Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Your right to privacy is no longer as private as you once thought or hoped. By court order, Google is being forced to hand over all the records of every video watched by YouTube users. This information will include users’ names as well as IP addresses, and the request has Google lawyers arguing invasion of privacy.  The judge in his ruling, however, found this argument “speculative” and ordered them to turn over the logs on a set of four terabyte hard drives.

The purpose behind the lawsuit is that Viacom intends to prove that infringing material is more prominent than user-created videos. This would most likely increase Google’s liability if they are found guilty of contributory infringement. The suit was originally filed in March of 2007, with Viacom seeking over $1 billion in damages. Google tried to argue that the law provides a “safe harbor for online services so long as they comply with copyright take-down requests.” Apparently Judge Louis L. Stanton, the senior judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who issued the opinion and order, wasn’t buying it, since the order also requires Google to supply copies of any video that was taken down for any reason.

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Klausner Technologies has finally received what it wants from Apple, Ebay and AT&T following a lawsuit which they filed against the three companies requiring them to license its patent for its voicemail technology.

If you would recall, Klausner sued thse companies for $360 million in damages and future royalties over their unlicensed used of the company’s visual alert technology that alerts computers or mobile phones when a user received a voice message. Likewise the technology can also selectively retrieve messages.

Although the financial details of the settlements were not disclosed, it must be too good an offer that Klausner is also reportedly negotiating with Comcast and Cablevision for the use of their technology.

“The patent litigation with Apple has been settled. The patents have been licensed to Apple,” said its founder Judah Klausner.

The licensing deal adds up to Klausner’s other licensees which include Vonage and Sprint Nextel.

Read [Reuters]

The lawsuit that has only recently come to light, has seemingly gone away just as quickly. I am of course referring to the recent announcement that T-Mobile was suing Starbucks claiming “breach of contract” and “unfair competition” in regards to how they let AT&T quickly move in and take over and begin promoting their services.

According to reports T-Mobile, along with Starbucks and AT&T have reached a “memorandum of understanding” in an attempt to resolve their issues. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, however Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum stated that they are “committed to providing a high quality WiFi experience for customers, including Starbucks Rewards Customers, at Starbucks locations nationwide.”

Which makes it sound like nothing will be changing, at least on the customer side, after all some of the new programs including the 2-free hours per day from AT&T is part of the Starbucks Rewards program. I am glad to see an issue get resolved, especially quickly, lets just hope that does not mean my free Wi-Fi is going away.

Read [CNN Money] Via [Starbucks Gossip]

T-Mobile has decided to sue Starbucks over their recent agreement with AT&T to begin providing free Wi-Fi. The lawsuit claims that both Starbucks and AT&T are not living up to their end of the agreement dealing with the switchover. They are claiming “breach of contract” and “unfair competition” and seeking an unspecified amount of damages.

“Starbucks and AT&T ... secretly developed a promotional plan under which they would offer ‘free’ AT&T/Starbucks Wi-Fi even in stores” that were still reliant on T-Mobile’s infrastructure, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit goes on to claim that “to date, only two markets—the San Antonio, Texas, and Bakersfield, California, markets—have been transitioned from T-Mobile to AT&T.” However we have used a few and also seen reports from many other Starbucks locations now offering AT&T Wi-Fi. While T-Mobile is understandably upset, the agreement that the stores would be converted “on a market-to-market basis” leaves a great deal of judgment room. It looks like this one could get messy.

Read [Reuters]

Torrenting is used by many, and I’m sure everyone who torrents has used or at least heard of, TorrentSpy. The website has been closed down since March 24, 2008, and after the latest news its safe to say that it will remain down. Basically, their reason for shutting down is that they had lost too much money from court cases, and according to the statement on their site the “legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile.” Now in the latest blow, the MPAA has come out victorious after going at TorrentSpy and not only did they win the court case, but also $110 million. Looks like this will keep them down.

Via [CrunchGear]

A Seattle native, Steve Shellhorn, recently purchased a few coins off eBay and little did he know that those few coins would turn into a $10,000 lawsuit. Yes, $10,000 all because of a few measly coins. He was sued because he left “neutral” feedback, and the seller didn’t like that, and promptly sued him for 10,000 big ones.

Basically, Shellhorn wanted to get some old, probably rare coins off eBay. The price was fair, but they came loose in an envelope and the overall packaging did not meet his expectations, he expected better considering what they were. Doing what most people would do when upset at the situation, he left a neutral feedback, saying that the price was fine, just that he wasn’t happy with the packaging. He even said, “The coins were hanging out of the envelope, loose, with no packing whatsoever around them.” Then the seller decided to sue, and Shellhorn was forced to hire an attorney, good news is that he eventually won the case and didn’t have to pay the money, however, he did have to pay $500 for the attorney. 

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Best Buy customer Raelyn Campbell has filed a $54 million dollar lawsuit for the loss of her laptop. The story starts out innocent enough, Raelyn had purchased a laptop along with an extended warranty from Best Buy, after a while the laptops power switch broke and she had thought that warranty would prove to be useful. That is where it began to go downhill, originally told the repairs would take roughly two to six weeks it ended up going much longer. After several months it was determined that the laptop had never left the store and to make matters worse the laptop had been stolen, not to mention Best Buy had lied to her about the status for months.

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The International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate a complaint of patent infringement made against Sharp Corp. Samsung claims that Sharp has infringed on 4 different patents for LCDs. Samsung is attempting to block imports of products using Sharp LCDs. These products include HDTV’s and the Motorola RAZR2. The companies are suing each other in various federal courts and in Seoul, South Korea. A decision is not expected to come for about 15 months.

Read [Bloomberg]

Social networking site MySpace (part of Fox Interactive Media, Inc.) has filed a lawsuit against Scott “Spam King” Richter for violating the federal CAN-Spam Act (aka Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) and California’s anti-spam statute.

Allegedly, Richter used phished MySpace account information to send email sales campaigns without the page owner’s knowledge. The filing demands monetary compensation (amount not specified) and a permanent injunction barring Richter and his various companies from MySpace.

If found guilty and there is not an out-of-court settlement, the CAN-Spam Act states that each violation is subject to fines of up to $11,000 and include imprisonment, while the California statute adds $1000 for “each unsolicited commercial e-mail advertisement transmitted” with a maximum of $1 million per incident.

Richter has already been sued by Microsoft in 2005/2006 and the New York Attorney General, paying $7 million and $50,000 to NY respectively. Hormel Foods, which owns the questionably tasty SPAM product, stopped Richter’s effort to start up a line of “Spam King” clothing.

With so many cranky companies and the potential to owe many millions more, it’s no wonder Richter likes to settle out of court. Next time, try for a tastier title like “Sausage King” or even “Teenie Weiner King.”

Read [CNNMoney]

Apparently the thing to do these days is to file a patent early, wait until competing companies are extremely popular, and then sue the hell out of them.  That’s what NTP’s stance was against RIM (Blackberry), and that’s Intertainer’s stance now.  Intertainer filed a patent in 2001 (granted in 2005) that according to BusinessWeek, “outlines the business model for offering video content from various providers to consumers over the TV and the Internet.” It’s not clear how this relates to Napster, but we’re assuming there’s some other vague language in there that makes the suit legit...or they’re just trying to sqeeze money out of another giant.  We’ll have to wait and see how this one unfolds.

Read [BusinessWeek] Via [Engadget]