A woman who repeatedly texted her boyfriend, while she knew he was driving, and who ultimately crossed traffic and crashed into motorcyclists, cannot be added to a civil lawsuit according to a Superior Court judge in Morristown, New Jersey.

The plaintiffs' lawyer argued that the girlfriend's conduct contributed to the accident that cost his clients their legs. The woman's lawyer argued that while she sent the messages, it was ultimately her boyfriend's responsibility to control when he looked at them and when he responded to them.

The boyfriend plead guilty to three violations of the motor vehicle code, including driving while using a mobile device. He's now being sued in civil court.

Skippy Weinstein, the Kuberts' lawyer, argues Colonna was "electronically present" in the crash. He says she should have known Best was driving home as they exchanged text messages leading up to the crash. She says she "may have known" he was driving.

"What I find interesting was her testimony at depositions was that she answered by saying, 'This is what teenagers do,'" Weinstein said.

The judge disagreed. This time. But the term "electronically present" is going to be something interesting to watch in the coming years.

Can you be "electronically present" at an accident? At a robbery? At a homicide? During civil disobedience? As a witness?

We've often discussed how our devices know who we are, where we are, and often what we're doing. They allow us to communicate almost instantly from across the room or halfway around the world. You can text significant others, FaceTime grandparents, Skype colleagues.

How soon will it be before that technology becomes par for the course in civil and criminal matters?

This week, in New Jersey, a judged ruled a woman couldn't be sued for texting her boyfriend while she new he was driving, and when he ultimately drove his truck into two motorcyclists, What about in the months and years ahead? How long until the law and technology becomes such that "electronically present" is held as the equivalent to "physically present"?

Source: KKTV via @philnickinson

The standing committee on infrastructure and communications in the Australian House of Representatives will be launching an investigation into why digital goods (such as iTunes music and iBooks) are priced so much more highly in Australia than elsewhere in the world. Traditionally, shipping costs drove prices up for physical goods, but for electronic files you're downloading, there's really no good reason for such a price disparity. Stephen Conroy, Australia's Minister of Communications, said in a recent letter:

There is evidence to suggest that the innovative use of technology is not always matched with innovative new business models in the case of products and services distributed online... I agree that Australian businesses and households should have access to IT software and hardware that is fairly priced relative to other jurisdictions … the global digital economy is likely to make it increasingly difficult to sustain business models that are based on a geographic carve-up of markets.

iOS apps in Australia don't really cost any more than they do over here, but there's a pretty big disparity in music prices. For example, Jack White's newest album, Blunderbuss, and Adele's, 21, cost $10.99 in the U.S., but $16.99 in Australia. I'm sure there are different taxes to be paid over there, but they can't be that huge. As for iBooks, there aren't many textbooks that have found their way to the Australian market since the big educational update. Pricing for iBooks can sometimes be even more expensive than a proper paperback, a situation which is exacerbated by a pricing model which is currently under scrutiny elsewhere, too.

Of course, Apple isn't the only one in the crosshairs. Adobe is charging $1400 more than the the U.S. version for one software package in Australia. Microsoft will also be called to explain its pricing model to the government over the course of the investigation, which will be launching sometime this year.

Australians, who have you found to charge the most inflated prices for digital downloads? Have the higher prices stopped you from buying software, music, or e-books?

Source: SMH

The Fair Labor Association has just wrapped up its independent audit, commissioned by Apple, of the working conditions at Foxconn. After interviewing over 35,000 workers from three different factories, the FLA said their "nearly month-long investigation revealed serious and pressing noncompliances with FLA’s Workplace Code of Conduct, as well as Chinese labor law." Sounds serious, right? Well, to be fair, the above graph represents the degree to which the Foxconn factories are meeting FLA and standards of national law, and as the FLA had reported earlier, Apple's factories aren't doing particularly bad. The FLA established four major areas where Foxconn needed to improve: working hours, health and safety, industrial relations and worker integration, and compensation and social security insurance.

First, average weekly work hours are beyond the legal limits across all factories, and some employees worked 7 days straight, despite the legal requirement to have at least a single 24-hour break. Foxconn promised to be compliant as of July 1... 2013. Apparently they need to hire more people in order to make up for the hours, which lines up with previous reports of a Foxconn hiring spree.

Secondly, workers felt insecure, especially after that explosion caused by aluminum dust last spring. While Foxconn made safety procedure changes following the incident, they've promised to keep a sharper eye on safety infractions; instead of just keeping records of incidents when work has stopped, they're now going to keep tabs on every employee injury.

Thirdly, Foxconn laborers have no say in who is appointed to representative committees, which means they're more or less puppets to the agendas of managers.  To fix that, Foxconn is going to introduce an election process, and to improve their sense of empowerment, Foxconn is going to give a copy of their Collective Bargaining Agreement, and offer union information during orientation of new employees.

Lastly, Foxconn has been illegally putting interns to work for shifts longer than 8 hours, and no more than 5 days a week. As it turns out, Foxconn has had them working night shifts and overtime. Also, 14% of workers are only paid unscheduled overtime by the half hour, so they don't get anything for working 29 minutes. Foxconn promises that they'll knock that down to 15 minutes. Insurance is also an issue. 99% of the workers in two factories are migrants, but since insurance is doled out on a provincial basis, they can't collect if they ever go hom. Foxconn is going to look into private alternatives.

While there's some stuff here that needs to be fixed, none of it sounds insurmountable. Even though it sounds like they're working hard, only 17.7% of respondents said they worked too much, while 33.8% actually wanted to work more. As for the age of workers, the FLA found the average to be around 23, and that the percentage of those aged 16 to 18 to be between 3.6% and 5.5%, depending on the factory.

In any case, it's really good to see a proper report like this, even compared to Nightline's piece. Getting into specific numbers and specific processes gives us a much clearer idea of how Apple is churning out millions of iPhones and iPads. Hopefully this level of scrutiny sets a new bar for other electronics manufacturers in China.  It's good that Apple is being proactive in getting the FLA involved, but it's hard to tell if they're getting a little too involved... Would this report have been a little more harsh if Apple wasn't paying them dues to be in the association?

The FLA will be following up on this investigation to make sure the changes are implemented. You can find the FLA's full report, complete with appendices over here. It's definitely worth a gander.

Last month, Apple finally concluded the class-action lawsuit surrounding the iPhone 4's reception issues, and today those affected can now start the process of cashing in. A simple, dedicated website outlines qualification criteria, provides claim forms, and answers a variety of FAQs.

Basically, if you ever owned an iPhone 4 and you live in the U.S., and you weren't interested in the free bumper Apple was offering, you can get $15 instead -- even if you aren't still using an iPhone 4. When can you get the cash? Well, there's going to be a hearing on July 13 to approve this settlement, which may see appeals which could last over a year. At that rate, I would just take the free bumper, as detailed in Apple's support knowledgebase.

The antennagate debacle was caused by a flaw in the iPhone 4's external antenna design; basically, when you bridged two sections of it when holding the phone in a fairly natural way while in a low-coverage zone, your signal would drop like a rock. While the issue caused a lot of bad press, the actual instances and real inconveniences of the phenomenon were sparse, and didn't put a dent in iPhone 4 sales. Still, that didn't stop Consumer Reports from withholding their recommendation of the phone, despite it being the best thing on the smartphone market at the time.

Any iPhone 4 owners in the house that were affected by antennagate and didn't bother getting the free bumper? Here's the link you need to visit, below.

Source: iPhone 4 settlement via CNET

Sweden-based Micro Systemation recently demonstrated on video just how easily their desktop software for military and law enforcement can crack into an iPhone. With a few quick reboots, XRY can not only dig out the phone's unlock code, but can also personal data, GPS locations, messages, and a log of keystrokes. Though Micro Systemation wouldn't go into specifics on how they go about doing all of this, they said the process is similar to jailbreaking, and they're constantly keeping up to speed on the latest iOS and Android updates. Though the video below shows the process happening pretty quickly, more complicated passwords can make the crack take infinitely longer - sometimes too long to be worth it.

Of course, this kind of software is used exclusively by law enforcement agencies of various kinds around the world, so there's no need to worry about some random hacking into your phone with this software. Likewise, Micro Systemation isn't responsible for how police and military use the software once they've been certified by local governments.   In California, cops don't even need a warrant to search your phone.

We all know that our iPhones are highly personal items and can store a lot of sensitive information on them. As scary as it might be that the cops can get access to it in a heartbeat, it's only really an issue if you've done something wrong, isn't it?

Source: Forbes

AT&T is reportedly offering a settlement to the individual who recently won a court case against them for the throttling his data service to an unlimited data plan a settlement. According to the Associated Press, Matthew Spaccarelli sent them a letter dated last Friday that he obtained from the law firm hired by AT&T to defend his small claims lawsuit. The letter stated that if he was not willing to sit down and "talk" his service would be terminated.

According to Spaccarelli, the reason for this particular letter (and alleged threat) is that AT&T wants him to keep quiet and sign a confidentialialty agreement. Legal settlements usually do include non-disclosure agreements, and Spaccarelli had blogged detailed information and instructions on how to engage in the same type of lawsuit against AT&T. Also in the letter was the request to keep quiet about the settlement talks, something Spaccarelli has no interest in doing, prompting him to send the letter to the Associated Press.

It seems like Spaccarelli may be pushing his luck here. He already has won the case and that may have helped persuade AT&T to increase the throttling cap from 2GB to the current 3GB, but now he's continuing to push the carriers buttons.

What do you think? Time to declare victory and let it go, or should he hound AT&T until the end of time?

Source: Associated Press, publikdemand, @matthewpacc

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) is asking for your help to tell the U.S. Copyright Office that jailbreaking does not violate the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and its exemption should be continued and expanded.

In 2010, the Copyright Office said jailbreaking smartphones doesn’t violate the DMCA. This year, we’re asking them to renew that exemption (otherwise it will expire) and expand it to cover tablets. We’re also asking for a new exemption to allow jailbreaking of video game consoles.

The Library of Congress added the exception for jailbreak to the DMCA in July of 2010. Specifically:

Computer programs that enable wireless telephone handsets to execute software applications, where circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of enabling interoperability of such applications, when they have been lawfully obtained, with computer programs on the telephone handset.

However, jailbreak was declared as an exclusion from the DMCA, and protection wasn't actually hard coded into the act. That means the declaration could ultimately expire and leave jailbreakers subject to legal penalties.

If you'd like to help ensure this never happens, the EFF has advised you submit your opinion in comment form to the Copyright Office, and even offer a submission template with comment suggestions for your convenience. Comments are due by February 10th at 5PM, so make sure you submit your comments soon!

Souce: EFF

The Court of the Hague, in the Netherlands, has denied an appeal from Apple to place an injunction on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 sales on grounds of design patent infringement. The Dutch ruling took into account two out of six potential pieces of prior art, though they may take more into consideration later on. Apple has already been shot down once for this case in the Dutch lower courts, and having the appeal denied as well means this case is pretty cut and dry.

Apple's having some good luck against Samsung in Germany, but that's apparently not setting a precedent for the rest of Europe. It seems like globally, Apple is going to have a hard time enforcing these design patents, despite seeing varied success in a few regions. Even Australia, which had placed a ban on some Samsung products, eventually reversed its decision. Unless Apple manages to get consistent ruling internationally, it will be hard to avoid imports into the few countries that have a local sales ban on devices that look like the iPhone or iPad.

While I certainly appreciate Apple's classy design, it seems a little extreme for a company whose founder openly borrowed good ideas and made them better. You can find the full Dutch court ruling, ripe for Google Translating, via the source link below.

Source: rechtpraak.nl, FOSS Patents

The New York Times (via TUAW) is reporting that the iPhone is literally causing mistrials now. Howsat?

It might be called a Google mistrial. The use of BlackBerrys and iPhones by jurors gathering and sending out information about cases is wreaking havoc on trials around the country, upending deliberations and infuriating judges.

Others were, apparently, Twittering updates during trial, or looking up information in Wikipedia [citation needed...]

Sorry, smacked my head on the desk in utter disbelief of personal entitlement these days, one moment while I recover...

Is law once again failing to keep up with technology, or are humans -- also once again -- slipping further down the slope of irresponsibility? What say we?