Court documents unsealed recently in the titanic Google-Viacom lawsuit over Youtube have uncovered a treasure trove of alleged dirt: Youtube founders writing emails detailing copyright abuses from within and Viacom’s original plans of buying Youtube:

But an e-mail exchange among YouTube co-founders Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim showed there were in-house copyright abuses. “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site,” Chen wrote in the July 19, 2005, e-mail. “We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” In a statement after the documents were unsealed, YouTube said Chen’s e-mail was referring to some aviation videos that had been making the rounds on the Web. “The exchange has nothing to do with supposed piracy of media content,” YouTube said.

You can read all the dirt here

Lindsay Lohan has recently filed a complaint against E*Trade after its “Baby Girlfriend” commercial, first aired during the Superbowl, mentioned a “milkaholic” named Lindsay. The complaint alleges that E*Trade used Lohan’s name and characteristics without her permission. In my opinion, only a self-indulgent Hollywood star would think it was referring to a specific person. But Lohan’s lawyers seem to think that this commercial is “causing and threaten[s] to cause immediate and irreparable damage to the plaintiff.” Lindsay and her attorneys are asking for an injunction as well at both $50 million in compensatory damages and $50 million in exemplary damages.

A former TSA contractor, Douglas Duchak, is being charged with injecting codes of a malicious nature into the government network used for screening people at the airport. The code was allegedly designed to disrupt and damage the data on the servers. The network that was attacked is the same network that stores the information from the government about the terrorist watchlist, criminal histories of travelers, and so on. A week before the malicious code was transferred, Duchak was told that his job would be terminated. Although Duchak pled not guilty and was released on bonds, he was charged with two counts of attempting to cause damage to protected computers. The maximum sentence for this crime is 10 years and $250,000 for each count. Duchak’s defense is that the system that he worked on was in a beta stage and was being used for testing statistical analysis and was not in any way connected with security.

The Americans with Disabilities Act prohibits state and local governments and other “places of public accommodation” from discriminating against individuals with disabilities.   Under the ADA, a place of public accommodation “shall take those steps that may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services, unless the public accommodation can demonstrate that taking those steps would fundamentally alter the nature of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations being offered or would result in an undue burden, i.e., significant difficulty or expense.”

The ADA does not specify what is meant by a “place” of public accommodation.  A case is now pending, Stern v Sony, which will determine whether an online gaming forum would constitute a a place of public accommodation. In 1996, the DOJ’s Civil Rights office stated that the provisions of the ADA should apply to Internet websites. But federal courts are split on this issue. In 1994, in Carpats Distribution Center v. Automotive Wholesalers Ass’n of New England, the court decided that a public accommodation includes areas more than physical structures. Dicta in a 1999 case, Doe v. Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company, also suggested that electronic websites could be considered in public facilities.

However, other courts have stated that the ADA was intended to apply only to an actual physical location. For example, the court in Ford v. Schering-Plough Corporation did not allow the ADA to be extended to an insurance policy as it should only apply to actual physical places.

As we become increasingly more dependent on the Internet, the threat of cyber attacks has become a pressing concern. Dennis C Blair, the director of National Intelligence, has said to the Senate Intelligence Committee that “malicious cyber activity is occurring on an unprecedented scale with extraordinary sophistication.”

In a recent simulated cyber attack, a “March Madness” application was made available for smart phones, which was downloaded by many college basketball fans.  While the users thought that they were simply following their favorite teams, their passwords were being stolen and their emails intercepted. The March Madness application hid a spyware program that could hack into these smart phones.  The madness that ensued transcended the basketball games on the court. This spyware affected over 60 million cellphones and various electric grids across the nation. The simulated cyber attack was named “Cyber Shockwave.”

After the exercise, former White House advisors and other officials joined together in order to discuss the vulnerabilities of our nation’s digital infrastructure. In order to discuss such vulnerabilities, these leaders participated in a three hour simulated crisis meeting. The event was run by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington DC. None of the panelists knew what the scenario was in advance and they were supposed to act as they would if the scenario was real. However, the results of this meeting hardly assuaged anyone’s woes of the dangers of cyber attacks.  Although each advisor suggested various solutions to the fake attack, there was no overarching idea of how to prevent such an attack.

Harriton High School is Pennsylvania has been using laptop webcams for a new, unconventional reason, at least according to parents. One  family has alleged that the school was using the webcam to spy on their fifteen year old son. Of course, this accusation has created a frenzy with the other parents, the school district, and civil liberties groups. One family submitted a motion to Judge Jan DuBois requesting a restraining order against the activation of the webcam which they refer to a “peeping tom technology”. The complaint further states that the school periodically turns on the cameras on the computers to monitor the student and their usage of the computer issued by the county and that “many of the images captured and intercepted may consist of images of minors and their parents or friends in compromising or embarrassing positions, including, but not limited to, in various stages of dress or undress.” The school has insisted that the camera is only turned on if the laptop was lost or stolen in order to find the missing equipment.

The Robbins’ motion was prompted by their son being accused by the assistant principle of Harriton High of taking and selling drugs. The student claims that he was eating candy but the school says that using images of the student from the webcam, they witnessed the drug handling. The Robbins said that their child was at home while using a computer that was not reported as lost or stolen and that pictures were taking of him without the permission of his parents while he was at home.

According to PC Mag Online:

Microsoft and Amazon on Monday signed a cross-license agreement under which both companies will have access to each other’s patent portfolio. The deal covers a “broad range” of products, including Amazon’s Kindle and Amazon’s use of Linux-based servers. Exact terms of the deal were not released, but it was revealed that Amazon will pay Microsoft for the access.

The article goes on to state that the goal of agreements like these is to help prevent costly patent litigation down the road.

The full article can be read here.

In a recent interview with gaming website IGN, John Koller, a Sony Hardware Marketing Director, detailed new plans to help combat piracy on Sony’s portable system, the PSP (Playstation Portable).

IGN reported that the plan calls for:

Those who purchase SOCOM Fireteam Bravo 3 are now required to register the title through PlayStation Network before given access to online gameplay. UMD copies of the game will come with a voucher code that must be redeemed online, while digital copies will automatically register in the background. Those who buy a used copy of the UMD can purchase a PSN entitlement voucher for $20 to play online.

It’s also a move designed to both counter piracy and ensure a revenue stream from games even if they are sold in the secondary market.

The full interview can be read here