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U.S. Federal Courts Enjoin Three State Laws Regulating Online Content

Federal courts in Texas, California, and Utah issued preliminary injunctions blocking controversial state laws directed at social networks, focusing on provisions that the courts deemed to negatively affect the platforms’ right to free speech.

A federal court in Texas accepted industry groups’ petition and blocked several provisions of the state’s Securing Children Online Through Parental Empowerment Act (SCOPE ACT), signed ...

Israeli Regulator Outlines Board of Directors' Data Protection Oversight Responsibilities

A company's board of directors must supervise and ensure the company's compliance with privacy laws and related regulations, according to guidelines issued by the Israeli Privacy Protection Authority (PPA).

The guidelines state that the board of directors must ensure that the company drafts, adopts, and implements policy documents required by privacy law. The board of directors must also ensure that ...

Israel Signs International Treaty on AI and Human Rights

Israel signed the Council of Europe’s Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights. The treaty was finalized in May 2024. It was drafted with multinational representatives, including numerous Israeli officials representing the Ministries of Science, Technology and Space, Justice, and Foreign Affairs, the Innovation Authority, and the National Digital Agency. The USA and Canada acted as observer states in the ...

Court Upholds DMCA's Anti-Circumvention Provisions

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), rejecting a First Amendment challenge brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Section 1201 prohibits circumventing technological protections on copyrighted works and distributing tools for such circumvention. It also empowers the Librarian of Congress to grant temporary exemptions through ...

FTC Uncovers Widespread Use of Manipulative "Dark Patterns"

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), along with two international consumer protection organizations, have uncovered that many websites and mobile apps employ "dark patterns"—design strategies that subtly manipulate consumers into making purchases or compromising their privacy. The study, led by the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) and coordinated with the Global Privacy Enforcement Network (GPEN), reviewed 1,010 websites ...

Internet Archives Held Liable for Copyright Infringement in ‘National Emergency Library’ Project

The Internet Archive, an American non-profit organization, suffered a major defeat in copyright litigation that book publishers asserted against it regarding the National Emergency Library (NEL) project.

In March 2020, at the onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the Internet Archive launched the National Emergency Library (NEL), an online library of around 1.4 million books, many of which are copyright-protected ...

California Fights Fake and Misleading Online Content

California’s governor signed three state bills in a legislative flurry to combat election-related online misinformation and AI-generated deep Fakes especially. One of these laws, AB-2839, bans the creation and publication of election-related ‘Deep Fakes’ during the period between 120 days prior to election day and 60 days after it and was adopted as an emergency measure, was set to enter ...

Fifth Circuit Declares Geofence Warrants Unconstitutional

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that geofence warrants are unconstitutional, holding that they violate the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits the U.S. government from conducting "unreasonable searches and seizures." Geofence warrants allow law enforcement to request information about all subscribers located in a specific geographic area during a given timeframe, to identify potential suspects of ...

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