attorneys

In an effort to make billions of dollars by suing Facebook, Paul Ceglia is actually putting a large dent in his own wallet.

Federal Magistrate Leslie Foschio ordered Ceglia to pay the social network almost $90,000 in attorney fees today, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The order comes because of Ceglia's last-minute cancellation of legal depositions that Facebook had already paid its lawyers to do. Foschio also ordered Ceglia to reimburse an additional $7,000 in travel and lodging expenses for the social network's experts that were to be deposed.

Ceglia is suing Facebook with the … Read more

Two members of a group that wanted to be known for being first to release the latest Hollywood films to the Web were sentenced to prison today, the U.S. government says.

Willie Lambert, 57, of Pittston, Pa., was sentenced to 30 months in prison and three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay $449,514 in restitution, according to a press release from Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. MacBride is also the man who's pressing a separate criminal copyright case against MegaUpload founder Kim DotCom.

Sean Lovelady, a co-defendant from … Read more

Making good on her promise, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has continued her crackdown on mobile-app developers and companies for not doing more to ensure users' privacy. She announced today that she'll be sending letters to 100 app developers and companies to formally notify them that they're violating California's privacy laws.

"Protecting the privacy of online consumers is a serious law enforcement matter," Harris said in a statement today. "We have worked hard to ensure that app developers are aware of their legal obligations to respect the privacy of Californians, but it is critical … Read more

The Attorney General's office of California today announced a new Privacy Enforcement and Protection Unit in the state's Department of Justice that will hold companies accountable for safeguarding consumer data.

The newly created unit will reside within the eCrime Unit established last year to prosecute identity theft, data intrusions and crimes involving the use of technology. The office will enforce privacy protections using existing state and federal laws that regulate how companies can collect, store, use and destroy personal data, as well as educate consumers on their rights and help industry develop best practices, said Travis LeBlanc, Special … Read more

Vice President Joe Biden did not orchestrate the criminal case against MegaUpload, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.

Kim DotCom, the founder of MegaUpload, a cloud storage service accused of trafficking in pirated materials, said this week that he has proof Biden ordered the prosecution against him and six other MegaUpload managers.

"There was no White House involvement in the decision to charge this case," the office of Neil MacBride, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote in an brief e-mail to CNET. MacBride is the federal prosecutor who filed a criminal … Read more

Facebook will require developers to include privacy policies in apps used by mobile users on the social network. The move is part of an effort led by the California Attorney General's office aimed at getting Internet companies to provide better privacy protections for consumers.

Facebook is the seventh company to make that commitment aimed at providing consumers information about the data that apps will access, use, and share before they download them, according to a statement released today from California Attorney General Kamala Harris. In February, Harris announced agreements from Apple, Google and Microsoft, as well as Amazon, Hewlett-Packard … Read more

The Texas Attorney General seems unhappy with Google. What started as an antitrust lawsuit two years ago has now morphed into an investigation into the Web giant's alleged attempts to withhold documents from the Lone Star State.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a civil lawsuit against Google this week alleging that the search engine has redacted or refused to turn over documentation based on false attorney-client privilege, according to AllThingsD. Supposedly, Google has refused to hand over 14,500 documents claiming attorney-client privilege. Abbott said some of these documents are indeed protected, however, many others are not.

Here'… Read more

Adscend Media, accused by the Washington state attorney general in January of running a "likejacking" scam on Facebook, agreed today to a consent decree to stop spamming Facebook users and pay the state $100,000 in attorneys fees.

Facebook, which also sued Adscend in January over likejacking claims, settled that case for undisclosed terms last week.

In the state's suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Seattle, it accused Adscend of tricking Facebook users into clicking links that then mark a site as one they "like" on their Facebook news feed. That, in turn, … Read more

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--Managers at Carpathia Hosting should have known their MegaUpload gravy train would roar off the tracks one day, according to a lawyer representing the U.S. government.

Since January, when the U.S. Department of Justice filed criminal copyright charges against MegaUpload, one of the world's most popular cyberlocker services, the private firm that hosted MegaUpload's servers has preserved user data on its own dime. During a hearing yesterday in U.S. District Court to decide what to do with MegaUpload's user data, Carpathia's lawyer told the judge that the federal government should pick … Read more