CNET News - Politics and Law

Report: Guilty verdict overturned in MySpace suicide case

Caroline McCarthy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:26:00 PDT

Lori Drew, the woman convicted of using a hoax MySpace profile to harass a teenage girl to the point of suicide, was acquitted by a Los Angeles judge on Thursday, Wired reported.

Judge George Wu overturned Drew's guilty verdict, which was issued in November, saying that if Drew had ...

Originally posted at The Social

Court: MySpace not liable for offline assaults

Caroline McCarthy — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 05:26:00 PDT

Social-networking sites and other Web services can't be held liable in a sexual assault on a minor that stemmed from a meeting online, according to a ruling in a California appeals court that consolidated a number of complaints against MySpace on behalf of teenage girls and their parents.

Reuters ...

Originally posted at The Social

New dashboard shows where federal IT tax dollars go

Lance Whitney — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:53:00 PDT

It's the age-old question. Where do our tax dollars go? Washington is using the Web to try to provide an answer, at least as it relates to information technology.

The IT Dashboard, a new tool from the USASpending.gov site, promises a behind-the-scenes look at how our tax dollars ...

China delays rule for Net-screening software

Stephen Shankland — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:58:00 PDT

China has indefinitely delayed enforcement of a requirement that PC makers preinstall Green Dam-Youth Escort software that experts believe would have screened not just Internet pornography but also some online political content.

Green Dam allows users to specify categories of sites to block.

(Credit: University of Michigan)

The reprieve, announced ...

Amazon positioned to win state tax battle

Larry Dignan — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 07:13:00 PDT

This was originally posted at Between the Lines. It was updated at 3:25 p.m. PDT with Amazon adding Hawaii to the list of states where it's pulled its Associates program.

Amazon.com is in a high-profile tax showdown with states over its Associates referral program and is ...

NY mayor: Info to the people will improve gov't

Caroline McCarthy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 08:27:00 PDT

NEW YORK--The state senate in Albany was in a bit of a shambles Monday. So instead of speaking in-person at the Personal Democracy Forum as planned, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg used Skype to make his keynote address.

"Through the miracles of modern communication, we're essentially together," Bloomberg commented to ...

E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming

Declan McCullagh — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:10:41 PDT

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation ...

Pirate Bay judge ruled unbiased

Mats Lewan — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:54:00 PDT

The judge in the Pirate Bay case, Tomas Norström, was not biased. That's the decision of the Swedish High Court of Justice, which investigated accusations made by the four defendants in the high-profile file-sharing case.

The accusations were based on Norström's membership in organizations ...

ICANN names new CEO

Lance Whitney — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:41:00 PDT

Former U.S. cybersecurity official Rod Beckstrom has been named the new CEO and president of ICANN.

His appointment was announced at the annual meeting Friday in Australia of ICANN, which stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

A global nonprofit, ICANN is responsible for assigning and ...

U.S. asks China to drop censoring software requirement for PCs

Erica Ogg — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:33:00 PDT

Updated at 2:20 p.m. PDT with comments from HP and Lenovo.

The U.S. Trade Representative has written a letter to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce asking that the country drop its requirement that all new PCs sold in China have special filtering software installed.

The letter was ...