bills of the past have tried to do, as he’ll explain, is bring us back to the ideal age for them, when televisions and radios were what we sat in front of and consumed, and that’s it. Everything from video tapes to xerox copy machines to the newest weapons of sharing, downloads and streaming video, these are things that the groups producing and otherwise selling the media you consume would have stomped out and destroyed.

If SOPA and PIPA pass, you will be guilty until proven innocent. Because groups like YouTube cannot by any realistic means afford to police each and every person who submits videos to their site, they’d have to shut down uploads by you, and would only be able to show videos they upload themselves that have been pre-approved by the owners of said media. Tumblr, WordPress, essentially every message board in the world, and more, will be under the gun should SOPA and PIPA pass, simply because they do not have the legal means to stop the wave of taketown notices that would pummel them.

Watch that video, see what you think. Also check our timeline below for the rest of the SOPA and PIPA related news and columns.

His note itself has over 75 thousand likes on it, having gotten these in right around 10 minutes, the support from his followers (and the rest of the internet) quite clear at this point. Zuckerberg notes that Facebook is wholly against both SOPA and PIPA and he also links to Facebook’s position page making their views, again, very clear.

You can check out our view on SOPA and PIPA in the post we laid out this morning, and find out all you need to know about the bills in our timeline below. These bills are dangerous and WILL have adverse affects on the way you are able to access information if they’re allowed to pass. Don’t let it happen!

SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act and its sibling bill is PIPA, or the Protect IP Act. Both bills are written in a way that makes them appear to attempt the killing of online piracy – the hosting of media like videos, music, software, and the like, and offering it for download when the hosts do not have the right to do so. What they actually would do, instead, is to put up a screen door to block a wave, this stopping all of the law-abiding fish when its the water they’re trying to get. SOPA and PIPA give rights to businesses and the government itself to stop and sue companies out of existence, even if they’re not actually doing anything illegal.

NOTE: Read the entirety of SOPA here and the entirety of PIPA here.

SOPA and PIPA work with non-US sites by attacking the sites inside the USA that work with them to bring their content to US citizens. Just to be clear, the US government already has the right to seize domains inside the USA (.com, .net. and .org) they believe are used for piracy, and have been doing so since 2010 through the “Operation In Our Sites” act with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) – having seized hundreds of domains thus far. The Pentagon has “Cyberspace” as an Operational Domain as well, if you want to know. What SOPA and PIPA do instead is to force US-based internet service providers, search engines, online payment groups (like Paypal), and ad services to stop working with, indexing, and paying groups outside the USA if they host illegal content.

Copyright owners will be able to write up a certain kind of letter under SOPA and PIPA to a media host such as YouTube or any manner of data host (like the ones that host SlashGear) demanding that if the group (like us) take down any little bit of content we have, without proof that it’s theirs. If we do no respond within five days, our host would have to either take us down entirely, or face themselves being sued into a corner as well. Can you see how this might be harmful to more people than just those who are “real” pirates of illegal content?

SOPA has a section (section 104, if you’re counting) which allows for a big bad conflict of interests that favors giant companies like Comcast. As mister Nilay Patel notes, legal immunity to ISPs like Comcast to block websites at will. Comcast owns NBC, and if they found a group from somewhere outside the USA that competes with them, they could claim, technically, that if they had “reasonable belief” that they were “dedicated to the theft of US property,” they could stop them from being shown to everyone under their Comcast umbrella.

That’s not an open and free Internet, and it will not stop piracy.

And this is just the beginning. The people writing up this bill are not alone, and they’re not going to stop just the same as the people pirating media are not going to stop, ever. You’re not going to get someone to stop looking at your painting if its out in public, you’re not going to stop someone from smelling the lovely smells your bakery gives off – the only thing you can do, media creators, is evolve.

These lawmakers are not protecting the interests of movie makers, they’re not helping out those who make music for a living. They’re attempting to control the free and open internet as it stands today so they can profit from a closed market. Plain and simple.

Get educated, do everything you can to stop this kind of outright evil.

[poll 25]

“As for me, what I am hoping is that people outside the US who have friends or family who are voters in the US, will ask them to make a call to their senator or representative,” Wales explained, “and I hope we send a broad global message that the internet as a whole will not tolerate censorship in response to mere allegations of copyright infringement.”

The alternative, the Wikipedia founder says, was the possibility of only taking down the site for US visitors. That resulted in a close vote on how broad the protest should be: in the end, 591 of the Wikipedia community polled said they were in favor of the global blackout, against 479 calling for it to be US-only. “While there was a solid majority, it wasn’t the overwhelming majority that we had for the whole concept” Wales admits. “It seems to have been somewhat of a tough choice for many people.”

SOPA has, most recently, been apparently shelved after the Obama Administration voiced concerns that the proposed act might be too dangerous in terms of challenging the underlying openness of the internet. It’s a stance that earned the US President a tongue-lashing from News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch, who described Obama as having “thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters” while Google is apparently the “piracy leader.”

If you’re panic-stricken at the thought of being without Wikipedia for 24hrs, there’s still hope. You can download an offline version of the database from here, assuming you have sufficient drive space and bandwidth.

“This is going to be wow. I hope Wikipedia will melt phone systems in Washington on Wednesday. Tell everyone you know,” tweeted Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales this morning calling the move a decision made by the Wikipedia community. The announcement, however, follows Congress’ decision earlier today to shelve the SOPA vote until there is consensus on the bill.

Nonetheless, companies are going forward with the blackout and note that the bill could still be resurrected and that PIPA is still being actively considered. “We have no indication that SOPA is fully off the table,” said Wales in another tweet this morning. “PIPA is still alive and kicking. We need to send Washington a BIG message.”

[via VentureBeat]

Issa continued by noting that “While I remain concerned about Senate action on the Protect IP Act, I am confident that flawed legislation will not be taken up by this House.” This is, again, a decisive victory for not only those opponents of the bill in Washington, but the masses of internet groups that came out to oppose the bill and its flawed bits allowing companies to shut down webpages at the crack of a whip. You can view the full continuum of events surrounding this situation in our timeline below.

Meanwhile do not think to yourself that this is the end of such legislature. The powers that be will continue to try to move through congress, the house, and the president to bring about a bill that’ll allow big business to censor the internet. It sounds too absurd to be true, but the possibility is there – know it, and fight against it.

[Image via Haibane]

“Instead of the normal glorious, user-curated chaos of reddit, we will be displaying a simple message about how the PIPA/SOPA legislation would shut down sites like reddit, link to resources to learn more, and suggest ways to take action … We’re not taking this action lightly. We wouldn’t do this if we didn’t believe this legislation and the forces behind it were a serious threat to reddit and the Internet as we know it. Blacking out reddit is a hard choice, but we feel focusing on a day of action is the best way we can amplify the voice of the community.” Reddit

It’s not the first blackout protest that has been staged to show users just what they might find happening to their favorite sites should SOPA pass. Microblogging site tumblr prompted almost 90,000 calls to US Representatives in November, after taking the site offline bar offering a way for concerned users to get in touch with their local elected official.

Subsequently, Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal and others have openly mulled the possibility of a synchronized blackout, as the opponents to SOPA grow more concerned that the act could succeed. Earlier today, CES 2012 organizer CEA announced it too opposes SOPA, directing the “nerd army” over to DeclareInnovation.com to find out how they can protest.

When someone like Vint speaks up on a matter of such importance as this, it’s time to listen up. A fellow with such insight as to have seen that developments like TCP/IP were needed in order to bring the internet about is certainly one whose opinions on that network are to be considered. Thats why when he speaks the following, the government, too, should be turning their earphones and eyeballs up:

“Technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience. It is a mistake to place any particular technology in this exalted category, since over time we will end up valuing the wrong things. … Improving the Internet is just one means, albeit an important one, by which to improve the human condition. It must be done with an appreciation for the civil and human rights that deserve protection – without pretending that access itself is such a right.” – Cerf

What do you think, folks, is it the job of one party or the other to provide access to the rest of the world for citizens such as you and I through technology such as the internet? Does it make sense to put such a responsibility in the hands of the technology industry instead of the government? Not that you’d want to have to bring yourself to truly trust either body of action, but how do you expect anyone to charge someone with denying you your right to communicate on any level?

[via The New York Times]

Financial details behind this most recent set of transactions have not been revealed at the moment, nor are the terms quite yet apparent. Google and IBM have kept such details to themselves in the past as well. Google has acquired several thousand patents inside the 12 months of 2011 alone, with more sure to unfold inside the early months of 2012 if I may be so bold. It’s pretty clear at this point that IBM has found Google to be a suitable place to move their patents to, perhaps (and again, this is conjecture) due to the fact that Google’s Android OS had been the subject of so many law bombs throughout the last year.

What we’re seeing here is patents for everything from “Selecting and Rendering a Section of a Web Page” to the “Transfer of Web Applications Between Devices.” Perhaps most interesting is the one by the name of Computer Phone, whose abstract reads thusly:

Computer phone

Abstract

A computer integrated cordless phone. The phone can include a cordless handset transceiver configured for coupling to an antenna shared with a wireless network adapter through a multiplexer/demultiplexer so that both of the cordless handset transceiver and the wireless network adapter transmit and receive data within a common wireless frequency spectrum. In a preferred embodiment, the cordless handset transceiver can include a further configuration for coupling to a central processing unit, audio processing circuitry and power supply within a computing device shared with the wireless network adapter. Notably, the common wireless frequency spectrum can include the ISM frequency band.

That file contains patent filings leading all the way back to April of 1987, one written up by Nishimura which calls for a “Wireless phone system communicatively combined with a computer.” Interesting stuff! Check out that filing in U.S. Patent Document 4,661,659 and the one for Computer Phone in U.S. Patent Document 7,499,726. Enjoy, and expect more soon!

[via SEO by the Sea]

It was in a TechDirt article that it first seemed to appear in comments that the vote had been re-scheduled not long after the first re-scheduling to make the vote in a quick and silent manner. CA-49 worker and House GOP watchdog Darrell Issa noted once that the vote would likely be Wednesday and that he’d received confirmation from Republican leader Eric Cantor that votes may take place Monday and maybe Tuesday. There is only one reason for this vote to be moved back into 2011: sidestepping moves like An open letter to Washington as signed by internet OGs like Sergey Brin and Mitchell Baker.

You can take action by contacting your state representative with this easy to use form or just call them up if you’ve got their number handy. H.R. 3261: Stop Online Piracy Act can be read in its entirety at Goftrack.us, complete with gems like this one: “To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes.” Seem like a pretty big open space there? You are not alone in thinking this. Take action now or big business owners will be able to request and receive the ability to censor pages and content you post to the internet without due process. That’s the long and short of it.

[via Reddit]

This isn’t the most creative way to do away with pirates – not by a long shot – but it’s certain to wake more than a few of them up to the fact that they’re certainly not going unnoticed, and the chance that they will get caught taking what they didn’t pay for is certainly no non-existent. Torrentfreak is one of the websites that is claiming they’ve been contacted by these thousands of recipients of bills for €911.80 ($1230) as sent out by CD Projekt. They’re also saying, though, that the recipients aren’t always who CD Projekt assumes they are:

“Aside from targeting many people who indeed downloaded and shared the game without paying, CD Projekt’s lawyers are also wrongfully accusing people who have never even heard of the game.” – Torrentfreak

Back in 2008, as some of you may remember, UK based file-sharing lawyers Davenport Lyons sent out very similar cash settlement demands. This set of demands was instead for the original Witcher game. CD Project has affirmed, contrary to what Torrentfreak says, that they “only take legal actions against users who we are 100 per cent sure have downloaded our game illegally.” Sound alright to you?

[via Venture Beat]

What the signees of this letter suggest is that everyone who will vote upon these acts heed their words, they being people fortunate enough to have been able to freely found Internet companies and nonprofits “in a regulatory climate that promotes entrepreneurship, innovation, the creation of content and free expression online.” They note that although they recognize that the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act were both started as “well-meaning efforts to control piracy online,” they’ve now turned into legislation that will undermine the framework that makes the internet such a great place to start a business and express one’s self online.

Points this group of leaders have raised are as follows:

These two pieces of legislation threaten to:

• Require web services, like the ones we helped found, to monitor what users link to, or upload. This would have a chilling effect on innovation;

• Deny website owners the right to due process of law;

• Give the U.S. Government the power to censor the web using techniques similar to those used by China, Malaysia and Iran; and

• Undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet.

The list below is everyone who has signed on to the letter you’ll see in the gallery below. They each “urge Congress to think hard before changing the regulation that underpins the Internet.” In that they do not want to se “the next generation of entrepreneurs and founders” to not have the same opportunities they had when they started out, they’d rather these acts were not passed. Have a look, Congress – you know what to do:

Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Mitchell Baker, co-founder of Mozilla Firefox
Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr and Hunch
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn
Arianna Huffington, co-founder of The Huffington Post
Chad Hurley, co-founder of YouTube
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and co-founder of Alexa Internet
Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist
Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay
Biz Stone, co-founder of Obvious and Twitter
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation
Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter
Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!

All that make sense to you so far, all that make it alright to have disrupted the GPS of poor defenseless little navigation machines across the nation? It’s not quite so simple as that, folks, and as Ahuja notes, the team at LightSquared has been working to fix the problem which, as you’ll see him say, isn’t of their making in the first place. In other words: LightSquared didn’t do it! Have a peek at this paragraph written up by Ahuja himself:

“The testing further confirmed that the interference issues are not caused by LightSquared’s spectrum, but by GPS devices looking into spectrum that is licensed to LightSquared. We have taken extraordinary measures — and at extraordinary expense — to solve a problem that is not of our making. We continue to believe that LightSquared and GPS can co-exist. And we will continue to work with the federal government on a solution that will allow us to begin investing $14 billion in private money into the infrastructure of America to create jobs, competition and increased access to technology to the nation.” – Ahuja

The issues brought up in the case earlier were regarding a terrain avoidance system, they say, and as they “profoundly disagree with the conclusions drawn with respect to general navigation devices,” so too do they say we should just forget about it. We’ll see how this continues to play out and if the FAA will enjoy this message as they work with LightSquared to fix up any future abnormalities.

Civilians have nothing to fear from this powerhouse of a light blaster of course since makers of the SMU 100 say it’ll only be used against rioters. The makers of this device also note that an unnamed police force is set to be giving it a trial soon, with usage more than likely set for 2012. Pal Kerr of MD Photonic Security Systems, the makers of this device, noted the following about it:

“The system would give police an intimidating visual deterrent. If you can’t look at something you can’t attack it.” – Kerr

This device’s effect is good over 500 metres (1,640ft) and has not yet been fully tested in regards to the potential side-effects of the light. This test will be part of the full trial taking place soon, and only AFTER it’s been given approval by the commission in charge of testing it at this juncture will it be allowed to head to the Home Secretary in the UK. This is not the first time a weapon such as this has been used – American and British troops used similar blasters in Afghanistan to protect convoys from attack by sight-dependent enemies – but the UK police have not been using such excellent light-based-weapons up until now.

ALSO though we’ve been assured several times that it’s not, we must assume that the rifle will work like this:

[via BBC]

Seems sort of like a scheme of devilish proportions when it comes down to it then, doesn’t it, when you’ve got a brand new service for sale that you “allow” people to purchase to protect themselves? In reality though what’s happened is that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers approved the .XXX domain inside 2011 after ICM Registry originally submitted a proposal in 2000. This situation is essentially no different from each other time a domain name family is approved for sales by domain name dealers, it’s just that the adult-themed nature of this combination of three letters makes the situation much more high profile. ICM Registry CEO Stuart Lawley noted the following on the situation:

“[The .XXX domain name exists] to clearly signpost adult entertainment on the Net. For those people who want to find adult content, they can easily find it, and for those who wish to avoid this kind of content, not only can you see that it has the .xxx as a suffix visibly … parents can set their browser settings at home and on mobile devices to filter this content out automatically.” – Lawley

For those of you with businesses in a position to get wrapped up in this situation, will you end up picking up your own .XXX domain, or will you let it fly to the devils? This domain name suffix is not quite as inexpensive as your .COM, your .US, or even your .NET names out there, so you’ll have to weigh against the dollars and cents you’ll have to drop in addition to working to block yourself to safety. Will you shield your brand from porn?

[via USA Today]

Over at the Consumerist, mister Ben Popken spoke with Lamberti this week and asked him several questions on why crowdsourcing, as you might call it, is working for the police force in Broward County. Lamberti noted that the air conditioner theft case would normally have taken several months, starting with an internal conflict as well as heavy talks about resource allocation, then talks with both Crime Watch and Neighborhood Watch (similar projects in which citizens are keeping watch over their own community) and more than likely a special task force would have to be created. A lead would need to be generated, and a few months later an arrest would MAYBE be made. Instead, in this case, that whole process was effectively dismissed and an arrest was made in less than a week – two days, to be exact.

Sheriff Lamberti’s fan page currently sits at 5,700 at the time of this posting, and as Lamberti notes, “We could have never touched that many people through Crime Watch.” Through this page fans will learn such mundane things as when Lamberti is draining the local pool to important events like the 11th Annual Bubbles & Bones Gala and his re-election campaign that inevitably pops up here and there. Requests for help and/or information from the citizens of his county are what we’re really looking for though, as they appear very much to be rather effective.

“A lot of crimes now are non-traditional, like prescription drug abuse and identity theft. All these new waves of crime we just don’t have the resources to deal with them while still going after bank robberies and auto theft. …When you talk about reducing budget and service, you need the public on your side more. Social media is a force multiplier.” -Lamberti

Such power was also shown in a case of coupon stealing this year in which after Lamberti sent out the call for information, an individual was filmed stealing the coupons from newspaper bins. In addition to the film, Lamberti got over 100 private messages regarding the thefts, and upon a local news reporter taking another camera to film showing the footage to the suspect, he admitted stealing the coupons. At which point, of course, the police were able to make an arrest without any additional resources dedicated to the case. How’s that for saving taxpayer money?

[via the Consumerist]

Of course this week we’ve also heard reports that Google has complied with the vast majority of takedown requests on user data over the past year, but today is different in its apparent – and I do once again note that this is not CONFIRMED, but seems quite OBVIOUS to your humble narrator – nature.

The connection comes in the form of THREE quotes from Google. The first is in a post on Google’s Enterprise blog:

More than 4 million businesses and 40 million users trust us with the data they store in Google Apps. We work to be responsible stewards of that data, and transparency is one important aspect of that. Last year, we posted a Transparency Report to provide the Internet community with more insight about how often governments ask for user data. Earlier this week, we published an update to the report. For the first time, we’re not only disclosing the number of requests for user data, but we’re showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in those requests, too.

The “update to the report” included the following, as posted on the Official Google blog:

Today we’re updating the Government Requests tool with numbers for requests that we received from January to June 2011. For the first time, we’re not only disclosing the number of requests for user data, but we’re showing the number of users or accounts that are specified in those requests too. We also recently released the raw data behind the requests. Interested developers and researchers can now take this data and revisualize it in different ways, or mash it up with information from other organizations to test and draw up new hypotheses about government behaviors online.

We believe that providing this level of detail highlights the need to modernize laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which regulates government access to user information and was written 25 years ago—long before the average person had ever heard of email. Yet at the end of the day, the information that we’re disclosing offers only a limited snapshot. We hope others join us in the effort to provide more transparency, so we’ll be better able to see the bigger picture of how regulatory environments affect the entire web.

The two quotes below, both published on the 27th of October, show that the quote below, though it sits inside a Google transparency report that shows a report on the first half of 2011, shows that Google has and continues to keep this stance on the subject at hand:

“We received a request from a local law enforcement agency to remove YouTube videos of police brutality, which we did not remove. Separately, we received requests from a different local law enforcement agency for removal of videos allegedly defaming law enforcement officials. We did not comply with those requests, which we have categorized in this Report as defamation requests.”

I must remind you once more that this paragraph is connected to the first half of this year, but that because of Googles promotion of this report this week, and the fact that it appears that NONE of the videos from Occupy Oakland with Police Brutality in them have been removed (to this author’s knowledge), that Google has refused all requests (that may or may not have been made) to take them down. Your narrator here happened upon this connection in an article on Read Write Web – as you’ll see in the comments, Jon Mitchell answered your humble narrator’s request to clarify the issue as it was first written, this then also resulting in the post you are now reading.

And what about the video / videos in question?

Here’s just a few of them. Lemme know what you think about them and the possibility that Google has both had requests to take them down by local police institutions and has refused those requests:

Wikipedia being a site that is without an editorial staff and has its entire contents made and edited by 3rd party contributors. In the case that there is a dispute about contents on any page, either an agreement must be met by the creator of the content and the person disputing it, or the content will be pulled entirely. What Italy’s new law would have done is to use government-inflicted requirements to have changes made without a judge – this is essentially what Wikipedia would be if, first of all, there were no mediators, and second, if there were no way to delete anything written on any page. Mass madness, basically.

Wikipedia Italy writes:

It should be made more than clear that none of us wants to question safeguarding and protection of the reputation, honor and image of any party – but we also note that every Italian citizen is already protected in this respect by Article 595 of the Criminal Code, which punishes the crime of defamation.

With this announcement, we want to warn our readers against the risks arising from leaving to the arbitrary will of any party to enforce the alleged protection of its image and its reputation. Under such provisions, web users would be most probably led to cease dealing with certain topics or people, just to “avoid troubles”.

We want to be able to keep a free and open-to-all encyclopaedia, because our articles are also your articles – Wikipedia is already neutral, why neutralize it?

The users of Wikipedia

The proposed last is known as “DDL intercettazioni” (Wiretapping Act) and the piece of the law that’s not quite the most agreeable is inside paragraph 29, as shown below. Seem like Wikipedia is doing the right thing? Protest!

The Bill – Rules on Wiretapping etc., p. 24, paragraph 29, letter a) states that:

«For the Internet sites, including newspapers and periodicals delivered by telematic way, the statements or corrections are published, with the same graphic characteristics, the same access methodology to the site and the same visibility of the news which they refer.

[via WikiItalia]

The net neutrality rules ban internet providers from deliberately blocking or slowing legal internet traffic. However, they do not prevent providers from offering faster traffic for companies that may need it for delivering video, games, and other services. The rules also offer more protection for consumers, requiring providers to be give more information on their services and actual speeds.

Although the new rules apply mostly to wired broadband networks, it will also require wireless internet providers to have fewer restrictions. There’s been plenty of opposition, which argue that the rules would only require more paperwork and that the FCC was overstepping its authority. Lawsuits were filed by Verizon and MetroPCS seeking to block the net neutrality rules, but the cases were dismissed as premature since the rules were not in place yet at the time. With the rules taking effect in November, we’ll be sure to see more lawsuits to come.

[via WSJ]

Note before we go any further several factoids, the first of which being that the grandfather of Java James Gosling just about a week ago decided to leave Google after only a half year on the job, this lining up suspiciously well with both the start of and possibly the end of the case we’re looking at right this moment. Remember also that so-called evidence dug up by IP man Florian Mueller has since been proven to be useless to the suit incase you were still wondering about that, and also remember that in July of 2011 relatively new Google CEO Larry Page was the subject of a 2 hour grilling on the case.

Also, for your records, this is completely separate from the patent wars being spoken about by Microsoft and Google over the past couple of months.

Now what we’re seeing today is that Google and Oracle appear to be walking together, holding hands, smiling at one another as they reach the mediation table where they’ll make a newly minted attempt at settling the case. Both Google and Oracle have released statements on the subject.

Google writes:

Google welcomes the Court’s suggestion that the parties participate in a mediation of this case before a Magistrate Judge. Google does not object to participating in a mediation before a Magistrate Judge who is not otherwise involved in this case.

Google recognizes the importance of having top executives of the parties attend the Court-ordered mediation. Google proposes that Andrew Rubin, who is Senior Vice President, Mobile and reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer, attend for Google together with Kent Walker, Vice President and General Counsel of Google. Mr. Rubin’s executive responsibilities include all of Google’s mobile business, of which the Android business is a part. Mr. Rubin is knowledgeable regarding the issues in this case and he is fully empowered to resolve this matter on reasonable terms.

Google also understands from counsel for Oracle that they propose that Safra Catz and Thomas Kurian attend on behalf of Oracle — and Google agrees with this choice. Ms. Catz is one of two Presidents of Oracle who, like Mr. Rubin, reports directly to Oracle’s Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Rubin and Ms. Catz were involved in previous discussions involving the subject matter at issue in this case.

Oracle writes:

Oracle concurs with the Court’s view that an additional attempt at settlement of the case through mediation before a United State Magistrate Judge is warranted. Oracle has found previous efforts at settlement, including private discussions between the parties, frustrating for lack of follow-through, and believes that those efforts have not exhausted the possibilities for resolving the case.

As suggested by the Court, Oracle considers it essential that both parties bring top-level executives. Accordingly, Oracle’s executive representatives in the mediation before the Magistrate Judge will be Safra Catz, President of Oracle Corporation, and Thomas Kurian, Executive Vice President of Oracle Product Development.

Oracle will strive to make its representatives available as necessary and proposes that the mediation occur before the end of September.

So Judge William Alsup, in his infinite wisdom, has suggested such a mediation before the case heads to jury. Oracle’s Safra Catz, if you were considering this particular meeting to be a matchup of minds, might be the top contender in this barrel, and as that fellow Florian Mueller, who just seems to keep popping up in this epic story somehow, says:

The choice of Andy Rubin and Google’s General Counsel Kent Walker is very questionable. While Google can’t be penalized for the fact that it doesn’t give anyone the title of “President”, those two executives are clearly not at a level with Safra Catz.

What do you think? Are Google and Oracle taking this case seriously? I sure as heck feel like Oracle is ready to go the full swinging boxing match here – and with what’s at stake, one would hope that both parties would bring their best contenders to the floor. We’ll be following this story to the end, so stay tuned until the very epic end!

[via FossPatents]

From what the two defendants in this newly minted case say, they were only acting on what they’d been told and what they’d heard from other sources – authorities they say therefor acting outrageously in the face of what they’re calling simple repeats (or in this case re-tweets) of information. Vera noted that he was sending out information that had been confirmed by his sister-in-law who had children that attended the school, while Pagola said she’d only been re-posting what she’d seen already posted on social networks earlier that day.

“How can they possibly do this to me, for re-tweeting a message? I mean, it’s 140 characters. It’s not logical.” – Pagola, quoted by her defense lawyer Claribel Guevara.

Veracruz state interior secretary Gerardo Buganza noted the results of the Tweets, those being people stopping their cars in the middle of the road to run and make sure their children weren’t harmed, car crashes, and what he said was panic which made Orson Welles’ 1938 radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” seem small in comparison. For those of you unaware, said radio broadcast actually caused quite a ruckus in 1938 as the broadcast made it seem as though there were an alien invasion, citizens listening in and panicking to the point of jumping in their cars and heading for the mountains for safety, if you know what I mean.

Both Vera and Pagola have been arrested and according to President Felipe Calderon, their actions are being treated as acts of terrorism. They could therefor face up to 30 years in prison if given a maximum sentence. Both Vera, a 48-year-old former school teacher who lives in the eastern state of Veracruz, and Pagola, a radio commentator and former government official, contend that not only were they only repeating what they’d heard from a separate source, but supporters for their release note that there’d already been weeks of gun battles in the area between drug traffickers and that on the same day as the incident, residents were seeing armed convoys of marines gathering in the streets, leading to rumors of possible incidents.

Vera’s original tweet read as follows:

“I can confirm this, at the Jorge Arroyo school in the Carranza district, five children have been taken away by an armed group. Total psychosis in the area.” – Vera

Veracruz Governor Javier Duarte de Ochoa noted the following in a statement:

“The punishment for those who caused damages is not because they are Twitter users, but for the consequences that their irresponsible acts provoked” – Ochoa

Finally Amnesty International wrote the following:

“The lack of safety creates an atmosphere of mistrust in which rumors that circulate on social networks are part of people’s efforts to protect themselves, since there is very little trustworthy information” – Amnesty International

What do you think? Is even re-tweeting information that could potentially lead to a riot worthy of punishment equitable to actually intentionally starting a riot? That said, with the information you’ve got here, do you think these two citizens intended to cause chaos? And what does this say about the current state of Social Networking?

[via DailyTech]

The funniest bit about this entire situation is that Samsung literally attached a YouTube clip to a court case file as evidence that as far back as 1968 (in the Kubrick film) tablets have had a rather chopped-down look to them. Whether or not this actually holds up in the case is yet to be seen – what’s interesting here is that by including a YouTube clip, Samsung has made this part of the case viral.

Another item of note is that the interior of the spaceship Discovery, this “tablet” scene included, was conceived several months before it was actually filmed, filming taking place somewhere inside 1965, pushing this “invention” date back even further. The officers aboard the ship, Bowman and Poole, also should be noted as using 9×16 ratio tablets, much larger than what we’re seeing in 10-inch tablets today. The YouTube user septemberX uploaded this video back on February 11, 2010, so we can guess that he had no original intent on it being used for this court case.

Samsung’s note includes the following:

Attached hereto as Exhibit D is a true and correct copy of a still image taken from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In a clip from that film lasting about one minute, two astronauts are eating and at the same time using personal tablet computers. The clip can be downloaded online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ8pQVDyaLo. As with the design claimed by the D’889 Patent, the tablet disclosed in the clip has an overall rectangular shape with a dominant display screen, narrow borders, a predominately flat front surface, a flat back surface (which is evident because the tablets are lying flat on the table’s surface), and a thin form factor.

Science Fiction always, always paves the way for the future. Though “true” Sci-Fi always shows a bleak, dark look at the future, here we see our present played out through the tablet computer. Whether or not it’s actually the first iPad-esque tablet or not, we’re not sure. What we can be sure of is that the idea has always been awesome.

[via FossPatents]

You can check out the full story on the original lawsuit threat on Notch’s Tumblr – basically it says that when Notch when to register the word Minecraft, he also sent in registration for the word “Scrolls.” At this time, Bethesda’s lawyers contacted Notch about their proposed “Scrolls” trademark and warned Notch that they would move for legal action in the future if they continued.

Notch sent back a message saying they did not mean to allude to anything in Bethesda’s game series, of course, but that if it was agreeable, they’d agree to never put any words before “Scrolls” in their game titles and always add more words to the end should they come out with any sequels, such as, as Notch puts it: “Scrolls – The Banana Expansion.” Having never heard back from Bethesda’s lawyers at this point, some time passed and a new letter came now that Scrolls is nearing a real live game.

Notch again got word from Bethesda’s lawyers that they’d move to legal action if they produced a game called “Scrolls” because it was too close to their trademarked name “The Elder Scrolls.” This came in the form of a 15 page letter which indicated they’d already paid the fee to the Swedish court in which they were going to sue Notch.

This week, Notch has the most awesome solution to this problem that has ever been thought of in the history of the tech industry, the gaming industry, or any other industry plagued by lawsuits galore: battle in the arena. In the Quake 3 arena, of all places, the greatest place anyone ever used a BFG to frag their opponents into oblivion ever. Here’s what Notch had to say:

Remember that scene in Game of Thrones where Tyrion chose a trial by battle in the Eyrie? Well, let’s do that instead!

I challenge Bethesda to a game of Quake 3. Three of our best warriors against three of your best warriors. We select one level, you select the other, we randomize the order. 20 minute matches, highest total frag count per team across both levels wins.

If we win, you drop the lawsuit.

If you win, we will change the name of Scrolls to something you’re fine with.

Regardless of the outcome, we could still have a small text somewhere saying our game is not related to your game series in any way, if you wish.

I am serious, by the way.

Whether or not this will be taken seriously by the other party is at the moment a moot point – this is a legendary challenge already, and Notch is a hero to us all.

Prosecutor Morley Pit noted today that charges would no longer be pursued against Gizmodo’s Jason Chen or anyone else employed by Gizmodo as “too much gray area” was found in state law which protects journalists’ unpublished notes from seizure. How does this have anything to do with the device in question? You might also recall Chen’s house being raided soon after Gizmodo posted images of the iPhone 4 as well. Turns out that’s the point of contention.

On the other hand, the two men who were found guilty of possessing and selling the iPhone 4 prototype after they “found” it in a Redwood City bar have indeed had misdemeanor charges filed against them. This all goes to show you that no matter how awesome the “leak” post is, you should always double check to see if what you’re posting is indeed a stolen device. Nothing is worth getting in gigantic trouble with the law.

[via USA Today]

Company spokesman Rich Young spoke the words above and has said that they’ve sought out injunctions against strikers in Pennsylvania and Delaware so far and will continue to seek them out in any state where strikers are blocking buildings. Around 45,000 workers are involved in the strike, none of them dealing with mobile business in Verizon Wireless stores. Labor contracts have apparently failed and Verizon workers are marching for pay and benefits they feel they deserve as Verizon employees.

The CWA represents 35,000 of the 45k workers on the strike while the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers makes up the other 10,000. Verizon spokespeople maintain that Verizon workers have been unwilling to “negotiate on anything that’s critical” while CWA members note that they’re getting “serious about bargaining.” For more information on this strike, head back to our original post entitled Verizon Workers Strike, 45,000 Union Members Strong and see some rather poignant quotes as well.

[via Rueters]

According to pan-European law, it is possible to file for such an injunction which will stop sales of products across the entirety of the EU. Thus far, the judge Apple is dealing with has backed Apple’s claim that this newest Samsung tablet has infringed on more than one Apple-owned patent and has “copied” elements of the iPad 2. Samsung is allowed to appeal against the judgement, but as Galaxy Tab 10.1 units are not allowed to be sold across the EU for the time being, the damage is essentially done. Any appeal of the decision already made (or about to be made, depending on when you read this post,) would take approximately four weeks time and would have to be heard by the same judge.

An Apple spokesperson has apparently made a statement already, noting:

“It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

The injunction in Germany affects the rest of the EU as well because according to EU law, any injunction issued by a national court acting as a “Community Trade Mark” court against infringement or “threatened infringement” will have an effect throughout the entirety of the EU initially, even if later on it may be found that the case will only affect the small area in which the court resides. We’ll be adding more information to this post as the case develops, any giant developments being published as separate posts here on SlashGear in the main news feed as well.

UPDATE: pages from the official injunction added in gallery below:

[via Wirtschafts Blatt]

The first Count of this new lawsuit reads as follows: “Apple sells or offers to sell within this district, computer systems, including but not limited to the MacBook Pro, that utilize the Mac OSX operating system that infringes at least claim 1 of the OSS [Operating System Solutions] Patent.” What this does is claim that Apple has either knowingly or unknowingly created an operating system with a feature that had been patented previously without confirming with the current patent holder that it was agreeable to do so. If the court should find that the fast-boot sequence on current OS X devices is close enough to the original patent’s description, Apple could be in a heap of trouble.

The one-time patent abstract from the original LG Electronics filing reads as follows – see if this seems similar to how your OS X Lion-toting device boots up:

“A method for quickly booting a personal computer system using boot configuration information on memory and the attached devices that was created and saved in a hard disk at the preceding boot process. The method for a quick boot process includes the steps of performing a power-on self test POST) operation when a personal computer system is powered on or a reset button is pressed; performing a normal boot process after the POST operation; saving the contents of memory and the status of the attached devices to a hard disk; checking if a reboot is requested; restoring the saved boot configuration information from the hard disk, after POST is completed during the reboot process; checking whether or not an initial device configuration file and/or an automatic batch file were changed; and executing commands in the two files and saving a newly created boot configuration information to the hard disk for future boot. The personal computer system, may reboot quickly because of omission of execution of the initial device configuration filed and the automatic batch file.”

The above is also what you’re seeing in the main image of this post, as seen above. The following paragraph is how the lawsuit claim reads, on the other hand. Decide for yourself if this matches up with the original LG Electronics patent wording:

“A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program.”

Patently Apple notes that it’s suspicious that the group currently running this lawsuit, the group that goes by the name “Operating Systems Solutions LCC” doesn’t appear in a simple Google search. When this sort of situation arises, alarms should be going off that read PATENT TROLL. This type of troll is one that uses patents in a rather opportunistic way, attacking groups that may have “infringed” on said patent without any intention of actually developing the patented subject matter on their own.

[via Patently Apple]

Indictment files made in San Jose, California have said that Facebook servers were manipulated by Wallace, unsolicited mails being sent then to users from their “friends” accounts, these users never actually having sent the messages in the first place, messages then encourage users to click links leading to 3rd party sites that then collect Facebook information such as friends lists, these lists then used to continue the cycle of SPAM through the Facebook world. Also according to the indictment files, this operation took place between November of 2008 and March of 2009.

*This hack apparently has nothing to do with Facebook hacks we saw take place a few months ago to Facebook-based Farmville and the Zuckerberg profile page hack that preceded it.

According to a separate report, Wallace has previously been in trouble with Facebook, this time being sued by Facebook in 2009 for “compromising their servers,” this time the judge issuing a $711 million USD judgement against Wallace, also barring him from accessing the site. Authorities now say he violated that order. Chris Sonderby, one of Facebooks lawyers in such matters, released a statement reading: “[Facebook] will continue to pursue and support both civil and criminal consequences for spammers and others [attempting to harm Facebook users]”.

Wallace has been into Spamming internet users since the mid-1990s, a time when he headed a group by the crafty name “Cyber Promotions”, this working with SPAM through email. The 11 counts leveled against Wallace now include intentional damage to a protected computer, fraud, and criminal contempt for violating previous orders to stay off Facebook as well as MySpace. Wallace had previously gotten in trouble with MySpace as a federal judge found him guilty of creating 10,000 fake profiles made to redirect legitimate users to third-party websites, this crime resulting in a $230 million judgement on Wallace.

BONUS: the photo above is of Sanford Wallace himself posing in front of an Apple Macintosh computer with three SPAM cans on top on May 8, 1997

[via Christian Science Monitor]

What Drummond is saying is that Microsoft and Apple are joining together in a quest to stop the advancement of Android through the clever purchasing and utilizing of patents from several camps. The first claim reads thusly: in acquiring Novell’s patent collection (the CPTN group which includes Microsoft and Apple, that is,) and Nortel’s patent collection (again through a group including Apple and Microsoft), they “made sure Google didn’t get them” and started seeking $15 licensing fees from every Samsung / Android device produced, thusly attempting to make the cost of creating Android-toting devices more than, say, all of their competitors.

Businesses like Winstron, Onkyo, Velocity Micro, General Dynamics Itronix, and HTC have signed agreements with Microsoft to pay listening fees for each Android device sold while Barnes & Noble, Motorola, and Samsung have been sued to continue adding to these ranks. Drummond notes that a single smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 of what he calls “largely questionable” patent claims, where Google’s competitors, Drummond continues, “competitors want to impose a “tax” for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers.”

What this means, if what Drummond says is true, is that instead of creating new devices with innovative features to compete with Google, its competitors are fighting through litigation. Drummond continues by noting that this “anti-competitive” strategy is taking the cost of patents and driving it WAY beyond what they’re “really worth.” For example the Notel patent portfolio recently sold for nearly five times what it was estimated at pre-auction: $1 billion to $4.5 billion at the hammer fall. Drummond notes though that “the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means” and that therefore as these purchases of patents and suing of manufacturers is likely to draw regulatory scrutiny and this “patent bubble” will pop.

Drummond concludes his public statement with the following:

We’re not naive; technology is a tough and ever-changing industry and we work very hard to stay focused on our own business and make better products. But in this instance we thought it was important to speak out and make it clear that we’re determined to preserve Android as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it.

We’re looking intensely at a number of ways to do that. We’re encouraged that the Department of Justice forced the group I mentioned earlier to license the former Novell patents on fair terms, and that it’s looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anti-competitive means. We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio. Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices — and fewer choices for their next phone.

What do you think? Does Google have a point, or are those with the patents the ones who have the right to get the patent cash?

[via Google]

The bill is called the “Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011″ and hopes to close any loopholes in the current federal law regarding location privacy. The proposed law will apply to both device manufacturers and app developers for smartphones and tablets.

“Our laws do too little to protect information on our mobile devices,” Franken said in a statement. “Geolocation technology gives us incredible benefits, but the same information that allows emergency responders to locate us when we’re in trouble is not necessarily information all of us want to share with the rest of the world. This legislation would give people the right to know what geolocation data is being collected about them and ensure they give their consent before it’s shared with others.”

However, Apple has insisted that they do not track their customers location, and have issued an iOS update that has addressed most of the concerns. Google also responded saying that they require consent for every location service and allows users to shut them off.

[via Apple Insider]

The curfew will block ISPs from online gaming access and the Vietnamese government says any business or organizations violating the gaming curfew will be dealt with swiftly. Deputy Minister Le Nam Thang says, “Provincial departments of information and communication will inspect on-line games activities nationwide and deal with organizations that violate regulations by canceling their services.”

Vietnam hopes the measures will stem the gaming addiction in teens and young adults and hope that the youth will find something more productive to do. However, creative and persistent gamers will likely find ways of getting past these government restrictions.

[via Switched]