Corporations & Media

Business Insider | Doing so, he will probably save at least $67 million in taxes…but he's also liable to be "excluded" from physically re-entering the United States.  So reports Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall:  US immigration law does not look kindly on former citizens who renounce their citizenship to avoid US taxes. Specifically, it doesn’t look like Saverin should ever be able again to get a visa to enter the United States.

NBR | NBR ONLINE asked Chapman Tripp principal Justin Graham for his comment on FYX's new internet service. The new ISP lets New Zealanders beat geographic restrictions on US commercial download providers such as Netflix.

Boing Boing | A post by Slashdot user Dangerous_Minds summarizes a series ZeroPaid's Drew Wilson, who has been examining 20 file-sharing studies from the decade-plus-long filesharing wars. Time and again, the studies show that the effect on markets is marginal, and that the big entertainment companies are opposed to file-sharing a means of suppressing competition and innovation:

The Atlantic Wire | It's always exciting when someone stands up to a bully—unless that results in jacking up of the price of the hottest phone even higher than it already is. That is very unexciting, actually. In fact, it sucks. And that is exactly what's happening in this subsidy war between Apple and its wireless carriers, as these companies stand up to Apple's subsidies, which it turns out, is good for them, but bad for you.

Torrent Freak | In its case against 26 major record labels at British Columbia Supreme Court in Canada, BitTorrent index isoHunt has submitted a response to the copyright infringement allegations. The BitTorrent site argues that not only do they pose no threat to the music industry, it’s the copyright industry itself that’s threatening the freedom of expression of millions of people on the Internet.

Justia | A class-action lawsuit against Apple (read it below) accuses the tech giant of double billing customers for downloads made from the company’s iTunes Store.  The lawsuit filed by New York resident Robert Herskowitz alleges that Apple charged him twice for purchasing a single pop song, “Whataya Want from Me?”

Washington Post | The Labor Department on Tuesday ordered Wal-Mart to pay $4.8 million in back wages and damages to thousands of employees who were denied overtime charges, the latest in a string of embarrassments for the company over its business practices.

Crikey | US-based toy multinational Hasbro is embroiled in a damaging Internet scandal after it marshalled henchmen representing global lawyers Baker & McKenzie to threaten an online fan for posting photos of his favourite Hasbro Nerf guns.

Cult of Mac | The dirty secrets surrounding Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram have remained relatively unkown, until now. Many were taken aback by the incredible amount of money Facebook dropped on the photography app, but it turns out that Instagram wanted more than $1 billion. It’s been revealed by The Wall Street Journal that Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom originally pitched his app to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg with a price tag of $2 billion.

Business Week | Volkswagen AG's Audi unit says it will buy Italian motorcycle maker Ducati Motor Holding SpA from Investindustrial Group.  Audi did not disclose the purchase price in announcing the deal. It said the acquisition was approved Wednesday by the supervisory boards of both Audi and parent Volkswagen.

The Verge | MIT's Technology Review has just gotten news of a mysterious new project that claims it will "create a new industry and a new definition of 'natural resources.'" Space exploration company Planetary Resources will be unveiled in a conference call on Tuesday, April 24th. Besides the audacious announcement, which promises to "overlay two critical sectors — space exploration and natural resources — to add trillions of dollars to the global GDP," what makes this unique is its high-profile support group. The venture is backed by Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, director James Cameron, and politician Ross Perot's son, among others.

ARS Technica | Netflix awarded a $1 million prize to a developer team in 2009 for an algorithm that increased the accuracy of the company's recommendation engine by 10 percent. But today it doesn't use the million-dollar code, and has no plans to implement it in the future, Netflix announced on its blog Friday. The post goes on to explain why: a combination of too much engineering effort for the results, and a shift from movie recommendations to the "next level" of personalization caused by the transition of the business from mailed DVDs to video streaming.

KIRO | Microsoft is examining computer files that company employees seized in two raids on Friday.  The company promises to get even more aggressive in its fight against online criminals, rather than wait for law enforcement to act.

RAW Story | That’s the date when the nation’s largest ISPs will all voluntarily implement a new anti-piracy plan that will engage network operators in the largest digital spying scheme in history, and see some users’ bandwidth completely cut off until they sign an agreement saying they will not download copyrighted materials.

The Diplomat | China’s State Council has released a ground-breaking draft proposal of a grain law that establishes legislation restricting research, field trials, production, sale, import and export of genetically engineered grain seeds. The draft stipulates that no organization or person can employ unauthorized GE technology in any major food product in China.

Read Write Web | In its claim, the law firm Murphy P.A. said the company "repeatedly ignored" warnings from a user who noticed Facebook continued to track users' activities on the Internet even after they had logged off. Facebook finally confirmed the practice in September and promised to make corrections within 24 hours.

Physorg | A University of Southampton led project, exploring how people of antiquity viewed the geography of the ancient world, has been backed by $50,000 of funding from Google, Inc. via its Digital Humanities Awards Program.

Forbes | Every time you go shopping, you share intimate details about your consumption patterns with retailers. And many of those retailers are studying those details to figure out what you like, what you need, and which coupons are most likely to make you happy.

New York Times | Andrew Pole had just started working as a statistician for Target in 2002, when two colleagues from the marketing department stopped by his desk to ask an odd question: “If we wanted to figure out if a customer is pregnant, even if she didn’t want us to know, can you do that? ”

Forbes | Think back, every question you’ve ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions.  Each question potentially may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.

Daily Tech | The Pirate Bay has long been synonymous with one thing -- torrents.  The world's largest torrent site has had more than its fair share of legal headaches over the years for promoting the ubiquitous file-sharing mechanism.  Consequentially on Feb. 29 in will be taking what on the surface appears to be a mind-blowing move -- deleting all torrents hosted directly on the site, which are being actively shared by more than 10 individuals.

Digital Spy | Apple has been criticized for seemingly exploiting the death of Whitney Houston after the price of her albums on iTunes increased following her death, although further reports have indicated that label Sony Music is responsible for the hike.

CNN Money | One measure of how quickly events are unfolding in the smartphone patent wars is the number of typos appearing in Florian Mueller's FOSS Patents dispatches. The German-born blogger's coverage of the "thermonuclear war" Steve Jobs promised to unleash against Google's (GOOG) Android operating system are closely read by all sides in the cross-continental disputes, and lately he's hardly had time to breathe, never mind spellcheck.

The Independent | Rupert Murdoch was last night preparing to fly to Britain to join frantic efforts to secure the future of The Sun after the arrests of five senior journalists by police investigating allegations of bribery and phone hacking.

Wikipedia | This list includes corporations that were in existence during World War II and that are documented to have profited from participation in the Holocaust.

The Daily Yomuiri Online | Toyota Motor Corp. has announced it will shift production of its Highlander sport utility vehicles to a factory in Indiana from Toyota Motor Kyushu, Inc., a subsidiary in Miyawaka, Fukuoka Prefecture, in the latter half of next year.

Torrent Freak | In yet another episode in Hollywood’s year-long legal battle with one of the world’s biggest cyberlocker services, the MPAA has now drawn Google into the dispute. The MPAA says that Google holds valuable information on Hotfile and should produce it, but the search giant is refusing without the file-hoster’s consent. Hotfile says ‘no’ on the basis that the deadline for discovery expired last year.

Bloomberg | P&G, which agreed in April 2011 to sell Pringles to Diamond for $1.5 billion, must now determine how to exit the deal and whether Diamond will resist the breakup, said one of the people, who declined to be identified because the matter is private. If the sale were to proceed, P&G shareholders would own a majority of Diamond’s stock, which fell 37 percent yesterday.

O'Reilly Radar | Imagine buying a car that locks you into one brand of fuel. A new BMW, for example, that only runs on BMW gas. There are plenty of BMW gas stations around, even a few in your neighborhood, so convenience isn't an issue. But if one of those other gas stations offers a discount, a membership program, or some other attractive marketing campaign, you can't participate. You're locked in with the BMW gas stations.

Activist Post | The farmers are concerned that Monsanto’s aggressive agenda to genetically alter the planet will ultimately result in a severe threat to the organic integrity of farms worldwide. It is not hard to believe that many ‘organic’ farms have already been contaminated with GMO crops, as nearly 93% of soybeans are now admittedly genetically modified.

Huffington Post | Los Angeles Superior Court Commissioner Douglas Carnahan ruled Wednesday that the automaker misled Heather Peters about the potential fuel economy of her hybrid car and awarded her $9,867 – much more than the couple hundred dollars cash that a proposed class-action settlement is offering.

Huffington Post | In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Initial reports from sources suggested that an ABC News camera was also prevented from taping the hearing; ABC has since denied that they sent a crew to the hearing.

Mashable | Once you’ve read this infographic about SOPA, you might become angry, too. That’s because when you see the series of technological events that has led up to the present day, you’ll start realizing that almost every innovation that came along has been seen by the motion picture industry as a threat to its existence.

Hollywood Reporter | Megaupload hasn't experienced much success thus far in pressing claims that UMG misused its copyrights by removing the video, which featured many stars purportedly endorsing Megaupload. But the lawsuit did reveal something that wasn't known -- YouTube had granted UMG the powers to remove videos from the video-sharing website at will, "based on a number of contractually specified criteria."

Business Insider | Andrew Restuccia of The Hill is reporting that Ener1, a battery company that President Obama referenced in his State of The Union Speech on Tuesday as an example of successful energy investments, has just filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The Atlantic | It has joined with five other businesses (Vulcan, NIKE, RealNetworks, Group Health Cooperative, and Concur) to support bills that would legalize gay marriage in Washington state, where Microsoft is based. The letter to Governor Chris Gregoire was brief. In its entirety it reads, "We write you today to show the support of our respective companies for SB 6239 and HB 2516 recognizing marriage equality for same-sex couples." But Microsoft elaborated on why it was supporting the bills on its official blog. There, Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith writes:

Reuters | Wikipedia will shut down for 24 hours Wednesday to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act, founder Jimmy Wales announced on Monday.  In doing so, Wikipedia joins a long list of web companies such as Reddit and Mozilla that are taking similar measures against the proposed legislation.

Russia Today | John Castle, the 76-year-old CEO of the Castle Harlan equity firm, could be facing charges after a waiter at the posh Palm Beach, Florida establishment Club Colette made claims that Castle went berserk after he brought him the check.

Slashdot.org | In a tweet early this morning, cybersecurity researcher Christopher Soghoian pointed to an internal memo of India's Military Intelligence that has been liberated by hackers and posted on the Net. The memo suggests that, "in exchange for the Indian market presence" mobile device manufacturers, including RIM, Nokia, and Apple (collectively defined in the document as "RINOA") have agreed to provide backdoor access on their devices.

Press Release | Fortitude is a high concept performance video that expands reality to accommodate a crew of Ian Cooke clones as they perform the title track to Ian's new album Fortitude.  Big Blue Entertainment is the partnership of Tom Mares and Nick Walker in Denver, Colorado, specializing in all kinds of production from reality TV to high concept branding.

The Daily Beast | One of the nation’s highest-paid executives is sitting on a massive pile of stock options and enjoys a private jet wherever he goes. Gary Rivlin on John Hammergren, the 1 percenter you’ve never heard of.

Forbes.com | Consider a few key metrics.  Despite the disappearance of competitors including Circuit City, the company is losing market share. Its last earnings announcement disappointed investors.  In 2011, the company’s stock has lost 40% of its value.  Forward P/E is a mere 6.23 (industry average is 10.20).  Its market cap down to less than $9 billion.  Its average analyst rating, according to The Street.com, is a B-.

My Fox Tampa Bay | Allie Scott is a junior at Osceola High School. The 16 year old says it all started in the school parking lot last month when she parked her brother's car in another girl's spot. She was asked to move it, and when she did at the end of the day, the car had been scratched up with a key.

Don't Tread On Mike | You may have heard about the mass exodus of customers from GoDaddy due to their support of SOPA. You may have also heard that GoDaddy no longer supports SOPA. The problem is, only one of those things is true. While GoDaddy no longer publicly supports SOPA, that is just a PR move. They have not withdrawn official support for the bill, let alone actually come out in opposition to it. But it gets worse.

PR Newswire | Monsanto, a major biotech corporation responsible for genetically modifying many staple foods, has been given the Worst Company of 2011 Award for threatening both human health and the environment. The award was given by natural health information website NaturalSociety after thousands of readers voted Monsanto the worst company of 2011.

Rueters | Facebook is steamrolling forward. It now boasts 800 million active users. The company is reportedly preparting for an initial public offering. It’s laying plans to sell a Facebook phone, strengthening its presence on the mobile web. But Facebook’s plans may be hampered by a new backlash against the company’s efforts to get its users to share more of their lives online.

The Guardian | Mark Lewis, who has represented victims of phone hacking including the family of the murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler, was one of the lawyers targeted.  The News of the World hired a specialist private investigator to run covert surveillance on two of the lawyers representing phone-hacking victims as part of an operation to put pressure on them to stop their work.

New York Times | The suspect, a 48-year-old man, is the sixth person to be arrested in Scotland Yard’s investigation into illegal payoffs by newspapers to police officers in the wake of the phone hacking scandal at The News of the World. He was arrested outside London “in connection with allegations of corruption,” the police said, and taken to a police station in southwest London for questioning.

Silenced No More | Boulder, Colorado passed by a 3-to-1 margin an amendment that says corporations are not people and money is not speech and 6 Senators introduced a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. Have corporations overplayed their hand – is the backlash now underway?

American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations | Go to any gathering, and you’ll find nearly every person carrying an iPhone or an iPad, despite the Apple Computer’s dismal record on labor practices. Apple executives must be laughing all the way to the bank — their Swiss bank, that is.