Megaupload takedown a "death sentence without trial," says Kim Dotcom
In his first extensive interview since leaving a New Zealand prison on bail, Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (read our in-depth profile) describes himself as a family man with a "big kid...
Spain asks: If Google search results make your business look bad, can you sue?
Los Alfaques, a bucolic campground near the Spanish town of Tarragona, isn't happy with Google. That's because searches for "camping Alfaques" bring up horrific images of charred human flesh—not good for business whe...
RIAA (sort of) responds to SOPA critics, says copyright "offers little real protection"
Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), must have a mild masochistic streak. On February 8, he penned a badly-received New York Times op-ed in which he invited Stop Online Piracy...
Takedowns run amok? The strange Secret Service/GoDaddy assault on JotForm (updated)
Popular site JotForm doesn't host music or movies or child pornography, all of which have led US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to seize other Internet domain names without advance warning (sometimes making se......
Police: download a file, go to jail for 10 years and pay an "unlimited" fine
The 70,000 daily visitors to popular music site RnBXclusive.com were met with a purposely terrifying message on Tuesday and part of Wednesday. The UK's Serious Organized Crime Agency (SOCA) took the site down, arrested its...
RIAA still raging against Google, Wikipedia for "misuse of power" in SOPA battle
Cary Sherman, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, is a sharp guy with degrees from Cornell and Harvard Law. When we've spoken in the past, Sherman has shown a keen grasp of the...
Czech, Slovak governments backing away from ACTA, too
My wife, who is professionally interested in the politics of the Czech Republic, doesn't usually find ways to connect her work and mine. So she was surprised to see this week that the European protests against the Anti-Counterfei...
Whatever happened to that "six strikes" P2P notice system? It’s coming soon
Whatever happened to the "six strikes" system that was to help civilize the American Internet?
Three years ago, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) gave up its mass litigation strategy of targeting tens...
A license to link? Lowe’s has one
In the course of building a large framed mirror last month—a process which cemented my belief that doing pro-quality wood staining is a black art best left to necromancers—I visited the website for hardware gian......
Anonymous pokes fate bear, leaks FBI conference call about Anonymous
Anonymous has begun taunting its police pursuers in ever-more aggressive ways, upping the ante today by releasing an internal FBI conference call in which agents from across the country and police in the UK share...
EFF ready to sue if "innocent customers" can’t get Megaupload data back
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today officially asked all parties involved in the Megaupload criminal case to refrain from deleting any data stored on servers once leased by the file-hosting service—and it suggest...
Beyond ACTA: next secret copyright agreement negotiated this week—in Hollywood
One of the worst parts of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) was its ridiculous secrecy, under which it was easy for negotiators and industry reps to see draft text, but impossible for the public to do so except throu......
