piracy

This month, Facebook made a sneaky change to its privacy settings, and the new policy is generating a fierce backlash. The social network's default privacy setting now allows anyone to see a user's personal information. While users are permitted to change those settings, through an option to limit...

Late last month, Somali brigands in a dinghy hijacked the Maran Centaurus, an American-bound tanker carrying millions of barrels of crude oil, in the latest episode of escalating pirate attacks off the coast of the failed, anarchic East African state. But that event won't come up at Tuesday...

The CEO of News Corp.'s (NWS) Fox Filmed Entertainment this week called for a U.S. "three strikes" law, similar to one just passed in France that would cut off suspected Internet pirates' Web connections and could land them in jail. Speaking at a press conference in Athens, Fox's Jim Gianopulos...

Consumers groups have accused President Barack Obama of favoring a global trade agreement -- currently being negotiated in secret on national security grounds -- that would include harsh provisions similar to France's "three strikes" law, which cuts off internet access for repeated digital piracy....

Facing a contempt of court charge, BlueBeat.com, an obscure music website, has yanked Beatles remasters off its site after EMI, the band's record label, sued for copyright infringement, though some non-remastered Beatles albums and songs are apparently still available on the site. EMI had charged...

And so it goes on: the interminable wait for a deal that would make the Beatles music available on the Web. Instead, Apple Corps. Ltd., which manages the Beatles' legacy, and EMI, the band's record label, have announced the release of a limited-edition USB flash drive preloaded with Beatles songs...

Going Rogue is on track to become a best-selling book. The well-timed political memoir of controversial former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin already sits atop the best-seller lists at online book sellers Amazon.com (AMZN) and Barnes & Noble (BKS). All of those sales were actually pre-orders, as...

The press release may not read this way, but Microsoft (MSFT) is trading jobs in the Chinese city of Hangzhou for protection against the piracy of its software. Over the years, the world's largest software company has almost certainly lost billions of dollars on pirated copies of its Windows...

Wolverine had some pretty sharp claws. In America, the opening weekend haul was bigger that even the most optimistic expectations, even my own: $87 million. International showings doubled the take to a grand total of $160 million. That was despite the worldwide malaise over swine flu that kept some...

The recent capture and subsequent freeing of Capt. Richard Phillips has, once again, drawn world attention to Somalia. The beleaguered African nation, which has an ineffective central government, has become a regional staging-ground for piracy, and has emerged as a major threat to shipping in and...