She isn’t accused of homicide, exactly, but a woman in Japan could spend five years in jail on charges related to “murdering” her virtual husband in revenge for a virtual divorce.

Police in Japan suspect that a 43-year-old woman grew enraged after her online husband “divorced” her in the interactive Maple Story game — so much so that she virtually eliminated him.

The woman, Mayumi Tomari, has been arrested by the police on suspicion of illegally using the man’s logon and password to steal his ID in the game and delete his character, according to an account in the Daily Yomiuri Online.

As of Friday, Tomari hadn’t been formally charged. But she could face a hefty fine or up to five years in prison if charged and convicted on allegations of illegally accessing a computer and manipulating electronic data.

Maple Story is an online role-playing game (it claims to be the first) in which online characters engage in relationships — and apparently end them — while also battling virtual enemies.

No indication has emerged yet that the 33-year-old purported victim of the alleged crime plans a civil suit around any sort of damages — something that might be theoretically possible in some countries, at least, if the victim had invested in his online character in the way that some Second Lifers do, for instance.

Although the impact of the alleged ID theft seems to be confined to the virtual world, there have been other instances where game interactions have actually sparked real world crimes.

As one example, a blogger on TechnologyExpert.com has pointed to the arrest of 33-year-old Kimberly Jernigan of North Carolina of charges of trying to kidnap a boyfriend she’d met on Second Life, after he’d ended their real world romance and sexual affair.

Then, there was the killing in Russia of a 33-year-old member of the Platanium clan of an MMORPG guild by a 22-year-old member of the rivalrous Coo-clocks clan. When the two virtual gang members confronted each other in the physical city of Ufa, Russia, the 33-year-old got badly beaten. He died on the way to the hospital.

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The vote’s been tallied, and the European Union’s new Safer Internet program turned out to be roughly as controversial as claiming that water’s wet.  While almost three percent of members abstained, a full 96 percent of the European Parliament agreed to spend 55 million to protect children online.

The 55 million (or $70.5 million) would be doled out between 2009 and 2013.  Part of it would go towards awareness initiatives and research.  Labels proclaiming some sites safe for children would also be established, and contact points and hotlines for reporting illegal and objectionable content are in the works.

Viviane Reding, the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media, explained these steps by stating, “Today’s children and teenagers face new challenges when they use Web 2.0 services.”

She then continued, “The EU will coordinate actions to empower children and protect them. . . .  I am convinced that the new Safer Internet programme will play an important role in our understanding of the challenges regarding online risks for young people and children, and will provide concrete help to many young internet users and their parents.”

The program will next go in front of the Council of the European Union, but no hang-ups are expected to occur there.  It should be passed sometime before the end of the year.

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eBay has filed suit against Digital Point Solutions, best known as the owner of one of the more popular web site owner communities, and others over an alleged cookie stuffing scheme.

According to the filing lodged in the Northern California District Court, Shawn Hogan and Digital Point Solutions, Todd Dunning and Kessler’s Flying Circus, and Brian Dunning and Thunderwood Holdings defrauded eBay in a “cookie stuffing” scheme that made it appear that their companies should be paid commissions on eBay affiliate sales.

The scheme worked like this: users were automatically redirected to eBay without clicking on an eBay advertisement, resulting in an affiliate cookie being place on each users computer marked with the defendants affiliate code so that for future purchases they received a cut.

The complaint alleges that the defendants tried to hide their scheme, using “deceptive means to prevent it from discovering the fraud, and to conceal it.” eBay is demanding “compensatory, treble and punitive damages.”

It’s not clear whether users on Digital Point itself were redirected under the scheme, but it would appear from the filing that there was a direct relationship at least on some levels.

In one way, it’s so simple as to be brilliant, but did they really think they could get away with it, or better still that eBay wouldn’t notice?

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In August, Italian courts ordered that local ISPs block popular BitTorrent destination The Pirate Bay, but the decision was later overturned in appeal. This week, we found out why the Court of Bergamo ruled as it did.

Italy’s recent attempt to block BitTorrent tracking site The Pirate Bay was deemed indefensible under an EU regulation.

At the end of September, an Italian tribunal decided that ISPs were not allowed to block the Pirate Bay. This week, details of that decision were made public. According to those documents, it is not within the power of the Italian courts to unconditionally block a foreign site on the grounds of copyright infringement.

The judgment falls under European Commission directive 2000/31/EC, commonly known as the E-Commerce Directive, which caused some concern in Italy In 2007.

At that time, Italy passed a law that mandated immediate ISP-level blocking of sites found to contain child pornography. But under the E-Commerce Directive, the criminal liability of the ISP is limited, and the Italian government could not force its own ISPs to block content outside of its borders. This was the same condition placed upon the Pirate Bay.

When the order came around, The Pirate Bay posted a blog entry that pointed a finger at Bergamo prosecutor Giancarlo Mancusi, accusing him of being a lackeye of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi is the founder of Fininvest media group, which owns Mediaset, the largest single broadcast media property holder in the country.

In July of this year, Mediaset sued Google for an estimated €500 million for carrying video clips of Mediaset’s intellectual property.

Meanwhile, Mancusi oversaw the shutdown of Italy’s top Torrent site Colombo-BT. The Pirate Bay said the goal of this litigation was simply to “make it hard to not support Berlusconi’s empire.” TorrentFreak founder Ernesto, who follows the group’s progress closely, announced the group would be appealing the decision.

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In a costly loss in US District Court in Alexandria yesterday, a jury found all of Verizon’s claims that Cox Communications infringed upon its VoIP-related patents to be without basis, and even invalidated two of eight patent claims. Back in January, Verizon filed a patent infringement suit against a Virginia division of Cox Communications, which was establishing VoIP service in that state. It was a boilerplate case that asserted its claims to eight US patents in the field of Internet-related voice telephony. Those patents were mostly acquired by Verizon on account of mergers and acquisitions, having been originally issued to such one-time giants as MCI and Bell Atlantic. Two such patents issued to Bell Atlantic in 1997 were both for an “enhanced name translation server.” Imagine a DNS server that was capable of being directed arbitrarily to resolve a domain name resolution request with an alternate IP address. Now imagine if that alternative could be a telephone number, or something which linked to the public service telephone network at that number. That’s the basis of these two patent claims. Yesterday, with a series of checkmarks on a court tally, the jury declared those two Verizon claims invalid. This in a case in which Verizon was the plaintiff. A Verizon spokesperson’s statement yesterday did not specifically indicate whether it would appeal the jury’s verdict, though it did reiterate the company’s belief that its patents were infringed. The jury’s decision does not nullify those patents, though the invalidation of those two claims could be strikes against Verizon should Cox find itself defending against an appeal in a higher court.

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Litigants trying to get data on what the video site’s users were watching have backed off somewhat, although YouTube will still have to share some data with Viacom.

Plaintiffs Viacom and a class-action group led by the Football Association of England agreed to accept a watered-down version of YouTube’s viewer logs. That version will not include the IP addresses nor the YouTube usernames of the viewers.

Earlier this month, a judge ordered Google to turn over this information to Viacom. The media conglomerate had specifically requested information that would have also tied the viewer data to a specific YouTube user.

Viacom has been at the forefront of the copyright fracas involving YouTube: It sued the site for $1 billion in 2007. The Football Association of England followed not soon after, claiming it had identified about 160,000 unauthorized clips of European football programs — viewed more than 1.5 billion times.

Privacy advocates and users alike almost immediately slammed Viacom for what they saw as an overreach. The Electronic Frontier Foundation called it a “setback to privacy rights,” while users threatened a boycott of Viacom programming.

However, as the criticism deepened, the media company seemed to back off its original request, saying in a statement that “the personally identifiable information that YouTube collects from its users will be stripped from the data before it is transferred to Viacom.”

Yet Viacom still seemed to want to gain access to users’ private videos, Google’s search technology on YouTube, and specifics on how YouTube identifies videos that may infringe on copyrighted material.

In a post to its company blog, YouTube officials boasted that the judge in the case had sided with the video sharing site.

“We remain committed to protecting your privacy and we’ll continue to fight for your right to share and broadcast your work on YouTube,” it said.

Regardless of Monday’s developments, a resolution in the matter could be a far ways off. Neither case is expected to come to trial until 2009 or 2010, say legal analysts.

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Yesterday, eBay secured an important legal victory after New York District Judge Richard Sullivan ruled the online auction service actually did do enough to thwart the sale of counterfeit jewelry.

The battle between Tiffany and eBay started four years ago in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and has ended with a decision stating it’s the responsibility of manufacturers to police counterfeit goods sold through eBay.

All of Tiffany’s trademark infringement charges were denied by Judge Sullivan. In its suit, Tiffany focused on trying to hold eBay responsible for alleged “liable for direct and contributory trademark infringement, unfair competition, false advertising, and direct and contributory trademark dilution, on the grounds that eBay facilitated and allowed these counterfeit items to be sold on its Web site,” its 66-page filing read.

The legal case between the two companies marked the first time eBay has faced counterfeiting allegations in the United States. In France last month, high fashion manufacturer Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton (LVMH) won a judgment of $63 million for eBay’s failure to thwart the sale of counterfeit goods. And in Germany in April, a judge ordered eBay to create new guidelines to help stop the sale of counterfeit Rolex watches.

A possible eBay defeat here had analysts worried that multiple other companies would have followed suit.

“This decision validates that eBay has always been committed to fighting counterfeits in a way that goes beyond what the law requires,” eBay Senior Vice Counsel Rob Chesnut said in a statement. “We see this as an important victory for our global community of buyers and sellers.”

Tiffany is expected to appeal the decision.

EBay states it swiftly removes listings once notified about trademark infringement, and allows both companies and eBay shoppers to flag suspicious listings. Its opinion is that luxury goods manufacturers are more focused on eliminating a fair marketplace by continuing to control the sale of their goods through conventional retail channels.

The auction service reportedly has a $20 million yearly operation that involves 2,000 employees who are responsible for tracking down sales of counterfeit items. Even with its operation, the company will continue to face legal problems, especially in Europe, where infringement laws are a lot more flexible than in US courts.

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eBay has won a major legal victory today, after a federal judge ruled that Tiffany was not able to prove the online auction company was responsible for the sale of counterfeit Tiffany jewelry on its Web site.

The 2004 lawsuit brought by Tiffany in U.S. District Court in New York and the ruling in eBay’s favor could influence how business is done online.

Tiffany claimed that eBay ignored the sale of fake Tiffany silver jewelry on its site. eBay said the jeweler did not participate in eBay programs that help brand owners prevent fraud.

“The Court concludes that Tiffany has failed to meet its burden in proving its claims,” wrote U.S. District Judge Richard Sullivan in his opinion.

“Tiffany has failed to demonstrate that eBay knowingly encouraged others to dilute Tiffany’s trademarks,” he wrote. “Rather, to the extent that eBay may have possessed general knowledge of infringement and dilution by sellers on its Web site, eBay did not possess knowledge or a reason to know of specific instances of trademark infringement or dilution as required under the law.”

eBay said in a statement,”The ruling confirms that eBay acted reasonably and has adequate procedures in place to effectively address counterfeiting. The ruling appropriately establishes that protecting brands and trademarks is the primary burden of rights owners.”

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According to a decision by the Frankfurt Court of Appeal the victims of WiFi theft can’t be held responsible for the thieves’ copyright infringement. The same court that previously ruled parents can’t be held responsible for the flle sharing activities of their children overturned a lower court’s decision, and potentially dealt a blow to the campaign being waged by a UK lawfirm against several hundred people for alleged copyright infringement.

Lawyers at Davenport Lyons have been sending out letters to alleged UK file sharers pointing out the German court ruling making individuals whose WiFi connection is used by others without authorization responsible for any infringement. They went on to point out that it was likely that decision would be echoed by UK courts. Don’t expect to see a similar claim about this new decision.

With the possible implications of the ruling don’t be surprised to see yet another round of arguments before things are decided for sure. Christian Solmecke, a lawyer currently defending around 500 file-sharers said “The future will show us what the highest court in Germany - the Bundesgerichtshof - says to this difficult question.”

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The IFPI and Italy’s Guardia di Finanza have announced the shutdown of the alleged file-sharing forum Downrevolution.net for thousands of instances of copyright infringement.

In connection with the site, four people have been arrested and each will face a “criminal investigation.”

Reports claim that only one of the men arrested was over the age of 18 meaning the rest are minors. There was no word on whether they will prosecuted as minors however. 17 computers, three external hard drives, and hundreds of counterfeit CDs and DVDs were also seized from a house in Sesto San Giovanni.

If found guilty, the men arrested could face 4 years in jail and large fines.

Downrevolution.net, like many other “warez” forums, posted Rapidshare.com and Megaupload.com links, allowing over 30,000 users to share copyrighted movies, music and more. The site stayed in business by selling banner ads and accepting donations in exchange for VIP status.

Jeremy Banks, IFPI’s Head of Internet Anti-Piracy Unit, added: “This shows a real commitment by the authorities to stopping online copyright theft, and it also highlights that forums like these are anything but immune from the law.”

The Guardia di Finanzia usually looks into intellectual property investigations for the Ministry of Finance.

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