Report from Fox Business In Brief – Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), one of Capitol Hill’s foremost Republican critics of large tech companies, chaired a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Crime and Counterterrorism and aggressively criticized Meta and other major...
Epic Settles Android App Store Antitrust Dispute with Samsung
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Epic Games has settled its legal dispute with Samsung Electronics and will drop claims that the device company conspired with Google to maintain a monopoly over Android app distribution. The app developer’s federal lawsuit accused...
Arkansas Will Delay Enforcement of Social Media Law
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Attorney General of Arkansas has agreed that the state will not enforce legislation that prohibits social media platforms from using algorithms that could “cause” a user to commit suicide, buy drugs, develop an eating disorder, or...
Brazil Tariff Threats Linked to Internet Policies and Bolsonaro Trial
Report from The Hill In Brief – Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has announced that he backs the Brazilian Supreme Court’s (STF) decision to increase the liability of social media platforms in the country for content posted by their users, which has...
Apple’s DMA App Store Offer May Gain Approval from the EU Commission
Report from Reuters In Brief – The European Commission’s antitrust regulators are reportedly preparing to accept Apple’s latest proposal to comply with the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) on App Store rules and fees. The Commission announced in April that they were...
German Court Clears Meta to Train AI with Some EU User Data
Report from The Decoder In Brief – A German regional court has cleared Meta to use public data from Facebook and Instagram users to train its AI systems, dismissing an emergency lawsuit from a consumer protection group. Back in April, Meta announced that it would...
Texas Law Will Put Online Age Verification Duties on App Stores
Report from the New York Times In Brief – Texas is the second state to require app store operators to verify all users’ ages and then block minors from downloading apps without the permission of a parent or legal guardian. SB 2420, the App Store Accountability Act,...
European Hotels to Sue Booking for Retail Price Fixing Damages
Report from Reuters In Brief – Hotel associations from 26 European markets plan to file a class-action lawsuit against Booking .com in the Netherlands over the platform’s long-time use of price parity contract clauses that prohibited hotels using the site from...
German Government Eying Huge Tax on US Digital Giants
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The Culture Minister of Friedrich Merz’s German Government has revealed that they are drafting legislation for a national digital services tax (DST) targeting the biggest internet companies operating in country, in particular US giants...
Senate Budget Bill Includes Modified “Revenge Tax” to Counter DSTs
Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Senate version of the massive budget reconciliation bill includes a modified version of a tax provision included by the House of Representatives that penalizes foreign countries that impose “unfair” taxes on US companies....
Malaysia’s Social Media Age Limit Regime Enters into Effect
Report from Channel News Asia In Brief – Malaysia’s aggressive online-safety framework goes into operation with new rules effective June 1. The regulations issued by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) require online platforms to adopt...
South Korea’s Take on AI Training and Copyright Fair Use
Report from Korea JoongAng Daily In Brief – South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism has released an English version of its guide on the application of the fair use exception in South Korea’s Copyright Act to the training of generative AI models....
Sizeable Fine Expected in the Google Vertical Search DMA Case
Report from Reuters In Brief – The European Union is reportedly preparing to impose a high triple-digit million euro antitrust fine on Google this summer for violating the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by unfairly prioritizing its own “vertical” search services in general...
Meta Offers a Month of WhatsApp Free to Chatbots to Negotiate
w/Commission Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – Meta has offered to allow rival AI chatbots to use WhatsApp to interact with their users in the EU free of charge for one month as it seeks to work out an agreement with the European Commission on how AI...
EU Court Says Italy Can Force Meta to Pay Media for Snippets
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – The Court of Justice of the European Union has upheld Italy’s forced media payments regime for the largest digital platforms, rejecting Meta’s challenge to national rules requiring tech platforms to negotiate compensation with...
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