On Wednesday, the company's services division filed a lawsuit in U.S district court in San Antonio, Texas, to block 25 unnamed "John Doe" defendants who have allegedly pretended to be customers to gain access to account information.

AT&T customers affected by the data breach have been notified and access to their online accounts has been frozen, the company said.

"Regrettably, there are always people looking for ways to circumvent the system," Priscilla Hill-Ardoin, chief privacy officer for AT&T, said in a statement. "But we intend to remain vigilant in order to keep our customers' information secure."

A judge has told the Bush administration that its domestic wiretap programme violates American civil rights and has ordered it to stop.

US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor said the wiretaps under a five-year-old "Terrorist Surveillance Program" violated freedom of speech, and protections against unreasonable searches.

She said that the Bush administration had flouted a constitutional check on the power of the presidency.

She added that there were no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution.

Not surprisingly the US government has appealed saying that the programme is protecting people from terrorism.

In the case of Warner et al v. Scantlebury, yet another individual was targeted by seven record labels looking for restitution of the horrible damages inflicted by the alleged downloading of music files.

Larry Scantlebury had the temerity to die before the case was resolved, though. Again, the cause of death is unknown, but the RIAA did get a hold of a death certificate. It was filed as support for a motion to "stay the case for 60 days and extend all deadlines 60 days," filed by the record labels' lawyers.

"Plaintiffs do not believe it appropriate to discuss a resolution of the case with the family so close to Mr. Scantlebury's passing. Plaintiffs therefore request a stay of 60 days to allow the family additional time to grieve."

Because the litigants believed that the case was nearing a resolution before Larry's passing, it wants to move on with the proceedings rather than drop the case, and will request depositions from his heirs after the 60-day grieving period. Considering that deceased Enron executive Ken Lay's assets may be safe from legal action after his death, the recording industry's tenacity in this case is astounding.

In one of the many RIAA lawsuits over unauthorized distribution of music online, the defendant's lawyers are trying to depose RIAA representatives -- but the RIAA is refusing, unless they have a blanket gag order that would ensure that none of the information in the depositions is made public. Kind of makes you wonder what they're hiding. Speaking of hiding, with the RIAA dropping plenty of cases where they realize they may actually lose the case (usually, because they sued the wrong person), a whole bunch of legal groups joined together to file a statement supporting the idea that the RIAA should be responsible for paying the legal fees of the person they falsely brought to court. It seems only fair.

A higher German court has ruled to uphold a decision by a lower court to ban the sale of used software licenses, in a case involving a subsidiary of Oracle.

The Appellate Court of Munich ruled on Thursday that the sale of used software licenses is illegal, upholding a decision reached by the District Court of Munich on Jan. 19, which ruled that the sale of software licenses by Soft infringed upon copyrights held by Oracle International.

At the time, the court ruled that the first sale of a license for software on tangible media, such as a CD-ROM, limits the manufacturer's right to restrict the resale of the media under certain conditions.

To the 12-year-old friends planning to build themselves a den, the cherry tree seemed an inviting source of material.

But the afternoon adventure turned into a frightening ordeal for Sam Cannon, Amy Higgins and Katy Smith after they climbed into the 20ft tree - then found themselves hauled into a police station and locked in cells for up to two hours.

Officers considered charging the children with criminal damage but eventually decided a reprimand - the equivalent of a caution for juveniles - was sufficient.

The parents of the children, who all live in Halesowen, West Midlands, say they are angry with police for treating their children as hardened criminals and accused officers of over-reacting.

'To detain them, DNA them and treat them that way was simply cruel and an over-reaction by the police. Generations of children have played in that tree and my son and his friends won't be the first to have thought of building a tree den.'

'West Midlands Police deals robustly with anti-social behaviour. By targeting what may seem relatively low-level crime we aim to prevent it developing into more serious matters.'

For years, the RIAA has claimed that having the IP address of a computer that has shared unauthorized files is the equivalent of having the evidence of who was actually sharing files. That, of course, is false. The IP address simply can help you know who paid for the internet access, but not who was using what computer on a network. In fact, this even had some people suggesting that, if you want to win a lawsuit from the RIAA, you're best off opening up your WiFi network to neighbors. It seems like this strategy might actually be working. Earlier this month the inability to prove who actually did the file sharing caused the RIAA to drop a case in Oklahoma and now it looks like the same defense has worked in a California case as well. In both cases, though, as soon as the RIAA realized the person was using this defense, they dropped the case, rather than lose it and set a precedent showing they really don't have the unequivocal evidence they claim they do. The RIAA certainly has the legal right to go after people, even if it simply ends up pissing off their best fans and driving people to spend their money on other forms of entertainment -- but, if they want to do so, they should at least have legitimate evidence. It's good to see that some are finally pointing out how flimsy the evidence really is.

Stuart Romm boarded a plane in Las Vegas on February 1, 2004. When he got off the plane in British Columbia, Canada's Border Services Agency stopped Romm for questioning. After learning that Romm had a criminal background, Agent Keith Brown searched his laptop and discovered child porn sites in Romm's Internet history list. Canada then bundled Romm back onto a plane to Seattle, where US Customs agents had a chance to question him further.

An appeal of the case went to the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which was charged with deciding an important issue: can border patrol agents search laptops without a warrant and without probable cause? The court's ruling was handed down on Monday, and said that yes, agents can search laptops for any reason.

The court argued that the forensic analysis fell under the "border search exception to the warrant requirement." This exception was established by United States v. Montoya de Hernandez in 1985, and says that "the government may conduct routine searches of persons entering the United States without probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or a warrant." The court goes on to note that international airports count as border terminals, even if not physically located on a US border.

Last November, Shawn Hogan received an unsettling call: A lawyer representing Universal Pictures and the Motion Picture Association of America informed the 30-year-old software developer that they were suing him for downloading Meet the Fockers over BitTorrent. Hogan was baffled. Not only does he deny the accusation, he says he already owned the film on DVD. The attorney said they would settle for $2,500. Hogan declined.

Now he's embroiled in a surprisingly rare situation – a drawn-out legal fight with the MPAA. The organization and its music cousin, the Recording Industry Association of America, have filed thousands of similar lawsuits between them, but largely because of the legal costs few have been contested and none have gone to trial.

Hogan, who coded his way to millions as the CEO of Digital Point Solutions, is determined to change this. Though he expects to incur more than $100,000 in legal fees, he thinks it's a small price to pay to challenge the MPAA’s tactics. "They’re completely abusing the system," Hogan says. "I would spend well into the millions on this."

A US judge has sent Kinderstart back to the drawing board, after dismissing the education website's anti-trust lawsuit against Google.

Kinderstart filed its suit in March after Google changed the way it ranked sites on its web search and advertising system. Allegedly, these changes led to 70 per cent drop in traffic to the site in 2005, when its ranking was changed to "zero".

It accused Google of "pervasive monopolistic practices" that denied its free speech rights, destroyed competition, and led to predatory pricing conditions.

Kinderstart attorneys are now seeking other companies who are aggrieved about Google's rankings to join Kinderstart in a class action suit.