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Online discount real estate brokers can now enjoy complete access to the nation’s Multiple Listing Service thanks to an antitrust lawsuit by the Department of Justice.
The New Hampshire legislature has reached a tentative agreement on the state’s Online Safety Act.
City councilors in Tulsa want to consider new legislation for the secondary ticket market and make it illegal to scalp tickets.
A proposed federal law that would place extensive regulations on technology companies doing business in China and other nations is deemed to be unreasonable "Internet-restricting."
The Justice Department announced to online real estate brokers, and potentially their clients, by forcing new industry policies that give Internet-based agents access to home listings they were previously denied.
In the worst housing market we’ve seen in a lifetime, home buyers and sellers finally have some good news. Yesterday’s settlement between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors (NAR) prevents Realtors from punishing online brokers, who often give consumers a discounted commission rate.
Under NAR’s rules, your listing broker could opt-out of allowing your home to be displayed on other brokers’ web sites. How that could possibly be in the seller’s best interests has never been explained. But under the settlement, NAR has to scrap these rules and avoid future discrimination against online brokers.
This settlement should encourage more innovation and competition for both buyers and sellers, driving down costs and complexities. Hopefully this case has been a wake-up call to traditional Realtors, who need to invest in technology and new ways of providing information and service to home buyers and sellers if they want to remain relevant in the future.
Attacking the European Union's Internet backbone is now the preserve of organized crime, not young hackers out to prove a point.
Texas's Attorney General encourages the use of child safety flash drives. Parents can load key information about their children, including pictures and friends’ contact information on the drive in case they are to ever go missing.
As a result of New York's new sales tax law, Overstock.com announced that it will bid adieu to its New York-based affiliates. 3,400 New York-based affiliate advertisers will no longer provide advertising for the company.
In a previous blog post, I talked about how the New York legislature in April passed a law designed to increase sales tax revenue from Internet sales. The law is referred to as the “Amazon tax” because of the way it broadens the sales tax law to apply to Amazon’s Associates Program, thereby achieving the necessary legal nexus for New York to force Amazon and other Internet retailers to collect and remit taxes on all sales to NY residents.
I like Overstock's reaction here. Instead of rolling over and complying, it's thumbing its nose at New York's law and the up to 9.5% sales tax collection burden as Amazon's lawsuit proceeds in court.
-Braden
Spammers are taking advantage of recent natural disasters and are disguising as news reports and donation requests following the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China.
Several other states are taking notice of New York's new sales tax law and watching the situation closely. California is one state that is considering similar legislation that would broaden online sales tax requirements.
Please see New York's Ambitious Sales Tax Law--Broader Than Amazon and the Internet?
Senators pressed executives from Yahoo, Google, and Cisco Systems on Tuesday to justify their business practices in China and other Internet-censoring countries.
New Jersey’s Governor signed legislation would allow the state to monitor or restrict Internet access by convicted sex offenders.
The Department of Homeland Security leaked a disturbing experiment video which highlights the need to guard against cyber-security threats to critical infrastructure like power plants and the telecom system.
China is aggressively honing its ability to shoot down satellites, forcing the U.S. military to paint China as posing a growing threat to the United States and others in space and cyberspace.
Egypt will host the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN) 33rd International Public Meeting in November, after Kenya lost the bid on security grounds.
An editorial in the New York Times argues that Congress has delayed the important issue of net neutrality, and legislation should be passed on this issue immediately.
Secondhand ticket prices for Neil Diamond’s sold-out concert at Fenway Park are approaching the levels of actual diamonds on ticket reselling web sites.
The Missouri State legislature gave final approval to a bill targeting cyber-crimes, making harassment from computers and other electronic devices illegal.
The FBI reports that online fraud is at an all time high which has stolen $239 million from consumers last year.
The US homeland security chief wants to build a system to detect Internet attacks from terrorist hijacking before they occur.
