Report from Courthouse News In Brief – A senior EU legal adviser to Europe’s top court has issued an advisory opinion that online publishers do not violate national copyright laws simply because users can bypass geographic restrictions using tools like VPNs. Advocate...
Court Overturns Brazilian Regulator’s Block on WhatsApp’s Chatbot Ban
Report from Reuters In Brief – In a surprising and possibly temporary turnabout, a Brazilian court has suspended a recent order imposed by Brazil’s antitrust regulator CADE that blocked Meta from restricting third-party AI chatbots from operating over WhatsApp using...
Supreme Court to Hear Video Privacy Case Bedeviling Online Advertising
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could clarify how a federal privacy law enacted in 1988 applies to modern online video services. The dispute centers on the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), which was enacted after a...
French National Assembly Supports 15-Year-Old Social Media Age Threshold
Report from Reuters In Brief – France’s National Assembly has approved legislation to ban children under 15 from accessing social media. Lawmakers voted 116–23 in favor of the bill, which is strongly backed by President Emmanuel Macron, and prohibits under-15s from...
Meta Proposes New Per-Message WhatsApp Fee for Chatbots in Italy
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – Meta has announced that it will charge AI companies a per message fee for running their chatbots on WhatsApp in regions where regulators force the company to allow chatbots on the platform. The policy will go into effect in Italy on...
Landmark Social Media Addiction Trial Underway in California State Court
Report from PBS In Brief – The initial “bellwether” trial testing claims that major social media platforms are liable for a wide range of mental health injuries because they intentionally designed their products to be addictive to children is underway in Los Angeles...
UK Antitrust Regulator Proposes Google Search Rules Including AI Opt-Outs
Report from Euractiv In Brief – The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has announced proposed rules to govern how Google operates its search engine, including requiring that the company allow website publishers to opt out of having their content used in...
Paris Prosecutors Continue to Investigate X for Criminal Law Violations
Report from Reuters In Brief – French authorities have raided X’s Paris offices as part of an expanded criminal investigation into the social media platform over its handling of unlawful content. The probe, which began last year as an investigation of the platform’s...
Grok Chatbot Faces Regulatory Criticism for Sexualizing Photo Images
Report from Australian Broadcasting Corporation In Brief – Grok, the AI chatbot integrated into X, is facing growing backlash for being capable of digitally altering photos posted on X to depict women, and in some cases apparent children, in revealing clothing,...
New York Enacts Law Requiring Warning Labels on Social Media
Report from Digital Watch In Brief – Governor Kathy Hochul added New York to the list of states that is trying to require social media platforms to display cigarette package-style warning labels that describe their services as employing dangerous “addictive features”...
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European Publishers Suing Google for Adtech Monopoly Damages
Report from the Press Gazette In Brief – More than 20 European news publishers from eight countries have launched a lawsuit against Google seeking over €640 million in damages, alleging the company’s dominance in advertising technology harmed their businesses by...
European Commission Orders Meta to Allow Chatbots on WhatsApp for Free
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The European Commission competition authority has issued an interim order to Meta requiring the digital giant to allow AI companies to use WhatsApp to interact with European users without charges. The dispute stems...
Colorado Governor Vetoes Bill Restricting Data Use for Prices and Wages
Report from Colorado Newsline In Brief – Colorado Governor Jared Polis vetoed House Bill 26-1210, legislation that would have barred companies from using personal data and algorithmic tools to set individualized wages or prices. The bill targeted so-called...
Cyber Concerns Results in Ban on Foreign Use of Top Anthropic Models
Report from the Wall Street Journal In Brief – The Trump administration's decision to halt foreign access to Anthropic's most advanced Fable and Mythos AI models followed warnings from Amazon’s CEO that his company’s researchers had been able to prompt the Fable 5...
Meta Adds Funding to the Content Moderation Oversight Board
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Meta has agreed to provide the Oversight Board, an independent organization it created in 2020 to review content moderation decisions across Meta’s platforms, an additional $13 million in “top up” funding to support its operations...
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