Google strips Pirate Bay homepage from search results

The Pirate Bay’s homepage and seven other pages relating to the BitTorrent tracker website have been removed from Google’s search engine, following a DMCA complaint. Anyone attempting to locate thepiratebay.org via Google will be greeted with some results to access the website, but none that point directly at its homepage. We’ve asked Google if it could tell us more about removing some of the site’s pages from its search engine, but at the time of writing it hadn’t got back to us with comment. The Pirate Bay mouthpiece, Peter Sunde - who actually quit his position as the website’s main spokesman a few months back - asked on his Twitter account this morning “why is 'thepiratebay.org' (the frontpage) removed from your [Google’s] index?” A DMCA notice at the bottom of a “thepiratebay.org” search query via Google reveals that Mountain View has simply reacted to a takedown request. “In response to a complaint we received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we have removed 8 result(s) from this page. If you wish, you may read the DMCA complaint that caused the removal(s) at ChillingEffects.org,” reads a notice.

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/02/google_removes_pirate_bay_homepage/

Judge Orders Gmail Account Deactivated After Bank Screws Up

A California federal judge has ordered Google to temporarily de-activate a Gmail account after a bank mistakenly sent sensitive data to the account. U.S. District Judge James Ware also ordered Google to disclose the identity of the Gmail account holder. The Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming sued Google to obtain the account holder’s name after a bank employee erroneously e-mailed an attachment to the account containing sensitive information on 1,325 individual and business bank customers. The attachment contained customer names, addresses, Tax ID and Social Security numbers and loan information. The employee sent a second e-mail to the recipient instructing the person to delete the e-mail and attachment without opening it. When the employee got no answer, the bank contacted Google to find out if the account was active or not. Google wouldn’t provide any information without a court order so the bank sued Google to get the account holder’s name and contact information. Google has stated that once it receives a court order to identify an account holder, its policy is to notify the account holder before complying with the order to give the account holder a chance to file an objection.

Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/09/judge-closes-gmail-account/

End in site for Yugoslav domains

Websites using the .yu domain extension will cease to be available online from 30 September. The extension - assigned to the former Republic of Yugoslavia - has been replaced by .rs (for Serbia) and .me (for Montenegro). Icann - which oversees the assigning of top-level domain names - allowed extra time for sites to make the transition before removing the .yu extension. It is thought up to 4,000 websites have still not migrated to a new domain. However, the Serbian National Register of Internet Domain Names has requested a postponement of several months; The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) is meeting to consider the request. Icann removed the .yu extension from their list of approved country domain names in 2006. The former Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed Serbia and Montenegro in 2003, although Montenegro subsequently broke from the union in 2006. Icann says the .rs and .me extensions are now the appropriate domain names as the Republic of Yugoslavia no longer exists.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8278364.stm