A European court has ruled that record labels and film studios can't use the courts to instruct a broadband company to track or try to block a customer.

Record labels, film studios, and other owners of copyrighted music, movies, or media have in recent years tried to steer government and courts toward making ISPs responsible for piracy. They argue that ISPs should keep an eye on what their customers are doing online, and if they spot a customer illegally accessing copyrighted material, courts should order the ISP to boot the customer off the Internet.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and state regulators say druggies can use the single ingredient in his "Polar Pure" water purifier -- iodine -- to make crystal meth.

Special Agent Richard Camps, a San Jose-based state narcotics task force commander, said he received reports of suspicious buyers.

"Weird-looking people, 'Beavis and Butt-Head'-types, were coming into camping stores and buying everything they had on the shelves," Camps said. "Then they would take off into the mountains and try to cook meth with it." The DEA reported agents found Polar Pure at a meth lab they dismantled in Tennessee two years ago.

Ever since the days of Napster, the recording industry and movie industry have treated the Internet as a place on the map marked “Here be dragons.” For the last decade, Hollywood and big music have spent time not innovating, but trying to get the U.S. Congress to help them tame the Internet.

GigaOm’s Mathew Ingram wrote that the bill gives the government and private companies “unprecedented powers to remove websites on the flimsiest of grounds.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the bill “a dangerous wish list.” The nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington said SOPA would cause “broad collateral damage to freedom of expression and privacy.”

SOPA targets search engines, Internet service providers, ad networks and payment networks precisely because those components are so central to the functioning of the Internet.

ReDigi must "quarantine any copies on its servers of our Member's sound recordings so that those recordings are not exploited in any manner," the RIAA's Jennifer L. Pariser insists. On top of that, ReDigi must erase from its website "all references to the names and likenessess of artists signed to RIAA members" and break any ongoing connections between the operation's current downloaders and its servers.

Next, RIAA wants ReDigi to fork over "an accounting of all sales achieved and revenue generated" from RIAA member sound recordings through the ReDigi service, "so that we can discuss a resolution of our Members' claims."

Finally comes this kicker: "After our Members' claims are resolved, we expect that you will destroy the quarantined sound recordings."

Attracting top employees can be difficult for cash-strapped startups. So, in many cases, they give out company stock to supplement salaries that employees might feel is below-market.

One Journal source said that Zynga executives were especially concerned with not creating "a Google chef" scenario.

That reference relates to Google's 2004 IPO when one of the company's chefs, who was hired in the firm's early days, walked away with $20 million worth of stock after the shares went public.

The company is expected to raise up to $1 billion in its IPO.

The shutdown is the direct and unavoidable outcome of a two-year battle with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, which was eventually decided against the Usenet provider. News-Service announced that it will appeal the decision “out of principle” as it threatens the entire 30-year-old Usenet community.

Although the name NSE might not ring a bell with many people, it is the largest usenet provider in Europe and has many high-profile resellers such as Usenext.

Aside from threatening many other Usenet providers, a similar judgement would also mean the end of file-hosting sites such as Megaupload, and other cloud storage services including Dropbox.

Zediva, if you don't recall, let people rent movies remotely. It would load them up in a DVD player that you could log into. It legitimately bought the DVDs and used them just as you would at home if you rented a DVD and brought it home. The only real difference here was that the DVD player was at a central location, rather than your home. In a very weird ruling, a court determined that the length of the cord determines if something is infringing.

If you want to get a sense of the future under E-PARASITE/SOPA: this is it. Except it's even worse. Chris Dodd and the MPAA won't even need to go to court, they can just send a single notice to the payment processor for Zediva, and the plug would be pulled. Dead.

House bill 195 basically says those who buy and sell second hand goods cannot use cash to make those transactions, and it flew so far under the radar most businesses don't even know about it.

The law states those who buy or sell second hand goods are prohibited from using cash. State representative Rickey Hardy co-authored the bill.

Hardy says the bill is targeted at criminals who steal anything from copper to televisions, and sell them for a quick buck. Having a paper trail will make it easier for law enforcement.

Diaspora* the open source social network that arose out of privacy issues associated with Facebook last year, recently reached out to the community for donations to sustain the network, which was all well and good until PayPal shutdown their account.

"We immediately made several phone calls, and were told they needed additional documentation, such as our certificate of incorporation, which we supplied," Peter says. "It proves we're legitimate. Yet this morning they emailed us that our "appeal" was denied and that our money is locked up for 180 days(!). We called them again and were told that they had now blocked all incoming donations."

The company is currently working on a solution by using Stripe, a new payment startup, and they expect to have payments back online soon.

You probably heard a few weeks ago about how an astrology software company, Astrolabe, claimed it now controlled the copyright for the historical time zone database that nearly every Linux and Unix system uses to set clocks to local time... and was suing the two individuals who maintain the database.

"We are aware of the lawsuit," [Kim Davies, a technical manager at ICANN] said. "We believe it's important to continue the operation of the database. We'll deal with any legal matters as they arise."