Apple lists 8 Samsung products it wants banned

Apple Inc. on Monday gave a federal judge a list of eight Samsung Electronics Co. products it wants pulled from shelves and banned from the U.S. market, including popular Galaxy model smartphones.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh asked for the list after a jury in San Jose last week slammed Samsung with a $1.05 billion verdict, finding that the South Korean technology giant had "willfully" copied Apple's iPhone and iPad in creating and marketing the products. Samsung plans an appeal.

The products Apple wants out are all smartphones: Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 AT&T, Galaxy S2, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail.


Koh on June 26 banned the Galaxy Tab 10.1 from the U.S. market after finding it likely violated a "design patent." Samsung is now asking for that ban to be lifted after the jury found the computer tablet didn't infringe that particular patent, but it did find it infringed three Apple's software patents that cover the popular "bounce-back" and pinch-to-zoom features.

The judge has scheduled a Sept. 20 hearing to discuss Apple's demands for the sales bans. She asked Apple on Friday to submit the list of products its wants removed from U.S. stores after Samsung complained that it doesn't have enough time to prepare for the scheduled hearing.

The judge is deciding whether to reschedule the hearing to give Samsung more time to prepare. Samsung plans to ask the judge to toss out the jury's verdict as unsupported by the evidence. Failing that, the company says it will appeal the verdict to higher courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

In addition to the sales bans, Apple also plans to ask the judge to triple the damages to $3.15 billion because of the jury's finding that Samsung "willfully" copied Apple.

Apple filed its lawsuit in April of last year alleging that 28 Samsung smartphones and computer tablets had "slavishly copied" the iPhones and iPads. Samsung countered with its own claims that Apple used its wireless technology without proper compensation.

A nine-person jury in its verdict Friday unanimously agreed with Apple. Most of the damages were tied to Samsung's smartphones. The jury rejected Samsung's counterclaims.

Most of the Samsung products found to have "infringed' Apple's patent were older devices no longer being sold. The list Apple presented to the court on Monday represent devices it believes are still being sold in U.S. stores, including several versions of the company's popular S2 phones introduced last year. Samsung's newest and hottest selling smartphone, the Galaxy S3, was not part of the lawsuit and is unaffected by the jury's verdict.

The award represents about 1.5 percent of Samsung's annual revenue. Analysts said the embarrassment of the verdict is a bigger blow for Samsung than the financial setback.

Still, the question remains whether Samsung and other Apple competitors will have to redesign their smartphones to avoid infringing Apple's patents. Most analysts agree the verdict sends a threatening message to device makers such as Samsung, which use Google's Android operating system.

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Govt orders blocking of 300 specific URLs including 16 Twitter accounts

NEW DELHI: The government stepped up its efforts to stop what it feels is an online campaign of misinformation and rumour mongering in the wake of lower Assam riots and ordered blocking of 16 Twitter accounts, including two belonging to journalists, considered sympathetic to the right in India.

The department of telecommunications (DoT) ordered blocking of the accounts on August 20. The blocked accounts include those maintained by a columnist and a journalist working for a TV channel. Twitter accounts @sanghparivar, @drpraveentogadia and @i_panchajanya are also mentioned.

The 16 Twitter accounts are part of a list containing over 300 specific URLs that internet service providers (ISPs) in India have been told to block. The list is dominated by URLs belonging to Facebook and Youtube. Indian government allegedly found 102 URLs on Facebook and 85 URLs on YouTube where communally sensitive content was posted. According to a blogpost at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), a non-profit organization that got hold of the list on Wednesday, almost "all of the blocked items have content that are related to communal issues and rioting".

At the same time, Pranesh Paraksh, a CIS official, noted on the blog that it was unclear if the government exercised its powers responsibly in this case. "The blocking of many of the items on the list are legally questionable and morally indefensible, even while a large number of the items ought to be removed," he wrote.

According to the leaked list, Indian government also blocked 30 Twitter URLs, 3 Wikipedia URLs, 11 Blogger URLs and 8 Wordpress URLs. Some URLs belong to Pakistani websites. The list also contained URLs belonging to several mainstream media websites, including The Telegraph and Al Jazeera.

The blocking of Twitter accounts was partial due to technical challenges. The accounts have been blocked with the help of ISPs and not Twitter. Accessing them from India shows web users a message, saying "This website/URL has been blocked until further notice either pursuant to Court orders or on the Directions issued by the Department of Telecommunications". Also, the block works only if the accounts are accessed using HTTP and not HTTPS protocol. Twitter allows users to force HTTPS, which is a secure protocol and doesn't let ISPs see the content that a user is accessing.

Due to the partial block, accounts remained active. When Nirupama Rao, India's ambassador to the US, talked on Twitter about a discussion on a news channel on the subject of social media and government's current policy, one of the "blocked" accounts tweeted back to her saying, "@NMenonRao Is that why UPA Govt has blocked my Twitter handle? Is that the reason? A reply would help." Following the Twitter profile ban, which was reported around midnight on Wednesday, several Twitter users in India started hashtag #Emergency2012. A few hours later, #Emergency2012 and #GOIBlocks were among the top trending topics on Twitter for India.

For list of the urls blocked by the government, log on to: 1, 2, 3, 4.

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Govt issues guidelines for its departments for using social media

New Delhi: The Department of  Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology has approved and notified two important frameworks to ensure effective  citizen engagement and communication with  all stakeholders using  various offline  as well as online channels including Social Media.
         
In a press note, the Ministry said, "As more and more projects  are getting implemented, an increasing need has been felt for wider and deeper participation of an engagement with all stakeholders especially public at large to ensure that citizen centricity  is maintained in all projects.  To enable and support this goal, the Citizen Engagement Framework for e-Governance Projects has been developed for all government agencies.


Media is transforming the way in which people connect with each other and the manner in which information is shared and distributed.  In order to encourage and enable government agencies to make use of this dynamic medium of interaction, the Framework and Guidelines for use of Social Media by government agencies in India has been formulated. These guidelines will enable the various agencies to create and implement their own strategy for the use of social media. The document will help them to make an informed choice about the objective, platforms, resources, etc. to meet the requirement of interaction with their varied stakeholders.

The guidelines provide an in depth review of types of social media, their characteristics and challenges in their uses. In order to assist the departments to undertake such an engagement, the document provides for a framework and detailed guidelines governing each element of the framework.

While at a personal level, the uptake and usage of social  media is gaining rapid popularity, use and utility of such media for official purpose remain ambiguous. Many apprehensions remain including, but not limited to, issues related to authorisation to speak on behalf of department/ agency, technologies and platform to be used for communication, scope of engagement, creating synergies between different channels of communication, compliance with existing legislations etc."

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Vodafone drops 3G tariffs by up to 80 %

Vodafone, on Tuesday, slashed 3G tariffs by up to 80 per cent, becoming the fourth telecom service provider to reduce rates after Bharti Airtel, Idea Celluar and Reliance Communication. Vodafone 3G plans now start from Rs.25 for 25 MB data usage and go up to Rs.1,599 for 12 GB data usage.

Under the pay-as-you-go for pre-paid customers, the rate has been cut by 80 per cent to two paise per 10 KB.


With reduction in tariffs, Vodafone also announced that there would be no additional charges for roaming on data usage. “Additionally, Vodafone will now allow its customers to use data from their bundle package while on-net roaming across any location in India without any additional charge, a company statement said.

“With the introduction of these plans, we aim at establishing a foundation for providing a 3G data plan for everyone, making it affordable to the masses in the country, Vodafone India Chief Commercial Officer Sanjoy Mukerji said in a statement.

The 3G tariff war is happening at a time when most operators are up in arms against the high reserve price of spectrum proposed by regulator TRAI.

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Internet censorship bill passed in Russia

MOSCOW: The Russian parliament on Wednesday voted to approve a contentious bill that activists fear will introduce internet censorship by blacklisting sites deemed as undesirable.

In a further controversial move, deputies also passed in first reading a bill that makes libel and slander criminal offences with punishment of up to five years.

"The goal of the bill is to wipe out dissent in our country," Communist deputy Anatoly Lokot exclaimed at the hearings as other opposition deputies said that restrictive bills are introduced faster than they can read them.

The two bills are criticised as likely to be used against the opposition and follow initiatives hiking protest fines and introducing the term "foreign agents" for NGOs with funding from abroad.


The trend to fast-track certain bills after their introduction by majority party United Russia led some critical lawmakers to compare the parliament to a "secretarial office" of the Kremlin.

The Russian-language version of Wikipedia went on strike the day earlier in protest at the bill that is advertised as a crackdown on child pornography by creating a register of blacklisted sites and obliges site owners and providers to close them.

"Imagine a world without free knowledge," it said, blocking access to the site. The site was back up on Wednesday as deputies passed the bill with next to no debate or public discussion.

"Mind boggling," opposition leader Alexei Navalny wrote on Twitter after even opposition deputies voted to pass the law, calling them "idiots."

In Washington, the US State Department voiced its concerns.

"As Secretary (of State Hillary) Clinton has noted, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right 'to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers'," said spokesman Patrick Ventrell.

The bill has to be signed by President Vladimir Putin and is expected to become law in November.

Russian newspapers said Wednesday the final version had narrowed a previously broad term of "harmful information", saying only child pornography, suicide how-to instructions and drugs propaganda can lead to website closure without a trial.

However, an expert on Russia's security services, Andrei Soldatov, said the bill would lead to creation of a mechanism for blocking foreign sites for the first time by forcing internet providers to install special equipment.

"Clearly, it will be possible to use it not just against websites propagating pornography; the government will be able to use these instruments any way it wants," he wrote on his website Agentura.ru.

Russia's biggest search engine Yandex said the bill's proposed methods to fight pornography "create room for possible misuse and raise questions from internet users and company representatives."

"Such decisions cannot be taken hastily, the way it is happening now," said the statement signed by the company's chief editor Yelena Kolmanovskaya. The engine's slogan "Everything will be found" had the word 'everything' crossed out on the main page on Wednesday.

"The amendments can lead to introduction of censorship to Russian internet," said Livejournal, a popular blogging platform frequently used by opposition leaders for communicating with their audience.

The new libel bill breezed through the voting process in the parliament in the first reading and could be passed before the end of this week before the Duma session ends for summer break.

The bill creates a new criminal charge making slander and libel subject to a jail term of up to five years. The charge was previously decriminalised during Dmitry Medvedev's presidency under the drive to liberalise the criminal code.

Opposition deputies on Wednesday decried what they said was a trend of introducing restrictive bills at short notice and ramming them through without any public discussion.

"We are turning the parliament into an secretarial office that carries out somebody else's wishes," opposition deputy Gennady Gudkov of the Just Russia party said at the hearings.

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