Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s Minister of Small and Medium Businesses says Shein and other online retail platforms will face a “year of resistance" from traditional storefront retailers and their backers in the government. Serge Papin argued that retail...
Federal Jury Finds Uber Financially Liable for Driver Sexual Assault
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – A federal court jury in Arizona has ordered Uber to pay $8.5 million in damages to a young woman who was allegedly raped by her driver in 2023. The decision marks the first time Uber, which has been fighting such claims for a decade,...
France Considering VPN Regulation to Follow Social Media Age Threshold
Report from TechRadar In Brief – As France continues forward with legislation to impose an age threshold of 15 for social media use in the country, Anne Le Hénanff, the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs, said that the government is...
EU Commission Directs Google to Play Nice with Chatbot Competitors
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – The European Commission has announced two “specification proceedings” to direct Google in setting policies related to third-party AI chatbot competitors that comply with its Digital Markets Act (DMA) obligations. One process...
Federal Court Rejects Appeal to Block Minnesota Political Deepfake Law
Report from MPR News In Brief – A three-judge panel of the US 8th Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to block a Minnesota law enacted in 2023 that bans the use of deepfake technology to influence elections, siding with the lower court that the two plaintiffs lacked...
Google and Apple Make App Store Competition Commitments in the UK
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Apple and Google have made commitments to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to implement practices to prevent discrimination against third-party apps that compete with their own services. Last year, the CMA found that...
Dutch Regulator Opens Digital Services Act Investigation of Roblox
Report from NL Times In Brief – The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) has launched a formal Digital Services Act (DSA) investigation of Roblox over concerns that the online gaming platform may not be doing enough to protect children. The DSA...
EU Commission Moves to Stop Meta from Banning Chatbots on WhatsApp
Report from Wall Street Journal In Brief – The European Commission has informed Meta that it plans to block the company’s ban on third-party AI chatbots from operating over WhatsApp. The antitrust regulator has reached a preliminary finding that Meta’s policy could...
Department of Justice and State AGs Appeal Google Search Remedies Order
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The US Department of Justice has announced that it notified the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it will appeal US District Judge Amit Mehta’s remedies order in the federal antitrust lawsuit that found Google...
France Pushing Digital Sovereignty Directing Ministries Off Zoom and Teams
Report from ZDNET In Brief – French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has directed all French government officials and civil servants to stop using American-owned video conference software such as Teams and Zoom by 2027 in favor of a new French-made application called...
Booking Faces European Commission DSA Investigation of Fraud Policies
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The European Commission has begun a formal investigation into whether Booking breached the Digital Services Act (DSA) by failing to adequately address online fraud and provide users with proper transparency into...
FTC Demands Nine Companies Give Data on Pricing and Gig Pay Practices
Report from Reuters In Brief – The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is demanding information from Delta, United, JetBlue, Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Instacart, Target and Walmart about how they use personal data, including location, browsing history and income, to set...
Germany’s Top Civil Court Asks for More EU Views on Host Provider Liability
Report from Der Spiegel In Brief – Germany’s Federal Court of Justice has again suspended Green Party politician Renate Künast’s lawsuit against Meta and referred what it believes are unresolved legal questions to the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) for...
EU Commission Has Plan to Tax Tech Giants by Taxing Giant Companies
Report from the Financial Times In Brief – The European Commission is examining a plan to impose a big annual lump-sum levy on the largest, most profitable companies operating in Europe as a way to tax the US-based tech giants without imposing a direct tax on just...
Clearview AI’s Privacy Law Battle with the UK ICO Continues
Report from PPC Land In Brief – Clearview AI, the small US company that built a facial recognition database using images collected online, argued to the Court of Appeal in London that the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) lacks authority to enforce data...
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