Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music on Thursday filed legal proceedings against vKontakte, or VK, charging that the Russian social network operates a music service that deliberately facilitates widespread copyright infringement. VK operates an unlicensed music service involving a large collection of copyright-infringing tracks, the companies charge.

China's government is asking the U.S. to explain itself -- and to knock it off with all the cyberespionage -- following reports that the National Security Agency has had its way with Chinese telecom giant Huawei. The NSA reportedly penetrated Huawei servers to monitor communications among company executives, and to gain access to the dealings of Huawei customers.

China's state media seems to have the ear of U.S. tech companies. Amazon's China unit closed down a third-party store after state media criticized Amazon for selling fake cosmetics. Amazon's China unit took the accusations seriously, it said, promising to "strengthen the process of scrutiny." The fake-product accusations were floated on China Central Television.

Getty Images, the stock photo giant that many professional photographers loathe but amateurs love, on Thursday announced it will allow consumers to embed its images free for non-commercial purposes on blogs, social networks and other websites. The move indicates the company, whose battery of highly paid lawyers has chased copyright violators for years, is bowing to the brave new Internet world.

Twenty-one-year-old Spaniard Alba González Camacho was convicted of inciting terrorism thanks to some ill-conceived tweets about a far-left terrorist organization. She became the first person in Spain to be convicted of such charges for Twitter posts. González Camacho implored the terror group "Grapo" to murder politicians. Grapo was responsible for 80-some killings, mostly in the 1970s and 80s.

John Chen, BlackBerry's new chief executive, lashed out at T-Mobile after it sent an email to BlackBerry users imploring them to ditch their current devices and switch to an iPhone. BlackBerry was not notified about T-Mobile's email blast beforehand, causing Chen to become "outraged" over what he dubbed a "clearly inappropriate and ill-conceived marketing promotion."

The U.S. speedskating team's high-tech suits -- which theoretically are supposed to help shave seconds and accrue medals -- have been identified as a suspect in the team's stunning faceplant at the Sochi Games. Before the Games, the suits, designed by U.S.-based sportswear giant Under Armour, were deemed to be on the cutting edge of racing technology.

The Pirate Bay is once again wide open, thanks a ruling by an appeals court in the Netherlands that decreed Internet providers no longer have to block IP addresses associated with the site. The Hague Appeals Court reasoned that the required blocking was impossible to implement or enforce because users were able to use workarounds to access the site.

A man who wore Google Glass to a movie last weekend was hauled out of the theater and questioned for several hours by federal authorities over piracy concerns. The officials reportedly took no action against the man after they determined the wearable tech device functioned as his prescription glasses, and that he did not have the Google Glass recording feature activated.

French taxi drivers reportedly attacked vehicles linked to Uber, a smartphone app that helps people find shared rides and drivers-for-hire -- or, from cabbies' perspective, erodes a time-honored business model. Protestors blocked traffic and went after the service's vehicles, reported one Uber-using witness, Kat Borlongan. The vehicle she was in suffered significant damage, including a flat tire.

The Guardian has become the latest Western media outlet to get blocked in China. For more than a year, China's Web-censoring authorities, unaffectionately known as the "Great Firewall of China," have blocked sites for The New York Times and Bloomberg, each of which published unsavory articles about wealth amassed by family members of Communist Party leaders.

Netflix and YouTube together now account for more than half of all North American fixed network data traffic during peak hours, according to a Sandvine Internet traffic trends report published Monday. Netflix now accounts for 31.6 percent of downstream traffic in North America, while YouTube accounts for another 18.6 percent. Peer-to-peer file-sharing now accounts for less than 10 percent of total daily traffic.

Google's rivals are none too impressed with the company's most recent round of proposals designed to appease antitrust concerns and end what is now a 3-year-old case with the European Commission. Google's previous stab at concessions was roundly rejected in April because the changes did next to nothing to rectify Google's abuse of its dominant market position, according to rival companies.

Last month, researchers at George Mason University's Mercatus Center launched a website, PiracyData.org, to determine whether or not there are legal alternatives for viewing the world's most pirated movies. The researchers will quantify the validity -- or invalidity -- of copyright holders' claims that pirates are thieving material that is indeed available elsewhere.

In Vancouver, B.C., three entrepreneurs opened what appears to be the world's first ATM that is able to exchange Bitcoins for official currencies. The machine looks like a normal ATM and resides in a popular coffee shop. It exchanges Canadian dollars for Bitcoins, the virtual and controversial online currency. The transactions can go either way -- cash to Bitcoin, or Bitcoin to cash.

A Swedish court reduced the fine for a teenage boy who uploaded a pornographic video of his unwitting then-girlfriend. The original fine was going to be about US$20,000 but was reduced to less than $4,000 after the ruling. Notably, the court justified its decision by asserting that young people are "so open" about their sexual behavior that such a large fine was unjustified.

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, long suspected of being in cahoots with Beijing authorities, said Friday that no government has ever asked it to divulge information about citizens. Translation: Anyone concerned about government meddling should be more concerned with Washington's connections to U.S. companies than Beijing's connection to Huawei. It called for global standards on security.

Russia's Pirate Party wrote a letter to NASA offering to host the agency's website, which is currently out of commission because of the government shutdown. The Pirate Party -- a minority political movement in many European countries predicated on privacy and transparency -- informed NASA that it could use the party's dedicated servers until the U.S. government got off the ground.

Members of the European Parliament's internal market and consumer protection committee voted unanimously Thursday in favor of a new law mandating universal chargers for mobile devices. In addition to convenience -- German parliamentarian Barbara Weiler called the current situation "cable chaos" -- the measure is motivated by a desire to curb electronic waste.

Departing from the normal routine of chiding Google over taxes, British parliament is trying its hand at chiding Google over piracy. A select committee accused Google of apathetically failing to curb piracy. The chairman of the committee, John Whittingdale, said that MPs were "unimpressed by Google's continued failure to stop" displaying search results for illegal content.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff gave a speech in which she -- well, maybe it's best to just let her say it. "What we have before us, Mr. President, is a serious case of violation of human rights and civil liberties," Rousseff said, addressing the UN General Assembly. The U.S. and NSA were responsible for "invasion and capture of confidential secret information," she asserted.

The National Security Agency's efforts to include "backdoors" in U.S. companies' security products, networks and devices -- thereby making it easier for the NSA to snoop around -- could hurt business abroad. Specifically, foreign countries could come to view U.S. firms' relationship with Washington much the same way that the U.S. views Chinese companies' relationship with Beijing.

Yahoo China ceased providing news and community services Sunday, a move experts say signals that Yahoo is pulling the plug on its Chinese service. People attempting to access Yahoo China are now automatically redirected to now.taobao.com, a public welfare site run by China-based Alibaba Group, which operated Yahoo China and used to own a large stake in Yahoo.

About six years ago, the World Trade Organization sided with the itty-bitty Caribbean island of Antigua on its claim that the United States' ban on overseas remote gaming violated international trade agreements. The WTO upheld its ruling last winter, confirming once and for all that the island could suspend its obligations to certain U.S. intellectual property rights.

A recent tweet from Al-Qaeda asking for ideas on the "development of jihadist media" set off a deluge of responses mocking the extremist group. Terrorism expert J.M. Berger, who has more than 13,000 followers, tweeted about Al-Qaeda's call for ideas along with the Islamic hashtag the group wanted to use. After that, the trolls took over.

Lawmakers in Finland will vote on a crowdsourced legislative proposal that, if approved, would change the nation's copyright laws. Last year, Finland's constitution was modified to allow citizens to submit proposals to Parliament, so long as said proposals obtained 50,000 supporters within six months. One of the proposals to garner the requisite support is the "Common Sense in Copyright Act."

In a nod to developing nations like India and Brazil, Facebook will unveil plans for "Facebook for Every Phone," which is designed to make Facebook accessible on technologically humble feature phones. Facebook, which already boasts more than 1.1 billion users, now wants to target the 100 million people worldwide who access the site on feature phones.

Jack Ma, the billionaire founder and executive chairman of Chinese Internet giant Alibaba Group, said that China's move to violently squelch Tiananmen Square protesters in 1989 was "the most correct decision," adding that "a leader needs to make this kind of decision." The remarks -- made in May and posted online over the weekend -- have drawn criticism from Chinese netizens.

The White House and eight companies including Google and Microsoft announced a joint effort to mobilize against online piracy and counterfeiting Monday with the help of a set of best practices developed in conjunction with the Interactive Advertising Bureau. The effort is designed to limit the revenue gained from displaying ads on sites that offer pirated materials or counterfeit goods.

I have a fascination with litigation. One of my early career choices was to become an attorney, and I was actually mentored for a time by a judge. Over the years, I've spent a lot of time engaged in litigation or covering it. I just watched a presentation by the National Association of Attorneys General, and these top law enforcers painted Google as a criminal organization.