Dear Author, a leading romance blog, reported on digital publisher Ellora’s Cave’s tax violations and missing author payments. Now Ellora’s Cave is suing Dear Author and its founder for defamation.
Fitbit is facing its first lawsuit a month after recalling its Force activity tracking band, which caused an allergic reaction for some users.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/the-zuckerberg-files-new-scholarly-archive-scrutinizes-facebook-ceo/47777
Facebook has received plenty of resistance in its piece-by-piece effort to open up more user information for use in features and advertisements. Each time Facebook changes its policy, a predictable cycle occurs: initial user anger, followed by the company’s soothing words that privacy is still important. Privacy scholar Michael Zimmer has launched The Zuckerberg Files to unlock Mark Zuckerberg’s “philosophy of information” — and track his ever-changing stance on privacy. Though it’s a bit involved for an ivory-tower dweller, it is interesting to see the Facebook CEO get tracked for a change.
Google’s new Terms of Use allow the company to scrape and sell user information from YouTube, reviews and other Google products in order to offer “endorsements” of products.
The social media company has won a suit against a serial cybersquatter that registered domains for over 100 variations and misspellings of “Pinterest.”
In an apparent recognition of the reality that most people use the phrase “app store” to refer to any marketplace selling apps, Apple and Amazon have their long-running lawsuit thrown out.
Patent trolls have been bleeding legitimate businesses for years — now a state government has turned the tables and asked a troll to pay $10,000 for each of the hundreds of threatening letters it has mailed out.
Penguin, which is merging with Random House, has settled with the Department of Justice in the ebook pricing lawsuit, which alleges that Apple and publishers conspired to set ebook prices. Penguin had planned to fight the case in court, but the pending merger has changed that.
Google has been cracking down on sites and services that make it possible to convert videos into MP3 files, but now some of its users are firing back with a petition. Their logic: YouTube is a broadcast site, so it should also allow recording.
It’s a slow news day (aside from the obligatory new iPhone rumor), so I’ll use this space to direct your attention to this great write-up from my colleague Tom Krazit on the first week of the patent trial between Google and Oracle. Oracle claims Google improperly used Java technology rather than obtain a license to build Android, while Google has countered that it didn’t need a license for the technology in question. Expect to see plenty of headlines as this showdown continues for the next seven weeks or so — or until the two sides settle.
