Over at Jerry Yang's shareholder snoozefest today, Chinese political protesters showed up outside the hotel lobby. They set up exhibits shaming Yahoo for handing over bloggers' Yahoo Mail accounts to the Chinese government. Although Jerry Yang has already answered to Congress and settled with the bloggers' families, the protesters who showed up are still mad. Or opportunistic, given the expected media attention this year on Yahoo's normally sleepy annual meeting. The bloggers remain in Chinese prisons. As I tried to take more pics — on a public street outside the hotel — guys in suits came out and told me to leave the premises. And here I thought I was in the United States.

Psystar, the Florida-based maker of computers which can run Apple's OS X operating system, has hired Carr & Ferrell, a Palo Alto-based law firm, to respond to lawsuits from the (official) Mac manufacturer. The firm previously managed to squeeze a settlement from Apple on behalf of its client Burst, a video-streaming technology developer. If Psystar loses the court battle, it willl likely have to recall all the computers it has shipped — all 10 of them. If Apple loses, we might see more clones in the future. [Computerworld]

Some observers said that when Google bought YouTube, it was buying a lawsuit. The total damages claimed in various copyright infringement cases against YouTube are now more than Google paid for the company back in 2006. On top of Viacom's $1 billion suit still pending in New York, Mediaset — the Italian media empire of irascible tycoon Silvio Berlusconi — wants €500 million ($777 million) for "immediate damages," and may ask for much more based on lost advertising opportunities.The suit was filed in Rome civil courts, and will certainly test the Italian implementation of the European Union Copyright Directive — a law similar to the DMCA in the U.S., but considered a little more friendly to copyright holders. It can't help YouTube that the case will be argued in a country where Berlusconi was just reelected to another term as prime minister after being acquitted last year of corruption charges stemming from allegations of bribing judges. (Photo by AP/Andrew Medichini)

1 Model Management president Scott Lipps is none too pleased with his former assistant-turned-booker Vivien Wang. Although Wang departed the agency on good terms in May, the relationship quickly went sour once she landed at rival DNA Model Management. Now 1 Model claims that Wang and her new employer have been trying to poach clients, including Denisa Dvorakova, who's walked for Chanel and Christian Dior (and who's pictured on the left with Wang and model Noot Seear). Lipps' lawsuit against Wang and DNA after the jump!

Last week, Simon & Schuster filed suit against both Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown for failing to turn in the books they had been contracted to write. You can peruse both lawsuits against Kimberly Jones and Inga Marchand after the jump.

Oh, look, someone's left those floodgates ajar. Fox News "independently verified" the Enquirer story that John Edwards met with Rielle Hunter and her baby at the Beverly Hilton late one night. Their story is written in a lovely tone—equal parts sensationalistic and "reporting on what this nasty tabloid claims" careful prudishness. Now the Enquirer reporters are suing the Beverly Hills Police Department, because hotel security didn't let them have their gotcha moment. Huh. This means, as they note, that "Edwards now could be contacted by police to give an eyewitness account of what occurred." Hah. Have a great weekend!

On Monday, spokespeople for software megalith SAP announced that SAP would shut down its software support subsidiary, TommorrowNow, which PC World called "a rising star in third-party maintenance and support for Oracle enterprise applications such as Siebel, PeopleSoft and JD Edwards." The fatal bullet: A lawsuit from Oracle that claimed TomorrowNow employees had downloaded confidential data and software from Oracle. SAP decided there wasn't enough left to save.Over 200 big corporate customers like the American Red Cross and Southern California Edison are now without an alternative to Oracle's legendarily steep support fees. At the same time, SAP announced a new fee structure that fixes support costs at 22 percent of the original purchase price, compared to TomorrowNow who simply charged half of whatever Oracle did. Oracle in turn announced a 15-20 percent increase in support fees for U.S. customers. Hey, everybody wins! If you're not familiar with IT at the big-corporation scale, enterprise software support fees are huge extra payments tacked on to any major software purchase for a large company — paying 22 percent of the original license, annually, isn't unusual. These fees in theory cover the cost of application support, patches and upgrades. Here's what's happening with Oracle: Big corporations trying to deal with a stalled economy are held in a stranglehold by application providers like Oracle, who can charge a lot for ongoing support because it's still cheaper than changing applications for 3,500+ users. A newer option for enterprise customers is SaaS — software as a service. Instead of being installed on the customer's computes, the app is maintained on a Web server owned by the vendor. SaaS supposedly lowers the customer's infrastructure cost — no servers to own or maintain — and makes it easier for them to switch brands if they're not happy. But switching apps isn't free or easy if you're the electric company. Who's going to pay for TomorrowNow's shutdown? Probably you.

We have vast banks of TiVos and staffers trained to use them to feed us material from the magic lightning box called television for use on this internet. But sometimes (often!) we use the amazing gift from god called RedLasso. Not anymore! NBC and Fox joined forces (inspiring!) to sue them. And now RedLasso is back to being "a business-targeted service that lets clients track and clip content for internal use and a service for radio stations that lets them upload their clips for online sharing." Sigh. This is why the internet can't have nice things. [NYT]

Female rapper Lil Kim and female rapper #2 Foxy Brown are both being sued for the same reason: being procrastinating authors. Ha, [we're-all-in-same-boat joke]! Simon & Schuster has filed suit against both of them for taking their advances ($40K and $75K, respectively) and then not writing a damn word. Ha, if only [Keith Gessen joke]! And they have no excuse for not doing it-they were both in jail! Ha, [OJ-confessional-book joke]! I'm sure you'll all grieve for the lost opportunity to read Lil Kim's prospective book, which was titled "Untitled Novel." Ha, how come these things never happen to [blogger-turned-author joke]? [NYS]

Matthew Firsht, managing director of Applause Store Productions, which finds audiences for television and radio shows, won the equivalent of $33,000 in damages against a former schoolfriend. Grant Raphael's profile for Firsht falsely suggested was looking for same-sex relationships and was signed up with groups including Gay in the Wood…Borehamwood and Gay Jews in London. The judge awarded Firsht $29,500 for libel and $4,000 for breach of privacy. Firsht's firm was awarded $10,000 for libel. [Guardian]

Hasbro, maker of board game Scrabble, has filed suit in a New York court against Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the brothers who created Scrabulous, a Facebook-app version of the game. Hasbro also filed a DMCA notice with Facebook, asking that the company remove the game from its website because it infringes on Hasbro's copyright. I'm not a lawyer, and neither is Iminlikewithyou founder Charles Forman — but he has managed to get away with his own bit of copying other people's games, turning Tetris into Blockles and Pictionary into Draw My Thing, for example. Forman tells us that the Agarwallas would be totally in the clear if they'd only copied Scrabble's rules in building Scrabulous. Game rules can't be copyrighted, argues Forman. But since the Scrabulous guys also copied the physical appearance of the Scrabble board — which can be copyrighted — Forman thinks they're screwed.

"Rudy Giuliani's son Andrew has been kicked off the Duke University golf team and is suing to get back on. The 22-year-old aspiring pro golfer claims in a federal suit that Duke's new golf coach trumped up a series of allegations to force him out and turn his classmates against him." [NYDN]

Max Mosley, the British auto racing boss who found himself in a scandal over his Nazi-or-maybe-prison-themed sex orgy video and embarrassed the world's luxury auto makers, has won his privacy lawsuit against the UK paper that published the photos, thereby killing the UK's gossip industry. Slate will find a way to make the whole thing boring. Jalopnik has the tape. Here's how Mosley won:

Burt Pugach is the Queens man who hired a man to blind his girlfriend Linda by throwing acid in her face, went to prison for 14 years for his crime, and then remarried her after he was released. Dan Klores (left) is the PR titan-turned-filmmaker who secured rights to the couple's story and made the 2007 documentary Crazy Love, which earned critical acclaim and a slew of awards. It seems the mutually beneficial Pugach-Klores relationship has ended: Last week, Pugach—a disbarred ex-attorney—had his lawyers serve Klores with a $15 million lawsuit. The reason? Klores recently signed a deal with HBO to turn the documentary into a feature film. Pugach, naturally, wants a much bigger check for handing over the rights to his story. The entire lawsuit—including Pugach's claim that Klores attempted to woo him by shlepping Linda Fiorentino to their first meeting at the Shalimar Diner in Rego Park!—after the jump.

Broadband provider Comcast is pushing back against New York state attorney general Andrew Cuomo's demands to support his anti-child-porn campaign. Comcast and 16 other ISPs signed an agreement with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which maintains a blacklist of suspected illegal porn sites — but for Cuomo's office, that isn't good enough. They insist that in addition to blocking websites, Comcast must fall in line with Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Sprint, AOL and AT&T in shutting customers out of all or part of Usenet, the network of Internet-based discussion groups, and contributing funds to root out more child porn providers. It's not the most practical or even Constitutional approach, but a good move for headlines. Comcast has until Friday to respond to Cuomo's request to sign his code and kick in the cash. (Photo via Bloomberg)

Adult site promo businesses boast of "high payouts" to webmasters who bring customers to their partner sites, but nothing like the $500,000 Slickcash.com had to hand over to Facebook. SlickCash settled the "hacking" suit, in which they were alleged to have hit up Facebook's servers at least 200,000 times, presumably to advertise LesbianTraining.com and other sites in their stable through the Friend Finder feature.

Gossip blogger Perez Hilton (or Mario Lavandiera) has no problem stealing from other people, but it seems he isn't too happy when the tables are turned. According to court papers made public today, the attention-seeking loudmouth is claiming that the website Perezrevenge.com infringed on his trademark and lifted his "content" without permission. The full complaint after the jump.

Nonsense. How typically self-important of Internet users, to think that Viacom cares about the dozens of South Park videos they watched. Viacom is not being disingenuous in saying it never meant to violate Internet users' privacy, I've come to believe.

Motorola has sued Mike Fenger, the former head of Motorola's mobile gadgets for Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Fenger allegedly broke a two-year noncompete agreement by jumping to Apple to run global sales for the's iPhone in March. “He cannot perform his duties for Apple without inevitably disclosing Motorola’s trade secrets,” says the lawsuit, which aims to keep Fenger away from Apple and other mobile makers for two years. Trade secrets? Here's a more honest appraisal: If Fenger did so well selling the Moto Q, imagine what he'll do given an iPhone.

More drama for Ashley Dupre! Another Jersey girl, Amber Arpaio, is suing Ashley for stealing her identity and ruining her good name since Dupre used Arpaio's ID when she participated in that infamous Girls Gone Wild shoot. [The Smoking Gun]