Tech Law

Several radio broadcasters and online media companies are challenging a ruling this week that sets a higher royalty fee structure for music played over the Internet. The Copyright Royalty Board, a body created by Congress to settle royalty disputes in the music industry, has decided on a higher fee ...

Internet auction fraud accounts for close to half of all the complaints made to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, according to a report released Friday. Of the 207,492 complaint submissions made to the Internet Crime Complaint Center in 2006, Internet auction fraud accounted for 45 percent,...

The trial of the former Qwest Communications CEO Joseph Nacchio began Monday. Nacchio is accused of violating insider trading laws as he sold some $101 million of the telecom company's shares. Nacchio, who served as Qwest CEO from 1997 to 2002, faces 42 charges of insider trading, each one involving...

Cingular Wireless will refund $18.5 million to former California customers who were charged penalties for canceling substandard wireless service. The company will also drop plans to appeal to the Supreme Court the ruling against it in the case. Under an agreement reached with the California Public U...

The Japanese Internet mogul who became emblematic of the high-flying Internet sector in that country was found guilty Friday of fraud and sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. Takafumi Horie, the 34-year-old founder of Internet portal, Web services and interactive marketing firm Livedoor, was found gu...

Time Warner's AOL unit said it would withdraw its $900 million offer to purchase the Swedish online marketing company TradeDoubler, saying it had not received enough interest in its bid from shareholders. TradeDoubler's management had backed the AOL offer, which was made in January, but several majo...

Former Hewlett-Packard Chairwoman Patricia Dunn, whose decision to aggressively investigate boardroom press leaks led to a scandal that led to a wave of resignations -- but little collateral damage for the PC maker -- was cleared of all criminal charges Wednesday. Judge Ray E. Cunningham dismissed a...

In a contentious congressional hearing Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission was accused of overstepping its authority in its recent actions regarding the cable TV industry. At the end of 2006, the FCC -- led by Commissioner Kevin Martin -- approved in a 3-2 vote new video franchising rul...

While Viacom is seeking a cool $1 billion in its suit against Google's YouTube for allegedly using Viacom's copyrighted content without permission, the stakes may be far higher for Google and other Internet companies. Google is expected to argue that the safe harbor provision of the Digital Millenni...

MTV's parent company Viacom is seeking more than $1 billion in damages from YouTube and its owner Google for thousands of alleged copyright infringements. A complaint filed by the media giant in U.S. District Court in New York contends that almost 160,000 clips of Viacom's programming have been made...

The SEC on Monday filed civil fraud charges against four former executives of troubled telecom gearmaker Nortel Networks, which has spent the past several years embroiled in an accounting mess. The executives had engaged in "accounting fraud to bridge gaps between Nortel's true performance, its inte...

Most federal agencies have failed to comply with a decade-old law designed to ease public access to government information over the Internet, according to a report released Monday. A mere one out of every five federal agencies actually complies with the Electronic Freedom of Information Act amendmen...

As part of its crackdown on fraudulent e-mails promoting bogus investments, the Securities and Exchange Commission has suspended securities trading of 35 companies that have been the subject of such e-mails. Sometimes called pump-and-dump schemes, these e-mails typically urge the recipient to buy a ...

Internet phone service provider Vonage on Thursday was ordered to pay Verizon $58 million after a jury found it infringed on three patents owned by telecom giant Verizon Communications. The award against Vonage covers penalties and a percentage of subscriber revenue -- royalty payments to Verizon fo...

When Microsoft attorney Thomas Rubin on Tuesday accused Google of taking a "cavalier approach to copyright" and of using its Book Search project to make money off other people's copyrighted creations, he ignited a fiery debate over the ethics of information access, the meaning of copyright and the r...