News Items Topics Internet Law Update

U.S. Securities Commission Imposes Fines for Improper Disclosures of Data Security Risk

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charged four companies with making materially misleading disclosures regarding cybersecurity risks and intrusions. The companies have settled the SEC’s charges, paying a total of $7 million in civil penalties.

The companies, Unisys Corp., Avaya Holdings Corp., Check Point Software Technologies Ltd, and Mimecast Limited, were victims of breaches resulting from the SolarWinds Cyber-attack ...

Irish Data Protection Commission slaps €91 million fine on ‘Meta Ireland’

Following a five-year-long investigation, A €91 million fine was sanctioned by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) in late September, due to Meta’s data breach incident keeping hundreds of millions of user passwords in an unencrypted, readable ‘plaintext’ format. The DPC found that Meta violated its obligations as a controller according to the GDPR, reprimanded the company, and issued a ...

Israeli Privacy Protection Authority Issues Guidelines on Data Transfers

The Israeli Privacy Protection Authority (the “PPA”) published the final version of its position paper regarding international transfers of personal information. Like the draft paper in 2022, the final version recognizes the significant practical difficulties that regulations on international data transfers raise, given Regulation 3 of the Privacy Protection Regulations (Transfer of Information to Databases Outside the State’s Boards), 5761-2001 ...

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 ...

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 ...

FTC Issues "Click-to-Cancel" Rule for Simpler Cancellation of Subscriptions

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the adoption of a “click-to-cancel” rule that will require subscription sellers and service providers to make it “as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up”. The rule is set to take effect in April 2025.

The rule targets what are called “Negative option programs”, where a seller ...

U.S. Federal Court rules eBay not liable for harmful products sold on its platform

A federal court in New York found that the online e-commerce giant eBay bears no liability for products sold on its platform by merchants when these products are banned by federal laws. The decision was handed down in the Justice Department’s lawsuit against eBay, which alleged that eBay has been allowing businesses to use its platform to sell banned engine ...

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 ...

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