Items tagged with judge
Uh, this is weird. If you're a judge and/or lawyer in Florida, you should probably go through and clean house on your Facebook account. If you're a judge, you're now disallowed from "friending" lawyers for fear of having some sort of bias when or if that lawyer steps into your courtroom. No, we aren't kidding.The Florida Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee has just banned all judges in the state from clicking "Confirm" on Friend Requests from lawyers, and the reason why goes a little something like this "It reasonably conveys to others the impression that these lawyer 'friends' are in a special position to influence the judge." We suppose we can kind of understand this. Those in court relying...
Read more...
It's a good day whenever something bad happens to a spammer. That makes today a beautiful day, as a judge in Los Angeles has ruled in MySpace's favor in a suit they brought against two spammers who ran amok on MySpace pages. The damages awarded were worthy of a deposed Nigerian dictator: $230 million dollars.U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins in Los Angeles ruled in MySpace's favor Monday after Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines failed to show up for a court hearing.Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s. He left that company, Cyber Promotions, following lawsuits from leading Internet service...
Read more...
A judge has ruled that a defendent cannot be forced to give up the passphrase for his encrypted hard drive. Without this passphrase, authorities aren't able to decrypt his drive. Now we know why U.K. authorities were asking for a backdoor into Bitlocker-encrypted Windows Vista PCs last year, right?U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.Niedermeier tossed out a grand jury's subpoena that directed Sebastien Boucher to provide "any passwords"...
Read more...
Way back in April, a class-action lawsuit was filed against Microsoft, alleging that Microsoft used deceptive marketing practices when it allowed computer and other hardware makers to use the term "Windows Vista Capable" on their items, when in fact the hardware was unusable with Vista. The suit really centers around personal computers labeled as "Windows Vista Capable" before the operating system released in January. A judge has ruled that the lawsuit can proceed and set a court date for October. Seattle District Court Judge Marsha Pechman on Tuesday rejected Microsoft's request for a dismissal of the case. Microsoft had argued that the plaintiffs, Dianne Kelley and Kenneth Hansen, lacked...
Read more...
A U.K. court has ruled that Paul Martin McDonald can no longer sell lists of Hotmail addresses. McDonald had been selling the addresses through his company Bizads, and Microsoft claimed that his actions have damaged the reputation of Microsoft's e-mail service, which the court seemed to agree with. Bizads claimed that those who were on the list consented to their e-mail being there, the Judge disagreed however as numerous complaints were filed by those on the list. "IT law expert Struan Robertson called the ruling a "good result in the battle against spam." Robertson, who is a senior associate at Pinsent Masons solicitors, said the...
Read more...
A federal judge has dismissed part of AMD's suit against Intel on the basis that it does not meet the anticompetative claims made. In June of 2005 AMD filed a 48 page complaint against Intel alleging the company was engaging in monopolistic behavior by forcing companies (38 different ones cited) into using their chips thus forcing AMD out. Last year IDC reported Intel held 80% of the x86 processor market. Today those numbers are have changed slightly with AMD claiming that it has gained greater than 20% market share during the first two quarters of this year. Yesterday's ruling is sure to deal a blow against AMD. "AMD has not demonstrated that the alleged foreign conduct...
Read more...
