Long-time Slashdot reader zoobab shares this update about the long-standing Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a Munich-based non-profit opposing ratification of a “Unified Patent Court” by Germany: The FFII is crowdfunding a constitutional complaint in Germany against the third attempt to impose software patents in Europe, calling on all software companies, independent software developers and FLOSS authors to donate. The…
Tag: justice
Report Claims Huawei Finance Chief Meng Wanzhou Could Be Set Free In Exchange of Admitting Guilt
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The U.S. Justice Department is talking to representatives of Meng Wanzhou about a potential deal that would allow the Chinese telecom executive to return home from Canada in exchange for signing a deferred prosecution agreement admitting criminal wrongdoing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Meng, the chief financial officer of…
US Used Patriot Act To Gather Logs of Website Visitors
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The government has interpreted a high-profile provision of the Patriot Act as empowering F.B.I. national security investigators to collect logs showing who has visited particular web pages, documents show. But the government stops short of using that law to collect the keywords people submit to internet search engines because it…
Trump Administration Claims Facebook Improperly Reserved Jobs for H-1B Workers
The Trump administration has sued Facebook, accusing the social-media company of illegally reserving high-paying jobs for immigrant workers it was sponsoring for permanent residence, rather than searching adequately for available U.S. workers who could fill the positions. From a report: In a 17-page complaint filed Thursday, the Justice Department’s civil-rights division said Facebook inadequately advertised at least 2,600 positions between 2018…
As Antitrust Pressure Mounts, Google To Pull Back Benefit to News Sites That Adopted Its Preferred MobileTechnology
Four years after offering special placement in a “top stories carousel” in search results to entice publishers to use a format it created for mobile pages, called AMP, Google announced last week that it will end that preferential treatment in the spring. “We will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we…
Does Jupiter’s moon Europa have geysers? If so, what’s their source?
If watery plumes do burst from Europa’s surface, they might originate not in the moon’s underground ocean, but instead in pockets of brine trapped in the moon’s crust. If that’s so, it could be a source of frustration for those who want to probe Europa’s ocean for possible life. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/jupiter-moon-europa-plumes-salty-water-in-crust…
Trump Administration, In Late Push, Moves To Sell Oil Rights In Arctic Refuge
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The Trump administration on Monday announced that it would begin the formal process of selling leases to oil companies in a last-minute push to achieve its long-sought goal of allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. That sets up a potential sale of leases…
Microsoft’s 2020 Hour of Code Lesson Doubles As Unconscious Bias Training
theodp writes: What if we could build a better world through code?”, begins the just-released teaser video for Microsoft’s 2020 Hour of Code: A Minecraft Tale of Two Villages . “Help us bring two villages together through the power of code! […] You will experience empathy and compassion for your neighbor while embracing the diversity that makes us all uniquely special.”…
Antitrust Investigations and Policy Towards China: How Biden’s Victory Impacts Tech
Adweek has published an article titled “What to Expect: How a Biden Administration Would Tackle Tech Policy.” Some of the highlights: Industry observers have told us they don’t expect a change-of-guard to upend the Google lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in concert with 11 state attorneys general over the company’s search advertising hegemony. Indeed, we could see a spate of…
The Tech Antitrust Problem No One Is Talking About: US Broadband Providers
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: After years of building political pressure for antitrust scrutiny of major tech companies, this month Congress and the US government delivered. The House Antitrust Subcommittee released a report accusing Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook of monopolistic behavior. The Department of Justice filed a complaint against Google alleging the company prevents consumers from…