Judge Frank Easterbrook said the attorneys “cannot sue the messenger just because the message reveals a third party’s plan to engage in unlawful discrimination.” He went on to say the attorneys could identify those landlords with discriminatory ads and refer them to their state’s attorney for prosecution.

Viacom currently has a billion dollar lawsuit against youTube’s owner Google.com for allowing copyrighted content on their site. This decision will undoubtedly weigh in precedent for this and other cases like this.

We’ll keep you informed of this and other entertaining news.

Have you ever tried RSS? It’s where you add our website headlines to your homepage. Click the RSS icon in the sidebar to add us. We’ve made a video that shows you how. See it here

Story source: Reuters

We’ll keep you informed of this and other entertaining news.

Anyone who’s visited the doctor in the last few years is aware about privacy requirements on the part of the provider. The United States enacted legislation called the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. (HIPAA) This legislation protects the individual by making sure the patient gives clear consent to parties requesting information. The problem is, it has lopped another level of bureaucracy on the health system in the United States. You need to fill out a HIPPA form anytime your records go from one of your doctors to another; from your general doctor to your heart specialist, for example. It would seem this is an effort to streamline that process.

The Cleveland Clinic already uses its own electronic health record system and it houses records of around 100,000 patients. They will be giving a small portion of this population the opportunity to participate in the trial with Google.

On one hand you have a the Cleveland Clinic, a relatively small but prestigious healthcare company diligent in protecting it’s records along with Google; the internet marketing Behemoth and purported experts in the Internet. It looks like a good thing. On the other hand you might consider these questions: Would Google be able to give the attention to the patient records required to ensure their security? Is it naive to believe the Clinic couldn’t hire the right people to make sure the records are kept secure without Google’s help?

Lowering costs in Healthcare in the United States is important, We’re sure neither is doing it for their health, but will the savings come at a cost in security? We’ll keep you informed of this and other breaking news.

Ebay has relented somewhat. They’ve changed their policies concerning media and category-specific pricing. This change has been planned for some time but the threatened “seller strike” seems to have put the company into high gear in an effort to woo sellers to back off from a hard-line boycott stance. Ebay representatives say they are trying to demonstrate they listen to customer complaints and respond quickly to them. It took threats of a seller walkout for the company to get “more responsive.” Will this be a monthly thing?

Ebay is certainly a simple solution to put buyers and sellers together, but it it not the only one. Amazon and Yahoo are both major names and both have some sort of system for sellers to offer products to buyers at discounted prices, and auction websites can pop up faster than you can say clearanceland. We’ll keep you informed of this and other entertaining news.

The Life is Beautiful virus email is a H-O-A-X

It has been perpetrated for at least six years and changes its form somewhat. The first itineration of the hoax is believed to be in the form of a powerpoint attachment. The next itineration was who it came from or what it affected -which included names like Symantec, McAfee, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.

However, files contained in emails from unknown persons should always be treated suspect, in fact, you should only accept and open a file through email if you have specifically ordered it or a person that you know has told you that you are going to receive it. File attachments are notorious for carrying little “nasties” that will sometimes completely wreck your computer but more often they will install spy-ware so that it will send commands to other computers on in the internet for a myriad of destructive purposes. Sometimes destructive to the user (something that wipes out your files or gives away your personal information) but more often destructive to someone else (like a Denial of Service attack: where thousands –or even tens of thousands- are directed to one internet site at the same time to overwhelm the processes and shut the site down.)

Kudo’s to Snopes.com. These guys fact check emails and give a brief synopsis of the validity of them. They have become so popular and well known, that more often than not, these hoax emails are quoting that they’ve been checked on Snopes to be true: which makes you wonder if it is the people at Snopes that puts these things out in the first place! –not really.

Of course you know the next shoe will drop. Now that Life is Beautiful has been exposed as a fraud, someone will likely make a real virus and start sending it around! We’ll keep you informed of this and other interesting technology news.