After reading about how companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising (behavioral marketing), one New York lawmaker said there ought to be a law against it. He is now working to make that a reality.
I have written before that we use CopySentry to find and monitor occurrences of copy theft and infringement regarding content on our site. Today, I discovered a story on TechCrunch about a company called Attributor which offers a service very similar to CopySentry but with many added features.
Net Neutrality – the principle that all Internet sites should be equally accessible to any Web user, is under attack once again. The Washington Post reports that the Justice Department has come out in opposition to the idea of Net Neutrality and endorses the idea that Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic. This in light of several telecom and cable companies stating that they want to have the ability to charge select users for the right to access certain content on the Internet or to do so at higher speeds than others.
WebProNews reports that the Federal Communications Commission’s official Net Neutrality inquiry ended Monday, but not before a deluge of public comments in support have flooded in. Past experiences have demonstrated that it takes very few complaints to grab FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s attention. Examples include Janet Jackson’s exposed nipple during SuperBowl halftime show, what people are allowed to say and do on subscription media services, or the appropriateness of cracking jokes about “hamsterbating” before 10 PM.
An individual who apparently works for a search marketing firm based in the United States, has stolen copy that I originally wrote and posted it not once, but multiple times on various web forums. I wrote to them about this in an attempt to get them to either remove the posts or modify them so that my original copy does not appear, however they have ignored my request.
To tax or not to tax? That is the question. Taxing access to the Internet, access to email and the like has been looked at by the government for several years now but so far has escaped their grasp. A new bill dubbed “The Internet Tax Freedom Extension Act of 2007” was introduced in the Senate yesterday. If passed, this bill would extend the current ban on Internet access taxes for another four years.
Have you ever been someplace besides your home or office with the old laptop in hand and attempted to “sniff out” a WiFi access so you can get online? You better be careful in the future because apparently tapping into a WiFi connection that you do not have authorization to do so can get you arrested.
I just came across this story at WebProNews regarding a new IRS proposal that could have a negative impact on e-commerce. Essentially, The U.S. Treasury Department wants to crack down on Internet businesses like eBay and Amazon.com and require them to share their customer’s personal data with the Internal Revenue Service. What data specifically do they want? The obvious – names, addresses, etc. but then the not so obvious, social security numbers.
One can pretty much assume that if someone steals your copy, they are not too bright. The content thief is not intelligent enough to write or develop something on their own so they pilfer someone’s else’s hard work. However there are some that are in a class all by themselves. Not only are they too stupid to write their own content, they neglect to remove references to the place where they originally stole the content.
That is the lesson that KinderStart.com has learned as their case against Google is thrown out of court by Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The judge also imposed yet-to-be-determined sanctions on KinderStart legal counsel Gregory Yu for making unsupported allegations against Google.
