Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – In the latest in a string of major antitrust setbacks, US District Judge Leonie Brinkema largely sided with the Department of Justice (DoJ) and ruled that Google violated federal monopoly law in the operation of their...
Minnesota Democrats Explore a State Tax on Social Media Companies
Report from CBS News In Brief – Leading Democrats in the Minnesota state legislature are proposing to tax large social media platforms as part of an effort to close a state budget deficit estimated to reach $6 billion. Legislation approved by the Minnesota House and...
EU Commission Continues Ramping Up Staffing for DSA Enforcement
Report from EuroNews In Brief – The European Commission is hoping to hire 60 additional staff members for its Digital Services Act (DSA) enforcement unit, including legal and policy officers, data scientists, and researchers. In its latest report on DSA enforcement...
EU Commission Announces DMA Penalties for Apple and Meta
Report from Politico In Brief – After more than a year of investigations, the European Commission has announced that it has fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for failing to comply with EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Apple, Google, and Meta were the first...
TikTok Announces Its Own Version of X-Style Community Notes
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – TikTok has announced that it is testing a new feature dubbed “Footnotes” to allow users to add additional context and relevant information to videos to help others better understand certain content. It is clearly modeled on X’s...
Another Call for the EU to Regulate Google Search – Spam Filter Edition
Report from Reuters In Brief – ActMeraki, a German media company, has complained to EU antitrust regulators that a Google anti-spam policy that penalizes websites that sell part of their websites to other companies to improve the search results for the third-party...
Ninth Circuit Drastically Expands State Jurisdiction Over Online Companies
Report from Reuters In Brief – The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that online commerce platform Shopify, based in Canada, could face a class action lawsuit in California for allegedly violating state privacy laws. An en banc panel overturned an earlier...
UK CMA Targeting Apple and Google Mobile Systems with DMCC Probes
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened investigations of the mobile ecosystems run by Apple and Google under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumer’s Act (DMCC) to determine if the two digital giants have...
German Court Appears Likely to Reject Apple’s Challenge to Special Antitrust Standard
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Apple’s legal challenge to the German Federal Cartel Office (FCO) designation that they are a digital company “of paramount significance on competition across markets” appears to face skeptical judges on the Federal Court of Justice in...
Mobile Device Location Data Broker Kochava Settles Privacy Class Action
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Kochava has reached a settlement in a private class action lawsuit that will require the data broker to make several major privacy changes. The agreement filed with US District Court Judge B. Lynn Winmill requires the company to...
EU Commission Tells Google How to Open Android to AI and Chatbots
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – EU antitrust regulators have announced extensive directives they plan to impose on Google to give AI developers full access to Android on phones and tablets in the same manner as Google’s own AI models and services such...
California Judge Rules That Jury Will Hear AG’s Amazon Antitrust Complaint
Report from Redheaded Blackbelt In Brief – San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman has ruled that there is sufficient evidence backing the state’s antitrust lawsuit targeting Amazon’s price-parity regime that a jury will hear the case. The...
EU Regulators Tell Google How to Share Search Data with AI Competitors
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The European Commission announced that it sent preliminary findings to Google outlining measures the digital giant should take to allow third party search engines, including some AI chatbots, to access its store of search data to...
Telegram Investigated by UK Ofcom Over Child Sexual Abuse Material
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Ofcom, the UK online content moderation regulator under the Online Safety Act (OSA), has announced that it is investigating whether Telegram has failed to prevent the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM). The probe follows...
Colorado House Passes Bill Banning Online “Surveillance” Pricing
Report from Colorado Newsline In Brief – The Colorado House of Representatives has passed House Bill 26-1210, a measure prohibiting companies from using personalized data and algorithms to offer individualized prices and wages. Approved 39 – 24, with all support...
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