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Lawyer wants "Goliath verdict" against RIAA in abuse trial →

While the RIAA has stopped its mass litigation campaign against file-swappers, cases in progress persist. Tanya Andersen’s is one of the oddest and most intriguing, and it’s set to proceed to trial against the RIAA next year on charges of “abuse of the judicial process.”

When the record labels sued single mom Tanya Andersen of Oregon back in 2005, they got more than they bargained for. Not only did Andersen file counterclaims against the RIAA and its investigators, but she successfully got the case dismissed and even won $107,834 in attorneys’ fees. Then, in 2007, she filed a separate suit against the record industry, charging it with a huge list of accusations: …

Or, to sum it up another way: the RIAA and its investigator MediaSentry were called malicious privacy-invading gangsters who indulged a taste for computer fraud as they deceived the public, misused US law for their own twisted ends, and who purposely went after (and then slandered) a psychologically fragile woman.

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Palin hacker sentenced to one year in prison →

Threat Level broke the story in September 2008 that someone using the name “Rubico” had obtained access to Palin’s personal Yahoo e-mail account. Palin was then running for vice president on the Republican ticket. Kernell got into the account by using publicly available information—such as Palin’s birthdate and postal ZIP code—to reset the password to “popcorn” and gain control of her account.

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Kernell, a University of Tennessee economics student at the time, had targeted Palin, he wrote in comments online, because he’d hoped to find information that would help derail her campaign and prevent her from being elected.

Although Kernell never found information in the account that was damaging to her campaign, the hack did show that Palin used her personal e-mail account to conduct official Alaska state business. Critics had accused the Alaska governor and her staff of using personal e-mail accounts to avoid public oversight.

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From All You Need To Know About This Week’s Violent Video Game Case In The U.S. Supreme Court…

The United States Supreme Court is hearing that video game case this week, right? Right. The State of California vs. The Entertainment Merchants Association and Entertainment Software Association (aka “The Video Game Industry”). Oral arguments begin at the Supreme Court in front of Justices Roberts, Thomas, Kagan and the rest on Tuesday at 10am ET.

What’s it about, again? Whether violent video games should be treated like pornography — in other words, whether there can be a type of violent video game that would be legal to sell to adults but illegal to sell to kids.