Tag Archives: Legal

MegaUpload founder and perpetual courtroom denizen, Kim Dotcom, still finds himself battling with unknown forces. This time he's claiming that a camera placed in a hotel room opposite his apartment was pointed directly at him. Although official claims are that it was filming the nearby harbour, it has since been …

Youtube has never been a fan of the sites and browser extensions that make it easy to download videos from its site, in their entirety or when converted to MP3s. It's been going after them with legal action for years and it shows no sign of stopping. It's latest target …

Kim Dotcom, the founder of Mega, MegaUpload, Baboom and the Internet Party, has been in and out of court for over four years now, hoping to avoid being sent to the U.S. to stand trial for various charges relating to his long-shut-down file locker operation. While he looks set to …

Although its much less of a common tactic today than it once was, some movie distributors still like to target individual downloaders and attempt to have them pay through the nose for pirating a single movie. Considering defending yourself can be an expensive practice, one judge in the U.S. has …

If you access Facebook messenger, Twitter DMs, Skype or any other messaging service during work hours, be careful, as there is now legal precedent for your boss to look over your shoulder. In a landmark ruling that could have serious repercussions for in-work privacy, the European Court of Human Rights has …

The judge presiding over the case of Apple vs several thousand of its former retail employees for what were described as “demoralising,” bag searches throughout their time with the company, has thrown it out, stating that if employees wished to avoid the checks, they could have not brought bags to …

The smartphone industry is one that is as rife with innovation as it is with patent lawsuits. Apple, Samsung, Qualcomm and many others have dragged one another in and out of court rooms for the past decade or so, attempting to wrestle money and bans on sales from and against …

The extradition trial of the MegaUpload operators, including Kim Dotcom, versus the United States, has been ongoing for just over a week now, with most of that time spent giving the New Zealand Crown Court – representing the U.S. – its opportunity to paint an unflattering picture of the site …

Giant tech firms have a history of getting hit with gut-shots during anti-trust cases, facing massive criticism and huge fines, but Microsoft seems to have mostly skated in its latest case in China, where it was given only a minor fine for breaching anti-trust law, as it was said not …

In the case of the U.S. Department of Justice versus Microsoft, much of our international personal privacy hangs in the balance. Yes the NSA is probably hoovering up 99 per cent of what we transmit to each other across the the internet, but if the DOJ wins this particular court …

The recently hacked infidelity ‘dating' website, Ashley Madison, is now facing a lawsuit in Los Angeles from a man who claims that it and its parent company, Avid Life Media (ALM), didn't have adequate safeguards in place to protect his data. As well as being “embarrassing,” the suit claims that …

With the general election approaching in the UK, looking back on the term so far served by current PM, David Cameron, is something that a lot of people have been doing. One aspect of his time at no. 10 that's been overlooked though has been his crack down on sex and …

Zenimax, parent company of Bethesda, has gone ahead and sent a cease and desist letter to the developer of mobile game, Fortress Fallout, demanding that the game stop using the word ‘Fallout' in its name. Xreal, the studio behind the small mobile game will no longer be able to use …

Today, Microsoft is set to gain two more allies in its defense against the United States government, in an ongoing court case regarding a US warrant for customer data that is being stored in servers in Ireland. Both the Irish government and an European MEP, have now filed amicus briefs in support of the stance …

Kim Dotcom has been legally embattled since January of 2012, following his arrest after the raid on his home. This legal action takes place all over the world, with court cases and lawyer wrangling in the US, Hong Kong and New Zealand, as some try to extradite him, while others …

Google is one of those companies that's difficult to dislike, even if you don't quite trust it. It owns so much of our data and accounts for so much of our daily interactions, be it through searches, Google+ or just on any Android smartphone, that it's difficult to imagine it …

A U.S. Judge Lucy Koh on Wednesday denied Apple’s request for a permanent sales ban of certain Samsung products in the U.S. because they infringe Apple’s patents. The judge said that the infringement did not harm Apple, which is why the block of sales is unnecessary. “Apple has not satisfied …

It's rare to hear much from movie studio heads on the subject of piracy, other than the company line. It's almost always fire and brimstone in one guise or another, aimed at ISPs, site owners or maybe even the downloaders themselves. However there's a chance the tide could be turning, …

Apple and Samsung Electronics have agreed to end all their legal disputes outside the U.S. The agreement do not include any cross-licensing contracts and therefore it is possible that the two companies will renew legal fights in the future. “Samsung and Apple have agreed to drop all litigation between the …

Ignoring the new trend among lobby groups and movie studios to go after ISPs and hosting companies to take down websites, the producers behind the Dallas Buyers Club are following in the footsteps of Hurt Locker producers and have begun sending out threatening letters to individuals they believe downloaded the …

With copyright and intellectual property law in the messy state that it currently finds itself in the US and other western nations, a lot of time legislating behind the bench is the most common way for changes in the climate to be made and that looks to be the case …

Movie studios and lobby groups have been gunning for Kim Dotcom for some time. In conjunction with the New Zealand authorities and FBI, they spied on him before and after his arrest in January 2012 and since have been pushing to have the man extradited to the US. However with …

Hoping there's a bit more blood in that gum chewing stone, 3D Realms is contesting the idea that Gearbox, when swooping in and ‘saving' development of Duke Nukem Forever, acquired the rights to the name and franchise. That means as well, that it plans to continue developing Duke Nukem Survivor …

A New Zealand appeals court has made a landmark statement in the Dotcom extradition build up, by overturning the ruling that invalidated the warrants used in his arrest and has now legitimised the raid that led to it, suggesting that the search warrants were reasonably and obvious in their wording. …

Legal advisers to the British government have told MPs that much of the surveillance that GCHQ has been taking part in over the past few years could be considered illegal and in breach of human rights, and was only possible due to vagaries in current legislation that have been obtusely interpreted …

For a long time we've seen companies do everything from express apathy towards those that come up with workarounds for their DRM and other console anti-piracy systems, to full blown taking them to court over it and attempting to track down their fans via IP address. However those same companies …

Copyright law is in a bit of a mess at the moment. It's used by giant corporations like Samsung and Apple to lock others out of their strong selling markets and by trolls to try and scam money from people and companies. One such troll however, is going further than …

Despite Valve changing its terms of service in recent months to make it impossible for users of the digital download platform to sue it, that hasn't stopped a German consumer protection group – VZBV – stepping up to the plate and announcing its intentions to sue the company on behalf …

In order to prevent the organisation and the individuals behind it from facing financial crisis, Loz Kaye and the other members of the Pirate Party (PPUK) have taken the difficult step to take down the Pirate Bay Proxy, in the face of BPI legal threats. Back at the end of …

Google has fired off a legal notice to online job search site, Doogle, suggesting that because of the similarities in name, it is harmful to the company's brand. The owner of Doogle, 22 year old Andries Maree Van Der Merwe, believes he has every right to continue its operation and …