New submitter Based.Tech writes: The French Finance Ministry has sent out notices to big tech companies liable for its digital service tax to pay the levy as planned in December, the ministry said on Wednesday. France suspended collection of the tax, which will hit companies like Facebook and Amazon, early this year while negotiations were underway at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on an overhaul of international tax rules. The Finance Ministry has long said it would collect the tax in December as planned if the talks proved unfruitful by then, which is what happened when the nearly 140 countries involved agreed last month to keep negotiating until mid 2021. "Companies subject to the tax have received their notice to pay the 2020 installment," a Finance Ministry official said. France last year applied a 3 percent levy on revenue from digital services earned in France by companies with revenues of more than 25 million euros here and 750 million euros worldwide. The ministry had hoped to raise about 500 million euros this year from the tax, but the 2021 budget bill puts the figure at 400 million. Facebook's stance is "is to ensure compliance with all tax laws in the jurisdictions where we operate." Other tech companies have made similar statements.

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New submitter Based.Tech writes: The French Finance Ministry has sent out notices to big tech companies liable for its digital service tax to pay the levy as planned in December, the ministry said on Wednesday. France suspended collection of the tax, which will hit companies like Facebook and Amazon, early this year while negotiations were underway at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on an overhaul of international tax rules. The Finance Ministry has long said it would collect the tax in December as planned if the talks proved unfruitful by then, which is what happened when the nearly 140 countries involved agreed last month to keep negotiating until mid 2021. "Companies subject to the tax have received their notice to pay the 2020 installment," a Finance Ministry official said. France last year applied a 3 percent levy on revenue from digital services earned in France by companies with revenues of more than 25 million euros here and 750 million euros worldwide. The ministry had hoped to raise about 500 million euros this year from the tax, but the 2021 budget bill puts the figure at 400 million. Facebook's stance is "is to ensure compliance with all tax laws in the jurisdictions where we operate." Other tech companies have made similar statements.

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Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against an Amazon Nintendo Switch hack reseller -- the sort of litigation it's taken on in similar cases in the past. Nintendo's lawyers allege the Amazon seller, Le Hoang Minh, circumvents Nintendo's copyright measures in selling an RCM Loader, used to "jailbreak" the Nintendo Switch. From a report: The lawsuit was filed in a Seattle court last week, according to court documents obtained by Polygon. In the lawsuit, Nintendo outlines what it calls a "serious, worsening international problem" with video game software piracy. It details Nintendo's security systems, and how the RCM Loaders bypass those systems. The RCM Loader (which is essentially a USB device that plugs into the Nintendo Switch) allows the user to play so-called "pirated" or unauthorized games. According to the lawsuit, Nintendo sent a DMCA notice to the seller, to which a counterclaim was issued. Because of the counterclaim, Amazon was required to relist the RCM Loader, unless Nintendo filed an infringement lawsuit. And that's what it did. The company is looking for the courts to stop the seller, and award it $2,500 in damages for each infringement.

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Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against an Amazon Nintendo Switch hack reseller -- the sort of litigation it's taken on in similar cases in the past. Nintendo's lawyers allege the Amazon seller, Le Hoang Minh, circumvents Nintendo's copyright measures in selling an RCM Loader, used to "jailbreak" the Nintendo Switch. From a report: The lawsuit was filed in a Seattle court last week, according to court documents obtained by Polygon. In the lawsuit, Nintendo outlines what it calls a "serious, worsening international problem" with video game software piracy. It details Nintendo's security systems, and how the RCM Loaders bypass those systems. The RCM Loader (which is essentially a USB device that plugs into the Nintendo Switch) allows the user to play so-called "pirated" or unauthorized games. According to the lawsuit, Nintendo sent a DMCA notice to the seller, to which a counterclaim was issued. Because of the counterclaim, Amazon was required to relist the RCM Loader, unless Nintendo filed an infringement lawsuit. And that's what it did. The company is looking for the courts to stop the seller, and award it $2,500 in damages for each infringement.

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The conservation charity is accused of working with guards who allegedly tortured and killed people.

A US court has ordered Google to hand over the personal emails of the son of a Russian oligarch as part of a bitter $601 million divorce case. From a report (Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]: Judge Virginia DeMarchi in California told the US tech group to surrender Temur Akhmedov's emails for use as evidence in a lawsuit brought by his mother, Tatiana Akhmedova, the wife of an ally of President Vladimir Putin. Ms Akhmedova has gone to court in the US and the UK in an attempt to force her ex-husband, Farkhad Akhmedov, to pay the world's largest-ever divorce settlement. Google said the order was a breach of its customer's privacy. The divorce case, which is being funded by litigation financier Burford Capital, has led to a legal battle over assets including a helicopter, a private jet and a superyacht called the Luna that used to belong to Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich. Google sought to block the order to give up the emails this week on the basis that to do so would infringe Mr Akhmedov's right to privacy because he had not given consent to share them. Ms DeMarchi said Google's concern for the "privacy and security of its account holders' communications" was "commendable" but ruled the request did not breach the US Stored Communications Act, which governs voluntary and compelled disclosure of emails. The information from the emails will be used to learn whether Temur assisted his father in the fraudulent transfer of assets, and if so, to win a judgment against him, Tatiana Akhmedova said in a filing.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's internet infrastructure service that is the backbone of many websites and apps, is experiencing a major outage affecting a large portion of the internet. From a report: "Kinesis has been experiencing increased error rates this morning in our US-East-1 Region that's impacted some other AWS services," Amazon said in a statement to The Verge. "We are working toward resolution." And, ironically, in a notice on the AWS Service Health Dashboard, Amazon said the issue has apparently "affected our ability to post updates" to that dashboard. "We continue to work towards recovery of the issue affecting the Kinesis Data Streams API in the US-EAST-1 Region," Amazon said in a 1:47PM ET update posted to the dashboard. "For Kinesis Data Streams, the issue is affecting the subsystem that is responsible for handling incoming requests. The team has identified the root cause and is working on resolving the issue affecting this subsystem."

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Three Nigerians suspected of being part of a cybercrime group that targeted tens of thousands of victims around the world have been arrested today in Lagos, Nigeria's capital, Interpol reported. From a report: In a report disclosing its involvement in the investigation, security firm Group-IB said the three suspects are members of a cybercrime group they have been tracking since 2019 and which they have been tracking under the codename of TMT. Group-IB said the group primarily operated by sending out mass email spam campaigns containing files laced with malware. To send their email spam, the group used the Gammadyne Mailer and Turbo-Mailer email automation tools and then relied on MailChimp to track if a recipient victim opened their messages. The file attachments were laced with various strains of malware that granted hackers access to infected computers from where they focused on stealing credentials from browsers, email, and FTP clients.

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Three Nigerians suspected of being part of a cybercrime group that targeted tens of thousands of victims around the world have been arrested today in Lagos, Nigeria's capital, Interpol reported. From a report: In a report disclosing its involvement in the investigation, security firm Group-IB said the three suspects are members of a cybercrime group they have been tracking since 2019 and which they have been tracking under the codename of TMT. Group-IB said the group primarily operated by sending out mass email spam campaigns containing files laced with malware. To send their email spam, the group used the Gammadyne Mailer and Turbo-Mailer email automation tools and then relied on MailChimp to track if a recipient victim opened their messages. The file attachments were laced with various strains of malware that granted hackers access to infected computers from where they focused on stealing credentials from browsers, email, and FTP clients.

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The UK chancellor's spending review is accused of undermining the prime minister’s “green” vision.

The UK chancellor's spending review is accused of undermining the prime minister’s “green” vision.

The European Union will seek to overhaul the system for key patents such as those that have fueled legal battles between car makers and technology companies, the EU's technology chief said Wednesday. From a report: Margrethe Vestager promised that regulators will weigh reforms to improve the framework in place for so-called standard-essential patents and work on industry-led initiatives "to reduce frictions and litigation." The EU move could help avoid repeats of lengthy legal battles such as Nokia Oyj's effort to get Daimler AG to pay more for mobile technology used in cars. While Daimler wants the underlying patents be licensed to its various component suppliers, Nokia wants to charge per car at a much higher price. Companies often seek court help to determine whether certain technology patents are valid and how much should be paid for licensing technology seen as essential for an industry. The EU has frequently been asked to weigh in on how much is fair for key technology. "There's quite a lot of litigation back and forth and in the short-term we would want to push for industry to figure out how to set up foras to enable discussions and mediation so that maybe to a bigger degree it can be solved out of court," Vestager said. The current system to set up so-called standard essential patents deemed key to certain technology "is not very transparent," she said. "This is why we will consider a very close consultation with anyone involved whether we should set up a third-party essential 'reality check' so someone outside of your business" can rule on whether a patent is really important or not.

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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has proposed rule changes that would make it possible for gig companies to give equity to their workers as part of their compensation if they meet certain requirements. From a report: This is something gig companies including Uber and Airbnb have asked the SEC to do over the years as a way to share their companies' upside with these non-employees. Instead, both Uber and Lyft gave certain long-time drivers cash and the ability to purchase IPO shares when they went public, while Airbnb is putting 9.2 million shares into an endowment it will use to finance initiatives for hosts. The five-year pilot program would allow gig companies to issue equity as long as it's no more than 15% of a worker's compensation during a 12-month period, and no more than $75,000 in value during a 36-month period (based on the share price when it's issued).

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Trump sounded like he might want to have a beer with you.