Report from Bloomberg In Brief – The US Department of Justice has announced that it notified the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that it will appeal US District Judge Amit Mehta’s remedies order in the federal antitrust lawsuit that found Google...
France Pushing Digital Sovereignty Directing Ministries Off Zoom and Teams
Report from ZDNET In Brief – French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has directed all French government officials and civil servants to stop using American-owned video conference software such as Teams and Zoom by 2027 in favor of a new French-made application called...
Governor Newsome Drops Funding for Media from California State Budget
Report from SFiST In Brief – The latest budget proposal from California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has eliminated funding for the News Transformation Fund, a state initiative to pay millions of dollars to California media companies. The fund was announced in 2024 as...
Spanish PM Announces Social Media Age Threshold Amidst Musk Tussle
Report from AP News In Brief – Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has announced plans for a package of measures to regulate online companies, including banning teens under 16 from social media platforms that he called “a space of addiction, abuse, pornography,...
EU Commission Tells TikTok It Needs to Stop Being So Addictive
Report from Politico In Brief – The European Commission has announced its preliminary finding that TikTok’s design violates the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) by promoting compulsive use and failing to protect users, particularly minors, from harms including...
Amazon Sanctioned for Anticompetitive Price Fixing in Germany
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – Germany’s competition authority has ordered Amazon to stop enforcing retailer price controls on its German marketplace and has penalized the company €59 million, which it argues is excess profits it earned from its anticompetitive...
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...
Federal Judge Blocks Virginia’s One-Hour Time Limit for Social Media
Report from Reuters In Brief – US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles has issued a preliminary injunction blocking Virginia from enforcing Senate Bill 854 that imposes a time limit on teens using social media platforms with so-called “addictive” features. Platforms...
FTC Chairman Accuses Apple of News Media Viewpoint Discrimination
Report from the New York Times In Brief – The Federal Trade Commission announced that it sent a warning letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook expressing concerns that the operations of the Apple News may favor certain political viewpoints in a way that conflicts with Apple’s...
PM Starmer Proposes Bringing AI Chatbots Under the UK Online Safety Act
Report from Bloomberg In Brief – UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced plans to bring AI chatbots directly under the Online Safety Act (OSA) to close what he called a “legal loophole” in Britain’s online safety regime and ensure that they are designed to not...
Reddit Fined By UK ICO for Failing to Age Check 13-Year-Olds
Report from the BBC In Brief – The UK’s data protection regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has fined Reddit more than £14 million for failing to adequately enforce its rules regarding children under 13 accessing the platform. Following an...
Trump Administration Vehemently Rejects “Global Governance” of AI
Report from France 24 In Brief – Speaking at the AI Impact Summit in India, Michael Kratsios, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said that the US “totally” rejects global governance of artificial intelligence. Praising the shift...
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