SecurityProPortal.com / Legal IT

Internet shoppers to get duty relief for Christmas

Team Outlaw — Mon, 17 Nov 2008

Internet shoppers who wait until December to look for a Christmas bargain may save more money than they thought when HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) eliminates customs duty on personal purchases costing less that £105. The customs-free limit until now was £18

Count page views, not site visits, when suing for internet libel

Team Outlaw — Thu, 06 Nov 2008

Courts cannot assume that online material has been read without some evidence in libel cases, a court has ruled

Contractor loses memory stick with Government Gateway

Team Outlaw — Wed, 05 Nov 2008

Another Government contractor lost track of equipment containing citizens' personal data, newspaper reports have revealed.

US court narrows scope for business method patents

Team Outlaw — Tue, 04 Nov 2008

One of the US's highest courts has ruled that business methods cannot be patented unless they meet a test laid down by the Supreme Court

Wikipedia content will be set free for collaboration if licence change approved

Desire Athow — Mon, 03 Nov 2008

Content published on user-generated encyclopaedia Wikipedia might soon be usable along with content from other open source information projects

Privacy watchdog calls Home Office plans threat to British way of life

Team Outlaw — Mon, 27 Oct 2008

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has said that a single database of phone and internet usage records would undermine the "British way of life

Data protection officials to lobby for new child-protecting laws

Team Outlaw — Wed, 22 Oct 2008

Data protection authorities from all over the world have agreed to call for legislation specifically limiting the collection and use of children's personal data

Advocate General rejects Ireland's data retention objections

Team Outlaw — Tue, 21 Oct 2008

The European Union's Data Retention Directive was not procedurally flawed and should not be repealed, an Advocate General to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said. Ireland's argument that the law was wrongly adopted has been rejecte

German privacy watchdogs agree social networking ground rules

Team Outlaw — Mon, 20 Oct 2008

Social networking sites are not permitted to store information about people's use of the sites beyond the duration of a particular session in Germany, according to a panel of all that country's data protection officials

Court of Appeal orders men to disclose encryption keys

Desire Athow — Fri, 17 Oct 2008

Two men have been told that they cannot rely on their right to silence to refuse to give British police a computer password

Google to appeal thumbnail copyright defeats in Germany

Team Outlaw — Wed, 15 Oct 2008

Google has lost two German court cases over copyright in images displayed as thumbnails in search results. German courts ruled in both cases that Google's display of miniature versions of pictures without permission infringed copyright in the originals

German court says IP addresses in server logs are not personal data

Team Outlaw — Mon, 13 Oct 2008

A German court has ruled that website operators are allowed to store the internet protocol (IP) addresses of their visitors without violating data protection legislation. Without additional information, IP addresses do not count as personal data, it said

Average privacy policy takes 10 minutes to read, research finds

Team Outlaw — Mon, 06 Oct 2008

Website privacy policies take on average 10 minutes to read and sometimes run into thousands of words, researchers have found. While some are short, others would take over half an hour to read, researchers said

US and Europe agree mutual fast-track patent system

Team Outlaw — Wed, 01 Oct 2008

The patent offices of Europe and the US have begun an experiment designed to increase the speed at which patent applications from one area are processed in the other

Ofcom will deny premium-rate numbers to past phone offenders

Team Outlaw — Tue, 30 Sep 2008

Anyone who has abused premium-rate telephone numbers in the past will be barred from using the numbers again, telecoms regulator Ofcom has said

View web pirates as competitors, not just enemies

Team Outlaw — Fri, 26 Sep 2008

TV companies, film studios and record labels should spend less time fighting those engaged in piracy and more time competing with them, a leading anti-piracy expert has said

AdSense ads must be vetted by publishers, says ad regulator

Team Outlaw — Wed, 24 Sep 2008

Publishers must take responsibility for the suitability of published adverts, even if the ads are chosen by an automated system like Google's AdSense, the advertising regulator has said

Site glitches blamed for abandoned shopping carts on the web

Team Outlaw — Tue, 23 Sep 2008

Almost nine out of ten people who try to buy online run into problems, an annual customer survey has found. The research found that those problems can seriously affect businesses, as 41% of customers would abandon transactions if they came across a problem

Privacy chief approves of sharing criminal records if privacy beefed-up

Team Outlaw — Mon, 22 Sep 2008

Europe's privacy regulator has said that he will back a pan-European criminal records system only if specific data protection measures are put in place. Because the system deals with crime and security, EU data protection law does not currently apply to it

Europe demands IT import duty rethink

Team Outlaw — Wed, 17 Sep 2008

The European Commission wants the number of IT-related goods that are exempt from import duties around the world to be increased