E-Commerce Blog

Former Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee saw the suspension Wednesday of his prison sentence in a tax-evasion conviction, a move that confirmed South Koreans’ view that tycoons are immune from jail. The Seoul Central District Court convicted Lee for failing to pay tens of millions of dollars in taxes, and imposed a hefty fine of about $109 million against the man who led the country’s most powerful business conglomerate before he resigned in April over the allegations that included a range of fiscal crimes.

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Former Samsung Chief Convicted but Won’t Do Time

Online poker is becoming more and more popular in Germany. As a result, the country’s strict legal restrictions on gambling are under pressure, and Germany may soon have to open its protected markets to private online poker providers. Currently, private online poker operations violate the new German Interstate Lottery Treaty, in force since January 2008. According to the Lottery Treaty, gambling licenses are only granted to institutions or companies that are under control of the German Federal State.

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Skill or Chance? The Case for Online Poker in Germany

Viacom and Google have agreed to keep the personal information of YouTube users private, even as Viacom gears up for the next stage of litigation in its copyright infringement lawsuit against Google. Google will provide user data to Viacom, but redact information that can be used to make personal identifications. The agreement was forged after Judge Louis Stanton ruled that Google had to hand over the personal viewing records of YouTube visitors — including login IDs, the videos they watched, and the time they watched them.

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Google, Viacom Hammer Out Privacy Terms in YouTube Case

Rant all you want in a public park. A police officer generally won’t eject you for your remarks alone, however unpopular or provocative. Say it on the Internet, and you’ll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed. Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that’s controversial but otherwise legal. Service providers write their own rules for users worldwide and set foreign policy when they cooperate with regimes like China. They serve as prosecutor, judge and jury in handling disputes behind closed doors.

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Free Speech on the Web: Murky Rules, Personal Agendas

Two more Internet service providers have joined New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s crusade to block access to online child pornography at a key distribution source. AOL and AT&T have joined ISPs Verizon, Sprint Nextel and Time Warner Cable in this agreement, in which they cut off server access to Web sites that contain child porn and — perhaps more controversially — access to large swaths of Usenet that may have nothing to do with the subject. Cuomo announced the first agreement with the three providers in June.

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ISPs to Board Up Big Chunk of Usenet in Child Porn Crusade