Report from Reuters In Brief – Microsoft is likely to escape a major antitrust fine as the European Commission’s antitrust regulators are expected to accept the software giant’s improved offer to address complaints about the bundling of chat and video app Teams into...
EU Commission Finds TikTok in Violation of DSA Over Ads Repository
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has made a preliminary determination that TikTok has failed to comply with provisions of the Digital Services Act (DSA) requiring advertising transparency. Among the many requirements that the DSA imposes on...
Texas Legislature Passes Bill Putting Age Verification Duties on App Stores
Report from MediaPost In Brief – Texas became the second state to pass a bill that would require app store operators like Apple and Google to verify all users’ ages and then block minors from downloading apps without parental permission. SB 2420, the App Store...
Google Faces Follow-on Shopping “Vertical” Antitrust Lawsuits in Europe
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Google is facing at least €12 billion in damages claims from dozens of price comparison websites across Europe who allege that the search giant harmed them through years of anticompetitive treatment. The so-called “follow-on” civil...
Anthropic Lawyers Admit Filing a Brief with a Hallucinated Case Citation
Report from Reuters In Brief – Lawyers for the AI company Anthropic submitted a court filing that included a citation “hallucination” created by the company’s AI chatbot Clause. The filing was part of expert testimony from one of the company’s data scientists in...
Japan’s Antitrust Authority Releases Draft App Store Regulations
Report from Kyodo News In Brief – The Japan Fair Trade Commission, the country’s antitrust authority, has unveiled draft guidelines for the new law that will regulate how Google and Apple operate their smartphone app stores and compete with third-party app developers....
Apple Finally Restores Epic Game’s Fortnite to the US App Store
Report from the New York Times In Brief – More than four-and-half years after blocking Epic Games’ highly popular Fortnite gaming app from its app stores in a massive antitrust dispute, Apple has allowed the app to again be in the US App Store. The move came after...
OpenAI Wins Dismissal of AI Hallucination Defamation Lawsuit
Report from Reuters In Brief – OpenAI has won the dismissal of a defamation lawsuit filed by a conservative radio host in Georgia who alleged that the ChatGPT chatbot made false claims that he embezzled money from a gun-rights organization. Judge Tracie Cason of the...
California and Google Cut Funds Pledged to In-State Media Companies
Report from The Hill In Brief – Following California Governor Gavin Newsome’s (D) decision to scale back the state money promised to a new fund to pay California media companies, Google, the one big online company that also promised to contribute millions of dollars,...
Big House Tax Bill Massively Raises Ante in International Digital Tax Standoff
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The massive budget reconciliation tax and spending bill passed by the House of Representatives includes a tax provision that aggressively penalizes foreign countries that impose “unfair” taxes on US companies, bringing the House...
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Google Sues to Stop Massive Scraping of Its Search Results
Report from Reuters In Brief – Google has filed a federal lawsuit accusing SerpApi of illegally and massively circumventing its technical safeguards intended to block automated scraping of search results with the intent of accessing and reselling copyrighted and...
Meta Names Highly-Connected Republican Banker as Company President
Report from The Hill In Brief – Meta has announced the appointment of Dina Powell McCormick as its new president and vice chair as it accelerates investment in artificial intelligence and its “superintelligence” initiative. In the role, Powell McCormick will oversee...
TikTok Will Roll Out Age Estimation Technology in Europe
Report from Reuters In Brief – TikTok will start rolling out a new technology-based age-estimation regime across Europe in the coming weeks with the goal of more effectively identifying and removing accounts belonging to children under 13. The new system follows a...
US TikTok Spinoff Deal Backed by President Trump Finally Completed
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The business deal to spin off the US operations of TikTok from Chinese parent company ByteDance has been finalized, likely securing the app’s ability to operate in the American market. The new US-based entity includes Oracle, Silver...
EU Commission Opens DSA Investigation of Grok’s Sexualized Images on X
Report from CNBC In Brief – The European Commission has announced a new Digital Services Act (DSA) investigation of X and its integration of AI chatbot Grok with functionality that allowed users to create and post realistic manipulated images that could include...
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