Apple Gets iSued over iCloud

By: Kareem 

Last week a company by the name of…you guessed it, iCloud filed a lawsuit last week against Apple for copyright infringement.

It would seem that Apple is pretty bad at doing their homework, the company that’s suing them, iCloud has been around for 6 years and apparently Apple had no clue they existed yet went through the trouble of purchasing a U.S Trademark registration for the name iCloud from a Swedish consulting company. Kind of an odd thing.

I would think that if Apple new the U.S iCloud existed they would have purchased the rights to the name from them, and although I do think it’s entirely possible they missed it in researching the name, that’s a little hard to believe since they bought it off the Swedes. I think the more likely possibility is that iCloud Communications (the company suing them) does not own the copyright to the name iCloud but rather that they own the name iCloud Communications and are trying to gain some publicity and maybe a little settlement money from Apple by doing this.

I would like to assume that Apple, being as well off as they are, has good enough lawyers to where they’re on top of it. However they do have a history of acting before thinking. As a matter of fact when the iPhone first came out Apple was sued by Cisco because of the latter’s claim to the name for one of their VoIP devices. That ended with Apple settling, however the details of the settlement were never disclosed.

So I guess it’s not entirely wrong to assume that Apple is getting ahead of itself in the name game again, no one will really know for sure until either Apple starts talking (which they won’t) or the case goes to court and we get to feast on all the juicy details of who owns what.

Related Stuffs:

Source: Venture Beat

HTC Getting Charged By Microsoft Per Device

By: Kareem

According to reports, Microsoft is getting $5 off of every device that HTC sells. This is due to a previous settlement the two companies made during the latter’s lawsuit against Google.

So here’s how it started due to the fact that most of Microsoft can’t outright go after Google to get at Android, they go after the much smaller and easier to settle with device manufactures. Around the end of April last year they decided they would go after HTC for using Android to infringe on their Intellectual Property. HTC, presumably not wanting to end their relationship with Microsoft (they do make Windows mobile devices after all) decided to settle with the company. Turns out that one of the terms of that settlement is that HTC pay Microsoft a $5 royalty fee on every Android device they sell, be it phone or tablet.

Microsoft didn’t just go after HTC either, the big M is also suing Barnes & Noble for using Android on their Nook eReader’s. And they want to up their take from HTC as well. According to reports Microsoft is looking to get between $7.50-$12.50 from the manufacturer for each Android device they sell. Presumably they will want the same from Barnes & Noble as well if they decide to settle.

• What really dosen’t seem to make sense to me is:
• Microsoft is suing Android over infringing on it’s IP
• Microsoft claims that IP is a companies most prized possession and therefore almost priceless.
• Android is free and Google is not charging companies to use it

If IP is important and Android is free then why is Microsoft profiting off of someone else's IP? I thought that if a company made software free and open source than no other company could profit off the code. I thought that HTC’s profits came from hardware, not software, Shure they make sense. But a skin is a far cry from an operating system.

Seems to me like Microsoft is using it’s lawyers to scare HTC into paying an unnecessary royalty fee that they don’t deserve for an OS they had nothing to do with by threating to not allow the company to make anymore Windows Phone devices.

The real kicker here is that if Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and all the other companies suing other companies for using Android keep making settlement and getting their undeserved cash than Android might end up being more expensive than WP7 and become basically worthless.

It works like this, Microsoft gets $5-$12 for every Android device, then let’s say the trend continues and Apple wins a lawsuit, now Apple gets $5-$12. So now you have to pay between $10-$24 per device you sell. If more companies join in and keep getting more and more sooner or later it’s just not worth it. You end up having to pay these huge costs or just license from another company that allows you to put their software on your devices. This is where it gets a little interesting.

Microsoft has apparently though this pretty well through, during my research I found out that although Microsoft charges OEM’s to license WP7, they guarantee that the manufacturer will get their money back from advertising and other channels. So in essence WP7 is free, just not open source. Not being open source can also be beneficial to a manufacturer as they can count on timely updates and less fragmentation between devices the make.

Related Stuffs:

• Source: Top Tech Reviews

• Business Insider: HTC Pays Microsoft $5 Per Android Phone, Says Citi

• Seattle Times:  HTC pays Microsoft $5 for every Android phone

• Semi Accurate: How much do phone makers pay for Windows Phone 7?

Quick Hit: N.Y. Attorney General Wants To Know Why PSN Went Down

 

By: Syeed@techsual.com

Just this Tuesday Eric Schneiderman, N.Y attorney general subpoenaed Sony. Apparently they have some questions as to how and why the breach happened.

Sony is claiming that the attack was well organized and planned and that it had to be carried out by experts who had been researching the companies security. They’ve gotten the FBI involved in their personal investigation and it looks like they may be getting a little more help in hunting down the person or persons who caused all this havoc.

Sony is claiming that the perpetrators of the crime had only the intent of stealing credit card information in order to use it for ‘illegal purposes’. Even though there hasn’t been any evidence of the cards being used, and beside I thought Sony said the card numbers were encrypted and safe.

We can expect Sony to divulge all the details in court, until then we just have to guess at who might’ve done this and more importantly why. Was it just to prove a point? Or did they have some sort of malicious intent?

Related Stuffs:

• Source: Cnet
• Article: Sony Blaming Anonymous For Attacks
• Article: Update(2) PSN Still Down Might Be Up Soon

Quick Hit: Apple, Google And Other Big Tech Companies Being Sued For Not Paying Up

By: Kareem@techsual.com

 

A press release was umm released yesterday by the law firm LIef, Cabrasser, Heimann & Bernstein (there’s always got to be a Bernstein eh?), that basically says Apple, Google, Lucasfilm and a bunch more big tech companies weren’t paying their employees properly and worked together to keep employee wages low across all the suspected companies.

The whole shebang was file by Siddarth Hariharan, a former software engineer for Lucasfilm. He says; 

"My colleagues at Lucasfilm and I applied our skills, knowledge, and creativity to make the company an industry leader. It's disappointing that, while we were working hard to make terrific products that resulted in enormous profits for Lucasfilm, senior executives of the company cut deals with other premiere high tech companies to eliminate competition and cap pay for skilled employees."

So apparently the companies had a ‘gentlemen's agreement’ that they would not ‘poach’ each others employees, they did however say employees were free to apply at any company they wanted. What this effectively did was make sure that if a high value employee who was working ant say, Pixar, wanted to go and work at Lucasfilm the heads of Lucasfilm would deny his application because it could be seen as ‘poaching’ or they might give him the interview to save face, but he would have no chance at getting the job.

There’s tons more to the case, and it will probably be a long long drawn out battle.

Related stuffs:

 

 

 

Samsung Fights Back Against Apple

 

After getting slapped with a lawsuit by Apple recently, Samsung decided they weren’t going to take this lying down and plan to not only defend themselves but also counter-sue Apple for violating their company’s wireless technology patents.

An unidentified Samsung official made a statement to Yonhap news agency saying “Apple is one of our key buyers of semiconductors and display panels. However, we have no choice but respond strongly this time”

Apple was Samsung’s biggest client in 2010 and accounted for 4 percent of the Taiwanese company’s income that year.

If the statement from the unamend source is right then Samsung might have some claim to the patents Apple is suing them for, that would be pretty interesting.

Source: Yahoo News

Apple Sues Samsung, Claims They Copied the iPad

 

Apple filed a lawsuit that basically says Samsung ripped off the iPhone and iPad designs and used them in their galaxy phones and tablets.

According to Apple spokesman Steve Dowling; “It’s no coincidence that Samsung’s latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. This kind of blatant copying is wrong, and we need to protect Apple’s intellectual property when companies steal our ideas.”

Apparently Apple owns the right to seven patents that are related to the way tablets react to certain gestures, like pinch to zoom, selecting and scrolling. As well as three patents on design including the flat black face the company uses on their devices.

Apple is also going after Samsung for copying their packaging and some of their icons.

I personally think that Apple is going a little nuts here, it seems like they’re scared of the recent rise of Android and they’re trying to take a if you cant beat ‘em sue ‘em approach through the hardware companies, since each puts it’s own spin on Google’s open source OS.

I understand and agree with protecting your intellectual property to some degree, if someone steals code you were expecting to make money on and then goes on and profits off it on their own, costing you money and putting you out of business that deserves a lawsuit in my opinion. Apple should be confident enough in their products to not have to go this route, there’s always going to be similarities in the way people interact with hardware and people will always copy the best. To me it seems like at worst Samsung is copying the ‘style’ and not outright stealing anything from Apple. I don’t think the similarities between and iPad 2 and a Galaxy tab are going to deter anyone from buying either, no one is going to look at the Galaxy tab and think ‘Gee I want this, it’s just like an iPad’ unless they’ve never used an iPad. Likewise I don’t think anyone looking for a small 7’ tab is going to want the 10.5’ iPad 2.

Lawsuits like this hurt competition, if Apple is such an amazing company (which in some ways they are) then they shouldn’t fear copycats. Apple should know that what they have waiting in the wings will blow all the competition out of the water, common sense would tell you that if you are the company everyone is copying than you have a huge advantage. You will always be the first to market which is the biggest advantage you could possibly ask for.

Even if Samsung is copying the iPad and iPhone in it’s Galaxy devices they’re still way underpowered comparatively, Samsung even had to tell a few little ‘white lies’ in order to drum up interest in their Galaxy Tablet.

Besides going after Samsung, Apple is also trying to go after HTC as well, for pretty much the same thing.

• By: syeed@techsual.com
• Source: Bloomberg

Owners of Online Poker Companies Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker Charged With Fraud

The founders of PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker along with 11 other people were charged with fraud yesterday by U.S Attorney Preet Bharara in Manhattan.
The charges are the latest by Bharara in a series of criminal cases against Internet gambling company’s recently. The current case is seeking $3 Billion in penalties and forfeitures from the founders.
According to the charges, the companies were involved in tricking banks into processing payments to offshore gambling websites after the U.S enacted a law in 2006 preventing them from doing show.
The founders of PokerStars, Absolute Poker and Full Tilt Poker apparently had a scheme going where they would trick some U.S banks and bring in others to continue the massive multi-billion dollar flow of income.

• Source: Bloomberg
• By: kareem@techsual.com

Whiny Winklevoss Twins at it Again

After years of whining and complaining that Mark Zuckerberg stole his idea for Facebook from them, a federal appeals court finally ended the madness today saying that the twins could not renege on their previous settlement with the CEO, and declined to reopen the settlement.

The Winklevoss twins originally sued Zuckerberg for apparently stealing thie idea for a website similar to what Facebook became called connectU. They claimed that not only did Zuckerberg steal the idea but that he stalled them by promising to work on their site while he worked in secret on Facebook, thereby beating them to the punch and crippling their chances of competing in the social networking sphere.

Zuckerberg denied all the claims and just to shut them up paid out a completely undeserved $65 Million in cash and stocks to not only The Winklevii, but their partner Giyva Naredra in 2008. However the Winklevii recently tried to appeal to the courts and get the settlement overturned so they could sue for more, claiming that Facebook’s value was overestimated at the time of the deals and they want more shares of stock or money.

The courts however don’t agree and refused to allow the Winklevii to appeal or whine any more. So I guess Zuckerberg can finally rest easy now that this whole mess is over with, I’m sure it was stressing the 20-something year old billionaire something fierce.

Source: PC World

Largest Pedophile Ring to Date Taken Down

 

A team of police, internationally assembled and UK led shut down what they say is the largest internet pedophile ring to date.

The operation was known as Operation Rescue. It lasted three years and was headed up by detectives from the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. According to reports 184 people have been arrested 121 of them were in the UK (one was a woman), and about 60 children have now been protected. The suspects included police officers, a karate teacher, and a scout leader among others.

33 people have been convicted to date the latest being in Northamptonshire. The users were on a website called boylover.net (ewwww) and used it’s private channels to share pictures of abused children. The sites leader has agreed to corporate with authorities and is helping them round up the rest of the disgusting bastards who were doing this.

Check the link for a full article on bbc.co.uk.

Article: ‘Worlds Largest Pedophile Ring’ Uncovered

Judge Rules in Sony’s Favor, You no Longer Have Privacy

Some asshole judge signed off the subpoenas today that will allow Sony to unmask anyone who looked at any videos related to GeoHotz and his PS3 hack, or visited his website.

This is a slap in the face to anonymity rights. The subpoenas are extremely broad, and no one should be unmasked simply for watching a video or visiting a website. Some are calling this ruling dangerous and scary. I see it as funny, it’s damned hilarious how childish Sony is being, they’re mad, and pouty because someone they see as just a kid was able to best an entire team set up to stop him from doing exactly what he did. It’s embarrassing.

So how bout this, game division of Sony, how about you stop sucking so hard at security, go fix those folks cheating on all your online games and leave the homebrew channel alone? Does it really kill game sales when you let users mod and create their own experiences on your console?

Sony Says it Will Ban PS3 Jailbreakers

Sony said today that anyone caught using a jailbroken console will be permanently banned from the PlayStation network.

In order to avoid being banned PlayStation owners must immediately cease use and remove all devices using pirated software on their PS3.

Check the link for a full article on Wired.

Article: Sony Threatens to Terminate Service of PS3 Jailbreakers

Government Wants Internet Kill Switch

 

 

The internet kill switch, a bill proposed by Sen. Susan Collins. The bill was voted on in December and failed to pass, the creators of the bill claim it will not give the president the power to shut off the entire internet, but rather shutdown important sections during emergency.

Check out the full article on wired 

Article: Internet 'Kill Switch' Legislation Back in Play

U.K Releases WikiLeaks Hackers on Police Bail

 

The 5 WikiLeaks hackers that were arrested in the U.K yesterday have been released on police bail. Over here in the US the FBI has issued their search warrants but as far as I know made no arrests from the 40 they have on hand.

The hackers are members of the group anonymous, the group had this to say:

"You can easily arrest individuals, but you cannot arrest an ideology. We are united by a common objective and we can and will cross any borders to achieve that," Anonymous said in its statement.

"So our advice to you, the UK government, is to take this statement as a serious warning from the citizens of the world. We will not rest until our fellow anon protesters have been released."

 

Two Dutch suspects have also been arrested and released in a Europe wide investigation carried out  in conjunction with Scotland Yard.

If I was the government in any of these situations I would not be so quick to chase after a group of citizens who were only fighting to have the wars and their governments made more transparent. These people might have only carried out DDos attacks the last time, but that was seemingly because they weren’t really pissed off yet, and don’t forget they got to MasterCard, Visa and Amazon among many many others. So arresting and prosecuting 40-50, hell even 300-400 out of thousands who have capabilities to possibly fuck with a lot of peoples money, and maybe really cause some serious economical damage is a dangerous game to play.

Not to mention that their probably only catching kids who really were just doing it to be part of something cool, or the many people who allowed anonymous to use their computers as gateways. So in the end they catch the small fish, simply to piss off the big dogs, trying to get them to carry out an attack, in the hopes that they’ll catch someone slipping, prosecute the hell out of them and hope it scares enough people that they either stop. And all the while they hope no one notices their incompetence and how pathetically they attempt to stop those who only have their best interest at heart.

There is nothing to fear, the truth will set you free.

Check the link for the guardian post.

Article: Anonymous hacking suspects released on bail

FBI and U.K. Police Fight to Keep Their Secrets

Wired is reporting today that the U.K’s police force and the FBI in what I’m sure is just a coincidence raided over 40 people’s homes claiming their involvement in the WkiLeaks DDos (denial of service) attacks.
The attacks caused no significant monetary losses but the FBI wants to remind us that facilitating or conducting DDOs attacks is punishable by up to 10 years in jail. Which is just f'ing crzazy in my opinion.
Enjoy your free, honest and open society folks!
Check the link for the full article
Article: FBI Knocks Down 40 Doors in Probe of Pro-WikiLeaks Attackers

*NOTE*
The BBC is reporting that 5 men have been arrested in relation to the WikiLeaks attacks. Their reporting that they were arrested this morning, three of them were aged 15, 16, and 19 and two were aged 20 and 26 all were male.
Article: Five arrested over 'Anonymous' web attacks

Sony Still Fighting Freedom

 

Engadget is reporting today that Sony has won a battle against hacker geohot in the form of a restraining order that’s meant to stop distribution of his PS3 jailbreak code.

Of course the code is still out in the wild and basically unstoppable at this point. Sony needs to give up and just let people who paid for their product use it however they want.

For those who might not have heard you can read more about geohot’s hack here.

Check the link for the source.

Article: Court grants Sony's temporary restraining order against Geohot, PS3 jailbreak still available everywhere

Verizon Attacking Net-Neutrality

 

Technorati Tags: Verizon,Net-Neutrality,Activisim

According to an article at Daily Finance, Verizon is on the attack against net-neutrality.  The article states that Verizon filed a legal challenge on Thursday against federal regulations that stop big companies from being able to give priority bandwidth to certain websites.

Check the link for the full article.

Artice: Verizon Challenges FCC's Net Neutrality Rules

Match.com Sued For Fake/Dead Profiles

CIO.com posted an article today by PC world about a class action lawsuit being filed against match.com For not mentioning the apparently 60% of dead or fake accounts on their service in their ad's. They claim match.com allows dead profiles to sit on their site for months in order to pad their membersip numbers.

Click the link for the full article.
Article: Match.Com Sued By Sour Love Seekers

Do You Really Own Your Tech?

With all the controversy surrounding GeoHot new ps3 crack I can't help but think to myself. If you buy and pay for a piece of hardware, do you actually own it? I mean can't you modify a car to whatever ends without fear of some multi-national car company suing you?
I understand that they want to do their best to stop pirated games and they should. I think that the people who make games deserve to get paid for their efforts and I don't feel their overcharging for their products. However since the hack doesn't explicitly allow for the playing of pirated games there really is no 'cause for sony's reaction. It's really a simple matter of do you really own that box? If you do, you should be able to do anything you want to it within reason. I would expect Sony to go after some who might be trying to weaponize the ps3, that would be an example of someone not acting withing reason.

If Sony really wanted to solve this problem they could simply allow a homebrew channel on the ps3 that could run some open source software and just let people have at it. If someone violates a law by say creating an illegal emulator, then let the company who has the problem deal with it. At least thats how I feel.
I'm also wondering how far this can go? Another aspect of the hack is that it allows the ps3 to run Linux so If I go buy a pc with windows on it from Best Buy, wipe the hard drive and run Linux, then am I violating some law? Isn't the damn ps3 just a computer specialized to run games? I know it sounds silly, and it probably is, none the less I think that Sony is being stupid as hell in this lawsuit and should cut this shit out. There's no way there gonna stop people from getting/doing what they want with their tech so they should either support their customers or just get out of the business all together.

Here's an interview with GeoHot on Attack Of The Show


Here's some links if you wanna learn more about GeoHot and his infamous ps3 hack

Link GeoHots page
Link: GeoHot fan Page?
Link: Cnet Article

Man In Florida Suing WilkiLEaks Founder For $150 Million

Some guy in florida is suing face book founder Julian Assange for apparently endagering the lives of everyone on the entire planet.
I personally think he's an f'in moron but that's just me.
Check out this artice by Athima Chansanchai over at msnbc
Link: Florida Man Sues WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange