Lawyers in this year's two highest-profile file-sharing cases have joined forces, and they plan to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer to claw back the "$100+ million" that the RIAA "stole."

Not content simply to defend Jammie Thomas-Rasset in her high-profile retrial next week in Minnesota, lawyer Kiwi Camara is joining forces with Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson to file a class-action lawsuit against the recording industry later this summer.

Perhaps the RIAA had good reason not to send those settlement letters to Harvard for so long.

We've seen so many stories about movie theaters that have no problem treating customers like criminals that it's surprising to see one finally get in trouble for it. JJ sent over a story about a movie theater in Quebec that has been fined $10,000 for an unnecessary search of customers.

The theater owner acknowledges that they can still search bags, but have to do so with much stricter rules. Or, you know, they could treat paying attendees like they're customers rather than criminals, and perhaps people would feel a lot better about going out to the movies.

The EU passed the Data Retention Directive years ago, a law that demands ISPs and search engines hold onto data long enough to help the cops (but not long enough to cause privacy problems). But Sweden never passed it into national law, and the European Commission has now sued the country to make sure a bill appears.

ISPs like Sweden's Bahnhof responded to IPRED by simply deleting all their data on a regular basis-a perfectly legal move. But when the Data Retention Directive goes into effect, that option will be taken off the table.

The convoluted web of potential scandal further complicates the April 17 copyright infrigment convictions of the four founders of The Pirate Bay, the world’s most notorious BitTorrent tracker.

The defendants claim Norstrom was hostile to the defense because of his affiliations with the Swedish Copyright Association and the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

Attorneys for the Motion Picture Association of America attacked fair use during a hearing in the RealDVD case here on Thursday, claiming it is not a defense for violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Patel raised a crucial question during the MPAA's closing arguments regarding a consumer's right to copy a DVD he or she purchased for personal use.

"Not for the purposes under the DMCA," said Bart Williams, arguing for the MPAA. "One copy is a violation of the DMCA."

Police in northern New Jersey infiltrated Facebook to learn that students were planning to bring alcohol and drugs to an after-prom party.

Police created fake identities to enter the social networking site and found what Fair Lawn High School students were going.

School Superintendent Bruce Watson says the district doesn't check Facebook on a regular basis unless there's a reason. Watson says the district generally leaves Internet patrolling to police.

A spate of "sexting" cases in the US has prompted calls for a change in the law.

It could also lead to a criminal conviction as a sex offender for any teenager who forwards them on to someone else.

It has led people to ask whether threatening children with the same law that was drawn up to protect them - and potentially creating many more sex offenders - is the best way to tackle the phenomenon of "sexting"?

I walked over and took a picture with my iPhone of them and more interestingly of the open ATM.

The Loomis guys wanted me to give them my ID so they could write a report about me for their bosses because I took the picture of them and the open ATM. The REI security people that had been called in by now wanted the same thing.

That was when Officer GE Abed (#6270) spun me around and put handcuffs on me. They took me out the back door to the loading garage, put me in the back of Seattle Police car #805.

Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Fredrik Neij, and Carl Lundstroem were all found guilty last month of having assisted in making 33 copyright-protected files accessible for illegal file sharing via the Piratebay.org Web site.The four were sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay $3.6 million in damages to copyright holders.

As CNET has reported, Judge Tomas Norstroem, who ruled against the Pirate Bay defendants, is a member of two copyright organizations. Some allege his membership is a conflict of interest.

As you probably know, every three years, the Librarian of Congress gets to review requests for special "exemptions" to the DMCA.

Kevin alerts us to some video of a recent hearing, where the MPAA actually (you have to see it to believe it) demonstrates how to use a camcorder to videotape a movie off a TV.

Why would the MPAA show this? Because it wants to remove the (very narrow) exemptions that were granted in 2006 to media professors who wanted to copy clips of movies from DVDs for the purpose of education.