Flash Digest: News in Brief

By Kathleen McGuinness

Supreme Court of Canada Rules That Text Message Monitoring Requires Warrant

Google Announces Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge

Legal Challenges to “Stingray” Surveillance Devices Continue to Grow

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Canadian Supreme Court Ends Royalties for Online Music Downloads By Andrew Crocker — Edited by Michael Hoven Entertainment Software Association (ESA) v. Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN), 2012 SCC 34; Rogers Communications Inc. v. SOCAN, 2012 SCC 35, SOCAN v. Bell Canada, 2012 SCC 36. Opinions available at the Supreme Court of Canada. In three copyright decisions on July 12, the Canadian Supreme Court interpreted the scope of rights in musical works under Canada’s Copyright ... Read More...

Written By: Gillian Kassner Edited By: Matt Gelfand Editorial Policy In a 2009 Los Angeles Times article, “Beijing Loves IKEA – But Not for Shopping,” reporter David Pierson offered a humorous account of the weekend excursions of Beijing families to their local IKEA where they enjoyed free soda and Swedish meatballs, snapped family photographs, surveyed the merchandise, and went home. Pierson noted that purchasing anything at the Beijing IKEA “can seem like an afterthought.” What Pierson failed to include was an ... Read More...

By Tyler Lacey Bank Programmer Pleads Guilty to ATM Hacking On April 13, 2010, Wired reported that Bank of America employee Rodney Reed Cavelry pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorized computer access, after installing software on more than 100 ATMs that allowed him to steal more than $304,000 over a seven-month period last year. Bank of America identified Caverly’s theft internally, and was able to recover at least $167,000 in cooperation with the United States Secret Service. Bank of ... Read More...

By Chinh Vo Moviemakers Sue Tens of Thousands of BitTorrent Users A coalition of independent filmmakers has sued more than 20,000 individual movie torrent downloaders for copyright infringement in federal court in Washington D.C., the Hollywood Reporter, Esq. blog reports. The series of lawsuits marks the first major move in the U.S. by the movie industry to target individual torrent downloaders, rather than the torrent sites themselves, and is preceded by similar actions in Germany and the U.K. According to ... Read More...