Adscend Media, the company accused earlier this year of running "likejacking" campaigns on Facebook, has settled separate lawsuits with both Facebook and the state of Washington. CNET reports that the company agreed on Monday to settlement terms with Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna. In that settlement, Adscend Media agreed to stop spamming Facebook users and to pay $100,000 in attorneys fees -- but they did not admit liability as part of the consent decree. McKenna issued a statement about the settlement: Today's settlement puts a stop to Adscend’s 'likejacking' and other mi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Legal | Legal: General | Social Media Marketing: Spam

According to published reports, a federal jury earlier today delivered a mixed result in Oracle v. Google. The jury found that Google had in fact infringed on Oracle's Java copyright (by virtue of its Sun Microsystems acquisition) in using some Java code in Android and related APIs. However it deadlocked on the question of whether that infringement was protected by the doctrine of "fair use." Fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. There were more findings and procedural nuances, more fully explained in the Mercury News article on the case. Google has now moved f [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Android | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Mobile | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Legal: General | Legal: Patents | Top News

Although phishing attacks were down worldwide in the second half of 2011, they were up significantly inside China and, as a result, a Chinese domain name replaced Paypal.com as the most commonly phished domain name. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) recently published its 2011 Global Phishing Survey (PDF download), which says that phishing attacks "exploded" in China last year. In the process, the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao.com became the world's most frequent phishing target in the second half of the year -- a "title" that Paypal had held for several years. From the report: In [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Domaining | Legal: General | Statistics: General

In a big victory for affiliate marketers, an Illinois judge has declared that a state law allowing Illinois to collect sales tax on online sales by out-of-state companies -- a law sometimes called the "Amazon tax" -- is unconstitutional. According to a news release from the Performance Marketing Association (PMA), the judge ruled that having affiliates in Illinois doesn't establish a legal presence, or nexus, inside Illinois for tax purposes. The judge also agreed with the PMA's position that the 2011 state law is premature because of a federal moratorium on Internet taxes that runs through [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Amazon | Channel: Retail | Legal: General | Top News

Twitter's costs in fighting the spam created by five defendants it's suing are more than $700,000 -- and that may be a conservative underestimate. The company is seeking full restitution of those costs and other damages, along with an injunction forcing each defendant to stop its activities, as it seeks a jury trial in a San Francisco federal court. We wrote yesterday about Twitter's lawsuit against the five alleged spammers and, now that the filing is available (PDF download), more details are known about Twitter's case. Two Types of Defendants The lawsuit separates the five defendan [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Features & Analysis | Legal: General | Social Media Marketing: Spam | Twitter: Legal

Twitter filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco today against five "bad actors" that it says provide tools that are designed to spread spam across Twitter. The five defendants are a mix of companies and individuals: TweetAttacks, TweetAdder, TweetBuddy, James Lucero of justinlover.info and Garland Harris of troption.com. In a blog post announcing the lawsuit, Twitter calls this group "five of the most aggressive tool providers and spammers." With this suit, we're going straight to the source. By shutting down tool providers, we will prevent other spammers from having these services [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Legal: General | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing: Spam | Top News | Twitter | Twitter: Legal

I wouldn't want to be a lawyer in Google's legal department. Every move Google makes these days is scrutinized by governments, regulators and NGOs. Almost weekly there are new lawsuits and new investigations. According to a Bloomberg report, last week France’s data protection authority asked Google to answer 69 questions concerning Google's new privacy policy and its use of consumer data to determine whether they violate European data protection rules. Google has been given an April 5 deadline to respond. France is "taking the lead" on behalf of European regulators who had asked Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Privacy | Legal: General | Legal: Privacy

Washington state and Facebook have double-teamed on separate lawsuits against Adscend Media, a company that allegedly runs "likejacking" campaigns to collect money and/or personal information from Facebook users. As GeekWire reports, the practice was allegedly adding up to $1.2 million per month to Adscend's coffers. Likejacking, or "clickjacking" as the official release from Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna calls it, is described as follows: Scammers design Facebook Pages to look like they will offer visitors an opportunity to view salacious or provocative content. They condi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Facebook: Legal | Legal: General | Social Media Marketing: Spam