Judge sets schedule for Google book search case
The judge in the copyright infringement case pitting the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) against Google and its book search program has set a date for the final hearing on the parties' controversial settlement proposal. Read more...

Banks on watch after suspected card breach

Chinese authors turn up heat on Google over book scanning

Microsoft settles employee spying case

Hackers outwit Windows 7 activation

U.S. companies in China ask Obama for help on piracy

Pioneer sues Garmin over navigation technology

Judge's ruling puts legal nail in Psystar's coffin

Google, plaintiffs submit revised book search settlement

Spam campaign targets payment transfer system

More Intellectual Property and DRM Stories

AMD and Intel patch things up, HP buys 3Com
We had a blockbuster deal this week, with Hewlett-Packard saying it plans to buy 3Com, and a blockbuster settlement, with Advanced Micro Devices and Intel ending a long-running legal dispute. By midnight tonight, Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers are supposed to file a revised book-search settlement proposal, which could add to our top stories list for the week. For now, though, what follows are our top IT headlines of the moment.

A Practical Approach to Protecting Trade Secrets
Trade secrets are increasingly becoming a company's most valuable assets, and not surprisingly, threats to those assets have increased concomitantly. The greatest threat to company data is, of course, not outsiders but a company's own employees A company's ability to protect against rogue employees (as well as against unintentional harm) is governed by both federal and state laws, which vary by jurisdiction and, worse, are in a state of flux in many of those jurisdictions.

Finding Your Photos Online
Recently, a friend of mine congratulated me for selling one of my wildlife photos. When I asked him what he meant, he sent me a link to a site that was prominently using a shot I had taken of some wolves. The problem? I had never given the site owners permission to use my photo, which they had "borrowed" from my Flickr page. I asked them to remove the photo, and they did--but not everyone out there is so reasonable. You can watermark your photos to prevent this sort of thing from happening. But is there any way to find your photos online to see they're being used inappropriately?

Q&A: isoHunt founder says P2P can help create post-piracy world
isoHunt's Gary Fung talks about how isoHunt has evaded legal trouble so far, why he holds out hope of working together with Hollywood and the music industry, and how he's launched a new P2P site for just that purpose.

TSMC court win a major blow to China's biggest chip maker
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) has won a major victory over China's biggest chip maker in a court case that could have wide ranging implications for the loser.

The Struggle With DLP
Few security technologies have received as much attention over the past few years as Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) solutions have. The concept behind them is exciting, offering the ability to scan traffic on your network and in your systems, and assign rules-based protections to the data that you want to protect. Someone e-mailing out a copy of customer records with SSNs? The DLP system will block it or encrypt it on the fly. Someone trying to copy IP to a USB drive? Alert management and block the action. It can be a great way to protect your most critical information assets, but as many have found, it is not an end-all, be-all solution to your data leakage problems.

EFF launches 'Takedown Hall of Shame'
The Electronic Frontier Foundation last week aimed a historically potent weapon -- the spotlight of public shame -- at those corporations and individuals who abuse copyright claims to stifle free speech.

4 dangerous myths about data disposal, debunked
How often and how thoroughly do you take out the data garbage? Many "gotchas" surround data disposal. Here's advice from two experts on how to avoid some big traps.

Protect Your Legal Rights When Sharing IT Services
In a cross-organization IT shared services arrangement, two or more companies partner to provide the shared technology infrastructure or services. While there are several benefits to such agreements, there are risks that need to be understood and addressed. One of the most significant risks relates to the ownership and protection of intellectual property (IP).

Block data leaks at the endpoint
It almost goes without saying that the greatest threat to the security of an enterprise network often comes from within. Security professionals can shore up their borders, lock down their devices, and search bags on the way out, but there might never be a way to be 100% certain that an employee is not abusing access to sensitive data.

Editors' Picks

Getting to know Windows 7? Don't stop now: From speeding up taskbar thumbnails to reining in UAC, here are 20 ways to make Windows 7 act the way you want. Is Motorola's new Droid good enough to vanquish iPhone envy? To find out, we took it on a 3-day trip. Sure, you could always use Linux as a desktop OS, but Corel Linux 1.0 was the first distro designed for ordinary users. It's been a long, strange trip since then. New touch-screen laptops from Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo take advantage of Microsoft Windows 7's touch-friendly infrastructure.

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