court

A court says an employee who refused to keep a webcam switched on was wrongly fired. He was awarded around $72,000 USD in compensation. The man, whose name was not revealed in the case, worked remotely in the Netherlands for a Florida-based IT ... company called Chetu. After working in the role for almost three years, he was told to take part in a "Corrective Action Program - Virtual Classroom." This involved keeping a webcam switched on throughout his nine-hour working day. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) The employee refused to do so, arguing that he was already sharing his screen with ... (view more)

Californian laws requiring "net neutrality" have been found lawful by an appeals court. As so often on the topic, the legal argument is as much about who has the power to make laws as it is the legal measures themselves. While precise definitions ... vary between people with different viewpoints, the most common definition of net neutrality is the principle that all Internet traffic (except that carrying illegal material) should be treated equally. One of the key issues for that principle in practice is whether Internet carriers can give priority to connections to specific sites or intentionally ... (view more)

Google says defamation laws could mean it has to "censor" search results. It's appealing a case in Australia where it was told to pay damages for a link to a newspaper article. The case involves a man arrested in 2004 on charges of conspiracy to ... murder. The charges were later dropped. Google's search results database included a link to an Australian newspaper article from the time of the arrest. In 2016 the man asked Google to remove the link but it refused to do so. The man then sued Google for defamation, arguing that linking to the article had the same effect as the article itself. He ... (view more)

A court has ruled a grocery store did not violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to make its website accessible to blind people. The ruling creates a confused national picture that may well end up in the Supreme Court. The ... current case involves a chain called Winn-Dixie. A blind man brought the case forward after finding three features of the website were incompatible with his screen-reading software: online prescription filling, a store locator and a digital coupon tool. Carlos Gil said this had a discriminatory effect as it meant that visits to physical stores in order ... (view more)

Ticketmaster will pay a $10 million fine for computer fraud and hacking. The company admitted responsibility for hacking an unnamed rival with the help of an employee who had previously worked there. The $10 million figure is calculated as the ... maximum $500,000 penalty for each of 20 cases of breaking the law through "unauthorized access of a protected computer." The fine is through a "deferred prosecution agreement" in which prosecutors hold off pursuing the case through the courts. As part of the agreement, Ticketmaster admitted breaking the law and must cooperate with prosecutors ... (view more)

A court says US customs officials can't examine the contents of phones and laptops at the border without reasonable suspicion of illegal activity. It said current policies violate the Fourth Amendment. The amendment prevents "unreasonable searches ... and seizures" and requires warrants based on probable cause. It's been at the centre of numerous technology-related cases as courts decide what constitutes property and searches when it comes to digital devices and information. The latest case, first brought in 2017, covers the policies of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency and the ... (view more)

Google has won a major victory over "right to be forgotten" rules . When it agrees to delete 'outdated' search results, it will no longer have to do so outside of Europe. The latest ruling is part of a long running saga that began when European ... courts tried to find a balance between the competing rights to free speech and privacy. It all began with a Spanish man whose house was forcibly sold to settle a debt - an incident that was reported in a local newspaper. Eleven years later he asked the newspaper to delete the archived report, saying it was the top search result for his name and the ... (view more)

A court says Dominos Pizza must make it easier for blind people to order online. It said legal principles should be applied, even though specific regulations aren't yet in place. The case was brought by would-be customer Guillermo Robles who ... attempted to use an iPhone to place an order. Although blind, he is able to browse websites using the iPhone's built-in screen reader software. According to Robles, both the Dominos app and website lacked "alt-text" labels, which are text that describe an image and which can be read out by the screen reader. Robles said the specific missing descriptions ... (view more)

A judge says police can't force a suspect to unlock a phone with a fingerprint or other biometric measure, including a suspect's face . It's the latest step in the way privacy laws interact with technological changes. This ruling came from a federal ... judge in a court in California and involved a review of a search warrant request. The case involved two suspects allegedly using Facebook Messenger to trying to extort a victim by threatening to publish an embarrassing video. (Source: gizmodo.com ) The police wanted permission to not only search a location where they believed they would find the ... (view more)

A Florida court has ruled that "Facebook friends" don't count as real friendships. The decision followed claims that it was not possible for a judge to be unbiased, especially if he was a Facebook friend with an attorney in the same case. The ruling ... came from the Florida Supreme Court, which upheld previous rulings from lower courts. Both rejected claims that having a "Facebook friend" relationship between the aforementioned parties may result in not having a fair and impartial trial. The argument for the judge being potentially biased was based largely on advise given by ... (view more)