The global watchdog that drove through a welter of banking and market reforms after the financial crisis said it will pivot more toward reviewing existing rules and away from designing new ones.The Financial Stability Board (FSB), which coordinates financial regulation for the Group of 20 Economies, also resisted calls from some G20 members to regulate cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Lawmakers in the United States and Britain demanded that Facebook explain how a political data firm with links to President Trump’s 2016 campaign was able to harvest private data from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without the social network alerting those whose information was taken. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went so far as to demand that Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, appear before her panel to explain “what Facebook knew about misusing data from 50 million Americans in order to target political advertising and manipulate voters.”
Match Group is suing Bumble, which was founded by one of Tinder’s co-founders, for infringing on two of its patents, including a design patent for Tinder’s now-famous swipe-to-connect feature, according to the suit. Match also claims that early Bumble executives Chris Gulczynski and Sarah Mick, who both previously worked at Tinder, stole “confidential information related to proposed Tinder features,” including the idea for a feature that lets users go back if they accidentally skip someone, according to the suit.
A global body that oversees internet domain names is preparing a significant tightening of its privacy standards in response to new European Union policies. The U.S. government and some major American tech businesses warn the move, which is expected to be adopted within the next couple of months, will threaten their ability to track down bad actors on the internet.
Lawmakers pushing legislation aimed at preventing China from acquiring sensitive U.S. technology have proposed relaxing elements of the measure after lobbying by high-tech firms but will tighten another portion, according to a draft revision seen by Reuters. The bill in the Senate and a companion measure in the U.S. House of Representatives would broaden the reach of the inter-agency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in hopes of halting Chinese efforts to acquire sophisticated U.S. technology.
The Trump administration imposed fresh sanctions on Russian government hackers and spy agencies to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election and for a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries last year that officials have characterized as “the most destructive and costly” in history. Sanctions also were imposed on individuals known as “trolls” and the Russian organizations — including the Internet Research Agency — that supported their efforts to undermine the election.
The Federal Election Commission agreed to begin writing new disclosure rules for online ads as regulators grapple with ways to prevent foreign interests from influencing U.S. elections. But it’s not clear whether the rules will be fully in place for the 2018 midterm elections, and the regulations won't cover the full range of advertising that shapes American political campaigns, including the kinds of ads run by Russian operatives in the 2016 presidential contest.
Online platforms such as Google, Apple and Amazon face new European Union rules on their commercial practices with smaller businesses that use their services, as Brussels seeks to curtail their huge market power. The European Commission is drafting a new regulation specifically targeting online platforms such as e-commerce sites, app stores and search engines that will require the companies to be more transparent about how they rank search results and why they delist some services.
Facebook, its popular messaging app WhatsApp, and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) have reached a truce in their long-running investigation over how Facebook and WhatsApp share user data. The ICO announced that it has closed its investigation and concluded that WhatsApp and Facebook, in fact, cannot and do not share user data for anything other than basic data processing.
France is threatening to fine Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Apple Inc. for abusive commercial practices through their app stores, further complicating the relationship with the very companies the country seeks to attract. Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said France will take legal action against Google and Apple and fines could be in the “million of euros”.
Facebook has removed the pages of the anti-Islamic group Britain First and its leaders., which the social media company said the group had repeatedly violated its community standards. Earlier this month, Britain First's leader and deputy leader, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, were jailed after being found guilty of religiously aggravated harassment.
First lady Melania Trump plans to convene tech giants including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snap to discuss ways to combat online harassment and promote Internet safety, according to four people familiar with her efforts. The meeting at the White House, slated for March 20, marks the first major policy push in the first lady’s long-ago announced campaign to combat cyberbullying.
A group of major companies that includes Disney, IBM and Oracle is urging the Senate to pass an online sex trafficking bill that some internet firms believe could upend what they see as crucial legal protections for their industry. The companies, which have all been at odds with internet giants in the past, argued that the bill is necessary to crack down on the online sex trafficking trade.
Britain said it was considering taxing the revenues of internet companies like Facebook and Google until international tax rules are changed to cope with digital firms that can shift sales and profits between jurisdictions. Finance minister Philip Hammond said he had published a paper setting out proposals for taxing global digital firms before a meeting with his G20 counterparts.
The world’s financial leaders will call on international standard-setting bodies on March 20 for stronger monitoring of crypto-assets and to assess the need for a multilateral response as such assets could at some point threaten financial stability. The call appears in a draft communique prepared for the meeting of finance ministers and central bank governors of the world’s 20 biggest economies in Buenos Aires on March 19-20, seen by Reuters.
President Donald Trump issued an executive order Monday blocking Broadcom Ltd. from acquiring Qualcomm Inc., scuttling a $117 billion hostile takeover that had been subject of scrutiny over the deal’s threat to U.S. national security. Trump acted on a recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., which reviews acquisitions of American firms by foreign investors.
Yahoo has been ordered by a federal judge to face much of a lawsuit in the United States claiming that the personal information of all 3 billion users was compromised in a series of data breaches. In a decision on Friday night, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California rejected a bid by Verizon Communications Inc, which bought Yahoo’s Internet business last June, to dismiss many claims, including for negligence and breach of contract.
World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee issued an open letter, 29 years to the day after he first proposed his idea for the online information management system that would later become known as the Web. In the letter, he outlined what he thinks we need to do to save the Web from the concentration of power of a “few dominant platforms” that has “made it possible to weaponize the Web at scale.”
Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, Russia-backed online “trolls” flooded social media to try to block Mitt Romney from securing a top job in the incoming administration, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The operatives called the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, then a contender for secretary of state, a “two headed snake” and a “globalist puppet,” promoted a rally outside Trump Tower and spread a petition to block Mr. Romney’s appointment to the top diplomatic job, according to a review of now-deleted social-media posts.
For years, a slew of shadowy companies have sold so-called encrypted phones, custom BlackBerry or Android devices that sometimes have the camera and microphone removed and only send secure messages through private networks. Now, the FBI has arrested the owner of one of the most established companies, Phantom Secure, as part of a complex law enforcement operation, according to court records and sources familiar with the matter.
About : Legal Services | Doug Isenberg | Cases & Clients | Firm News
Resources : YouTube Channel | Daily News | Blog | Masterclass | Domain Dispute Digest
The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.