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Politics and Law

Browsers on Windows RT: It's a tough antitrust case to make

Browsers on Windows RT: It's a tough antitrust case to make

It's a good thing legal action is Mozilla's "last resort" for resolving its disagreement with Microsoft over bringing Firefox to the upcoming Windows RT, because it's likely a difficult antitrust case to make.

That's because Windows RT, the version of the operating system geared for devices using ARM processors, is a different beast than conventional Windows running on traditional x86 processors. Microsoft's present rules would hobble non-IE browsers on Windows RT, but the company's market power is with Windows on x86 chips.

ARM chips dominate today's smartphone and tablet devices running Apple's more

Iran curtails use of foreign e-mail providers

Iran curtails use of foreign e-mail providers

Iran is cracking down on the use of foreign e-mail addresses.

The country's telecommunications ministry is now barring local banks, insurance companies, and phone operators from communicating with their clients using foreign e-mail providers, according to the AFP news service.

Based on information from Iranian news service Asr Ertebatat, the new order requires such industries to use addresses ending in the Iranian domain .ir, effectively preventing them from using such foreign providers as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or MSN.

Customers of such companies are also included in the ban, requiring them to use local e-mail addresses in order to do more

EFF: Prosecutors want location data via a Twitter shortcut

EFF: Prosecutors want location data via a Twitter shortcut
By granting the subpoena request -- which Twitter has challenged -- the court is allowing prosecutors to bypass the need for a search warrant as typically required when seeking location information, the EFF argues.

"The judge also allowed the government to get access to location information without a search warrant. Twitter keeps a record of a user's IP address when he logs in to post a tweet," Hanni Fakhoury, EFF staff attorney, writes. "Since the majority of Twitter users access the site through mobile phones, these IP addresses are keys that help unlock a person's location."

The post more

Progress for Calif. bill to stop employers' social-media snooping

Progress for Calif. bill to stop employers' social-media snooping

In step with efforts by national lawmakers to ban employers from demanding workers' Facebook passwords, California today made a major move toward passing its own version of such legislation.

AB 1844 passed the state assembly unanimously by a 73-0 vote and now heads to the state senate. The bill, first introduced to the California State Assembly in February, would prohibit employers from requiring an employee or prospective employee to provide their username and password for Facebook, Twitter, or other social-media accounts. Assemblymember Nora Campos (D-San Jose), who authored the bill, calls AB 1844 a "preemptive measure" that will offer guidelines to the accessibility of private information behind what she calls the "social media wall."

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Democrats to employers: Stop asking for Facebook passwords

Democrats to employers: Stop asking for Facebook passwords

Democrats in Washington are aiming to protect employees being asked to hand over the keys to their Facebook accounts.

A new bill introduced yesterday in the U.S. Senate would seek to stop employers from requesting passwords or access to an employee's account on Facebook and other social networks.

Known as the Password Protection Act Of 2012 (PDF), the bill is the latest response from politicians over the growing trend of employers eager to snoop around their workers' online accounts.

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Apple, Proview battling over price to settle iPad trademark fight

Apple, Proview battling over price to settle iPad trademark fight

Apple wants to pay Proview to put an end to their iPad trademark fight. But the price tag remains a sticking point.

Apple has offered to pay Proview $16 million for the rights to the iPad name in China. But Proview is reportedly looking for a lot more, according to a report from Chinese site Sina.com (English translation) picked up from the Beijing Times. Citing a "source close to the negotiations," the Beijing Times said that Apple's offer was rejected by Proview earlier this week.

Struggling to stay afloat after filing for bankruptcy, the China-based monitor maker is more

Google report says search results protected by First Amendment

Do Google and other search engines have a constitutional right to control their own search results?

The answer is yes, at least in the opinion of UCLA law professor and First Amendment scholar Eugene Volokh.

In a report commissioned by the search giant (PDF), Volokh asserts that search results are a type of "opinion" based on what information the search engines believe would be most relevant to their users, according to news site PaidContent. Therefore, the results are protected by the First Amendment.

"Google, Microsoft's Bing, Yahoo Search and other search engine companies are rightly seen as media enterprises, more

Obama makes made-in-America pitch at N.Y. chip site

Obama makes made-in-America pitch at N.Y. chip site

President Obama today made a campaign stop at a major chip research and manufacturing in hub in New York to reemphasize his made-in-America theme.

Obama visited the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) of the University at Albany, State University of New York. CNSE is an education and research facility centered on nanotechnology.

The visit was intended to highlight "insourcing" and the connection between education, innovation, and manufacturing in supporting investment and bringing jobs back to the U.S.

The region is home to chipmakers IBM and Globalfoundries, the latter is in the final stages of constructing one the more

Oracle gets a chance to rewrite software law

Oracle gets a chance to rewrite software law

Every now and again, a court case comes along that stands to rewrite the legal rules of the computing industry -- and we might just be at such a juncture right now.

Oracle's suit against Google over Java and Android could be one such case. It's putting to the test the notion that application programming interfaces -- APIs -- can be copyrighted.

In a partial verdict today, a jury gave Oracle a hard-fought "yes" when U.S. District Judge William Alsup asked it, "As to the compilable code for the 37 Java API packages in question, taken as more

Franken: Comcast thumbs nose at Net neutrality rules

Franken: Comcast thumbs nose at Net neutrality rules

Senator Al Franken says Comcast may be violating Net neutrality rules by exempting its own video service from a usage cap on its broadband network.

The Minnesota Democrat today sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice asking the agencies to take a closer look at a new service Comcast announced in March that will stream Xfinity on-demand content to Microsoft Xbox consoles.

The content that is streamed directly to the Xbox console will not be counted against subscribers' total bandwidth usage caps.Comcast now imposes a 250GB monthly data cap on its subscribers.

This more

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