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If you own a laptop, tablet PC, or smartphone -- and who doesn't these days? -- feel free to bring them with you when you visit the Quincy District Court in Massachusetts. Unlike nearly every other court in the country, not only does this one allow these electronic devices, but it's actually encouraging users to live blog, post to Facebook, and update their Twitter accounts once court is in session.
We don't run a feature called "Quirky Lawsuit of the Month," but if we did, two California residents who decided to sue Twitter for sending an SMS notification after they withdrew their consent would be a shoe in. Hear us out on this one. It's not that we have a problem with punishing companies that blatantly ignore opt-out requests, but that isn't what happened here. Hit the jump to find out exactly what Twitter did.
If Google is one of the most prominent Linux stalwarts around, Android is undoubtedly the public face of its love affair with the open source operating system. But its Linux affection runs deeper than that as the Internet behemoth uses the OS on everything from back-end servers to employee machines. Now, that deep-rooted love is beginning to cost Google, for a jury has fined it $5 million for infringing on a patent (U.S. Patent No. 5,893,120) held by Texas-bases patent troll Bedrock Computer Technologies.
We're not calling the Winklevoss twins insane, but if Albert Einstein were still alive, he might come to that conclusion. After all, he's the one who famously (and supposedly) said that insanity is the belief that one can get different results by doing the same thing. That pretty much describes the Winklevoss twins, who filed yet another appeal in an ongoing and uphill legal battle against Facebook for a larger slice of the social networking site's pie.
A court has ruled that debt collectors mustn't hop on Facebook to send people messages demanding repayment for money owed. The ruling came after Melanie Beacham, who was late on car payments, filed a lawsuit against MarkOne Financial for allegedly sending her a message on the social networking site, as well as contacting her friends via Facebook. Turns out that was a big mistake.
FBI investigators tried a new approach to taking down a zombie PC gang. For the first time ever, federal authorities in the U.S. seized control of the bad guys' servers, a move that required the U.S. Justice Department to seek permission from a judge in order to carry out the sting. After doing so, authorities were able to counter-attack by issuing their own commands, programming the malware to shutdown, and also log IP addresses of infected machines.
Forget about the weary, there's no rest for the legal team of the rich of famous. In yesterday's episode in 'As the Social Networking World Turns,' an appeals court essentially
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss will have to figure out a way to budget $20 million in cash and a stake in Facebook worth about $140 million and make it last the rest of their lives, because that's all they're entitled to, an appeals court ruled. The $20 million settlement and partial ownership in Facebook was the agreement the Winklevoss twins and Mark Zuckerberg came to back in 2008, but as Facebook ballooned in value, they wanted more, claiming that Zuckerberg wasn't completely forthcoming with information when they signed the settlement.
Fair warning for anyone who plans to travel outside the country. Upon re-entry into the U.S., border agents have full authority to seize your laptop, netbook, tablet PC, and other electronic components without a warrant, but that's not all. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that border agents also have the power to send your confiscated electronics to an offsite location for forensic inspection.








