European Parliament Approves Laws on Antitrust, Digital Content Regulation

European lawmakers approved two sweeping new pieces of digital regulation, paving the way for clashes between regulators and some of the world’s biggest tech companies over how the rules should be applied. The European Parliament voted its stamp of approval for the two laws — one focused on anticompetitive behavior, the other on content deemed illegal in Europe— after reaching an agreement on them with European Union member states in the spring.

Twitter Sues Indian Government After Order to Remove Content, Block Accounts

Twitter said that it had sued the Indian government, escalating the social media company’s fight in the country as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks more control over critical online posts. Twitter’s suit, filed in the Karnataka High Court in Bangalore, challenges a recent order from the Indian government for the company to remove content and block dozens of accounts.

Social Media Sites Remove Pages Linked to Accused Chicago Gunman

YouTube, Instagram, Discord, and Twitter moved quickly to pull social media pages that appeared to belong to Robert Crimo III, a person of interest in the Chicago suburb shooting that left six dead and dozens injured this afternoon. Under a pair of aliases, Crimo seems to have posted more than a dozen videos to YouTube and hosted a Discord channel named “SS,” which was open to the public through an invite link.

Hacker Offers to Sell Police Database with Info on 1 Billion Chinese Citizens

In what may be one of the largest known breaches of Chinese personal data, a hacker has offered to sell a Shanghai police database that could contain information on perhaps one billion Chinese citizens. The unidentified hacker, who goes by the name ChinaDan, posted in an online forum that the database for sale included terabytes of information on a billion Chinese.

CFTC Files Civil Charges Against Company for Fraudulent Bitcoin Operation

The U.S. commodities regulator announced it had filed civil charges against a South African man and his company for operating a fraudulent commodity pool worth over $1.7 billion in bitcoin. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said the fraud scheme, which saw the firm solicit bitcoin online from thousands of people to purportedly operate a commodity pool, was the largest it had ever pursued involving the cryptocurrency.

FCC Member Asks Apple, Google to Remove TikTok from App Stores

A federal communications regulator has asked Apple Inc. and Google to remove Chinese-owned TikTok from their app stores, citing the security risks posed by the data collected by the short-form video site on American users. “It is clear that TikTok poses an unacceptable national security risk due to its extensive data harvesting being combined with Beijing’s apparently unchecked access to that sensitive data,” Federal Communications Commission member Brendan Carr wrote in a letter to Apple and Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc.

Google Agrees to Pay $90 Million to Settle App Developers' Lawsuit

Alphabet Inc's Google has agreed to pay $90 million to settle a legal fight with app developers over the money they earned creating apps for Android smartphones and for enticing users to make in-app purchases, according to a court filing. The app developers, in a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco, had accused Google of using agreements with smartphone makers, technical barriers and revenue sharing agreements to effectively close the app ecosystem and shunt most payments through its Google Play billing system with a default service fee of 30%.

Taiwanese Semiconductor Manufacturer Waiting on U.S. Subsidies

Taiwan’s biggest semiconductor manufacturer has started building a computer-chip factory in Arizona and is hiring U.S. engineers and sending them to Taiwan for training, but the pace of construction will depend on Congress approving federal subsidies, a Taiwanese minister said. The message follows similar calls from U.S. chip manufacturers Intel and GlobalFoundries, which said that the delay in passing the subsidy legislation is slowing their investments in new factories in Ohio and New York.

Former Uber Security Chief Faces Charges for Covering Up Hacking

A federal judge said a former Uber Technologies Inc. security chief must face wire fraud charges over his alleged role in trying to cover up a 2016 hacking that exposed personal information of 57 million passengers and drivers. The U.S. Department of Justice had in December added the three charges against Joseph Sullivan to an earlier indictment, saying he arranged to pay money to two hackers in exchange for their silence, while trying to conceal the hacking from passengers, drivers and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Ex-Canadian Government Employee to Plead Guilty to Ransomware Charges

A former Canadian government employee has agreed to plead guilty in the U.S. to charges that he worked for a ransomware gang that researchers say has reaped almost $50 million in illegal payments during the past two years. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins has agreed to plead guilty to hacking-related charges, according to court documents filed Tuesday in federal court in Tampa. He was accused of working as part of a digital extortion group known as NetWalker.

Switzerland's Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Foreign Gambling Sites

Switzerland's supreme court has upheld a ban on accessing foreign online gambling sites, dashing the hopes of three betting outfits to tap the Swiss market. The Federal Court said in a statement the "domain name system" ban was proportionate. Gaming officials have since 2019 used network blocks to limit access to the market to Swiss-approved games of chance.

Senators Ask Treasury Secretary for Details on National Security Review of TikTok

A group of six Republican senators asked U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about an ongoing Biden administration national security review of social media platform TikTok. The U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals by foreign acquirers for potential national security risks, in 2020 ordered Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok because of fears that U.S. user data could be passed on to China's communist government.

Senators Seek Information from Facebook About Policy on Gun Sales

Three top Senate Democrats are urging Facebook to be more transparent about an internal policy that allows gun sellers to violate the company’s prohibition against peer-to-peer firearm sales 10 times before they are kicked off the platform. Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) sent a letter to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, requesting documentation about how the company’s “strikes” system, which gives users who break the company’s rules a specific number of passes and a tiered system of punishments, applies to guns.

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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.