law

The Federal Communications Commission kicked off a series of potentially bitter debates about how to make high-speed Internet service faster and more popular with the official release Tuesday of its long-awaited National Broadband Plan.

The Senate Commerce Committee scheduled a hearing next Tuesday to explore the FCC's recommendations, which Congress requested last year. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will follow with its own hearing March 25.

The Windy City area is capitalizing on its most famous attribute with a new wind-powered electric vehicle charging station.  Located in Highland Park, 30 miles outside of the city, the charging station uses electricity generated by Illinois wind farms for law firm Emalfarb Swan & Bain.
The charging station is the second in the country and the first in the continental U.S. to be powered by wind.  The other station is located in Maui, Hawaii.

Around the globe, laws are too weak to deter cyberattacks and countries are incapable of preventing attacks. Those pessimistic findings are among the results of a worldwide survey of industry executives funded by McAfee and conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Google's bombshell announcement that it might pull up stakes in China because of cyberattacks and censorship points up a concern long overdue for higher scrutiny, security experts say.

For more than a decade, China and other nations have been ramping up state-sponsored cyberintrusions of commercial and military targets. Public outrage has been muted mainly because victimized organizations have disclosed as little as possible.

Always up for tweaking the breathless blogging that passes for technology journalism in Silicon Valley, ValleyWag this week offered to put up some real money if anyone could provide concrete evidence of the tablet computer that most Apple watchers expect CEO Steve Jobs to unveil at a Jan. 27 press happening in San Francisco.

A lawsuit in Wisconsin is bringing a fresh challenge to the practice of paying for keywords on Google and other search engines to boost one company's link over a rival's.

The practice has occasionally prompted a rival to file legal challenges alleging trademark infringement. Now a Wisconsin law firm is trying a new angle -- accusing its competitor of violating privacy laws.

Apple has won its lawsuit against Psystar, which has been selling Mac OS X in Mac clone computers. The decision in Apple's favor is expected to pave the way for Apple to argue its copyright-infringement case against future violators.

The Cupertino, Calif.-based software maker's claim against Psystar was granted, according to U.S. District Judge William Aslup's decision, and Psystar's anticompetitive claim against Apple was denied.

Nearly two months after being sued for removing electronic books from Kindle owners' devices without their knowledge, Amazon has agreed to a settlement. The Internet retailer will pony up $150,000 to settle the class-action suit.

The first complaint filed against Amazon came from 17-year-old Justin Gawronski. The high-school student from Michigan sued after Amazon erased copies of author George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984 along with notes on the book from his Kindle in July.

Apple has backed down from threatening legal action against BluWiki, a hosting Web site that discussed how users could circumvent Apple's iTunes software. Apple and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit public-interest group based in San Francisco, have stopped legal proceedings.

While EFF believes Apple's withdrawal against OdioWorks came because of EFF's legal threats, Apple attorney Sadik Huseny of the law firm Latham and Watkins said the code discussed on BluWiki is no longer an issue.

After scores of complaints about cracked Kindle 2 electronic readers and a class-action suit filed Tuesday, Amazon.com has decided to replace the broken Kindles for free. The company reversed its initial decision to make owners pay $200 to repair the devices just two days after the $5 million class-action suit was filed.