Va. man pleads guilty to selling $1M worth of counterfeit software
A Virginia man has pleaded guilty to charges related to selling counterfeit software with a retail value of about $1 million on eBay, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Read more...

The Pirate Bay four found guilty in Sweden

Appeals court blocks Internet streaming order in RIAA music piracy case

Patent office rules in favor of Microsoft in Alcatel-Lucent appeal

As expected, Facebook halts The Pirate Bay links

Microsoft ordered to pay $388M in patent violation case

Taiwan firm hits Apple with multitouch patent lawsuit

U.S. trade office releases information on secret piracy pact

AP takes aim at Web sites over unlicensed news content

Appeals court keeps alive trademark lawsuit against Google

More Intellectual Property and DRM Stories

Naughty workers, spam pollutes, Skype spin off
A whole lot of employees keep "inappropriate" photos, videos and browser cache links on their work laptops, a survey found. (Honestly, how difficult is it to at least clean out the cache?) As if that's not enough, the spam that clogs our computers is spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to McAfee. And eBay plans to spin off Skype after figuring out what many observers said a while ago, which is that they just do not seem to have much in common.

Pirates to Worry You: Chinese Manufacturing Partners
Somali pirates who brazenly attacked container ships in the Indian Ocean have garnered a lot of recent attention. But for companies that source products from Chinese manufacturing partners, there are even greater and longer-term business risks due to pirating attacks on companies' intellectual property and supply chains.

Unforeseen Impact of the Economic Meltdown
Without question, 2008 was an eventful year for major financial institutions, with massive losses, questions of solvency and, ultimately, government bailouts now totaling over a trillion dollars. The corporate fire sales, downsizing and mergers now commonplace in the financial industry are a cause for not only serious concern about the health of our economy, but also concerns relating to the security of personal and financial data. With companies being sold and mergers taking place, and on such tight deadlines, mistakes regarding the confidentiality and privacy of the data are likely being made every day. Significant risk is increasing for personally identifiable information entrusted to these firms.

A Wolverine in Fox's clothing
The Internet is a bad, baaaad thing. It turns otherwise normal people into criminals. And if you don't use it correctly it can get you fired. Erstwhile Fox News movie reviewer Roger Friedman found out this out the hard way when he reviewed a pirated copy of X-Men Origins: Wolverine -- and found himself X'd out of a writing gig.

Data Security: Whose Job Is It Really?
Forrester has a recommendation for CISOs struggling with how to secure corporate data:

Preventing Fraud Requires Customer Data Discipline
Customarily, retailers relax their policies relating to returns in the months around the holiday gift-giving season. The understanding is that many of the sales are in fact gifts and recipients will often want to return or exchange such items. By offering flexible returns, retailers hope to inspire higher sales.

Careless with Your Business Website? Don't Get Sued.
An improperly created website can breed lawsuits. It's not the place to test the limits of the law. Once you put information out on the Net, it's there for anybody to see. It's the ultimate in unrestricted access. You might create a site for potential customers, but your competitors and enemies get to see it too. A cautious and conservative approach is the way to go. How cautious you need to be will vary depending on several things. The preventive medicine is a legal audit of your website.

Laid-off workers as data thieves?
Employees with an ax to grind were around before the economic collapse, and they will be around after the economy recovers. Companies should have a program in place to deal with such miscreants in any economic climate.

New Zealand gets insane copyright law
Organized crime is everywhere. There's the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the American Mafia and the Russian Mafia. There's also the Japanese Yakuza and, until they got so wealthy from their realty holdings and legitimate businesses they couldn't afford to be outside of the law, the Irish Sinn Fein.

Your Identity: 'Costanza Style'
Your identity is like George Costanza's wallet. Really. Think about it. Do you remember the classic Seinfeld episode? The one where George wouldn't give up his ever-expanding wallet filled with store credit cards, Irish money, a coupon for an Orlando Exxon gas station and several Sweet and Low packets. This, in spite of the obvious physical pain it caused and the security threat all of that imposed.

Editors' Picks

Linux, Mac, Windows XP: Whatever your choice of operating system, we have some fun things for you to try. The operating systems of yesteryear weren't all sunshine and roses. Cyber cynic Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols names his picks for some of the worst OSs of all time. Apple's newest Mac Pro takes a significant step forward with the move to Intel's new Nehalem processor and an infrastructure that should be able to squeeze the utmost out of the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6. Satellite radio will die soon anyway, but Apple will accidentally perform a mercy killing of Sirius XM Radio this summer, says Mike Elgan.

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Virtualize Servers with Microsoft Hyper-V and NetApp (Source: NetApp) Learn how NetApp technologies help provide data protection, disaster recovery, deduplication, thin provisioning, and efficient cloning for faster virtual server provisioning when using Microsoft's Hyper-V virtualization solutions. Best Practices for Backing Up VMware® with Veritas NetBackup™ MarketVibe: The State of Data Governance in Enterprises Today 500% Improvement in Data Processing! Always-on Windows® Server - Mission Impossible? Think Again. Business Data You Can Believe In Employee Web Use and Misuse Creating Predictable IT Strategies in an Unpredictable Business Climate Bad Broker Data is Bad for Business Email Security Buyer's Guide Critical Data Protection Innovate Faster with Oracle Database 11g Oracle Database 11g: Real Application Testing & Manageability Overview Oracle Data Guard 11g The Next Era in Data Protection and Availability Keep Them Separated Best Practices for Symantec NetBackup (NBU) Design Data Domain for Symantec OpenStorage Primer Inventory Management Clustering System on JBoss Enterprise Middleware Ritz Camera Centers Snap "Common Sense" Image for PCI Compliance Retail Grocery Chain Checks out Whitelisting Security Common Pitfalls in Server Virtualization More White Papers

If you are faced with the complexity of meeting stringent privacy policies and continually changing government requirements, the new Novell® Compliance Management Platform will provide welcome relief. Only the Novell Compliance Management Platform integrates identity, access, and security information and event management technology to provide a real-time, holistic view of all network events across an enterprise. This tight integration eases implementation while creating the ultimate governance solution; ensuring business policy becomes automated IT practice. Identity and Security Management and Strong Information Technology Governance: Novell's Solution Suite Automates the Approach to the Perfect Union This IDC White Paper examines Novell's identity and security management (ISM) solutions and how these integrated offerings can play a key role in enforcing security compliance for enterprise organizations. Success Story: New York City Transit One of the top priorities of New York City Transit is to ensure that its employees have secure and timely access to information. With a Novell® solution, the agency has automated identity management for 85,000 users, giving 49,000 employees secure, single sign-on to applications and providing 36,000 retirees with online access to benefit information. Balancing Security Against Productivity What makes for great security? Is it about keeping the bad guys out or letting the good guys in? About detecting attacks or preventing them? Security is a balancing act of all three of these and requires a holistic, integrated approach. All three disciplines must interact automatically and seamlessly to ensure an effective level of service that enables good business. View Entire Zone

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"For years, Apple fans have claimed that Macs are invulnerable to attack, while belittling Windows as being full of security..." Read more "There are four approaches to dealing with malware-infested Windows machines, and too many articles on the subject only consider the..." Read more More Security Blogs See all Computerworld Blogs

The Spy Files For Congress to do anything that helps protect consumers and the critical Internet infrastructure as a whole, it must pass laws that require proactive processes to protect computers, not that tell people how to deal with the resulting mess, says Ira Winkler. Click here to read the latest column by Ira Winkler

In Security Stripping away the trappings of applications, systems and networks, information is the core asset of most organizations. Our columnist describes how asserting the importance of information governance is crucial to making that asset tangible, addressable and protected. Click here to read the latest column by Jon Espenschied