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Lifelock Dinged $12 Million for Deceptive Business Practices
The CEO of Lifelock, Todd Davis, became famous for advertising his Social Security number on television ads and billboards promising his $10 monthly service would protect consumers from identity theft. The company also offered a $1 million guarantee to compensate customers for losses incurred if they became a victim of identity theft after signing up for the service. But the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday that the claims were bogus (.pdf) and accused Lifelock, based in Arizona, of operating a scam and con operation.
Continue reading »Dutch Pirate Party Joins Election Race
2009 was a breakthrough year for the Pirate Party movement. With more than 7 percent of the vote, the Swedish Pirate Party secured two seats in the European Parliament. A few weeks later, the Pirates in Germany entered the local Parliament after a member of another party switched sides.
Continue reading »FCC wants 260 million people on 100Mbps broadband by 2020
Finally, the FCC has had it with “small ball”—and the agency is at last detailing some big-picture aspirational goals for US broadband. By 2020, the National Broadband Plan calls for 100 million homes to have 100Mbps Internet access, and the US should have the world’s largest “ultra-high-speed broadband testbeds.” In addition, Internet adoption rates should hit at least 90 percent—way up from the current 65 percent. Broadband will also become a universal service like the telephone system of old—and FCC Chairman Julius Genachoswki promised today that even baseline service would be faster than the 1-2Mbps currently pushed by other countries .
Continue reading »IFPI Loses “Deep-Linking” Case Against Baidu
Search engine Baidu.com is not only China’s biggest, but also a major player globally. It recently grabbed headlines when it was hacked by the ‘Iranian cyber army’, the same outfit that took Twitter offline in December. Baidu has become increasingly popular with the Chinese population for its MP3 indexing abilities.
Continue reading »Court to FCC: You Don’t Have Power to Enforce Net Neutrality
A federal appeals court gave notice Friday it likely would reject the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to sanction Comcast for throttling peer-to-peer applications. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit suggested as much during oral arguments with the FCC and Comcast.
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