Google

Hollywood Piracy Lawsuit Now Features Disney Porn, WikiLeaks and Jar Jar Binks

The lawsuit filed by Disney, 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros. against VidAngel is stepping on some bizarre territory. To quickly review, the three studios (including Disney subsidiary LucasFilm) filed a copyright infringement complaint in June with the allegation that VidAngel was operating an “unlicensed VOD streaming service” by selling movies and TV shows for $20, providing the means so …



Google Reaches $5.5M Settlement on Safari Class Action

SiliconBeat reports Google has agreed to pay a $5.5 million settlement in a class-action suit that resulted from cookie placement that worked around Apple Safari do-not-track settings. The lawsuit suggested Google collected the user data to boost ad revenue. “Behaviorally targeted advertisements based on a user’s tracked internet activity generally sell for at least twice as much as non- …


Google Tries to End Browser Privacy Violation Lawsuit

Google is trying again to end an advertisement tracking privacy violation court case brought against it in 2012, this time with a settlement offer of US$5.5 million (A$7.3 million). At the heart of the legal action is Google’s bypass of the default cookie settings in Apple’s Safari for iOS and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browsers. Cookies are small text files that web servers can place on …


Add Hewlett-Packard to the List of Tech Icons Sued for Ageism

In a complaint filed Aug. 18 in U.S. District Court in San Jose, CA., four former employees of the company allege that beginning in 2012, HP’s goal “was to make the company younger.” As such, it targeted older workers for termination and then systematically replaced them with younger employees, according to the complaint filed and reported on by the San Jose Mercury News and other outlets. The …


What the Fitbit Lawsuit Means for Clinical researchers

Fitbit is facing a class-action lawsuit regarding the accuracy of their heart-rate data, which have been shown to be inaccurate by a margin of up to 20 beats per minute by researchers at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. This news risks sending back to the drawing board many of us who have been optimistically experimenting with biotelemetry. We’ve been asked about the lawsuit nearly …


EEOC Investigating Google for Age Discrimination, Lawsuit Says

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is investigating complaints of age discrimination by Google, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court. Cheryl Fillekes, a systems engineer who interviewed with but was not hired by Google when she was 47, made reference to the EEOC investigation in …


Google Dodges Parents’ Web Privacy Appeal in Class Action Lawsuit

Google and Viacom on Monday defeated an appeal in a nationwide class action lawsuit by parents who claimed the companies illegally tracked the online activity of children under the age of 13 who watched videos and played video games on Nickelodeon’s website. By a 3-0 vote, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia said Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., and Viacom Inc. …


Google Age-Discrimination Lawsuit Could Grow

An age-discrimination lawsuit filed by two people who interviewed unsuccessfully for jobs at Google could expand to encompass other individuals if a motion filed this week is successful. The motion for conditional certification of collective action status was filed in a San Jose federal court Wednesday. Computerworld reports that the motion, which is similar to a class action, aims to include …


Google vs Oracle: US Jury to Hear $9 Billion Lawsuit

Oracle alleges that Google violated its copyright when it put pieces of the crucial Java technology into the Android operating system, which now ships on 80 per cent of smartphones sold. Google’s defense hinges on “fair use,” the idea that it was legally allowed to use Java as …