We’ve all received them. Those spam SMS messages that tell you that “Your entry in our drawing WON you a FREE $1,000 Target Giftcard! Enter ‘312’ at www.target.com.tgrz.biz to claim it and we can ship it to you immediately!”, or something similar about a Walmart or Best Buy gift card. Now the scum behind that text message spam, Daniel Pessin and Jacob Engel, along with their shell company Rentbro, have been taken down by the Federal Communciations Commission (‘FCC’).

Back in February we told you that it had just become illegal, on a Federal (i.e national) level, to unlock a cell phone – yours or anyone else’s. This was owing to the Library of Congress’ inaction, specifically their failing to renew an exemption to the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act). The exemption is what made it legal to unlock a cell phone despite that otherwise the DMCA would prohibit it. Not only that, but starting next year, you could go to prison for five years for unlocking a cell phone without the carrier’s permission. Now President Obama is leaning on the FCC to make unlocking your cell phone legal.

Patent trolls are the bane of nearly any tech business’ existence. While it is certainly true that there are patents that are infringed on, it is also true that a new breed of “business”, the extortion of money by companies whose sole business is to buy up patents, and then to use their patent portfolio to extort monies from companies – in other words, patent trolls – is burgeoning. These patent trolls demand amounts just below what they figure it will cost the target company – or themselves – to go to court, the theory being that the victim will roll over and pay rather than risk expensive litigation.

If you have recently started experiencing Facetime problems such as the dreaded Facetime problem “connection lost” (and whether it be Facetime problems on your Macbook or a Facetime problem on a mobile device such as an iPhone 4 or iPhone 5), well, you can blame the damn lawyers. Because the recent Facetime problems are directly related to changes that Apple has had to make to Facetime as a result of the patent infringement suit which Apple lost to VirnetX.

If former California Senator Steve Peace and attorney Michael Thorsnes get their way, there could be a new California privacy law. The new California ballot initiative filed this month by Peace and Thorsnes would require opt-in for many things, unlike most of the U.S. which generally lets your information be scraped by marketers and then requires you to opt-out. The United States trails behind most of the European Union in this regard – the EU generally requires opt-in versus opt-out, and has much stricter rules on the use and protection of user privacy and information.

Russia is using the situation with Edward Snowden, the NSA and PRISM leaker, to push an agenda that would see the United Nations taking over primary control of the Internet, from the United States.

A few months ago, Texas teenager Justin Carter, a regular gamer who played the League of Legends game online, and a fellow gaming friend, got into a heated argument with someone on Facebook. During the argument, which took place publicly on their timelines, the person with whom they were having this discussion on Facebook had said something to Carter, regarding his gaming in general, and League of Legends in particular, to the effect of “Oh you’re insane, you’re crazy, you’re messed up in the head.”

We’re all familiar with the movies and stories about jurors who skirt or even violate rules in the name of “real justice” (one of our favorites is the little-known movie Suspect, with Liam Neeson, Dennis Quaid, John Mahoney (best known as Frasier’s dad), and Cher). But it’s become a serious problem as the confluence of Google, social media, and smartphones in the pocket of every juror has led to a phenomenon known as the “Googling juror”, or “digital disobedience”. Put simply, jurors are taking matters into their own hands, doing extra-curricular (and extra-legal) research, and also sharing information on social media, which is throwing trials, and even causing mistrials.

The Internet, the country, and indeed the whole world is abuzz with the news of PRISM, the no-longer-secret program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) first exposed by Glenn Greenwald of the British newspaper The Guardian, through which the United States federal government is accessing and mining all sorts of user data from the major ISPs and possibly cell phone companies. Data which is potentially about just about anybody and everybody, even you. The list of companies and ISPs alleged to be involved with PRISM, by which we mean allowing the government to data mine their users’ data, is impressive (read as “scary”) indeed, although most of them are quick to deny it. However, we have evidence (see screenshots below) that even though they are denying it, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, PalTalk, YouTube, Skype, and AOL are all involved. There are rumours of DropBox and Amazon joining. And Verizon is also giving the Feds access to their user data. But as 1984 as this all is, we really only have one question: why is anybody surprised?

The U.S. Federal government’s case against Apple for price-fixing is under way. Last year the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) accused Apple and five ebook publishers of attempting to fix the prices of ebooks, claiming that there was a conspiracy to affect the e-book market. Here’s an explanation of the law suit against Apple.

Movie2k, which lives, or lived, at Movie2k.to, is down, and a lot of fans want to know what happened to Movie2k, and why they can’t access Movie2k. Put simply, you can’t reach Movie2k because the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) got a restraining order from the court, requiring that access to the site be blocked. Everywhere.

If you are thinking about creating multiple fake Facebook accounts in an effort to make it appear that your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend are stalking you, and if you are thinking about calling the police multiple times to report – relying on “evidence” from Facebook profiles that you yourself created – that your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend are in fact stalking you, you should probably hear the story of Michigan’s Cheryl Nelson first. Nelson allegedly weaved the web of deceit just described, essentially stalking herself on Facebook, with the main targets being her ex-boyfriend Kevin Haarsma and his new girlfriend. For her efforts Nelson is currently facing criminal charges for falsely reporting a felony.

The phone spam calls start out essentially the same, “Hi, this is Rachel from cardholder services..” or “Hi, this is Rachel from cardmember services…”.. then usually it will either say something like “..calling in reference to your current credit card account. It is urgent that you {take some action}”, or “Please hold for an important message…” or she will ask you to select from several options with your phone’s touch pad. Most often it is “Press 1 to speak to an operator, press 2 to be removed from the call list.” Stacey and Stacy have been making a lot of these calls too, about extended warranties. These are so-called “robocalls” – generated (often overseas) with the Rachel or other similar script and computerized dialing, and almost always peddaling some scam, be it debt relief, credit card consolidation, mortgage refinancing, or some similar financial scam. It has gotten so bad that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ran a “Robocall Challenge”, offering a $50,000 reward for the best proposed technology to deal with the burgeoning robocall problem.

A New York court has ruled that Manhattan residents can legally use the e-Hail “hail a cab” app to which the private car-for-hire and livery industry had objected. One of the apps, called the “New York Taxi Cab Riders – NYC Taxi Free” app, from Mphony, is the companion app to the “NY Taxi Cab for Drivers and Service Providers – NYC Taxi for Drivers” app, which New York City taxi cab drivers can run on their iPhones or iPads, and which shows where fares wanting to hail a cab are located. However, recently NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission Commissioner David Yassky said that Uber would be the service that would participate in a year-long pilot program.

The Marketplace Fairness Act (“MFA”) has been in the news quite a bit lately, and no wonder. The proposed Federal law, which if passed will result in sales tax on Internet sales across state lines, cleared its first Senate barrier on Monday, and is expected to be passed by the Senate this week.