Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission has announced a consent decree with advertising companies Omnicom Group and Interpublic Group to allow their $13.5 billion merger after the companies agreed that they would not boycott media...
US Supreme Court Goes Easy on Age Checks for Online Porn Sites
Report from the Washington Post In Brief – The US Supreme Court has ruled that requiring online porn websites to use age verification tools to confirm that users are adults does not violate the First Amendment. Advocates for the porn industry argued that Texas’s...
AI Regulation Moratorium Stripped from Senate Budget Bill in Late Night Vote
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The moratorium on state laws regulating AI was stripped from the massive budget reconciliation bill carrying the budget and spending priorities of President Trump and the Republicans. A broad 10-year version, backed by AI industry...
Paris Court Pauses French Law Imposing Age Checks on EU Porn Sites
Report from Euractiv In Brief – A French administrative court has paused the implementation of a national law enacted in 2024 that requires all websites displaying adult content to use technical age verification methods to block minors in France from accessing their...
Australia Will Require Age Checks for Search Engines
Report from MediaPost In Brief – The Australian eSafety Commissioner has released the Search Engine Services Online Safety Code that directs search engines to implement technical age verification by the end 2025. Age verification will apply to Australian search engine...
President Trump Says He Will Soon Begin Talks with China Over TikTok Sale
Report from the New York Times In Brief – President Trump has said that he had found a buyer for the TikTok short-video app and will soon begin talks with the Chinese Government to get the deal approved. He previously indicated that the identities of the possible...
Top EU Company Leaders Urge Slowdown in AI Regulation
Report from the Financial Times In Brief – The chief executives of 44 large European companies including are publicly urging European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to initiate a two-year pause in the implementation of the AI Act, warning that unclear and...
Federal Judge Blocking California Law on Online Sale of Suspicious Goods
Report from Courthouse News Service In Brief – US District Judge Beth Labson Freeman is blocking enforcement of California’s SB 1144, a new state law that requires online platforms to take stronger actions against the sale of stolen goods. At a hearing, Judge Freeman...
Final Draft Code of Practice for EU’s Big AI Regulatory Regime Released
Report from TechCrunch In Brief – The European Commission has announced the release of the final draft AI Code of Practice that gives “voluntary” guidelines to AI developers to help them comply with AI regulation under the EU’s AI Act. The code focuses on copyright...
Canadian Regulator Proceeds with Amazon Pricing Policy Investigation
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Canada’s Competition Bureau has secured a court order to advance its investigation into whether Amazon is abusing its dominant position as an online marketplace provider to push third-party sellers to increase prices on other online...
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EU High Court Legal Advisor Rules Publishers Not Liable for VPN Use
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...
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