Internet Computer Network

A Santa Barbara software maker has filed a $2.2-billion lawsuit against the Chinese government and several Chinese technology firms, accusing them of conspiring to steal and disseminate the U.S. firm's Internet filtering technology. Cybersitter, also known as Solid Oak Software Inc., alleged in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles that Chinese software makers stole thousands of codes to develop a controversial Internet filtering program that was to be installed on all personal computers in China by July 2009.

For a couple of precious hours Monday, the Chinese government's Web censoring system, popularly known as the Great Firewall, was lifted. Suddenly, Internet users had access to websites that had been banned for months, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Cautious excitement spread on some social-networking platforms that authorities were expanding Internet freedoms. But by the time most Chinese woke up the restrictions were back. Error messages once again flashed across computer screens for sites blocked by the nation's censorship filter.

When German-born fashion journalist Vera Hohleiter poked fun in print at the smell of kimchi and the short skirts of South Korean women, the cyber response was swift and nasty. Incensed Seoul Internet users flooded her blog with insults, calling her a racist and a Nazi, and demanded that she leave their country immediately. "For weeks, I went everywhere by taxi," said Hohleiter, 30, whose perceived transgressions were contained in a 2008 book, "Sleepless in Seoul," her memoir about a foreign woman hopelessly in love with a young Korean man. "I just didn't want to be confronted with this growing public anger."

She can't vote yet, but 17-year-old Victoria Westburg has thrown herself headlong through cyberspace into the realm of real-world politics. A teenager who spends "a lot of hours" a day on her computer, she's ticked off by laws that allow the government to snoop into or limit what people do online, and she wants to translate her outrage into action. "The Internet is a big part of my life, and I think that it always will be," Westburg said. "These laws that have come right now are very hostile toward the Internet and everything I like about it, and I don't think that's OK."

When Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury started Maktoob.com as an Arabic e-mail service 10 years ago, they had a modest office in Amman, Jordan, and little support from friends and family who could not imagine anyone using the Internet in Arabic. "We were a typical start-up; I remember the day we got air conditioning we had a party," Toukan recalled. In August, Yahoo Inc. acquired Maktoob, now the largest Arabic portal, for a reported $80 million -- a milestone in the evolution of the Arabic Internet.

One morning in May 2008, an eighth-grader walked into Janice Hart's office at a Beverly Hills school crying. She was upset and humiliated and couldn't possibly go to class, the girl told the counselor. The night before, a classmate had posted a video on YouTube with a group of other eighth-graders bad-mouthing her, calling her "spoiled," a "brat" and a "slut." Text and instant messages had been flying since. Half the class must have seen it by now, she told Hart. Hart took the problem to the vice principal and principal, who took it to a district administrator, who asked the district's lawyers what they could do about it. In the end, citing "cyber-bullying" concerns, school officials suspended the girl who posted the video for two days.

Billions of dollars and scores of top engineers with the world's largest aerospace company couldn't get it to fly. But now a tiny, 25-employee firm in Westlake Village thinks it has found a way to make in-flight Internet access via satellite finally take off. Row 44 is outfitting planes with inexpensive devices that allow passengers to access the Internet while flying in a plane. Earlier this year, Southwest Airlines Co. and Alaska Airlines began offering Row 44's Internet service.

The Social Security numbers, home addresses and phone contacts for at least 300 students who applied for admission to Cal Poly Pomona six years ago were unintentionally disclosed online, according to the university. The personal information remained on the university server and was accessible to the public for about five years, school officials said. The applicants were notified last week and urged to contact credit reporting agencies, school officials said. The personal information, which did not include financial data, was "mistakenly put in a publicly accessible folder on a university server in November 2003, and Google and other search-engine companies mined the data," according to a statement released by Tim Lynch, senior media communications coordinator for Cal Poly Pomona.

Microsoft Corp. and OpenX Technologies Inc., a Pasadena-based Web advertising start-up, have struck a deal that would enable both companies to expand the reach of their online ad businesses. OpenX, which operates one of the nation's largest independent online advertising networks, develops software that enables marketers to funnel ads to websites that are visited by the type of buyers they are targeting. Similarly, advertisers use Microsoft to create and distribute ads, be they for flowers, movies or Maseratis.