Google not liable for defamation

Google is not the publisher of defamatory words that appear in its search results, the High Court ruled yesterday, reports The Register.

Even when Google had been told its results contained libellous words, it was not liable as a publisher, the High Court ruled.

The search giant's US and UK operations were sued in England by a London-based training business over comments about its distance learning courses that appeared in the forum of a US Web site.

In a case of life imitating art, Amazon has angered some customers of its Kindle electronic book service, by remotely deleting two George Orwell books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, reports CBCnews.

Copies of the novels, which feature dystopian worlds, were wiped from the book readers this week.

Amazon said the books were uploaded by a publisher who did not have the rights to reproduce copies. "When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers," Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener told the New York Times.

Riot police stormed a man's 30th birthday barbecue for 15 guests because it was advertised as an "all-night" party on Facebook, according to The Register.

Four police cars, a riot van and a force helicopter were dispatched to a privately-owned field in a small village near Sowton, Devon, in the UK on Saturday, ordering the party shut down or everyone would be arrested.

Andrew Poole, a coach driver from Sowton, said his birthday barbecue was busted up before they even had a chance to plug the music in.

The latest update of Apple's iTunes has included a fix to block devices such as the Palm Pre that use the program for synchronising music and content, reports BBC News.

While many devices can, through intermediary software, connect and synchronise with iTunes, the Pre was able to do so because it identified itself as an iPod.

However, Apple recently issued a note stressing that it "does not provide support for, or test for compatibility with, non-Apple digital media players" and warned that "newer versions of Apple's iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality" with them.