Google Refuses to Part with Wi-Fi Data, Flouts German Deadline

Even a company of a pleasant disposition like Google can become a touch nettlesome when its rivals are busy playing a high-stakes game of musical chairs, where the winner gets to be the world's leading tech company – Apple snatched the honor from Microsoft on Wednesday. Probably feeling left out and dejected, the company even missed a key deadline yesterday. The German authorities had asked it to hand over the unauthorized Wi-Fi data it had collected during an image-collection campaign for its Street View service. But the internet giant let the deadline pass.

It was kind enough to offer a clarification, though: “As granting access to payload data creates legal challenges in Germany, which we need to review, we are continuing to discuss the appropriate legal and logistical process for making the data available.” This excuse appears untenable given the fact that Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection supervisor, claims to have been assured by the state prosecutor, Lutz von Selle, that the requested data will not be used to compound Google's legal problems.

However, Google's failure to comply with the request has actually compounded its problems, as it has given rise to a criminal investigation against it. The company also enraged regulators in Hong Kong by missing a Monday deadline for furnishing similar data collected in that neck of the woods.

The ruckus began when Google fessed up to “inadvertently” collecting 600 gigabytes of “fragmentary data” from open Wi-Fi networks in more than 30 countries, and offered to destroy the data instead of making it available for scrutiny. Although data protection watchdogs in Australia, Ireland and Denmark gave the nod for the data to be destroyed, most countries have requested that it be preserved for the sake of possible legal action in the matter.

Flimsy Anti-Piracy Regulations in China Worry Microsoft

China is not only vying for the top economy crown but also breathing down America's neck in a panoply of key industries. Take for example the global PC market, where it is currently ranked second - just behind the US - with somewhere between 15 to 20 percent of all PC sales. Its rise to the top of the PC market is most likely to happen sometime this year.

So the soon-to-be world's biggest computer market must have the undivided attention of Microsoft then? Not really. Not until China respects intellectual property rights and clamps down on software piracy. Microsoft after all only owes 1 percent of its total revenue to the Chinese market. According to Steve Ballmer, the company sees greater promise in countries like India and Indonesia.

The Microsoft CEO told media persons in Singapore that intellectual property protection in these two countries is far better than China. He also shared his concern over the ongoing debt crisis in Europe. Ballmer fears a possible global fallout from Europe's debt crisis.

RapidShare Cleared of Wrongdoing in Copyright Case

Uber popular file-hosting service RapidShare has won a court victory against Perfect 10, a California-based adult media company specializing in, um, NSFW content. In the lawsuit, Perfect 10 accused RapidShare of infringing the copyrights of a bunch of its images and requested an injunction, but the request was rejected by the U.S. District Court of California, which ruled that RapidShare can't be accused of copyright infringements.

"The view that RapidShare does not promote any infringements of copyright, unlike other file-hosts, appears to be gradually catching on," Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare said. "It is a milestone for us that this is also happening in the US. We are happy that the court in California has not bought into the odd line of argument put forward by Perfect 10 and we look forward to increasingly emphasize the major difference between RapidShare and illegal share-hosts."

RapidShare has been on a legal roll as of late. Earlier this month, a German Court of Appeal overturned a verdict in a case against movie rental company Capelight Pictures, with the verdict stating that RapidShare isn't liable for copyright infringement acts committed by its users, TorrentFreak reports.