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STLR Link Roundup – April 9, 2010

STLR — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 13:03:14 +0000

The latest on the STLR radar:

The British Parliament has approved a law authorizing temporary suspension of internet access for those accused of repeated copyright infringement, reports the New York Times. Opponents of the law, such as the Open Rights Group, promise to turn this into an election issue in Great Britain.

Canadian company Wi-Lan has filed suit in the Eastern District of Texas against 19 high-tech companies—including heavyweights Apple, Dell, Motorola, Acer, and others—for allegedly violating its Bluetooth patents, reports Business Week.

From Wired: a U.S District Court judge has given a lawyer a 30-day sentence for contempt of court for encouraging people to flood the judge’s e-mail account, to persuade him to side with the lawyer’s client in a civil suit. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals is now reviewing whether the judge had the authority to impose a contempt sentence for conduct outside the physical courtroom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturned a 30 year computer ban for a sex offender, saying that the ban is “substantively unreasonable” and “aggressively interferes with the goal of rehabilitation,” reports Wired’s Threat Level.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation applauds the 2nd Circuit’s decision in Tiffany vs. eBay, finding the online auction company not liable for contributory trademark infringement on the basis of users selling items in Tiffany’s signature blue boxes, but the digital rights organization worries about the lack of a statutory “put back” procedure in trademark law.

The New York Times has a detailed article explaining China’s internet censorship methods.

After a federal court held that the FCC cannot impose network neutrality on ISPs (as PC World discusses), the FCC declared its intention to pursue its National Broadband Plan nevertheless. CNET reports that the FCC considers the court’s ruling to have forbidden one technical mechanism for achieving the FCC’s goals, but not the goals themselves.

From eWeek: an Arkansas woman faces misdemeanor charges for posting slanderous messages on her teenage son’s Facebook account.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has found that Google’s AdWords program does not infringe the patent for a bidding system determining pricing for ads on search results, Ars Technica reports.

Mexico may disconnect millions of people’s cell phones for failure to register their identities with the government via text message. This is part of an attempt to fight crime by regulating cell phone use, Reuters reports.