Tech Companies Answer Senate Committee's Questions in Antitrust Probe

Four top U.S. tech companies, Alphabet’s Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple, responded to questions from a congressional committee by defending their practices and declining to answer some questions. The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, which released the answers, had sent the queries as part of its antitrust probe of the four giants, which face a long list of other antitrust probes.

Amazon Tells Lawmaker Police Officers Can Keep Ring Doorbell Videos

Police officers who download videos captured by homeowners’ Ring doorbell cameras can keep them forever and share them with whomever they’d like without providing evidence of a crime, the Amazon-owned firm told a lawmaker earlier this month. More than 600 police forces across the country have entered into partnerships with the camera giant, allowing them to quickly request and download video recorded by Ring’s motion-detecting, Internet-connected cameras inside and around Americans’ homes.

Senate Bill Would Limit Flow of Sensitive Info from Tech Companies to China

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a bill that would curtail the flow of sensitive information about people in the U.S. to China through large tech companies like Apple and TikTok. Hawley's legislation would place new and wide-reaching limitations on companies with ties to China such as TikTok, the mega-popular social media platform owned by a Chinese firm, and Apple, an American company that builds many of its components in mainland China.

Apple Removes All Vaping-Related Apps from App Store

Apple removed all vaping-related apps from its App Store, siding with experts who call vaping “a public health crisis” and “a youth epidemic.” Erika Sward, assistant vice president of national advocacy for the American Lung Association, said apps like the ones removed by Apple are an important marketing tool for vaping companies and can be appealing to children and young adults.

FTC Chairman Discloses 'Multiple' Investigations of Major Tech Platforms

The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission said that his agency had multiple investigations of tech platforms, in addition to its known probe of Facebook, but did not identify them. Big tech companies like Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon.com and Apple face a slew of antitrust probes by the federal government, state attorneys general and congress.

Twitter to Put Limits on Advertisements About Some Political Issues

Twitter announced that it is going to restrict, but not outright ban, advertisements that raise awareness about particular issues like climate change and abortion as part of a broader effort to rein in political advertisements. The social media platform, which has about 330 million monthly active users and raked in an ad revenue of $2.61 billion last year, said it is placing significant limitations around advertisements that touch on topics like "environmental stewardship" or "social equity causes."

EU Antitrust Regulators Ask U.S. to Share Merchant's Complaint Against Amazon

Amazon.com Inc.’s big push into logistics is getting scrutiny from European Union antitrust regulators who asked the U.S. to share an online merchant’s complaint against the retail giant, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg and two people familiar with the matter. The merchant accused Amazon of rewarding those who pay for the company’s warehousing, packing and delivery services with better visibility on Amazon’s e-commerce website.

Supreme Court to Hear Java Copyright Case Between Oracle, Google

The Supreme Court said that it will hear a dispute between tech giants Oracle and Google in a blockbuster case that could lead to billions of dollars in fines and shape copyright law in the Internet era. The case concerns 11,500 lines of code that Google was accused of copying from Oracle’s Java programming language. Google deployed the code in Android, now the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

  • Read the article: CNBC

Whistle-Blower's Apparent Name Spreading Online Despite Attempts to Block

Despite YouTube and Facebook saying they would block people from identifying the government official thought to be the whistle-blower who set in motion an impeachment inquiry into President Trump, a name believed by some to be the whistle-blower has been shared thousands of times on Facebook and videos discussing the identity have been watched by hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube. The failure to keep this official’s name off social media is the latest indication of how difficult it is for these companies to police their sprawling platforms.

Pope Francis Calls for Tech Companies to Remove Child Porn Online

Pope Francis called for Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Google and other tech companies to urgently take measures to remove child porn from the web and prevent children from accessing pornography online. Francis told a Vatican conference of religious leaders and high-tech representatives that it’s no longer acceptable to merely follow the law in monitoring online content, because technology is fast outpacing regulation.

FTC Chairman Encourages Congress to Pass Stronger Privacy Laws

In testimony before a House subcommittee, Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons renewed his call for Congress to pass new privacy legislation, telling representatives, essentially, he can't enforce a law that doesn't exist. Simons was on Capitol Hill testifying in a hearing on "Online Platforms and Market Power," the probe the House Antitrust subcommittee launched in June to dig into Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google.

State Attorneys General in Google Ad Probe Expand Scope to Android

The 50 attorneys general investigating Google are preparing to expand their antitrust probe beyond the company’s advertising business to dive more deeply into its search and Android businesses, people familiar with the matter tell CNBC. The attorneys general — who represent 48 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. — will write up subpoenas known as civil investigative demands, or CIDs, to support the inquiries, the people said.

  • Read the article: CNBC

EU Laws Force Google to Stop Sharing Some User Data with Advertisers

Alphabet Inc.’s Google said its ad exchange would stop telling advertisers what categories of websites users are visiting, a concession to European data-protection authorities that have said the company’s real-time ad auctions violate European Union privacy laws. The changes will affect the process behind the electronic auction that happens in milliseconds to determine which ads show up when users load a website.

Counterfeits Remain Prevalent on Amazon as Critics Blame Other Priorities

Amazon executives have publicly lamented the scourge of counterfeits, saying they have spent hundreds of millions of dollars and hired thousands of workers to police its massive market of third-party firms that use the e-commerce site to sell their goods. But Amazon’s system is failing to stanch the flow of dubious goods even with obvious examples of knockoffs, the result of Amazon’s decisions to prioritize a broad selection of products and cheaper prices over the deployment of aggressive technologies and policies that could further stem the problem, according to former executives and outside consultants.

YouTube to Require Creators Label Videos Directed at Children

YouTube formally announced its plan to have creators label any videos of theirs that may appeal to children. Starting in January 2020, if creators mark a video as directed at kids, data collection will be blocked for all viewers, resulting in lower ad revenue, and those videos will lose some of the platform’s most popular features, including comments and end screens.

Facebook Reports Taking Action on Tens of Millions of Posts, Photos, Videos

Facebook took action against tens of millions of posts, photos and videos over the past six months for violating its rules that prohibit hate speech, harassment and child sexual exploitation, illustrating the vast scale of the tech giant’s task in cleaning up its services from harm and abuse. The company revealed the data about its policy enforcement to the world as part of its latest transparency report, which it said reflected its still-improving efforts to use artificial intelligence to spot harmful content before users ever see it and outwit those who try to evade its censors.

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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.