New Hampshire Judge Rejects TikTok's Request to Dismiss Lawsuit

A judge rejected TikTok’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit by the state of New Hampshire accusing it of using manipulative design features aimed at children and teens. In his ruling, New Hampshire Superior Court Judge John Kissinger Jr. said the state’s allegations were valid and specific enough to proceed, writing the civil claims were “based on the App’s alleged defective and dangerous features” and not the content in the app.

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French Prosecutors Investigating X Algorithms for 'Foreign Interference'

French prosecutors have opened a criminal investigation into X over allegations that the company owned by billionaire Elon Musk manipulated its algorithms for the purposes of “foreign interference.” Magistrate Laure Beccuau said in a statement that prosecutors had launched the probe and were looking into whether the social media giant broke French law by altering its algorithms and fraudulently extracting data from users.

Judge Says Meta, TikTok Must Face Mother's Wrongful Death Suit

Meta Platforms and TikTok owner ByteDance must face a wrongful death lawsuit by the mother of a 15-year-old Manhattan boy who died while "subway surfing" on a moving train, a New York state judge ruled. Justice Paul Goetz ruled that Norma Nazario can try to prove Meta and ByteDance "goaded" her son Zackery into subway surfing by addicting him to Instagram and TikTok, where he viewed content about "dangerous challenges."

Google to Propose Highlighting Search Results from Other Sellers

Alphabet Inc.’s Google will propose highlighting search results from other companies’ shopping and travel platforms at the top of its page in an attempt to comply with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act and fend off fines, people familiar the matter said. Under the plan, a box at the top of Google’s search results will show ranked options from price-comparison companies’ websites, the people said, asking not to be identified because the proposal is not yet public.

Illegal Copies of Movies on YouTube Create New Challenges for Studios

YouTube has long tried to tamp down piracy, but users who upload stolen films and television shows have employed new tactics to evade the platform’s detection tools, research showed, including cropping films and manipulating footage. The findings of the research shed new light on the copyright issues that once threatened to upend YouTube’s business and also show how advertisers have unwittingly supported illicit content on YouTube, and they provide rare data about piracy on the platform.

Attorney General Told Tech Companies to Ignore TikTok Ban

Attorney General Pam Bondi told tech companies that they could lawfully violate a statute barring American companies from supporting TikTok based on a sweeping claim that President Trump has the constitutional power to set aside laws, newly disclosed documents show. In letters to companies like Apple and Google, Ms. Bondi wrote that Mr. Trump had decided that shutting down TikTok would interfere with his “constitutional duties,” so the law banning the social media app must give way to his “core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers.”

Supreme Court to Hear Case on ISP Liability for Copyright Infringement

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to decide whether an Internet service provider can be liable for materially contributing to copyright infringement if it failed to terminate internet access for customers known to be pirating music. The Supreme Court granted cert in an appeal by Cox Communications, which maintains that a decision imposing liability by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond, Virginia, “threatens mass disruption across the internet.”

Jury's Verdict Requires Google to Pay $314.6 Million to Android Users

A jury in San Jose, California, said that Google misused customers' cell phone data and must pay more than $314.6 million to Android smartphone users in the state, according to an attorney for the plaintiffs. The jury agreed with the plaintiffs that Alphabet's Google was liable for sending and receiving information from the devices without permission while they were idle, causing what the lawsuit had called "mandatory and unavoidable burdens shouldered by Android device users for Google's benefit."

Senate Drops Provision Limiting State Laws on AI for 10 Years

The U.S. Senate voted 99-1 to strip from the sprawling tax and immigration bill a provision that would have blocked states from regulating artificial intelligence for the next decade. Republican leaders and tech trade groups have pitched the multiyear freeze on state regulations as necessary to pave the way for U.S. AI firms to innovate and outcompete their Chinese counterparts.

Supreme Court Upholds Texas Law Requiring Age Checks for Pornography

The Supreme Court rejected a challenge to a Texas law that seeks to limit minors’ access to pornography on the Internet, ruling that it does not violate the First Amendment to require people to verify their age through measures like the submission of government-issued IDs. The Texas law applies to any commercial website “more than one-third of which is sexual material harmful to minors” and and requires such sites to use one of several methods to verify that users are 18 or older.

U.S. Officials Prepare for Cyberattack from Iran as Retaliation

U.S. officials and private experts are warning that Iran may retaliate against the United States for bombing its nuclear facilities with any of a wide range of cyberattacks that could cause lasting damage or significant psychological impact. In the 15 years since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran with the early cyberweapon known as Stuxnet, a computer worm that infiltrated computers in Iran’s nuclear enrichment program and damaged critical centrifuges, Iran has devoted itself to building its own capabilities to a point well beyond those of other countries its size.

U.S. Indicts British Hacker 'IntelBroker' for Stealing, Selling Data Online

A 25-year-old British man known as “IntelBroker” was accused by U.S. authorities of conspiring with a group of hackers to steal data from dozens of companies and offer it for sale online, causing more than $25 million in damages to victims around the world. Federal prosecutors in New York announced an indictment had been unsealed charging Kai West, 25, with four counts including conspiracy to commit computer intrusions.

Judge Says Fair Use Protects Meta in AI Copyright Case -- With Caveat

Meta Platforms Inc. escaped a first-of-its-kind copyright lawsuit from a group of authors who alleged the tech giant hoovered up millions of copyrighted books without permission to train its generative AI model called Llama. San Francisco federal Judge Vince Chhabria ruled that Meta’s decision to use the books for training is protected under copyright law’s fair use defense, but he cautioned that his opinion is more a reflection on the authors’ failure to litigate the case effectively.

Judge Finds Anthropic's Claude Protected by Fair Use in Books Case

Anthropic’s use of books to train its artificial intelligence model Claude was “fair use” and “transformative,” a federal judge ruled. Amazon-backed Anthropic’s AI training did not violate the authors’ copyrights since the large language models “have not reproduced to the public a given work’s creative elements, nor even one author’s identifiable expressive style,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup.

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Shareholders Sue Apple for Overstating Progress on AI Features

Apple was sued by shareholders in a proposed securities fraud class action that accused it of downplaying how long it needed to integrate advanced artificial intelligence into its Siri voice assistant, hurting iPhone sales and its stock price. The complaint covers shareholders who suffered potentially hundreds of billions of dollars of losses in the year ending June 9, when Apple introduced several features and aesthetic improvements for its products but kept AI changes modest.

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.