germany

Porn bigwig extradited to Germany for tax evasion

The owner of the world's largest network of porn Web sites was arrested in Belgium and extradited to Germany for alleged tax evasion, according to the Associated Press.

Fabian Thylmann -- the man behind the Manwin porn empire -- is German but lives in Belgium. Local authorities arrested him last week on a German warrant for suspicion of tax evasion. According to the Associated Press, Thylmann did not dispute the extradition.

Manwin specializes in making its Web sites like YouPorn and PornHub optimized for the Internet, which garners the sites an obscene amount of traffic. Daily, Manwin says its … Read more

U.N. summit votes to support Internet eavesdropping

A United Nations summit has adopted confidential recommendations proposed by China that will help network providers target BitTorrent uploaders, detect trading of copyrighted MP3 files, and, critics say, accelerate Internet censorship in repressive nations.

Approval by the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union came despite objections from Germany, which warned the organization must "not standardize any technical means that would increase the exercise of control over telecommunications content, could be used to empower any censorship of content, or could impede the free flow of information and ideas."

The ITU adopted the confidential Y.2770 standard for deep packet … Read more

Google fighting German plan for linking fee

Google has kicked off a campaign against a proposed German law that would force search engine providers to pay copyright fees every time they return a news article in their results.

The Leistungsschutzrecht für Presseverleger, or "ancillary copyright for press publishers," would provide an extension of copyright in Germany to cover snippets of articles, such as those that show up in search results so the user can tell what each result is about. It is being proposed by Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition and follows intense lobbying by publishing giant Axel Springer and others.

Google today … Read more

Google TV music, movies arriving in Europe next week

Google is making Google Play's music and movies available in Europe later this month.

From November 13, owners of a Google TV set-top box or enabled television in the U.K., Germany and France will be able to download movies and music from the Google Play store, the company said in a Google+ post.

The movies and music -- previously only available in the U.S. -- won't, however, be available for download to other Google devices such as Nexus smartphones or tablets, but its availability is unlikely too be far behind.

Due to licensing restrictions by Hollywood … Read more

Report: Twitter bans German group for hate speech

On the heels of a firestorm of controversy over anti-Semitic tweets in France, Twitter has for the first time banned access in Germany to a German group's account due to its alleged hate speech.

According to the Financial Times (registration required), the San Francisco-based microblogging service has blocked access in Germany to the Twitter account belonging to an organization known as "Besseres Hannover," which means "Better Hannover" in English. The group is said to be a neo-Nazi organization, reported Danny Sullivan of Marketingland.com. The public expression of Nazi views is illegal in Germany.

Twitter'… Read more

Motorola devices sparse in Germany amid patent wars

Motorola Mobility's market in Germany may be shrinking even further.

The company continues to offer few devices via its German Web site as it battles Microsoft over patent issues, according to Foss Patents' Florian Mueller. Mueller has been employed as a paid consultant by Microsoft and Oracle.

A check of Motorola's German Web pages by blog site Areamobile found only three smartphones currently up for sale -- the Razr, the Razr i, and the Gleam HD +.

A search by Mueller turned up the same results, with no other phones or tablets available online for German customers. A link … Read more

German government tells public to stop using Internet Explorer

Update: 3:48 PM PT The fallout from this weekend's discovery of security holes in several versions of Internet Explorer continues to spread. The latest: Germany is urging its citizens to stop using Internet Explorer until there's a fix.

"A fast spreading of the code has to be feared," the German government's Federal Office for Information Security, or BSI, said. The BSI recommended that users access the Internet using alternative Web browsers until Microsoft's security update becomes available.

It's unusual for a government to flatly urge its citizenry to stop using a popular … Read more

Apple, Motorola strike licensing deal -- but only in Germany

Apple and Motorola Mobility are close to a licensing deal in Germany, thanks in part to the ruling of a local court.

Motorola, a unit of Google, disclosed late Monday that the company had reached a tentative agreement to license out its essential patents to Apple. Patent law blog Foss Patents was the first to discover the disclosure.

CNET confirmed that the companies are going through the process of determining a fair and reasonable rate for the essential patents, which will be set by the German court. The rate is for a royalty Apple must pay to Motorola for products … Read more

Giant Lego bridge clicks in Germany

Before giant Lego trees and flowers popped up in the Australian Outback, a honking huge Lego bridge made an appearance in Germany.

Late last year, street artist Megx pulled out the primary colors to transform the underside of a bridge into an optical illusion. Clever use of color and shading makes the bridge in Wuppertal look like it's built from an interlocking set of massive Lego bricks.… Read more