According to Singapore company VueStar Technologies, images that link to other Web pages, or the method of “locating Web pages by utilizing visual images,” are a violation of their patent.

From ZDNet/Asia: “Those who use visual images which hyperlink to other Web pages or Web sites … whether on the first page or subsequent pages of a Web site require a VueStar ‘license of use.’”

VueStar sent out notices to Webmasters demanding thousands in licensing fees. The company claims that ‘virtually all Web sites’ are supposedly infringing on its patent, and it intends to take on Microsoft and Google, too.

It further claims it has patents granted in New Zealand, Australia and the US:

I decided to search for their patents at the U.S. PTO website, and I found it:

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Israeli surveillance software is being used on US billboards to gauge who is looking at an advertisement and customize its content. The billboards provide analytics on the number of ad viewers, the duration of views, and (perhaps most worrying) viewer demographics.

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Inspired by the hideous and tacky mascots of the Beijing Olympics, the Internet Surveillance Division of the Public Security Bureau in Shenzhen and the Beijing Police have adopted animated, noseless “censor-mascots” of their own, Jingjing and Chacha. Note the play on words: jing cha means “police” in Chinese. Even as Chinese citizens use the Internet to respond to the Sichuan earthquake, Wired notes that network censorship has continued.

Images of the two characters appear on all Shenzhen sites, bulletin boards and blogs to remind visitors to monitor their own behavior in accordance with the law, much as a visible police presence does in the real world.

Clicking on Jingjing or Chacha takes visitors to a musical land of surveillance and self-restraint.

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Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is considering blocking Facebook, the popular social networking site used in April to mobilize 80,000 supporters to protest rising food prices. As described in earlier postings, Facebook has been used around the world to coordinated even larger protests. 

Blogger Kareem el-Beheiri, who covered and promoted the protest was imprisioned for 73 . See coverage from Reporters Without Borders.

The Washington Post provides an intimate account of three Facebook organizers, their attempts to organize online revolution in Egypt, their eventual chase, escape and interrogation.

Its kind of the opposite of, “do unto others”.

When Universal Music lost an infringement case to Bridgeport Music, it did an unexpected thing. It apparently made a successful case that punitive damages tacked on to statutory damages are unconstitutional.

As a plaintiff, Universal has argued in other cases for very high fines. It is, in fact, currently in just such a case, where its arguing against substantially the same constitutional argument and in favor of even larger fines than those they claimed to be unconstitutional.

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As reported back in November, the State of New York is now requiring e-commerce sites “doing business in the state” to collect sales tax.

New Yorkers were previously required to pay sales tax, but previous court rulings had exempted out of state sites from being required to collect that tax, unless they had sufficient manpower or points of presence in New York to be considered to be conducting business there.

The new law classifies promotion of an online store through an affiliate web site based in New York as constituting a sufficient nexus for taxation. Although Amazon.com doesn’t have a store in New York, individuals and organizations in New York get revenue if they refer customers to Amazon. Legislators, in fact, referred to this as the “Amazon Tax”.

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Viacom recently amended it $1 Billion lawsuit against YouTube (Google) for copyright infringement which it filed last year. Google claims that Viacom is trying to overturn precedent by making carriers and hosting providers liable for what their users post or transmit.

Viacom claims it has found over 150,000 instances of copyright infringing material on YouTube, and that YouTube has done little or nothing about them.

Google counters that it has assists in all copyright infringement claims, and follows the DMCA faithfully.

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