Judges in Texas, West Virginia, and Illinois had all ruled recently that such lawsuits were defective in various ways, but Howell gave her cases the green light; attorneys could use the federal courts to sue thousands of people at once and then issue mass subpoenas to Internet providers.

Between 2004-2009, Howell was the only listed lobbyist at the firm; the RIAA was her exclusive lobbying client for most of that time.

Howell's case is only one specific example of a much larger issue, one that always revolves around people working for corporations, entering government to make law or policy relating to those corporations, and then returning to private life.

Judge Kimba Wood has handed down an opinion in the LimeWire damages case that challenges the industry's belief it could be owed more than the entire global GDP for one year.

Judge Kimba Wood revealed that the record companies, seeking statutory damages against the music-sharing service, are seeking damages predicated on the "number of direct infringers per work" - leading to a damages claim of as much as $75 trillion dollars.

A federal magistrate is granting Sony the right to acquire the internet IP addresses of anybody who has visited PlayStation 3 hacker George Hotz's website from January of 2009 to the present.

A YouTube subpoena, also approved, seeks information connected to the "geohot" account that displayed a video of the hack being used: "Jailbroken PS3 3.55 with Homebrew." The subpoena demands data to identify who watched the video and "documents reproducing all records or usernames and IP addresses that have posted or published comments in response to the video."

Sony has threatened to sue anybody who posts the hacking tools or the encryption key. It is seeking unspecified damages from Hotz.

ICE has now arrested someone and charged him with criminal copyright infringement, such that he's now facing five years in jail (as well as fines). This is interesting, because when that domain was seized, we had noted that channelsurfing did not appear to host any content itself, but merely embedded content from other sites.

There's simply no such thing as criminal contributory infringement, so if that's the claim, then it would appear that ICE (yet again) is simply making up what it wants the law to be, rather than what the law actually says.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that the new charges for the first time formally accuse Manning of aiding the enemy.

The charge of aiding the enemy under the Uniform Code of Military Justice is a capital offense, but the Army's prosecution team has notified the Manning defense team that it will not recommend the death penalty to the two-star general who is in charge of proceeding with legal action.

Last week a Swedish court held a file-sharing copyright infringement case of their own against a 26 year-old man. In 2010 he had been tracked by the IFPI sharing 44 music tracks on the Internet - 20 more than the 24 shared by Thomas-Rasset and 13 more than the 31 shared by Tenenbaum.

While Thomas-Rasset and Tenenbaum currently face damages of $62,500 and $2,177 per track respectively, the outcome for the Swedish 26 year-old is somewhat more realistic. Although the judge had originally requested an amount equivalent to around $45 per track, in the end that amount was reduced to just $7.

In federal court in New York, prosecutors had portrayed Muse as a ringleader of the pirate gang who seized the Maersk Alabama some 450km (280 miles) off the coast of Somalia.

Muse pleaded guilty in May to what were said to be the first piracy charges to have been brought in the US in more than a century.

The latest installment of Operation in our Sites came last week with the seizure of 10 addresses for websites accused of illegally streaming live pay-per-view sporting events. Under the initiative, feds confiscate the internet addresses with no prior warning to the owners, many of whom are located outside US borders.

Owners get no opportunity to argue on behalf of their website until after the domain name is seized. At least 92 domains have been seized under the operation so far.

The first letters, or strikes, we're sent out last October, and a study has shown that only 4% were to quit.

Now Toubon is making the graduated response system seem even more ridiculous by claiming that the the 'Creation and Internet' law also covers illegal streaming and that users of these sites will be targeted just like users of illegal P2P applications and services.

It's amazing that he even thinks that users of illegal streaming sites could be monitored.

Criminal investigations "are being frustrated" because no law currently exists to force Internet providers to keep track of what their customers are doing, the U.S. Department of Justice told Congress.

"The problem of investigations being stymied by a lack of data retention is growing worse."