In December 2020, the Trump Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust complaint (Case No. 1:20-cv-03590, D.D.C.) against Facebook which came [f]ollowing a lengthy investigation in cooperation with a coalition of attorneys general of 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam, the complaint alleges that Facebook has engaged in a systematic strategy—including its 2012 acquisition…
There is a growing movement within the Trump administration to take on social media companies over perceived anti-conservative bias, which is triggering criticism from free speech advocates.;
After President Trump nominated D.C. Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to fill the vacancy left by retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the paper of record for Silicon Valley – the San Jose Mercury News – declared: President Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court is a disaster for the technology industry and…
The Russian’s use of social media platforms to influence the 2016 election and the fallout from Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal has triggered calls for regulation of the tech sector, but with no proposals emerging. Earlier this month, former acting-Commerce Secretary Cameron Kerry called for reviving the Obama-era Privacy Bill of Rights. Enter Senate Intelligence Committee…
While the Tech Giants have benefited from the “light-touch” regulatory approach taken in the United States, European regulators are increasingly flexing their muscles in the area of taxation, antitrust, content moderation and privacy. This is even before any potential retaliatory action taken in response to President Trump’s proposed tariffs on steel and threat of a…
How to Tame the Tech Giants with Open Market Institute’s Kevin Carty LISTEN / DOWNLOAD Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have all come under scrutiny for anticompetitive behavior and market domination, with increasing calls that it may be necessary to break up one or all of these entities (see image below). This debate was fueled…
A major decision on data scraping and blocking access to publicly available information on the web came this week in hiQ Labs, Inc. v LinkedIn, Inc., No. 3:17-cv-03301-EMC (N.D. Cal. Aug. 14, 2017). The decision enjoined LinkedIn from blocking access to its service.
Last Updated: January 30, 2017. The meeting between President-Elect Donald Trump and the tech community was as notable for who was there and for who was not. The meeting was attended by: Team Trump – Family POTUS-E Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner (son-in-law), Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. Team Trump – Other VPOTUS-E Mike Pence,…
Let it not be said that Utah-based 1-800 Contacts is not persistent. Once it began losing sales to lower-priced online competitors, the nation’s largest online seller of contact lenses has engaged in a protracted battle against competitive search advertisements to avoid having to compete on the basis of price. In 2004, 1-800 Contacts was behind…
EU Announces Antitrust Charges Against Google European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager (Denmark) announced it has served Google with a formal complaint (called a Statement of Objections) alleging that it unfairly prioritized its own Google Shopping search results over comparison shopping sites. if the charges are proven, Google could face up to $6.4 billion in fines. At…
Canadian Privacy Commissioner Tags Google for Medical BT In only her second month on the job, Interim Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier took on one of the giants of the Internet – Google. Bernier cited Google for sending targeted ads for medical conditions based on consumer searches which violates Canada’s “Privacy and Online Behavioural Advertising Guidelines”…
NSA’s Euro-Backlash: Germany’s Merkel Calls For New EU Privacy Legislation German Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, reflecting the widespread European outrage over the NSA scandal, is calling for the European Union to iadopt legislation requiring Internet companies to disclose what information about users they store and to whom they provide it. As the New York…
The U.S. antitrust laws are based on a few key principles, one of which is that competitors may not work in concert to set prices. In the Justice Department’s investigation into e-book pricing, it found that publishers frustrated with Amazon’s low pricing turned to Apple and Apple offered an agency pricing model in which the…
ROBERT ELLIS SMITH RETURNS TO CLBR TO DISCUSS PRIVACY AND MOBILE APPS With California Attorney General Kamala Harris’ enforcement action filed against Delta for its lack of privacy policy for its mobile app and the FTC indicating that it is investigating mobile compliance with children’s privacy protections, mobile privacy has become the hot domestic internet…
Cyber Report 