IBM is suing Amazon.com, accusing the bookseller turned Web megastore of knowingly using IBM's techniques for selling things online. Initially at issue was an IBM request for hundreds of millions of dollars in license fees, but the federal court could expose Amazon to even stiffer penalties.

IBM attorneys say they have been trying to negotiate with Amazon for more than four years-since September 2002-but talks did not go anywhere and Amazon ultimately stopped responding. "We have given them an opportunity over four years," said Gail Zarick, intellectual property counsel within corporate litigation at IBM.

The case traces its routes to 1988, Zarick said, when IBM started to patent a wide range of e-commerce techniques back when it owned Prodigy, which was an online service that predated the Web and was a rival to the early AOL and CompuServe.

"This is somewhat akin to patenting the concept of putting up storm shutters before a hurricane," said Cathy Hotka, senior vice president of technology and business development for the Retail Industry Leaders Association. "One should not be able to patent obvious business processes, like selling things. If these issues are not resolved, business innovation is in danger if the most obvious things can be reserved for one company."

A recording industry lobby group has launched 8,000 new cases alleging illegal file sharing all over the world but none of them is British because the UK lobby group is focusing on its negotiations with internet service providers.

The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) has begun the thousands of new cases in locations as far apart as Argentina, Iceland and Singapore. Action is being taken for the first time in Brazil, Mexico and Poland.

Earlier this year US resident Tammie Marson made labels back down from their case against her because she said that evidence that illegal copies of songs appeared on her computer was not evidence that she had downloaded or shared them. No file sharing case in the US has gone to a full trial.

The RIAA has dropped the Elektra v. Wilke case in Chicago. This is the case in which Mr. Wilke had moved for summary judgment, stating that: '1. He is not "Paule Wilke" which is the name he was sued under. 2. He has never possessed on his computer any of the songs listed in exhibit A [the list of songs the RIAA's investigator downloaded]. He only had a few of the songs from exhibit B [the screenshot] on his computer, and those were from legally purchased CDs owned by Mr. Wilke. 3. He has never used any "online media distribution system" to download, distribute, or make available for distribution, any of plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings.' The RIAA's initial response to the summary judgment motion, prior to dropping the case, had been to cross-move for discovery, indicating that it did not have enough evidence with which to defeat Mr. Wilke's summary judgment motion.

Whilst listening in on normal telephone calls over landlines or mobile phone networks has become a routine procedure, Voice over IP connections frequently present a problem for investigators, especially when the persons being monitored use Skype via foreign servers or call direct from PC to PC and encrypt their data. The Swiss Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (UVEK) is therefore examining the use of spy software to allow it to listen in on conversations on PCs.

Installation of the software wiretap is to be carried out on the instructions of a judge only. The ISPs of the persons under investigation will then slip the program onto their computers. The program will save overheard conversations and send them to a server in small, inconspicuous packets. If the computer is turned off before all the data has been transmitted, the program will continue transmission when it is restarted.

The wiretap has some additional functions. For example, the built in microphone on a laptop can be turned on to monitor a room or webcams can be activated. As the latter is usually indicated by an LED, this is unlikely to be useful in practice. Once wiretap activities have been completed, the software can be programmed to uninstall itself at a given time.

A woman who bought a bottle of shampoo at a store then attempted to resell it on eBay. She took a photo of the bottle she bought and used that in her eBay listing. The company proceeded to demand that she take down the listing completely. They appear to have two separate (but equally questionable) reasons for this. First, they claim that the photo is copyright infringement. That's a tough one to support since the woman took the photograph herself of the bottle that she bought and which she owns (yes, owns).

The second complaint from the company is that they have distributor agreements that say only certified resellers can sell their product. However, that's a contractual agreement between the company and its distributors. This woman has no contractual relationship with the shampoo company and thus cannot be violating any contract.

A Chinese journalist jailed in part due to e-mail evidence provided by a Yahoo subsidiary plans to file a lawsuit in the U.S. against the Internet company within the next few months.

A U.S. civil suit against Yahoo on behalf of Shi Tao, a Chinese journalist convicted of "divulging state secrets" by Beijing in part due to an e-mail Yahoo provided to Chinese authorities, will likely be filed in either New York or California, Ho said. Tao's e-mail, sent from a Yahoo account in April, 2004 to a pro-China democracy Web site in New York, contained a Beijing order for officials to be on guard for unrest and dissident activity ahead of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The new lawsuit would come just months after Ho filed a complaint to Hong Kong authorities against Yahoo Holdings (Hong Kong) on behalf of Tao. It also comes at a time when international pressure is increasing on Internet companies to handle the private data of their users more carefully, particularly with respect to human rights.

The producer of a mashup album that combined the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds and the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band has been threatened with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit by EMI, the Beatles' music publisher. EMI has also demanded that he turn over the IP addresses of the hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded the mash-ups, presumably so that EMI can sue all of us, too.

This follows a pattern set by EMI of indiscriminate censorship of people who do to the Beatles what the Beatles did to the artists who inspired them. First EMI tried to crush DJ Danger Mouse's incredible "Grey Album" (the White Album plus Jay-Z's Black Album), then they took down djBC's Beastles (The Beatles plus the Beastie Boys) and now they're coming after The Beachles.

Ever since the RIAA started taking on file sharing, it's always acted as if it were entitled to all sorts of things it isn't: access to the names associated with IP addresses without filing lawsuits, private info on the people they're suing and even the aid of the FBI in what's clearly a civil, not criminal, dispute. What's amusing about this is that the entertainment industry likes to accuse those who push for a fairer balance in intellectual property laws as having a "sense of entitlement" to free stuff. The latest case involves someone accused of file sharing. The RIAA wants to examine her computer, and for very good reasons, she feels uncomfortable with just letting them scour her hard drive. As a compromise her lawyers suggested a neutral expert -- which seems much more reasonable. Instead, as Nick Burns submits to us, the RIAA has filed a response explaining why they will not accept a neutral independent forensics expert. It's difficult to see how they can legitimately complain about a neutral person examining the drive. However, this isn't the first time this has happened. The last time, the judge actually went in the other direction entirely, telling the accused that she could just hire her own expert to examine her drive, and the RIAA should pay for it.

Legal merits aside, the public has become accustomed to the record labels going after peer-to-peer services and even individuals. But now it's shooting itself in the foot thanks to some overzealous attorneys.

A couple of weeks ago, the RIAA was both ridiculed and reviled over its continued action involving a deceased defendant. Now, the New York Times is reporting that the industry group is targeting sites used by musicians to teach each other how to play songs.

Even if the courts support the record labels' position, the industry may never fully recover from the ill will engendered by these types of action. At a time when the entertainment business needs to remake itself, it's not a great idea to alienate consumers any more than absolutely necessary.

In early 2000, a computer hacker who used the now-defunct e-mail address unknownuser1069@hotmail.com seeded a Usenet newsgroup called alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.pre-teen with a clever bit of malicious Windows software.

On July 16, 2000, "1069" sent e-mail to the Montgomery, Ala., Police Department saying, "I found a child molester on the Net."

At the urging of Montgomery Police Capt. Kevin Murphy, "1069" eventually turned over more and more information that led back to a computer owned by Bradley Joseph Steiger, who had worked as an emergency room physician in Alabama. The hacker's finds included information from Steiger's AT&T WorldNet account, records from his checking account, and a list of directories on his computer's hard drive where sexually explicit photographs were stored.

A year later, "1069" fingered another man, William Adderson Jarrett, who lived in the Richmond, Va., area. He again contacted Murphy, who started an investigation that led to Jarrett's arrest.

Instead of informing "1069" that he was committing federal felonies and should cease immediately, Murphy and the FBI encouraged the hacker to continue. The FBI wrote "1069" in January 2002: "The FACT still stands that you are not a citizen of the United States and are not bound by our laws. Our federal attorneys have expressed NO desire to charge you with any CRIMINAL offense. You have not hacked into any computer at the request of the FBI or other law (enforcement) agency. You have not acted as an agent for the FBI or other law enforcement agency. Therefore, the information you have collected can be used in our criminal trials."