You can sell used CDs and used DVDs, and even, if you’re really old school, used records and tapes. So why not sell used MP3s that you don’t want any more. It may seem an obvious issue that an MP3 file can be copied again and again, but one company, ReDigi Inc., takes a different view of the issue, pointing out that the legal doctrine of “first use” allows purchasers of copyrighted material (such as songs on a CD) to resell them. Capital Records disagreed with ReDigi, and last October the two companies faced off in front of District Court Judge Richard Sullivan, in joint motions to dismiss the inevitable lawsuit that had been brought by Capitol Records. Last week Judge Sullivan ruled on the case, and chalked up one for the big guys.

Facial recognition software is in the news again. Previously we’ve discussed Facebook’s facial recognition software, which, among other things, encourages your Facebook friends to tag you in their pictures of you. Now the police are using similar facial recognition software, along with pictures that they are finding on Facebook and other social media, to identify suspects.

By now everyone has heard about the weekend verdict in the Steubenville Rape case: Two teen Steubenville High Big Red football stars, Trent Mays and Ma’lik Richmond, charged with the rape of the 16-year-old girl known as “Jane Doe”, and the posting of related images on social media, were found guilty of the charges. What many don’t know, however, is that KnightSec, a branch of the hacking group Anonymous, outraged by what they saw as a cover-up, played a role in bringing the online materials to the attention of prosecutors and the court. And that the Ohio Attorney General is calling for a grand jury to force the sixteen other teen witnesses to divulge what they know about who else was involved. (Includes graphic video, images, and texts.)

Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll has been implicated in Florida’s storefront Internet gambling parlor problem, specifically because of her involvment with a group known as Allied Veterans of the World, and so has resigned. The storefront Internet gambling casinos, which mask themselves as “Internet cafes”, contain electronic slot machines, in violation of Florida’s gambling laws.

A councilman in Berkeley, California, Gordon Wozniak, has proposed a new email tax as a way to help subsidize the U.S. postal service. The post office has bled red ink for several years, and in part this is being blamed on the rise of the use of email, instead of regular paper mail or, as it has come to be known, ‘snailmail’. Wozniak’s (no word on whether he is related to Steve Wozniak of Apple fame) idea is that a tiny tax on the billions of emails that are sent could help to bolster the failing postal service.

Microsoft has been fined to the tune of $732 million by the European Union, for failing to adhere to the requirements of a settlement agreement that resulted from Microsoft’s restrictive shipping of Windows computers pre-loaded with Internet Explorer as the default web browser, and with no obvious alternative. Joaquin Almunia, competition commissioner for the European Union, noted that it had been a mistake to let Microsoft monitor their own compliance with the agreement.

You may have heard recently about the ‘Copyright Alert System’, or “CAS” (also being called the “Six Strikes” system. This is the ‘6 strikes’ system that was proposed by the RIAA as a new way for Internet service providers (ISPs) to help combat the illegal downloading of copyrighted materials such as movies and music. Did you catch that? Your ISP is getting involved in the fight to keep you from downloading illegal content.

When Tyler Anderson posted shocking video detailing the violent aftermath that befell spectators as a result of Kyle Larson’s wreck on Saturday, NASCAR intentionally — but falsely — claimed copyright infringement which triggered the video being taken down by YouTube (or “utube” as the kids call it). The video was quickly replaced and, now, NASCAR admits it made the claim knowing no such copyright violation had occurred.

Believe it or not, as of Saturday, 2/2/13, it became illegal to unlock your cell phone. Or to unlock anybody else’s cell phone. The failure by the LIbrary of Congress to renew an unlocking exemption to the DMCA means that you must seek permission from the carrier or phone manufacturer before you can unlock your cell phone. If you don’t? You can face prison time. Just ask Sina Khanifar, who in fact was threatened with up to 5 years in prison. His crime? Unlocking his Motorola Razr.

Proposed California law AB 242, introduced by Assemblyman Ed Chau, is creating quite a buzz due to its wording, or rather, proposed lack of wording. AB 242 would require that all commercial websites and services offered through the Internet which collect personal information about California consumers make its privacy policy be written at a level of 8th grade reading, and be no longer 100 words.

Google is making clear how they will be handling warrants and subpoenas for users’ personal information. With January 28th being Data Privacy Day, Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, shared three initiatives on the Google blog, which detail how Google plans to protect user privacy when faced with a warrant or subpena to hand over private user information.

Hacktivist collective Anonymous, citing Operation Last Resort (#OpLastResort and #WarHead1) took control of the website belonging to the United States Sentencing Commission Saturday with a clear message: the government must agree to reforming the legal process and allowing for freedom of information, or else the collective will begin releasing internal documents that they claim they collected from the systems of the Department of Justice (DOJ). They cited the recent suicide death of Internet activist and Reddit co-founder Aaron Swartz as motivation for this latest mission.

The French-language version of Twitter has been an ugly and contentious place lately, and the French government is taking action. With recent hashtags of #SiMonFilsEstGay (if my son is gay), #UnBonJuif (a good Jew), and #SiMaFilleRamèneUnNoir (if my daughter brings home a black guy), the Grand Instance Court in Paris has ordered Twitter to create a way to alert French authorities of illegal content when an offending tweet is sent out.

Today Google posted some news on their blog, along with the release of their Transparency Report, which shows increasing requests from the government for private user data. In fact, the report shows that, of all the governments in the world, the U.S. leads the pack in personal information requests.

SOPA Activist and RSS author Aaron Swartz, co-founder of Reddit, has been found dead in his Brooklyn, NY apartment, from a hanging suicide. The 26 year-old was facing Federal prosecution for allegedly stealing 4.8 million documents from MIT’s computer networks, as well as from JSTOR, or Journal Storage, a nonprofit organization that offers journals and scholarly books to subsidized institutions. The death came as a shock to Swartz’s parents and girlfriend, who never expected him to hang himself, and they contend that the suicide was as a result of a “criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach.”