Elon Musk (Photo: Mark Lennihan/AP)

Several state associations of auto dealers are invoking older laws protecting conventional methods of selling cars by claiming the way Tesla sells cars is unfair to other dealers and possibly even illegal. Here's one example out of several cited by Automotive News:

In Illinois, the Secretary of State's office told Tesla officials in a meeting on Sept. 28 that the EV manufacturer is breaking Illinois law by listing company founder and CEO Musk as the owner of its suburban Chicago store. Tesla officials said they would correct the problem and asked for 30 days to respond, said Jay Mesi, deputy director of the Secretary of State's Department of Administrative Hearings.

Tesla has said in every case it's working to comply with existing laws. The company also insists that it isn't trying to change the way the auto industry works, simply providing a special, product-focused customer experience.

The complaining dealerships should also probably remember that if their conflicts with Tesla's methods can't be resolved, Mr. Musk did just oversee the launch of a fiery Dragon into space.

Still from a trailer for Innocence of Muslims

Google will not delete an inflammatory video currently playing a role in Muslim protests around the world, in spite of a take-down request from the White House.

The search giant is only censoring Innocence of Muslims in India, Indonesia, Egypt and Libya, where violent and deadly protests have broken out following the video's translation into Arabic. Reuters reports on the company's legalistic explanation for not just wiping the video completely from the web:

Google said [it] was further restricting the clip to comply with local law rather than as a response to political pressure.

"We've restricted access to it in countries where it is illegal such as India and Indonesia, as well as in Libya and Egypt, given the very sensitive situations in these two countries," the company said. "This approach is entirely consistent with principles we first laid out in 2007."

Innocence of Muslims was online for some time before the offensive, dubbed-in English dialogue in the clip was translated to Arabic. Since then protesters have been attacking U.S. embassies in heavily Muslim countries, the worst assault ending with the deaths of four American foreign service officials in Benghazi, Libya earlier this week, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens.

Police in California are currently investigating whether the film's alleged creator, ex-con Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, may have somehow violated his parole when he produced the video.