The law calls for internet retailers with more than $1 million in annual revenue to collect sales taxes from out of state shoppers. State governments claim it will help them collect billions in unpaid revenue while brick-and-mortar retailers, who also support it, say it will level the playing field by forcing online competitors to collect tax.

Opponents of the law, which include libertarians and states like Oregon that have no sales tax, complain it will lead to regulatory burdens tied to collecting tax from numerous state and local governments. Supporters counter that the task will not be that onerous because the law would require states to provide merchants with free tax collection software.

For consumers, the law means paying more sales tax on online purchases. Right now, consumers typically pay only if the online merchant is located in their home state.

The bill will now go to the House where conservatives say they will oppose the bill; they may not succeed, however, as politicians from both parties have argued that the bill does not impose a new tax but instead helps collect taxes that are already owed. The Obama Administration supports the proposed law.

eBay, one of the law’s prime opponents, said in a statement that it will keep pushing for merchants who collect less than $10 million to be exempt.

To understand more about the law, see GigaOM’s primer on who’s for it and who’s against.

Here’s what the tiny button looks like on Amazon:

Meanwhile, Kindle Fire users are waiting for an Android app (the only Pinterest app available so far is for iPhone).

via Ryan Spoon

The law is intended to give artists who sell their art cheaply early in their careers a chance to share in the wealth if their work is resold for big bucks later on. California is the only state that has such a “droit-de-suite” law which are common in Europe but not in English speaking countries.

California says the law applies to any resale that takes place in the state. To prevent sellers from dodging the fee by selling outside of California, the law also says the royalty applies in other places too if the seller is a California resident.

In October, artists and their heirs filed a class action suit in federal court in Los Angeles. They claim the auction houses and e-Bay — acting as middlemen for art sellers — deliberately avoided collecting the payments on many occasions, in some cases by failing to disclose that the sellers lived in California. The artists are looking to collect up to three decades of unpaid royalties plus punitive damages.

On Thursday, the defendants struck back by asking the court to declare that the entire California law is unconstitutional. Their primary argument is that the law interferes with interstate commerce by imposing a burden on out of state business activity. They also say California is intruding on federal copyright powers.

A copy of the motion to dismiss is below.

Motion to Dismiss

The news was first put out into the ether by Kara Swisher at AllThingsD, who got the original tip from an anonymous source, which means that the information has not been confirmed by either eBay (NSDQ: EBAY) or Yahoo, but Swisher has been on top of (and accurate about) much of the executive-upheaval news at the internet portal.

Swisher describes Thompson as a bona-fide “Internet geek,” but he is actually something a little more specific: his background is in commerce and payments (prior to PayPal he worked for Visa). And most recently, his big emphasis has been in mobile commerce, an area where PayPal has grown and is growing its presence a lot.

That raises tantalizing questions about what could be Yahoo’s next strategic step. More effective ways of monetizing the traffic that passes through its advertising, search and portal networks? Possibly even looking at a new direction in transactions? That’s an area where companies like Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) have established a strong base, largely through their mobile businesses.

Of course, a cynic might argue that a leopard cannot change its spots, and that Yahoo’s organizational issues may prove to challenge any new ideas. Once a leader in search, advertising and online information portals, Yahoo has in more recent years seen those businesses hit hard, particularly by competition from Google and increasingly Facebook (both now make more than Yahoo from display ads, an area where it was once king).

That has led to the company to try many different things over the past several years to turns things around — some meanderings in mobile, many executive changes, new products and services, and more recently an ad partnership with Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) and AOL (NYSE: AOL), two former arch competitors also hit by the Facebook/Google-naut. It actually beat analyst forecasts during its last quarterly earnings — but that seemed to be more due to lowered expectations.

After Bartz left the company in September 2011, Yahoo began to explore various options for itself, including the possible sale of part or all of the company. That has involved protracted negotiations with private equity firms, and also Softbank and Alibaba, who are shareholders and have respective JVs with Yahoo in Japan and China. These are still ongoing and could either result in the sale of those JVs, or, if you believe some reports, the outright sale of Yahoo to Alibaba.

The appointment of a CEO like Thompson, who could offer a new direction for Yahoo, could prove to be useful regardless of what the outcome is of those other negotiations.

The change, reported by the China-based blog Penn-Olson, will mean that users can pay for apps in the store using local bank cards from major Chinese banks.

In the past, users were only able to use credit cards that could process U.S. dollar transactions — that would have cut out many users who would have only be able to use free apps legally. And — not unlike one of the root causes of music piracy — in all likelihood the difficulties in paying would have contributed to a large black market for paid apps.

There have been a number of local players who have jumped into that void to make it easier for iPhone and iPad owners to get the apps that they want: most recently Tencent launched its own iTunes-alike to help users sync apps legit and pirated to their devices.

Now, users can either enter payment information from cards issued by supported banks, or they can top up their iTunes accounts with yuan, in increments of 50, 100, 300, and 500 renminbi, which then gets deducted as they purchase apps.

Penn Olson notes that accounts topped up rather than linked to credit or debit cards are a common route for paying for mobile services in the country. (We pointed out another use of the top-up here: China Mobile uses it as a way to offer WiFi access to its users.)

Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) is still not accepting third-party payment platforms like Alipay from Alibaba or PayPal, and it’s not clear if they will open iTunes to these competitors.

Recently, Apple ramped up its presence in the Chinese market with the launch of several new, shiny retail stores in key cities like Shanghai (which now has three). Apple has noted that its retail stores in China see the most traffic of any country’s retail operations.

The Asia Pacific region, which includes China in Apple’s reporting, is a close third in revenues for the company, behind the U.S. and Europe, but it is seeing by far the most growth. In its Q4 results reported in October, Apple said that Asia Pacific grew the most of any region both in terms of units sold and revenues. Respectively, they were up by 61 percent and 139 percent.

Within that Tim Cook, the CEO, noted that Greater China was growing at a “feverish” rate and now accounts for 16 percent of all of Apple’s revenues, or about $4.5 billion in the last quarter.

Apps are big business in China — as evidenced by the dozens of app stores that have sprung up from operators, handset makers and internet portals (a trend driven hugely by the boom in open-source Android devices — many of these app stores are geared at those users). Mobile app downloads in China are projected to reach 5.5 billion next year, according to ABI Research.

PayPal, the payments company owned by eBay (NSDQ: EBAY), has largely focused its attention up to now on mobile transactions made via the web or in apps: that is the basis for much of PayPal’s business today both online and in mobile, where the service is used for transferring money as well as paying for goods and services.

But a new “Shopping Showcase” set up by the company in New York, highlighting the use of PayPal in retail situations, points to where PayPal hopes to potentially play more in the future.

In a blog post on the installation, PayPal notes that it will show off its version of a digital wallet, where a user can keep electronic versions of loyalty cards and different payment methods in one place.

As GigaOm points out, one feature of that digital wallet will be a “tap phone” option to enable NFC payments.

This is not PayPal’s first demo of NFC on its platform. Back in July, the company showed off a service for NFC-equipped Android devices to transfer money to each other.

Neither of these demonstrations are firm commitments to NFC, but they are some of the first signs that this very large payments company will be getting behind the technology when and if it does start to become mainstream in devices.

Not so for a service out today from the mobile payments startup Square. Today the company — which first made its name with a square-shaped dongle used to make and take payments with Android and iOS devices — launched an updated verison of Card Case for iOS and Android, making it a contactless payment service that doesn’t go anywhere near NFC technology to work.

Card Case is a service that was first unveiled earlier this year as a way for users to store loyalty cards for different merchants within the Square app, as well as payment cards, and make payments (which it called “tabs”) at individual merchants that have signed up for the service.

Today’s development sees the service now working with geofencing technology. Now, when a user is within 100 meters of a participating merchant, and a user has enabled the app to work with that merchant (by indicating to “auto open” the tab), a user now only needs to give his or her name to process a payment, without taking out the device. The merchant, meanwhile, confirms the identity of a user based on a photo before approving the purchase.

There are now 20,000 merchants signed up to the Card Case service, out of the 800,000 merchants that have activated Square so far, according to this article in TechCrunch. A new service will also see the app directing users to the most popular Card Case retailers — a bit of promotion that might lead to more shops signing up for the service.

Levi Korinsky, the firm that filed the suit, claims the interclick board may have breached its duty to shareholders by selling at $9/share when one analyst had valued the company at $10/share.

This year alone, it seems like every significant tech merger that involves the acquisition of a public company has been followed by a shareholder suit. After eBay’s $2.4 billion acquisition of GSI Commerce in March, for instance, the deal was snared by a lawsuit that settled a short time later. Ditto ISP Windstream’s $2.3 billion acquisition of telecom firm Paetec. And “concerned” Motorola (NYSE: MMI) Mobility shareholders this August sued to stop Google (NSDQ: GOOG) from paying $12 billion to acquire the floundering company.

These lawsuits typically follow a four-part formula:

1. A class action firm stalks a potential merger involving a public company and then strikes with a class action threat as soon as the deal closes, stating the board of the target company should have held out for a few dollars more. And if the deal falls through, the firm can sue the board for rejecting it.
2. The law firm ferrets out shareholders to put their name on the suit. These “named plaintiffs” typically stand to gain a small cash pay-out and steak dinners at the law firm’s favorite restaurant.
3. The law firm quickly obtains a settlement from the companies, which are anxious to conclude the merger and avoid court delays.
4. The settlement obliges the target company to publish a notice or engage in some other formality. It also obliges them to provide for the plaintiff shareholders’ legal fees (in other words, pay the law firm hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars).

The merger lawsuit phenomenon first came to public attention in January when the Wall Street Journal reported that the number of securities-related class actions had spiked from 27 in 2006 to 216 in 2010. Today’s Yahoo! announcement suggests that the trend is not abating and that the technology sector is a prime target.

There is, of course, a place for these class actions — for instance, when a board conspires to sell a company on the cheap in return for personal gain. But there is no evidence this happened in the Yahoo! deal or in the Google acquisition (Motorola Mobility investors are probably still turning cartwheels..).

RIM has not commented further on BBM, after yesterday noting that it would cooperate with authorities to regarding any messages sent on its network and related to the riot. But the company is still getting hit from all sides.

On Tuesday, the MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, made a call for RIM to shut down the network to try to prevent that line of communication.

And a post on the BlackBerry Blogs site has been hacked by someone called “Trick” from a group called Teampoison, who says he is concerned that RIM’s cooperation with the police will lead to innocent people getting targeted.

Update: RIM took down, then reinstated, the site, free of the hack. Trick meanwhile reposted the hack on a mirror site here. The original text of the hack follows:

Dear Rim;
You Will _NOT_ assist the UK Police because if u do innocent members of the public who were at the wrong place at the wrong time and owned a blackberry will get charged for no reason at all, the Police are looking to arrest as many people as possible to save themselves from embarrassment…. if you do assist the police by giving them chat logs, gps locations, customer information & access to peoples BlackBerryMessengers you will regret it, we have access to your database which includes your employees information; e.g – Addresses, Names, Phone Numbers etc. – now if u assist the police, we _WILL_ make this information public and pass it onto rioters…. do you really want a bunch of angry youths on your employees doorsteps? Think about it…. and don’t think that the police will protect your employees, the police can’t protect themselves let alone protect others….. if you make the wrong choice your database will be made public, save yourself the embarrassment and make the right choice. don’t be a puppet..

p.s – we do not condone in innocent people being attacked in these riots nor do we condone in small businesses being looted, but we are all for the rioters that are engaging in attacks on the police and government…. and before anyone says “the blackberry employees are innocent” no they are not! They are the ones that would be assisting the police

- TriCk – TeaMp0isoN -
- Greets To: iN^SaNe – Hex00010 – MLT – BlackHacker

- Knowledge is Power . . . . .

Twitter: @TeaMp0isoN_

- TriCk

eBay. Meanwhile, some more on what happens to loot the day after… when the news broke of the first break-ins to mobile phone, sporting goods and consumer electronics shops, many people started to ponder how quickly items would make their way to eBay for sale.

{tweet_id=”100941722669957121″}

Well, according to an eBay UK spokesperson, so far, not at all.

“We haven’t seen any unusual listing activity on the site, but of course we will be vigilant over the coming days/weeks,” she tells me, along with this prepared statement:

Our thoughts are with the businesses and communities affected by recent events in London and around the UK. eBay will cooperate fully with the investigating authorities to identify and remove any listings which are linked to criminal activity.

There are, however, questions over how exactly eBay will be able to track hot goods: will it be based on sellers’ track record, or the date the items were posted, or whether they fall into certain categories? We’ve asked the eBay spokesperson to clarify this.

And if you think something might just slip through anyway, you could be right: nosing around the site looking for relevant items, I came across this. It’s a listing for a torched police car, put up yesterday.

“here we have 2 fire damage ex police astra’s for sale comes complete with alloys. may need new tyres and a re-spray. cash on collection. pick up from tottenham,” reads the description.

In all likelihood a (bad-taste) hoax, which eBay says it will be taking it down now that we’ve alerted them. But it does show that eBay’s system — whatever it is — may not be completely watertight.

RIM and eBay aren’t the only big tech/media companies feeling the impact of the riots. Last night, a warehouse belonging to Sony (NYSE: SNE) in the London area of Enfield burned to the ground, taking hundreds of discs for 150 independent labels with it.

“Please do not buy, sell, or transfer Pottermore early access accounts. Obtaining Beta registration for Pottermore with the intent of selling on those registration details for monetary gain not only deprives genuine fans the chance to gain early access, it is also expressly prohibited in The Magical Quill promotion Terms & Conditions,” says a post on the official Pottermore Insider Blog. “We have the right to terminate any Pottermore accounts that are sold online. Access to Pottermore is, and always will be, completely free so please don’t be tempted by people selling Pottermore accounts online. You will only be wasting your money–and there are still more clues and chances to come!”

It’s not that surprising that Pottermore early access accounts are hitting eBay, considering that there is a massive demand for them and “only” one million are being issued. Today marks the third day of the Magical Quill contest, and as of this writing it’s already closed. (“We know that many of you waited through the night for the first two clues to be posted on Pottermore.com,” the blog says.)

Four days of the competition are left to go, and once it’s over I’d expect the eBay action to pick up. For now, though, there doesn’t appear to be much demand for the accounts listed on the site–especially since there’s no consensus among sellers about what this free account is worth. Starting prices range from $0.99 to $100, and so far the bidding has gotten as high as, uh, $7.50.

For now eBay will continue to operate Zong as standalone service. A spokesperson told paidContent that eventually it will be integrated into eBay’s existing payment service, PayPal, which itself has had a substantial amount of growth in mobile among its 100 million active users to date. PayPal expects to generate $3 billion in mobile payments in 2011.

In a blog post, David Marcus, the CEO and founder, notes that he will be staying on and will work under Scott Thompson at PayPal.

Zong is best known for two things up to now: its link up with Facebook, providing the ability for people to get Facebook Credits via mobile; and its relationship with operators and app developers, enabling apps to implement payment services that link up directly with carrier billing. It works with 250 mobile carriers worldwide, covering payments in 21 languages and 45 countries.

It is unclear whether (and how) eBay will continue with these two lines of business — or whether Facebook and the operators will continue to work with Zong, for that matter.

Potentially, the deal gives the auction and e-commerce giant a big leg up in being more closely involved with transactions on mobiles particularly within apps and other services, which provides a complement to PayPal, largely used to transfer money between people and businesses, although earlier this year it also started to make its first forays into digital goods.

Although the connection with PayPal makes the Zong purchase an obvious one for eBay, investors and observers will be sure to watch that this acquisition does not go the way of Skype, another eBay foray into a new area for it that never quite resulted in operational dividends for the company.

The deal comes after weeks of movement in the mobile payments space, with the point-of-sale payments provider Square getting a huge injection of cash from investors, mobile operators linking up for new payment initiatives, and Visa buying Fundamo to crack mobile payments in the developing world.

Press release below:

SAN JOSE and MENLO PARK, Calif. – July 7, 2011 – eBay Inc. announced today that it has agreed to acquire Zong, a leading provider of payments through mobile carrier billing, for total consideration of approximately $240 million in cash. Zong leverages connections with more than 250 mobile network operators around the world, offering localized, secure and easy-to-use payments capabilities for digital goods and services in 21 languages and 45 countries. Combined with PayPal’s leading global payment platform serving 100 million active accounts worldwide, the company expects that Zong will add complementary technology and talent that helps strengthen PayPal’s leadership position in mobile payments and digital goods.

Zong allows consumers to easily pay for purchases from their mobile phones or computers through direct carrier billing. Consumers simply enter their mobile phone numbers. Then, in a matter of seconds, Zong verifies that number and clears the payment on the customer’s existing wireless service account.

With Zong, PayPal will have greater ability to offer consumers even more choices in how they want to pay – virtually anytime, anywhere. Both Zong and PayPal help to enable digital goods merchants to increase conversion, because they offer a faster, easier way for consumers to pay without leaving the merchant’s site.
“Commerce is changing. With mobile phones, we walk around with a mall in our pockets. PayPal helps to make money work better for customers in this new commerce reality – no matter how they want to pay or what device they’re using,” said Scott Thompson, president of PayPal. “We believe that Zong will strengthen this value by helping us reach the more than 5 billion people who have mobile phones, giving them more choice and security when they pay.”

“Our customers love the convenience of paying with their mobile numbers – a number they know by heart, and a device that they always have with them,” said David Marcus, CEO of Zong. “We look forward to extending our services to PayPal’s more than 9 million merchants around the world. And we’re committed to working with carriers and merchants to help them drive more sales across devices.”

PayPal is an industry leader in mobile payments and digital goods. PayPal expects to transact more than $3 billion in mobile payments in 2011. Currently, more than 8 million customers are making purchases on their mobile phones through PayPal, driving up to $10 million in mobile payments per day. PayPal offers Mobile Express Checkout for merchants, PayPal Mobile Payments Library for developers, PayPal payment apps for iPhone, Android, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Blackberry, and location-based shopping with Where.

Earlier this year, PayPal launched PayPal for Digital Goods, a new product that lets buyers pay in two clicks without leaving their gaming experience or content site. In 2010, PayPal processed $3.4 billion in payments for digital goods.

eBay Inc. does not expect the acquisition of Zong to have a material impact on its financial guidance as issued in conjunction with its first quarter earnings release on April 27, 2011. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approval, and is expected to close in the third quarter of 2011.