Report from The Guardian In Brief – Meta is challenging the methodology Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, uses to determine the regulatory fee and fines structure under the UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA). The fees that Ofcom charges regulated firms to fund the...
New York AG Opposes Surveillance Pricing and Electronic Shelf Labels
Report from WRVO In Brief – New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) is calling for state legislation to ban the use of personal data to influence prices, as well as a measure to prohibit grocery stores and pharmacies in the state from adopting digital shelf price...
Google Offers to Change Anti-Spam Policies to Appease EU Regulators
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Google has reportedly made a proposal to European Commission digital regulators to change their search engine's anti-spam policy to downrank news publisher websites that engage in a practice dubbed “parasite SEO”. The move comes in...
Colorado Scales Back Its Big AI Safety Law
Report from Colorado Newsline In Brief – Colorado, which was the first state to enact comprehensive “AI Safety” legislation when it did so in 2024, was set to see it finally go into in go into effect in June, but instead the law has been frozen by a court...
Australia Opens Online Safety Push Against Top Gaming Platforms
Report from DW In Brief – Online gaming platforms Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and Steam have been directed by Australia’s eSafety Commissioner to explain how they address risks to young users such as child grooming and the spread of extremist content. The regulator,...
Italian Regulator Challenges Booking on Unlabeled Sponsored Links
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The Italian Competition Authority, which is both an antitrust and consumer protection regulator, has opened an investigation into Booking over concerns that the company’s “preferred partner” and “preferred plus” programs...
Another Publisher AI Copyright Suit – This Time Targeting Meta’s Zuckerberg
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Another coalition of major publishers and authors has filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging the company illegally downloaded millions of copyrighted books and journal articles from pirate websites...
Settlement Between the FTC and Kochava Defines Sensitive Location Data
Report from AdExchanger In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with data broker Kochava over allegations that the firm engaged in unfair competition by improperly collecting and selling precise geolocation data from hundreds of millions of...
French Regulator Buys Suspicious Products and Reports Online Problems
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s consumer protection agency, the DGCCRF, reported that it purchased over 600 “high risk” items from seven large foreign-based ecommerce platforms and deemed that 75% failed to comply with EU product safety or labeling standards,...
Utah Prohibits Adult Websites from Discussing or Offering VPN Services
Report from TechRadar In Brief – Utah is implementing a new law imposing a 2% excise tax on online adult content sites with a controversial provision aimed at reducing the likelihood that Utah residents will employ Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or other digital...
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Maryland Tax Court Strikes Down Digital Ads Tax for Violating Federal Law
Report from MediaPost In Brief – In a major ruling in a tax law battle stretching more than five years, the Maryland Tax Court has struck down the state’s 2021 law imposing taxes on the digital advertising revenue of large online platforms and ordered the state to...
UK Continues Legal Efforts to Break Apple Encryption
Report from The Guardian In Brief – Apple has again launched a legal challenge to a UK government order calling for access to customers’ encrypted iCloud data. The move comes a year after the Home Office withdrew a broader request that led to a dispute with...
French Court Strikes Down Social Media Age Limit Over Teen Speech Limits
Report from Politico In Brief – The French Constitutional Court has struck down the country’s new law banning social media for children under 15, a flagship priority of President Emmanuel Macron. The court ruled that the measure disproportionately infringed minors’...
Reddit’s DMCA Lawsuit Against SerpApi and Perplexity Survives Dismissal
Report from ArsTechnica In Brief – US District Judge Paul Engelmayer has largely denied a motion to dismiss from SerpApi, a company accused of conspiring with Perplexity AI to illegally scrape copyrighted Reddit content from Google search results....
European Commission Issues AI Content Notification Rules
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The AI transparency rules required by Article 50 of the EU’s AI Act have taken effect, requiring companies to clearly disclose when users are interacting with artificial intelligence or viewing AI-generated or manipulated images, audio...
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