Author: Joe Mullin

Kim Dotcom. (credit: Kim Dotcom)

The battle between the US and Kim Dotcom over whether he should face criminal copyright charges is coming to a screen near you.

No, the movie rights haven't been sold (yet). The Internet mogul who ran the once-dominant cyberlocker site Megaupload has won the right to livestream his next court battle online.

Dotcom was arrested and charged in 2012, but the battle over whether he can be extradited from his home in New Zealand has dragged on. In December, a New Zealand judge finally said that Dotcom should be sent to the Eastern District of Virginia to face federal charges that he facilitated copyright infringement by promoting piracy on his website.

Enlarge / French Education minister Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, leaving the Elysee Presidential Palace last week in Paris. (credit: Frederic Stevens/Getty Images)

France's education minister has asked the company that makes Pokemon Go to keep its most valuable creatures out of French schools.

At a press conference earlier today, Najat Vallaud-Belkacem said she will soon meet with California-based Niantic to ask them to tweak their game. According to statements reported by The Associated Press, Vallaud-Belkacem wants to keep some creatures out of French schools, since she's worried they would tempt non-students to enter.

Principals can already apply online for a school to be wholly removed from the game's map, but Vallaud-Belkacem wants the company to take some steps without being asked. The minister says that her main concern is the placement of extremely rare or "legendary" Pokemon creatures in schools, which would prove too tempting to strangers who shouldn't be around the school.

(credit: megaupload.org)

Megaupload.org used to be where you'd go to access the vast amount of films hosted by Kim Dotcom's Megaupload service. But once Dotcom was hit with US criminal charges, that site and many others were grabbed by the FBI, and visiting them produced nothing but a government seizure banner.

No longer. Today, a visit to Megaupload.org (NSFW) brings up what can only be described as softcore porn. Text ads for "casual sex," "adult affair dating," "adult cam chat," and "live sex cams" are surrounded by pictures of women in their underwear.

So how did this happen? In all likelihood, this is the same thing that happened last year, when similarly scammy-looking ads took over the main Megaupload.com page. The FBI used a domain called cirfu.net as a "name server" to re-direct traffic from sites it had seized. Then the Bureau apparently forgot to renew that domain, allowing someone else to purchase it.

Enlarge (credit: portal_gda)

US prosecutors have now named a total of three men said to be operators of the defunct file-sharing site KickassTorrents (KAT). The new allegations are in a formal indictment filed Tuesday, which contains the most detailed charges against the site yet.

Last month, alleged site operator 30-year-old Artem Vaulin of Ukraine was arrested in Poland. The new indictment (PDF) also names Ievgen (Eugene) Kutsenko aka "chill" and Oleksander (Alex) Radostin aka "pioneer," also of Ukraine. Bench warrants have been issued for the arrest of all three men, although authorities have confirmed the arrest of only Vaulin. The indictment was reported earlier today by TorrentFreak.

Prosecutors say the three men developed and maintained the site together and used it to "generate millions of dollars from the unlawful distribution of copyright-protected media, including movies... television shows, music, video games, computer software, and electronic books." They gave out "Reputation" and "User Achievement" awards to users who uploaded the most popular files, including a special award for users who had uploaded more than 1,000 torrents.

Enlarge / WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange prepares to speak from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy on February 5, 2016 in London, England. (credit: Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Even as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange sits trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, the WikiLeaks website continues to publish the secrets of various governments worldwide.

But that's not all it's publishing. A report today by the Associated Press highlights citizens who had "sensitive family, financial or identity records" published by the site.

"They published everything: my phone, address, name, details," said one Saudi man whose paternity dispute was revealed on documents published by the site. "If the family of my wife saw this... Publishing personal stuff like that could destroy people."

(credit: Silk Road 2.0)

A 27-year-old Irishman whom police say was an administrator on the Silk Road drug-dealing website is fighting to avoid facing trial in the US.

Gary Davis of Wicklow, Ireland was indicted in 2013. US prosecutors say Davis was "Libertas," a Silk Road admin who helped with things like customer service and moderating the forums.

Davis was arrested in 2014. Earlier this month, Ireland's High Court ordered that he should be extradited to the US. Davis has appealed that order, The Irish Times reported this weekend. Davis has been charged with conspiracy charges related to narcotics distribution, money laundering, and computer hacking. If convicted, he could face up to a life sentence.

Over the years, BlackBerry has amassed a giant portfolio of patents, but it hasn't used them to sue others—until now.

BlackBerry has filed three patent infringement lawsuits in as many weeks. The struggling phone company's offensive barrage began with a case filed against IP telephony company Avaya on July 27. Last week, BlackBerry filed two lawsuits against budget cell phone maker BLU's products, alleging that BLU infringes a whopping 15 patents.

The dual lawsuits against BLU suggest that BlackBerry's new turn toward patent licensing isn't going to be a one-off event, but rather a more extended campaign. In a May earnings call, BlackBerry CEO John Chen told investors he's in a "patent licensing mode" and is hoping to monetize his company's 38,000 patents.

The Google Transparency Project is a Washington, DC group that's laser-focused on letting Americans know about Google's lobbying efforts. To get its message out, GTP has worked with journalists at Re/Code and The Intercept, which have run stories about Google's many visits to the White House, the prevalence of ex-Googlers in the US Digital Service, and other links.

What wasn't known, until today, is who was paying the bills for research by the "nonprofit watchdog" group. "The folks running the Google Transparency Project won’t say who is paying for it, which is odd for a group devoted to transparency," noted Fortune's Jeff John Roberts, one of many journalists who the group reached out to in April.

Today, Roberts has published a followup, confirming that based on a tip, he found at least one funder—Oracle. That's the same company that lost a major copyright trial to Google and continues to spar with the search giant in court.

(credit: Uber)

In April, it looked like a high-profile lawsuit against Uber was going to be resolved after the high-flying startup agreed to pay up to $100 million to settle allegations that its treatment of drivers violated labor laws.

Today, US District Judge Edward Chen said the deal "is not fair, adequate, and reasonable," and he won't countenance it. In a 35-page order (PDF) he slammed the deal, which would have required Uber to pay $84 million and up to an additional $16 million contingent on whether Uber's IPO hit certain price points.

After some complicated back-and-forth about Uber's arbitration agreements, Chen was overseeing a case with a class of more than 240,000 California drivers and just over 60,000 Massachusetts drivers. In addition to payments ranging from $12 to $1,950, drivers would have certain additional rights like explanations before being deactivated, more information about their star ratings, and an internal process for drivers to complain about payment of certain fares. It would also allow drivers in California and Massachusetts to ask for tips—although Uber made clear it would not add an in-app tipping function, and in fact the company dissuades riders from tipping.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

The attorneys who moved the song Happy Birthday into the public domain will receive $4.62 million in fees, according to a judge's fee order (PDF) published Tuesday. The amount, which equals one-third of a $14 million settlement fund, was granted over objections by the defendant, Warner/Chappell.

After various billing deductions, US District Judge George King found that a "lodestar" payment of about $3.85 million was appropriate. King then added a multiplier.

"Given the unusually positive results achieved by the settlement, the highly complex nature of the action, the risk class counsel faced by taking this case on a contingency-fee basis, and the impressive skill and effort of counsel, we conclude that a 1.2 multiplier is warranted," wrote King.