Facebook is trying to expand its trademark rights over the word "book" by adding the claim to a newly revised version of its "Statement of Rights and Responsibilities," the agreement all users implicitly consent to by using or accessing Facebook.

Not accepting the terms isn't really an option for anyone with a Facebook account. "By using or accessing Facebook, you agree to this Statement," the document says.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court said police had overstepped their legal authority by planting a GPS tracker on the car of a suspected drug dealer without getting a search warrant.

But after the ruling, FBI officials tell NPR, agents still had to turn off 250 devices that they couldn't turn back on.

"We have a number of people in the United States whom we could not indict, there is not probable cause to indict them or to arrest them who present a threat of terrorism. ... [They] may be up on the Internet, may have purchased a gun, but have taken no particular steps to take a terrorist act."

France's president proposed a sweeping new law Thursday that would see repeat visitors to extremist web sites put behind bars — one of several tough measures floated in the wake of a murderous shooting spree.

"Anyone who regularly consults Internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison," he told a campaign rally in Strasbourg, in eastern France.

Sarkozy has France's far-right nipping at his heels, so he's been under pressure to appear tough. A poll released Thursday by the CSA firm suggested that Sarkozy may benefit politically from a hardening of attitudes toward extremist violence.

Stephen Fry has confirmed he and Sir Ian McKellen will pay a copyright licence fee so a Southampton pub can carry on trading as The Hobbit.

The pub was threatened with legal action by Hollywood film firm the Saul Zaentz Company (SZC) which accused it of copyright infringement.

Sir Ian, who plays Gandalf in the Lord Of The Rings films, described the film company's actions as "unnecessary pettiness" and Fry said it was "self-defeating bullying".

By 2015, Munster suggested, the iPad market will expand to some 176 million units. He also believes that Apple will release a “sub-$300 iPad” sometime in 2013.

The new iPad (Apple has so far declined to give it an official name along the lines of “iPad HD” or “iPad 3”) features a high-resolution Retina display, an improved camera and processor and comparable battery life to its predecessors.

Thermal camera imagery has confirmed what iPad 3 owners already knew: the new Apple fondleslab runs hotter than its predecessor did.

That puts the heatsource in the battery area, though whether it's a case of the battery getting hot, how the iPad's casing routes heat away from the CPU, or both isn't clear at this stage.

A Higher Regional Court in Germany has ruled that file-hosting service RapidShare must proactively filter thousands of files uploaded by its users.

The Higher Regional Court in Hamburg reportedly ruled that RapidShare has to monitor user uploads to ensure that none of these titles are put onto their servers, which implies a mandatory filter and monitoring of all user uploads.

While a written copy of the verdict has not yet been made public, the book industry celebrated the outcome as a landmark victory.

Basically there are sites out there that completely focus their efforts on SEO and not content and those results would rank higher than sites that don’t focus on SEO.

The search engine at Google is about to go through a major overhaul and de-prioritizing sites with heavy SEO is just a small part in the big picture to bring better search results. The changes to the search engine will be coming in the next few months.

People with a healthy interest in fundamental freedoms and basic human rights have probably heard about SABAM, the Belgian collecting society for music royalties, which has become one of the global poster children for how outrageously out of touch with reality certain rightsholders groups appear to be.

This morning, word got out in Belgian media that SABAM is spending time and resources to contact local libraries across the nation, warning them that they will start charging fees because the libraries engage volunteers to read books to kids.

SABAM got in touch with the library to let them know that it thinks this is unacceptable, however, and that they should start coughing up cash for the audacity to read stories from copyrighted books out loud. The library rep calculates that it could cost them roughly 250 euros (which is about $328) per year to pay SABAM for the right to – again – READ BOOKS TO KIDS.

Wal-Mart this week ushered in a high-profile outing of Hollywood's UltraViolet scheme for digital streaming of movies and TV. And it's the same old song it ever was: complicated, restrictive DRM with a big side helping of "pay me again."

Those of us who remember FairPlay, Microsoft PlaysForSure, and all the other music DRM battles of the past 14 years or so (yes, it's been 14 years) spotted UltraViolet's true nature right out of the gate. From the consumer perspective, DRM only ever does one thing: drive people crazy.