Internetnews.com reveals that “
The Register reports that “[t]he Central London County Court has ordered four BitTorrent users to pay a video games company £750 interim damages following a landmark victory by no win, no fee copyright lawyers. […] It’s the first time one of the firm’s antipiracy campaigns has come to court. The level of damages indicates UK judges are sympathetic to the view that copyright infringement via peer to peer networks can cause greater damage to rights holders than the retail cost of their product, because the number of times it has been shared by an individual is unknown. Dream Pinball 3D costs £8.99 on Amazon.”
CNetNews.com writes that “[r]umors began to surface late on Tuesday that Facebook could no longer get past the Great Firewall of China. The company has acknowledged the situation but could not confirm a reason why. ‘We are disappointed to learn of reports that users in China are having difficulty getting access to Facebook,’ representatives from the social network said in a statement. ‘We have not made any changes to our site that would create access problems and are looking into the situation.’”
According to the International Herald Tribune, bloggers are “taking aim at Google.” The publication writes: “Was Google’s network of online services manipulated to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the past few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service. The bloggers, most of them supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton and all of whom are critical of Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, received a notice from Google last week saying that their sites had been identified as potential spam blogs. ‘You will not be able to publish posts to your blog until we review your site and confirm that it is not a spam blog,’ the Google e-mail read. Many of the bloggers were affiliated with JustSayNoDeal.com, a Web site opposed to an Obama presidency. In an article that appeared on Bloggasm.com, the reporter Simon Owens spoke with some of the affected bloggers, who said they believed that Google had fallen prey to a campaign by Obama advocates. According to the bloggers, Obama supporters clicked on a ‘flag’ on the anti-Obama blogs to make Google believe that they were spam. Should that be the case, it would be an embarrassment for Google. On its Web page explaining the ‘flag’ feature, Google says that ‘it can’t be manipulated by angry mobs. Political dissent? Incendiary opinions? Just plain crazy? Bring it on.’”
In more bad news for Google, the Washington Post reports that “[t]he Justice Department has opened a formal antitrust investigation into a deal struck last month that would allow Internet titan Google to provide some search advertising for Yahoo, according to sources familiar with the inquiry. […] Google and Yahoo officials have said since the deal’s announcement that they would delay its implementation for a voluntary Justice Department review. But a formal investigation signals that the department may have found some cause for concern.”