Entries Categorized as 'Legal'

Judge Sets Facebook Hearing to ‘Private’

Date June 23, 2008

Kicking the public out of a courtroom is an option that should be used rarely and extremely judiciously, which is what makes U.S. District Judge James Ware’s decision Monday disappointing.

Ware shuttered the doors to a San Jose, Calif., hearing pitting Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg, probably the world’s youngest self-made billionaire, against Harvard University classmates who [...]

Ask.com caves to Google’s privacy pressures

Date June 18, 2008

Ever the publicity hound nipping at Google’s heels, Ask.com has issued an open letter to the public about adding a privacy policy link to its home page.

The letter highlights the fact that, weeks ago, several privacy groups asked Google to play up the privacy policy on its start page. The search giant didn’t immediately add [...]

Ask.com caves to Google’s privacy pressures

Date June 18, 2008

Ever the publicity hound nipping at Google’s heels, Ask.com has issued an open letter to the public about adding a privacy policy link to its home page.

The letter highlights the fact that, weeks ago, several privacy groups asked Google to play up the privacy policy on its start page. The search giant didn’t immediately add [...]

Yang talks up Google partnership in DC

Date June 18, 2008

Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang made the rounds on Capital Hill on Wednesday, in an effort to dispel antitrust concerns surrounding its search advertising deal with Google.

During his one-day visit, Yang met with Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc., who chairs the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee.

Kohl has previously expressed concerns that the deal between two technology search rivals could [...]

AP Puts Up Ridiculous Blogger Toll Booth

Date June 18, 2008

Yesterday the AP wrote about the new LinkedIn valuation:
It’s one of the richest appraisals for a Silicon Valley startup since Microsoft Corp. paid $240 million for 1.6 percent of Facebook Inc. late last year. That deal valued Palo Alto-based Facebook and its online hangout at $15 billion.

The Facebook financing in turn helped several other startups [...]

Google says Viacom’s suit ‘threatens’ Net

Date May 27, 2008

Viacom’s $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information” over the Web, YouTube parent Google said in a legal response to the suit.

The response, reported by the Associated Press, was filed late Friday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Google says the threat comes from [...]

Amazon Argues Tax as “Vague” and “Invalid”

Date May 2, 2008

Recently, New York legislators’ consideration of a mandatory sales tax collected automatically by Amazon for purchases made by customers residing within the state has been in the news. The proposal, a leftover from former governor Eliot Spitzer’s office, recently passed with approval from governor David Paterson, with objections from a number of commentators. Including myself, [...]

MySpace turns News Corp. stock toxic as investors shun Murdoch

Date April 21, 2008

Rupert Murdoch’s effort to turn his $580 million MySpace purchase into an advertising powerhouse has turned News Corp. into a toxic stock.Analyst Michael Nathanson at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. cut his price estimate on New York-based News Corp., the media company Murdoch controls, by 13 percent last week to $21, and UBS AG’s Michael [...]

More Legal Trouble for Facebook?

Date April 18, 2008

Facebook just recently settled a lawsuit by the founders of ConnectU who claimed that Mark Zuckerberg had stolen their code and their idea to create Facebook. Within weeks, the beginning of a new story is becoming more public. Aaron Greenspan, who is releasing a book on the topic, claims that he coined the term Facebook [...]

Blockbuster Faces Beacon Trouble

Date April 17, 2008

Media Post has written, “A Texas resident has filed a federal lawsuit against Blockbuster for participating in Facebook’s Beacon program.” According to the suit, “Blockbuster violated the federal Videotape Privacy Protection Act by sharing information about her movie rentals and sales with Facebook without first obtaining her written consent.”

In the country with the most law [...]