Report from Guardian In Brief – India’s government has withdrawn a controversial directive requiring all smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the state-run Sanchar Saathi security app after intense public and political backlash. The Department of Telecommunications...
EU Parliament Backs Social Media and Chatbot Age Threshold of 16 Years
Report from Reuters In Brief – The European Parliament adopted a non-binding resolution calling for a harmonized minimum age of 16 across the EU for access to social media platforms, video-sharing sites, and AI-driven tools such as chatbots. EU member states currently...
Macron and Mertz Lead EU Digital Sovereignty Summit
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron headlined the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin, signaling the commitment of the two largest EU member states to advance European digital and AI...
Spanish Court Orders Meta to Pay $550 million to Media Companies
Report from Courthouse News In Brief – A Spanish commercial court has ordered Meta to pay €479 million in damages to 87 Spanish media outlets for gaining an unlawful competitive advantage in advertising on its top platforms. The ruling follows a lawsuit brought in...
Japanese Court Orders Cloudflare to Pay $3m for Aiding Manga Piracy Site
Report from Torrent Freak In Brief – Cloudflare, a leading US-based online security service and content delivery network (CDN) provider, has been held legally liable in Japan for copyright infringement carried out by anonymous users of its platform. The ruling by...
RealPage Settles with the DOJ in Algorithmic Pricing Lawsuit
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The Justice Department (DOJ) announced that it will settle its antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, an apartment-pricing software provider accused of enabling landlords to coordinate rent increases. The case, filed in...
EU Commission Opens Antitrust Probe of WhatsApp’s AI Chatbot Policy
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has announced an antitrust investigation into whether Meta is unfairly blocking chatbot providers from using its WhatsApp messaging app. In October, WhatsApp changed its business API policy to ban general-purpose...
EU Fines X Millions of Euros for Violating DSA with Blue Checkmark Change
Report from EuroNews In Brief – The European Commission has imposed its first-ever fine on a large online platform for violating the Digital Services Act (DSA), hitting X with a 120 million euro penalty after a two-year investigation. Among the findings, regulators...
Perplexity AI Hit with Two More Big Media Copyright Suits
Report from Engadget In Brief – The New York Times has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Perplexity, the self-styled Generative AI (GAI) “answer engine”. The media giant says that it sent the AI company several cease-and-desist demands to stop using its...
EU Responds to Publisher Calls for Antitrust Probe of Google AI Practices
Report from CNBC In Brief – The European Commission has announced an antitrust investigation into whether Google unfairly uses the content of online publishers to provide AI answers to search queries without appropriate compensation to publishers, and without offering...
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...
Governor Newsome Drops Funding for Media from California State Budget
Report from SFiST In Brief – The latest budget proposal from California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has eliminated funding for the News Transformation Fund, a state initiative to pay millions of dollars to California media companies. The fund was announced in 2024 as...
Spanish PM Announces Social Media Age Threshold Amidst Musk Tussle
Report from AP News In Brief – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced plans for a package of measures to regulate online companies, including banning teens under 16 from social media platforms that he called “a space of addiction, abuse, pornography,...
EU Commission Tells TikTok It Needs to Stop Being So Addictive
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has announced its preliminary finding that TikTok’s design violates the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by promoting compulsive use and failing to protect users, particularly minors, from harms including...
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