Report from Reuters In Brief – Amazon’s Italian logistics business unit has resolved a major investigation brought by the Milan public prosecutor’s office into alleged tax evasion and unlawful labor practices by paying roughly €180 million ($210 million) to Italy’s...
Google Testing Paid Media Relationships Related to AI Answers
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Google has announced a pilot program with news publishers to test AI-powered article overviews as part of the Google News pages. Participating outlets, including The Guardian, Der Spiegel, El País, and the Washington Post, will work...
India Withdraws Mandate for Smartphones to Include State Security App
Report from Guardian In Brief – India’s government has withdrawn a controversial directive requiring all smartphone manufacturers to pre-install the state-run Sanchar Saathi security app after intense public and political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...
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Google Ordered to Pay 16.2 Million Euros to L’Equipe for Advertising Abuses
Report from The Media Leader In Brief – The Paris Commercial Court has ordered Google to pay €16.2 million to French sports newspaper L’Équipe for damages caused by its anti-competitive practices in online advertising. The ruling builds on a 2021 decision by the...
EU Parliament Backs AI Intimate Images Ban in Digital Omnibus
Report from Reuters In Brief – The European Parliament is backing a proposal to amend the AI Act to prohibit apps from creating sexualized images of people without their consent. The ban on so-called “nudification” apps, which follows similar backing from the EU...
Sen. Blackburn Proposes Combining AI Regulation with Anti-Internet Priorities
Report from Roll Call In Brief – Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), a leading Republican critic of Big Tech companies, has released a nearly 300-page draft of federal AI regulation. Titled the “TRUMP AMERICA AI Act”, it preempts state AI laws in place of federal...
US Supreme Court Soundly Rejects Broad ISP Liability for User Piracy
Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that Cox Communications cannot be held liable for copyright infringement committed by its users, even if the company knows some customers engage in piracy and yet it does not cut them...
Tech Trade Group Challenges Chicago’s Social Media Tax
Report from the Chicago Sun-Times In Brief – NetChoice, a digital company trade group, is suing to block the City of Chicago’s new social media tax, arguing it violates the First Amendment and the federal Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA). The new tax extends...
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