The ripples following the takedown of Megaupload by the US government is still rippling through the tech industry with many wondering who could possibly be next.

Considering the fact that the US government feels that it doesn’t have to respect any country boundaries as long as the can convince the governments of those countries that it is in their best interests to go along with the US there are any number of similar businesses as Megaupload that could end up in the sites of the US Department of Justice.

Already we have seen sites like FileSonic and SileServer turn off the ability to share files with other people on their services and the other day we reported about how Uploaded.to had shut down access to the site to anyone from the United States.

So who else could possibly face the wrath of an entertainment industry paid for government.

Well according to Sean Ludwig at VentureBeat there are possibly 15 other companies that might be worried about what the future could hold; because it’s not like being located in a country other than the U.S. is going to make any difference.

It should be noted that the majority of companies on the list are equally as shady as Megaupload was which by all intents and purposes should put them directly in the cross-hairs of the DoJ.

• BayFiles - Hong Kong
• DepositFiles – Cyprus
• Divx Stage
• HulkShare
• MediaFire - Texas
• MegaShares
• NovaMov
• OvFile
• PutLocker
• RapidShare - Switzerland
• SockShare
• UploadHere
• UploadKing
• WUpload - Hong Kong
• ZShare - Hong Kong

Chances are that now that the DoJ has tasted blood by successfully taking down Megaupload we will be seeing a lot more actions like this against other companies in the same line of business.

With the Feds taking down Megaupload here’s some other file-sharing sites that could be next is a post from: The Inquisitr

Backlash to the Department of Justice’s takedown of MegaUpload and the arrest of its owner and its employees comes in many different ways it would seem. Not unexpectedly Anonymous has been launching DoS attacks against companies that supported the now shelved SOPA and PIPA bills that were headed to Congress; but wasn’t expected was the reaction of Uploaded.to another file-hosting site.

It seems that the company has decided that rather than risk facing the same fate as MegaUpload they could do without the business from US users. At some point today the company turned off access to the site for anyone in the United States.

There is no official statement yet from the company or if the access blocking is permanent but the only thing US users will see when they try to access the site is “Not Available: Our service is currently unavailable in your country. Sorry about that.”

This is definitely a different way to deal with the actions that seem to becoming a regular practice for the US government; but it also raises an interesting question.

What if more web companies started doing the same thing as Uploaded.to has done. Granted business on the web is predominately US based but not all of it is and with more and more cutting edge web companies are being started outside of the US it would be interesting to see what the reaction would be if US web users slowly found themselves being ostracized by the larger web.

It is called the World Wide Web after all.

via TorrentFreak

Uploaded.to is now blocking US users in response to the MegaUpload takedown is a post from: The Inquisitr

Mobile and wireless behemoth AT&T has urged the federal court in Washington to dismiss lawsuits brought against it by rivals Sprint Nextel and Cellular South. Both firms are arguing AT&T’s proposed USD39 billion purchase of T-Mobile from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom would be anti-competitive.

AT&T, which is also facing a civil antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, is claiming its competitors have failed to demonstrate that the T-Mobile deal will hurt competition or negatively affect access to networks needed to serve their customers.

Here’s part of the latest cuddly AT&T filing:

“What is good for consumers is bad for Sprint, and that is why Sprint has filed suit. Sprint does not purchase roaming services from either AT&T or T-Mobile – its network is technologically incompatible. The transaction will therefore have no impact on Sprint’s ability to obtain roaming prices. The immediate impact of any supposed reduction in demand for special access as a result of the merger would be to reduce the prices that Sprint pays for special access, not to increase them. That reduction in prices would benefit Sprint and would not constitute antitrust injury.”

AT&T’s filing also laid into Cellular South, stating:

“Cellular South suggested that it would not oppose the merger if AT&T would agree not to engage in facilities-based competition in Mississippi. This inappropriate proposal confirms that what Cellular South fears is competition, not lack of competition.”

Which, if you ask most right-minded people, is hogwash. Back in August, when the DoJ launched its civil antitrust lawsuit, deputy attorney general James M Cole warned the merger would mean consumers “faced higher prices, fewer choices and lower quality products,” for mobile wireless services.

Cole basically has the entire history of mergers to back up his case. Seven U.S. states and Puerto Rico seem to agree – all have backed the DoJ’s case.

AT&T Requests Dismissal of Sprint and Cellular South Lawsuits is a post from: The Inquisitr

Typically when businesses move to acquire another company it is pretty smooth sailing, even if the deal has to be approved by various US agencies. Even when IBM sold off its laptop business to the Chinese company Lenovo there wasn’t much more than a cursory overview from those government agencies responsible for watchdogging this type of  deal.

So it is no surprise that AT&T figured that their move to acquire competitor T-Mobile would just slide through regardless of the uproar that came from those pesky consumer groups.

Well, hell has frozen over folks because in a surprise move the Department of Justice is suing to block the acquisition of T-Mobile by AT&T using the most obvious,and probably very truthful argument that this deal would “substantially lessen competition” in the wireless market.

This lawsuit has apparently come as a total surprise to AT&T who thought everything was all hunky-dory after several meetings with the DoJ. According to Bloomberg

“We have met repeatedly with the Department of Justice and there was no indication from the DOJ that this action was being contemplated,” Wayne Watts, AT&T’s general counsel, said in a statement. He said the company intends to fight the litigation.

This lawsuit could be one of the most costly ones that AT&T has been involved in because if the acquisition is successfully blocked it would mean that AT&T would have to pay T-Mobile a $3 Billion cancellation fee so it is no surprise that AT&T moved quickly to counter the announcement of the lawsuit by the Department of Justice by saying that they will fight this all the way.

As noted by Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM the reasons the DoJ stepped in like this are inconsistant with past cases .

A quick read of the complaint shows that the DOJ looked at the merger not at a local level as has historically been the case in wireless merger agreements, but with an eye toward how this affects wireless coverage across the nation. Significantly, it realized the value of mobile data and competition in nationwide mobile broadband access as a reason that this deal would be harmful.

I don’t know about you but I’m going down to the grocery store and stock up on popcorn because this whole thing just started to get interesting.

Finally someone with balls is fighting the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile. Surprise, it’s the DoJ. is a post from: The Inquisitr

Justice Department investigators probing into illegal online pharmacy ads served via the Google Adwords system revealed this week that company Chief Executive Officer Larry Page knew of the ads for years but did nothing to remove them.

Settling a DOJ criminal probe Google on Wednesday agreed to pay $500 million for ads they had accepted for online Canadian pharmacies selling drugs in the United States.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal Peter Neronha, the Rhode Island U.S. Attorney who led the probe called out Page specifically:

“Larry Page knew what was going on.”

Evidence was found in the form of internal emails and documents which were delivered to Page.

According to the Justice Department the illegal ads were part of Google’s advertising system since 2003 but were not banned until 2009 when the DOJ mounted an undercover operation to stop the ads.

In an email regarding the issue a Google spokesperson wrote:

“As we’ve said, we take responsibility for our actions. With hindsight, we shouldn’t have allowed these ads on Google in the first place.”

The Canadian pharmaceutical ads are not the first to come under fire, recently the DOJ went after weight loss ads which send users to websites meant to look like standard news agencies, tricking users into believing they are buying products which have been accepted by the general media as effective in the fight against losing weight.

Perhaps people wouldn’t keep buying into these ads if U.S. pharmacological company’s didn’t over inflate their prices for U.S. customers, then again that’s probably just me being way to optimistic.

Google Pharmacy Ad Probe: Larry Page Knew of Illegal Ads is a post from: The Inquisitr

This is getting a little more than heavy handed to say the least but much of the news in the last couple of days has been centered around the seizure of poker sites and their assets by the U.S. government; but this apparently is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a post up today about some additional activity by the U.S. Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and nine U.S. Attorney’s offices that have taken part in the seizure of 82 domains claiming that they were engaged in the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and illegal copyrighted works.

Except there is a slight problem with this. It seems that at least two of the seized domains that in the their long history have done everything they can to comply with DMCA orders that they have received.

The sites in question are OnSmash.com and RapGodfathers.com; which anyone even remotely interested in rap and hip hop will recognize as two of the premier sites or the genre.

On Friday (November 26), two popular hip-hop blogs, OnSmash and RapGodfathers, were seized by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and Homeland Security Investigations. Both sites appear to be under investigation due to claims of copyright infringement.

In a post dated November 25, RapGodfathers wrote, “Yesterday, Tuesday November 23, agents from the United States DHS/ICE showed up to RGF’s data-center and seized our servers. During the whole existence of the website, we always honored any DMCA requests but apparently in [the] US people are guilty before proven innocent.”

DMCA, short for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, is a federal law passed in 1998 that largely made the distribution of copyrighted materials—read: MP3s—illegal. Remember Napster? The DMCA shut down the original peer-to-peer (P2P) download site.

What’s most disturbing in the case of OnSmash and RapGodfathers is that both sites claim to have complied with any DMCA removal requests. In the case of OnSmash specifically, the labels themselves gave the site the song links which OS provided to the public. Nevertheless, both hip-hop music destinations now find their daily updates grounded to a halt, with the possibility of losing their domain names.

via MTV’s Rapfix

Methinks this rampant misuse of government powers is getting a little more than out of hand but has all the earmarks of being prompted by the cozy relationship between the Department of Homeland Security and Hollywood entertainment trade groups.

Never mind the poker sites, the US government seizes 82 domains is a post from: The Inquisitr

When it comes to supplying software solutions to the U.S. governmental agencies they all have to be certified under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). Most of us wouldn’t have any interest in this but this certification was the center point last year when Google launched a lawsuit against the Department of the Interior after it awarded a large contract to Microsoft.

In the lawsuit Google claimed that it had been unfairly excluded from the bidding process even though its Google Apps for Government had the necessary FISMA certification.

Except as it turns out it didn’t.

At least that is what was revealed recently as some of the court papers from the lawsuit were made public. In fact is that the Department of Justice rejected Google’s claim that their Google Apps for Government had any sort of FISMA certification.

In fact Google made this claim not once but three times in its motion for a preliminary injunction bu in light of the disclosure by the DoJ one has to wonder if Google knowingly mislead the court or outright lied.

On top of this Google continues to state this FISMA certification

Google has repeated this statement in many other places as well. Indeed, for several months and as recently as this morning, Google’s website states, “Google Apps for Government – now with FISMA certification.” And as if that’s not sufficient, Google goes farther on another webpage and states “Google Apps for Government is certified and accredited under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).”

via Microsoft on the Issues

Of course Google apologists will call into question the fact that it is Microsoft bringing this story to the forefront but the simple fact is that Google is at the very least misrepresenting the facts here regarding their FISMA certification.

Google has yet to respond to this revelation.

UPDATE: My good friend Frederic Lardinios at NewsGrange got a response from Google on the story:

Here is a statement from Google’s David Mihalchik (Strategy and Business Development Lead Google Federal) regarding this issue:

“This case is about the Department of Interior limiting its proposal to one product that isn’t even FISMA certified, so this question is unrelated to our request that DOI allow for a true competition when selecting its technology providers.

Even so, we did not mislead the court or our customers.  Google Apps received a FISMA security authorization from the General Services Administration in July 2010.   Google Apps for Government is the same system with enhanced security controls that go beyond FISMA requirements.  As planned we’re working with GSA to continuously update our documentation with these and other additional enhancements.”

Nice little bit of misdirection if you ask me.

[UPDATED] Is Google lying or misleading over FISMA certification of Google Apps for Government? is a post from: The Inquisitr

The title of this posts was inspired by an excellent post over at Threat Level by Ryan Singel but is says exactly what my thoughts were when I first read a few days ago that Twitter went public about receiving subpoenas from the US Department of Justice demanding that Twitter turn over user information from a select number of people connected to WikiLeaks.

Not only did they go public but they also reached out to all the people whose information the DoJ had subpoenaed and let them know what was happening and that they had ten days to file arguments against the information being released. If they did nothing then after the ten days Twitter would hand over the information.

Now this may not seem like much but remember these subpoenas were sealed and came with a gag order which means Twitter had to go to court in order to get the gag order lifted, which they did, and won.

This is the email that was sent out by Twitter to those the DoJ was subpoenaing (via Geekosystem):

Kessel, Jan-07 11:20 am (PST):

Dear Twitter User:

We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account, @rop_g. A copy of the legal process is attached. The legal process requires Twitter to produce documents related to your account.

Please be advised that Twitter will respond to this request in 10 days from the date of this notice unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the legal process has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved.

To respond to this notice, please e-mail us at <removed>.

This notice is not legal advice. You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter. If you need assistance seeking counsel, you may consider contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation <contact info removed> or the ACLU <contact info removed>.

Sincerely,

Twitter Legal

I particularly like the last part of the email:

This notice is not legal advice. You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter. If you need assistance seeking counsel, you may consider contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation <contact info removed> or the ACLU <contact info removed>.

Nice touch Twitter and for once it is nice to send kudos your way.

Wow, Twitter must be beta testing a spine is a post from: The Inquisitr

There has always been rumors of an agreement between some of the biggest tech companies that they wouldn’t go around trying to hire top talent away from each other. Well it turns out that this wasn’t just a rumor as the Department of Justice in the U.S. filed suit the afternoon of September 24 against six high profile tech companies.

The DoJ state that Google, Intel, Apple, Adobe, Inuit and Pixar made agreements with each other not to poach competitor employees. This in the eyes of the government restrained competition between them for highly skilled employees. The DoJ also states that starting as early as 2005 the companies agreed to create do not call lists of each other’s employees as well as lists of companies that were off limits.

A couple of the examples given in the DoJ statement are

Beginning no later than 2006, Apple and Google executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees.   Apple placed Google on its internal “Do Not Call List,” which instructed employees not to directly solicit employees from the listed companies.  Similarly, Google listed Apple among the companies that had special agreements with Google and were part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list;

[....]

Beginning no later than September 2007, Google and Intel executives agreed not to cold call each other’s employees.   In its hiring policies and protocol manual, Google listed Intel among the companies that have special agreements with Google and are part of the “Do Not Cold Call” list.   Similarly, Intel instructed its human resources staff about the existence of the agreement; and

Now at the same time that the civil antitrust complaint was being filed a five-year settlement was also filed that would in effect end the suit.

The proposed settlement, which if accepted by the court will be in effect for five years, prohibits the companies from engaging in anticompetitive no solicitation agreements.   Although the complaint alleges only that the companies agreed to ban cold calling, the proposed settlement more broadly prohibits the companies from entering, maintaining or enforcing any agreement that in any way prevents any person from soliciting, cold calling, recruiting, or otherwise competing for employees.   The companies will also implement compliance measures tailored to these practices.

It’s so nice to see everyone getting along so well together eh.

Google, Apple, Adobe sued by the Feds, and then settled is a post from: The Inquisitr

Steve Jobs probably isn’t a very happy camper right around now. Word is that the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are negotiating with each other about which one of them is going to start an antitrust investigation into Apple’s iPad and iPhone applications policy.

Most of remember the uproar over Apple keeping Adobe’s Flash off of the iPad and iPhone as well as forcing developers to make their applications usable only on the iPad and iPhone rather than platform agnostic. Well it seems that the two government agencies involved think that this is anti-competitive and that Apple may have overstepped.

However just because the DoJ and the FTC are trying to figure out who will take the lead in any possible investigation it doesn’t mean that anything will happen beyond the initial inquiry.

An inquiry doesn’t necessarily mean action will be taken against Apple, which argues the rule is in place to ensure the quality of the apps it sells to customers. Typically, regulators initiate inquiries to determine whether a full-fledged investigation ought to be launched. If the inquiry escalates to an investigation, the agency handling the matter would issue Apple a subpoena seeking information about the policy.

Officials at both the Justice Department and FTC declined comment. Apple did not return calls seeking comment.

The threat of Apple being the subject of an investigation would be a remarkable turnabout for a company that has long seen itself as being outside the establishment, and one that has egged on antitrust officials to blunt the momentum of larger rivals.

Source: New York Post

It’s rather interesting to see the shoe on the other foot as Apple has for the most part flown under the radar in these types of things.

Apple could face government watchdogs is a post from: The Inquisitr

A California consumer group will this week call on the United States Justice Department to launch an antitrust action against Google, with the intent that the search giant should be broken up.

Consumer Watchdog will formally announce its push in a press conference titled “The Antitrust Case Against Google” in Washington, D.C. Wednesday, according to the SF Chronicle.

“We, as an organization, have concluded that there’s enough evidence on the table to warrant this, to go beyond the reactive steps that the regulatory agencies have followed up until now,” a spokesman told the paper.

The push to break up Google comes after Google has been targeted on privacy and competition grounds in the United States and Europe.

Consumer Group To Call For Google Break Up is a post from: The Inquisitr

If there is one powerhouse on the web today it has to be Google. Sure the little upstarts like Facebook and Twitter might be grabbing all the headlines but unfortunately Google is getting a different kind of attention, that it really doesn’t want. Mr. Dana Wagner, Google’s “senior competition counsel”, would like to have everyone believe that the company is part of an industry where disruption is only a mouse click away but not everyone is falling for that line.

Over the past little while Google has found itself under the ever increasing watchful eye of the Department of Justice. Following up on the derailment of a Google – Yahoo deal the company is facing three new antitrust investigations by the government. In an effort to soft-pedal Google’s influence Wagner has been making the rounds to talk with reporters in Silicon Valley, Washington and New York, as well as any Congressional staff members who let him in the door, and industry groups. In general anyone who can influence public perception about Google is getting a visit.

However not everyone is falling for the Google-spin about how it really is just a small company in the larger scheme of things and isn’t any danger to anyone because the market they operate in can change in the blink of an eye

Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. “They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn’t reflect their dominance of key sectors,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.”

[….]

Hand-wringing over Google’s power is not new. But some experts say that the steady stream of headlines about antitrust investigations could tarnish Google’s image with consumers, who by and large still view the company, and its growing list of free and innovative online services, positively.

“No company, whether it is Google, Microsoft or anyone else, wants to be portrayed in a negative way,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School. “It is absolutely right for Google to be worried, to be prepared, to be paranoid and to respond accordingly.”

Source: New York Times :: Google Makes a Case That It Isn’t So Big

While little press junkets like this might have worked in the past when Google was actually a small company the fact is they aren’t a small company anymore, and they do wield a lot of power on the Web. suggesting otherwise is just plain facetious.

image courtesy of InformationWeek

Poor Google, trying to convince everyone it’s no danger to anyone is a post from: The Inquisitr