Last year, we wrote about a case brought by a woman named Julie Riggs against MySpace. The complaint itself is somewhat of an amusing read (“At this point Plaintiff was literally seething with anger to the point that she was now consumed by it”). The main issue was that Riggs had created a website that tried to determine which celebrity profiles on MySpace were real and which were fake. She was upset (among other things) because (1) there were fake profiles on MySpace (2) MySpace later did something similar itself and (3) MySpace deleted her profile. After we wrote about the case, we received an angry email from Ms. Riggs telling us we “missed the point” and that MySpace “stole” her idea — and that we needed to get our story straight. She never explains how coming up with the same idea is illegal, of course. Also, my favorite: “What can you expect from site such as yours though.” Indeed.
Unfortunately, it appears that the district court also “missed the point” and did not get the story straight, because as Eric Goldman points out, it has dismissed the lawsuit. However, in this case, it may actually be true that the court missed the point. As Goldman notes in his discussion of the ruling, the court seems a bit confused about how Section 230 of the CDA works, and may have dismissed parts of the case for rather confused reasons. Riggs has appealed, so hopefully the Appeals Court fixes the problems (but still dismisses it). However, again as Goldman notes, this is taking place in the notoriously nutty Ninth Circuit, which often has a problem with reading Section 230 the way everyone else reads Section 230. Hopefully, they get this one right.
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Google Groups may not be the most glamorous service the Internet giant runs, but apparently its one of the most popular. It enables users to easily setup and manage groups around topics or interests and access them through the discussion forums or receive updates by email. Now Google has integrated Groups with Apps, one of the most obvious product marriages the company has ever made. Companies and schools can now create and manage groups within the Premier and Education Editions of Google Apps. 
A Gazprom spokesman on Monday dismissed concerns that a growth in the production of shale gas would pose a threat to the company’s foreign sales, voicing the gas giant’s first comment on the prospect.
The latest Google Chrome build, 4.0.249.30, has just been upgraded to the Beta channel on all platforms. This new beta release is an important milestone as it marks the first betas available for both Mac and Linux users which have been waiting more than a year to get to try a fully-baked Chrome on their machines. The biggest news for existing users though is the new Extensions Gallery which also went live along with the beta releases. The beta versions for the two platforms and full extensions support were the three most requested features the Chrome development team received. 
The wait is over, Google Chrome extensions are here for everybody, bar Mac users, and the online Extensions Gallery is now live with over 300 extensions at the time of launch. More than a year after Chrome was launched, the single most requested feature is now fully-fleshed and supported in the latest Beta builds of the browser which were released for all platforms today. 
