Report from Bloomberg In Brief – US District Judge John Chun, who is overseeing a collection of federal antitrust cases targeting Amazon’s marketplace practices, has rejected the company’s bid to have a lawsuit from now-defunct online apparel marketplace Zulily fully...
Polish Comparison-Shopping Site Sues Google for Years of Damages
Report from Reuters In Brief – Google has been sued by Ceneo, a Poland-based comparison-shopping unit of European ecommerce platform Allegro, seeking 2.33 billion zlotys (about $568 million) for damages suffered at the hands of the digital giant from 2013 through...
Mexico Enacts Gig Worker Legislation Classifying Top Earners as Employees
Report from Mexico News Daily In Brief – Mexico has enacted “Gig Worker” legislation that aims to provide hundreds of thousands of platform-enabled workers with traditional employment benefits and protections. The new law, which goes into effect in June, establishes...
Supreme Court Hears Arguments Over Law Requiring ByteDance to Sell TikTok
Report from Platform Economy Insights In Brief – The US Supreme Court heard oral arguments earlier today on the constitutional challenges filed by TikTok and a group of content creators against the federal law that requires the business to be sold by China-based...
Meta Trials eBay Listings in Facebook Marketplace to Address EU Concerns
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta and eBay have each announced that the social media giant would run a test in Germany, France, and the US enabling people to browse listings from eBay on Facebook Marketplace and complete transactions on eBay. The...
Federal Judge Rejects Blocking Some Aspects of California’s Social Media Law
Report from Courthouse News Service In Brief – US District Judge Edward Davila responded to a motion to enjoin California’s Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act by blocking some provisions, rejecting the motion to block some sections, and granting...
UK PM Keir Starmer Continues to Pitch AI Investment as a Top Tech Priority
Report from CNBC In Brief – UK Prime Minister Kein Starmer continued to press forward on initiatives he argues will make the UK “the best state partner” in the world for “anyone working at the AI frontier”, releasing an AI Opportunities Action Plan focused on building...
Zuckerberg Wants Trump to Protect US Tech Giants from EU Regulators
Report from Euractiv In Brief – In a major one-on-one interview with leading podcaster Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg framed the company’s public policy battles in Europe in the context of “censorship” and argued that incoming President Donald Trump should step...
UK CMA Open Probe of Google Search Under New Competition Law
Report from CNBC In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an investigation of Google under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer’s Act (DMCC) to determine if the digital giant has “strategic market status” (SMS) under the new law...
TikTok Reported to be Planning Full Shutdown on Sunday Absent Reprieve
Report from Reuters In Brief – TikTok is reported to be planning to shutdown their US app on Sunday, January 19th if the US Supreme Court or Biden Administration does not issue an order delaying the effective date of the federal law requiring the company’s US...
Another Publisher AI Copyright Suit – This Time Targeting Meta’s Zuckerberg
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Another coalition of major publishers and authors has filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging the company illegally downloaded millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from pirate websites...
Settlement Between the FTC and Kochava Defines Sensitive Location Data
Report from AdExchanger In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with data broker Kochava over allegations that the firm engaged in unfair competition by improperly collecting and selling precise geolocation data from hundreds of millions of...
French Regulator Buys Suspicious Products and Reports Online Problems
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s consumer protection agency, the DGCCRF, reported that it purchased over 600 “high risk” items from seven large foreign-based ecommerce platforms and deemed that 75% failed to comply with EU product safety or labeling standards,...
Utah Prohibits Adult Websites from Discussing or Offering VPN Services
Report from TechRadar In Brief – Utah is implementing a new law imposing a 2% excise tax on online adult content sites with a controversial provision aimed at reducing the likelihood that Utah residents will employ Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other digital...
Korean FTC Directs eCommerce Platforms to Revise Unfair User Terms
Report from The Korea Times In Brief – The Korean Fair Trade Commission (FTC), the country’s antitrust regulator, has directed seven major ecommerce platforms to make changes to their customer terms of service to better protect consumer rights and securely handle user...
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