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The Delhi High Court says Microsoft should not be involved in a Web censorship case that has turned its sights firmly on Facebook and Google.

Microsoft has been given a reprieve in an Indian Web censorship case against several online companies.

The software giant today was told by the Delhi High Court that it will not face charges in the criminal censorship case after the company argued that no formal allegations were brought against it. Microsoft's departure from the case comes after Yahoo was also allowed out.

The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the news.

The India case is focusing on Google and Facebook. Last week, the Journal reported that the companies were forced to head to trial in India after they were charged with failing to censor online content that "will corrupt minds."

For their part, Google and Facebook argue that they're protected under India's information technology law, which they claim protects them against content added to sites by users. The companies have also said that when asked, they comply with take-downs related to "objectionable" content.

A battle between India and the online giants, who are among nearly a dozen defendants, seemed to be brewing in December when the government demanded that all Web companies prescreen user content before it hits the Internet. India's acting telecommunications minister, Kapil Sibal, said at the time that the move would limit inflammatory content finding its way onto the Internet.

Internet censorship has become a key component in online companies' relations with countries around the world. China is perhaps the most notorious censor, taking Web sites down that it believes violate its laws. Google went as far as moving its China search to Hong Kong because of the country's stringent censorship laws.

In India, the stakes are high for all the companies involved. If they're found guilty, the firms could face stiff fines and their executives could be forced to serve jail time.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment.

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Microsoft off the hook in India censorship case

Rent control seems unfair, but ending it could threaten people's homesand endanger important zoning regulations

Michael Appleton / The New York Times / Redux

The doorbell on a rent-controlled apartment that was the focus of a landlord's suit against the actress Faye Dunaway and her son, Liam Dunaway O'Neill, in New York, Aug. 2, 2011.

Cohen is the author of Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days that Created Modern America

In many congested cities New York City most of all rent control laws protect tenants who are lucky enough to have such leases from major rent increases. But the Supreme Court could be on the brink of striking down rent control. If it does, the court will hand landlords a huge victory and put many tenants in danger of losing their homes. It could also lay the groundwork for striking down a wide array of zoning laws.

The Supreme Court is considering a case filed by James Harmon, a onetime Reagan Administration lawyer who owns a brownstone on West 76th street in Manhattan. One of his tenants, an executive recruiter named Nancy Wing Lombardi, has leased a one-bedroom apartment in the building since 1976. Since the apartment is rent-controlled, she pays $1000 a month, at least half what an unregulated apartment in the same neighborhood would cost. Harmon argues that laws limiting how much rent he can charge are an unconstitutional taking of his property. The court has not yet decided to take the case, but it has asked for additional briefing taking a harder look, the Wall Street Journal reported, than anyone expected.

(MORE:Real Estate Trend: Wealthy Californians Demand Tons of Bathrooms)

Rent control has a long history. New York City adopted its law after World War I, when a shortage of housing and a glut of renters including soldiers returning from the war put extreme pressure on rents. Many other localities have rent control laws, including dozens in New York State and California. Along with New York City, some of the largest are San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington, D.C.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld rent control, going back to 1921. In 1988, in Pannell v. San Jose, it ruled 6-2 that San Joses law did not violate the constitution in an opinion written by the very conservative then-Chief Justice, William Rehnquist. In 1992, in Yee v. City of Escondido, the court unanimously rejected a claim that a rent control ordinance was an unconstitutional taking of property just the issue Harmon is raising.

These rulings should settle the question. But rent control opponents clearly think they have a chance, given how pro-corporation the Court is today. Harmons challenge is attracting strong support from real estate interests and conservative groups like the CATO Institute. They argue that rent control unconstitutionally deprives landlords of the right to charge as much rent as they want. They like to point to extreme cases of people benefiting who do not need it like the actress Faye Dunaway, who until recently had a $1,048.72 a month one-bedroom on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

See the rest here:
What if the Supreme Court Kills Rent Control?

Article recommendations from your friends on Facebook and Twitter aren't a major source of traffic for news websites, according to Pew's State of the Media 2012 report -- but they have potential to become one.

The annual release focuses on trends in the world of journalism but as news continues to be made, read and reported with technology, this year's edition is chock full of interesting data about the ways we all use the Internet.

[More from Mashable: Facebook Photos: The Key to a Successful Social Media Campaign]

According to Pew, social media use is on the rise, more people are reading the news online and advertisers are spending more money on Internet advertising than ever before. All of those factors have the potential to make social media one of the most important elements of a news outlet's business plan.

Facebook usage is up, according to Pew: 133 million users in the U.S. from 117 million last year. The social network's got 845 million active users globally -- about 54% of the world's online population.

[More from Mashable: Dont Tag Me, Bro: How to Control Facebook Photo Tags]

It's also winning the social media popularity contest in terms of time spent on the site. Facebook users scrolled through their news feed, gawked at photos of friends and played games like Farmville for an average of 423 minutes in December of last year.

Tumblr came in second (151 minutes) and Pinterest third (80 minutes). To some surprise, MySpace (13 minutes) beat out Google+ (5 minutes).

Twitter is growing as well -- 24 million active users in the U.S., according to eMarketer. That's an estimated 32% increase from last year year. The company is tight-lipped on exactly how many people use the service.

Journalists have flocked to Twitter, says Pew, giving it "outsized influence" in the media game. Its ability to disseminate breaking news before traditional wire services gives it a "critical role" in journalism, says Pew -- Whitney Houston's death announcement on Twitter 55 minutes before it was confirmed on the AP wire is just one example.

Read more here:
Pew: Social Media Not Yet Driving News Traffic

Social media is more popular than ever, and so are viruses, malware and online scams. The chart below sheds some light upon how important it is for social networking users to stay on top of the basics of online security.

With even Ke$has Twitter account being hacked, one can never be too careful when it comes to social media security. Veracode application security testing platform has laid out a chart on the basics.

Some key points are that since social media exists in a cloud computing environment, it is more vulnerable than that of a traditional network, and the interconnective nature of social networks is an ideal setting for the propagation of malware. The chart adds that core distribution of malware is through social media sites, and tips are given for users to protect themselves.

Interestingly, the top 5 categories of Facebook spam are stalking, free stuff/games/Farmville, shocking curiosities, features not offered by Facebook and games not offered by Facebook.

The chart ends with the notion that, you dont have to avoid all forms of Social Media to be protected, but you do have to be aware of malware and scams. Educate employees as well on Social Media safety and best practices to reduce your companys risk from costly losses and identity theft.

Hat tip to Veracode.

See original here:
Social Media Security Basics Infographic

On my way to give a keynote talk at a genome meeting in California, I noticed in the Hartford airport that the April issue of Wired is on the newsstand. And in that issue is a feature I wrote about fighting viruses, based on visits and interviews with scientists exploring new ways of doing battle with these invisible foes. Its not yet on Wireds web site yet (Ill post a link when it goes online), but heres the introduction for a taste:

Theres a moment in the history of medicine thats so cinematic its a wonder no one has put it in a movie. The scene is a London laboratory. The year is 1928. Alexander Fleming, a British microbiologist, is back from a vacation and is cleaning up his workspace. He notices that a speck of mold has invaded one of his cultures of Staphylococcus bacteria. It isnt just spreading through the culture, though. It is killing the bacteria surrounding it.

Fleming rescued the culture and carefully isolated the mold. He ran a series of experiments that confirmed it made a Staphylococcus-killing molecule. And Fleming then discovered it could kill many other species of infectious bacteria as well. I had a clue that here was something good, but I could not possibly know how good it was, he later said.

No one at the time could have known how good it was. In 1928, something as minor as a scraped knee could be a death sentence, because doctors were mostly helpless to stop bacteria infections. Fleming was the first scientist to recognize an antibiotica discovery for which hed later win the Nobel Prize. Penicillin saved countless lives, killing off a wide range of pathogens while causing few side effects. Flemings work also led other scientists to discover more antibiotics, which collectively changed the rules of medicine. Now doctors could prescribe drugs that effectively wiped out most bacteria, without even knowing what kind of bacteria was making their patients sick.

Of course, even if all the bacteria in the world were eradicated, we would still get sick. Viruseswhich cause their own panoply of diseases from colds and the flu to AIDS and Ebolaare profoundly different from bacteria, and so they dont present the same targets for a drug to hit. Penicillin interferes with the growth of bacteria cell walls, for example, but viruses dont have cell walls, because they arent even cells; theyre just genes packed into protein shells. Other antibiotics, such as streptomycin, attack the factories inside bacteria that make new proteins, known as ribosomes. A virus doesnt have ribosomes, but instead uses the ribosome inside its host cell to make new copies of itself.

We do currently have antiviral drugs, but theyre a pale shadow of their counterparts that fight bacteria. Typically, antivirals will drive down the number of virus particles in the body, but they cant wipe the virus out completely. People infected with HIV (for example) can avoid developing AIDS by taking a cocktail of antiviral drugs. But if they stop taking antivirals, the virus will rebound to its former levels in a matter of weeks. They have to keep taking the drugs for the rest of their lives to prevent the viruses from wiping out their immune system.

And antivirals have a limited scope of attack. You can treat your flu with Tamiflu, but it wont cure you of dengue fever or Japanese encephalitis. Scientists have to develop antivirals one disease at a timea labor that can take many years. As a result, we still have no antivirals for many of the worlds nastiest viruses, like Lassa fever and Ebola. We can expect new viruses to leap from animals to our own species in the future, and when those new viruses begin to spread, theres a good chance we wont have any antivirals to help stop them.

Virologists, in other words, are still waiting for their Penicillin Moment. But they might not have to wait forever. Buoyed by advances in molecular biology, a handful of researchers in labs around the US and Canada are trying to engineer a new and unprecedented type of antiviral: a broad-spectrum virus-killer, one that could wipe out viral infections with the same ruthless efficiency that penicillin and Cipro bring to the fight against bacteria. If they succeed, future generations may struggle to imagine a time when we were at the mercy of viruses, just as we struggle to imagine life before Flemings moldy dish.

Excerpt from:
Waiting for the Penicillin Moment: my new feature on antiviral drugs for Wired | The Loom