Never has a internet company had so much information about its users. Facebook knows your friends. They know where you go in real life and online. They know who you hang out with, who you talk to, what interests you, and they have a database of pictures of you that the FBI would die to get a hold of (and probably have already). Companies are built around the data that Facebook shares about you, but that is changing. Facebook is building a moat around their data and only lowering the drawbridge to those who are not a threat and who contribute to the “Facebook cause” by giving back some love through sharing….

The French were not able to maintain their 75% tax on the super rich, so now they’re aiming for the super, super, super rich by going after companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. Their latest scheme: an Internet tax that will affect those collecting personal data from French citizens. This concept emerged late last week in a report commissioned by President François Hollande that details the unfair ways that large American internet-based companies are able to circumvent the French tax system and still remain relevant to its citizens. According to the report, personal data is the “raw…

France made waves in the P2P industry by implementing a controversial graduated response program in 2010 that was designed to reduce the amount of illegal downloads by establishing progressively-harsher penalties on file sharers. The results were strong, as shown in Hadopi’s report, with file-sharing activities traffic slashed by two-thirds in 2011. However, the goal of increasing revenues in the French music and movie industries did not materialize and revenues fell in both industries. The French music market fell 3.9% in 2011 while the video market fell 2.7%. As Ernesto of TorrentFreak…

Four Twitter accounts critical of French President Nicolas Sarkozy were suspended yesterday, just a week after the many started his own account to help with his re-election efforts. The accounts, satirical in nature based upon their Tweets, were allegedly reported by Sarkozy or someone acting on his authority according to Kaboul.fr who operated @_nicolassarkozy who contacted Twitter about the incident. There’s only two possibilities here. Either Sarkozy or his team contacted Twitter about the accounts and had them removed for impersonation violations, or someone else contacted Twitter…