Facebook’s new app bazaar ‘violates’ punters’ privacy – lobbyists
Facebook stands accused by a consumer lobby group of breaching Germany's privacy laws with the recent launch of its App Center.
The dominant social network has been threatened with possible legal action if it fails to respond to the Federation of German Consumer Organizations within the next seven days.
The lobby group claimed that Facebook was farming out customer information without informing its users that their data was being used, according to the Associated Press.
Facebook has until 4 September to resolve the matter, the group said, or else it could face potential legal action. Read more...
New Google data show Microsoft’s piracy problems
Google's Internet search engine receives more complaints about websites believed to be infringing on Microsoft's copyrights than it does about material produced by entertainment companies pushing for tougher online piracy laws.
A snapshot of Microsoft's apparently chronic copyright headaches emerged in new data that Google released Thursday to provide a better understanding of the intellectual property abuses on the Internet.
Google has a good vantage point on the issue because it operates the Internet's dominant search engine with the largest index of websites. About 97 percent of the copyright removal requests sent to Google are found to be valid by the company, prompting the offending links to be blocked from its influential search results. Read more...
India may overstep its own laws in demanding content filtering
India's reported plans to ask Internet companies to filter objectionable content may overstep the country's own laws, according to legal experts.
The government has asked Internet companies like Yahoo, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft to remove disparaging, inflammatory or defamatory content on their sites even before it goes online, according to newspaper reports on Monday. By Tuesday, the Indian government publicly accused the Internet companies of lack of seriousness in dealing with issues that hurt local sensitivities.
Executives of two of these companies confirmed on condition of anonymity that the country's ministry of communications and IT has indeed asked for such filtering of content. A spokesman at the country's ministry of communications did not return calls. Read more...
Google: We’ll Fight Anti-Piracy Blocking Laws
During a speech on Wednesday, Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt said that proposals from both the U.S. and British governments to block access to file-sharing websites would threaten freedom of speech. Google, he said, is opposed to such measures and will fight them, presumably in court, if necessary.
There can be little doubt that when it comes to hot tools for dealing with sites allegedly infringing the copyrights of the music and movie industries, site blocking and web filtering is absolutely in fashion this year.
The United States (with its IP protection bill) and the United Kingdom (with its Digital Economy Act), are both preparing what they believe could be their best chance at a silver bullet approach to piracy – the complete blocking of ‘infringing’ domains. Read more...