By Sharona Hakimi Amazon Threatened with Class Action for Remotely Deleting Orwell E-books on Kindles On July 20, MediaPost News reported that the law firm KamberEdelson is readying a class action lawsuit on behalf of consumers against Amazon for removing George Orwell books on owners’ Kindles. Amazon remotely deleted the e-books from users after discovering that the company that added them to the online catalog did not have rights to the books. Amazon did issue refunds to the owners, but ... Read More...

By Andrew Jacobs Cyberattack on U.S. and South Korean Governments Stymies Investigators Law enforcement officials are still investigating the cyberattacks that hobbled some U.S. and South Korean government websites for five days beginning July 4, the New York Times reports. The distributed denial of service attack caused 50,000 to 65,000 infected computers to jam websites of government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Secret Service with an extraordinary amount of traffic. Although independent and government investigations have ... Read More...

By Tyler Lacey Law Enforcement Using Cell Phone Data During Investigations, Privacy Laws Yet to Catch Up On July 5, The New York Times posted an analysis of the use of cell phone forensics by law enforcement. According to the article, major cell phone service providers receive hundreds of requests each month from law enforcement agencies for data that can be used to track a user’s cell phone. Many of these requests are not backed by search warrants that require ... Read More...

By Brian Kozlowski Lori Drew “Cyberbullying” Conviction Thrown Out The Los Angeles Times reports that on July 2nd, a federal judge dismissed the case against “cyberbully” Lori Drew, saying that the clear terms of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) preclude a guilty verdict. The Lori Drew case received widespread media attention eight months ago when the 50 year-old mother was found guilty of “unauthorized computer access” under the CFFA for aiding her daughter in creating a fake MySpace ... Read More...

By Andrew Jacobs FTC Ready to Regulate Blogs On June 21, The Washington Post reported that revised FTC advertising guidelines, set to be approved late this summer, will explicitly include blogs within their scope. The guidelines make clear that bloggers must disclose any compensation they receive for product endorsements and that they may be held liable for false claims made in those endorsements. According to the Post, while some bloggers worry about potential chilling effects, others believe that the guidelines ... Read More...