A new California law will force digital stores to admit users are simply licensing games, and not actually buying them. California Governor Gavin Newsom signed the new law (AB 2426), which will come into effect next year.
GOG, formerly known as Good Old Games, took a potshot at Ubisoft at the beginning of this...Read more...
The European Commission (EC) has been quite busy lately passing new laws that are meant to protect consumers, and investigating tech giants such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft for violating those laws. However, tech giants are not the only entities the EC has in its sights, as it now also requires all new vehicles in...Read more...
Well, that was a scary few days—Apple has convinced an appeals court to let it sell the latest Apple Watch hardware, pausing an import ban imposed by the International Trade Commission (ITC). So, you can once again head to Apple's website or your nearest brick-and-mortar Apple store to get the Apple Watch Series 9 or...Read more...
Opinions on the internet can be misleading. You may have heard a near-universal cheer for the forthcoming federal ban of video-sharing app TikTok. Well, put away the champagne and poppers. The so-called "ban TikTok bill" is a lot more insidious than one may realize.
TikTok is an insanely-popular video sharing site...Read more...
You've probably seen numerous reports of US states moving to restrict the sale of internal combustion engines and encourage the shift to electric vehicles. It's become so common you might have misread the above headline, but it's no typo—lawmakers in Wyoming are actually considering a measure that would phase out EVs...Read more...
Financial regulators in the US have been reluctant to come down on cryptocurrency for fear of stifling innovation, but there's nothing innovative about Forsage. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed charges against 11 individuals for running and promoting Forsage, which the SEC says is a "textbook...Read more...
Gaming companies took to social media last week in an effort to speak out against the United States Supreme Court's ruling to overturn the Roe vs. Wade decision. The 1973 landmark case legalized abortion nationwide nearly 50 years ago.
The ruling, which was first leaked last month to the press, means there is no...Read more...
In 2014, it was established that the U.S. Copyright Office would "not register works produced by nature, animals, plants, or through divine or supernatural spirits." This declaration stemmed from a monkey who took a selfie and a photographer who thought they had the rights to the image. We are now facing a similar...Read more...
You probably thought you were done with brain-jarring algebra and trigonometry from your school days but that may not be the case, thanks to some legal lunacy out of California. New energy efficiency regulations, which went into effect on July 1st and may be adopted by five other US states, limit the amount of power...Read more...
It’s a Christmas miracle! A law that will be going into effect on Sunday will make it so customers no longer have to pay rental fees for their own networking equipment. Also, ISPs will be required to delineate and itemize everything that goes into a bill. This is a big win for consumers everywhere and a step forward...Read more...
The name Team Xecuter might bring back nostalgic waves for console pirates from the early 2000s, but for Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo, the name likely brought shivers down executives' spines. In the early 2000s, the notorious pirate hackers created several iterations of modification chips for Microsoft's Xbox...Read more...
Loot boxes are common occurrence these days in gaming, and an incredibly annoying one for many. Three months after Hawaiian representative Rep. Chris Lee invoked Stars Wars to declare that "It's a trap" with regards to Star Wars Battlefront II microtransactions and loot boxes, state lawmakers have introduced four bills that would enact additional Read more...
Printers are expensive. Recycling and selling used/refilled printer ink cartridges has often been seen as a way to recoup the money that often gets sunk into the cash cow of the printer business - the ink itself. The ruling of Impression Products, Inc. v Lexmark Int’l, Inc, a recent and rather obscure court case...Read more...
Can the FBI access your email if it is on a foreign server? Google was recently ordered by a United States judge to release emails stored on foreign mail servers to the FBI. The communications are possibly related to a domestic fraud case.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Rueter in Philadelphia ruled that transferring...Read more...
2016 is going to be remembered for a number of fortunate and unfortunate things, with one topic that falls into the latter category being the debacle of U.S. law enforcement vs. Apple. The FBI and other US federal agencies have made it no secret that they would like to be able to gain access to any smartphone if the...Read more...
Rapid advances in artificial intelligence technologies is leading to some new and interesting use case scenarios that extend far beyond today's crop of digital assistants such as Siri and Cortana. Underscoring that point is a piece of software developed by computer scientists at University College London that...Read more...
Yahoo is the latest major US corporation dealing with the fallout of a data breach that happened two years ago. Some might say that Yahoo's heartburn is well-deserved, though, as the company could have handled things better back in the day, which would have led to a better outcome right now.
As we covered on...Read more...
As huge as Google is, it's sometimes easy to think of it as being invincible. The American company seemingly gets away with whatever it wants simply because it dominates its competition. But, the European Union has time and time again proven that Google is not invincible, and in fact, it could now be facing the EU's...Read more...
When Google's Android OS began overtaking every other mobile OS in terms of marketshare, it seemed obvious that at some point, the company would be catching a bit of flak for it. In fact, it seemed inevitable that the EU would have something to say about it, as it's traditionally been strict amount companies that...Read more...
Over the past couple of years, law enforcement at large has ramped up its efforts to try to gain access to communication mediums, which can include being able to browse unlocked smartphones. As it stands today, most jurisdictions do not give a member of law enforcement the ability to gain access to a smartphone...Read more...
We have been hearing so much about the FBI's pressure on Apple in its encryption fight in recent weeks that it might be easy to forget that it's only just begun in recent weeks. But what a few weeks it's been!
In the middle of February, a federal judge ordered Apple to break encryption on an iPhone that belonged to...Read more...
It's not often that people feel compelled to side with Google on the topic of privacy, but the company's newest CEO, Sundar Pinchai, gives us a great reason to. As Brandon covered in great detail yesterday, Apple has been ordered by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym to provide the FBI access to an iPhone 5c that was...Read more...