| Internet Governance European Commission Initiates Competition Law Enforcement Action Against Amazon: Armed with the authority to fine Amazon 10% of its global turnover, the Commission has charged the retail giant with using information about third-party seller activity on its online marketplace to gain a competitive advantage as a retailer itself; Amazon counters that its global market share is less than 1%, it faces large retailers in every country, and it has provided unrivaled support to small businesses, with over 150,000 European enterprises participating in its marketplace. TikTok Seeks Clarity As Divestiture Deadline Looms, Administration Silent: Despite efforts at actively engaging the administration and working to resolve the issues that prompted President Trump to ban the app, TikTok has received neither substantive feedback on proposed privacy and security improvements nor a response to its subsequent application for a 30-day extension to the November 12th deadline; as a result, the service has filed a petition in a United States Court of Appeals for a review of actions by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which issued the order requiring TikTok parent company ByteDance to sell its United States assets. |
| Privacy European Data Protection Board Publishes Guidance On Standard Contractual Clauses Following Schrems II: Following the July ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union that invalidated the Privacy Shield framework that many businesses relied on to transfer the personal data of European citizens from the European Union to the United States, the European Data Protection Board released a 38-page guidance on the use of Standard Contractual Clauses, one of the few remaining methods of engaging in EU-compliant data transfers to the United States. |
| Information Security and Cyberthreats Zoom Agrees To Upgrade Security Program In Tentative Settlement With FTC: The company has agreed to settle allegations that it has not provided end-to-end encryption for Zoom meetings outside of its “Connecter” product despite claims to the contrary; while Zoom will implement security measures to protect its user base as part of the settlement, it is not required to compensate affected users. Digital Rights Activist Accesses Moscow’s Facial Recognition System For Just $200: After transferring the equivalent of approximately $200 to a service advertised on Telegram that offered access to the Moscow Police’s facial recognition system, a digital rights group volunteer received a detailed report of her movements over the previous month that was based where her image had been captured by police cameras. |
| Intellectual Property Twitch Apologizes For Last Month’s Vague DMCA Takedown Notices: In a blog post explaining its copyright crackdown last month, Twitch apologized for its inadequate warning emails and recommended that users use recorded music on their streams only if they own the copyrights and that they delete old videos that have copyrighted music in them. |
| Free Expression & Censorship Facebook Groups In Violation Of Community Standards Policies Now Risk Forced Moderation, Subsequent Removal: In a heating up of Facebook’s efforts to curtail the spread of misinformation on its platform, the social media giant will start placing groups in frequent violation of its community standards policies on non-appealable, 60-day probationary periods, during which posts to the group must be manually approved by the group’s administrators or moderators; while Facebook deems the strategy a temporary protection “during this unprecedented time,” it warns that a group that persists in violations during its probation will be banned. |
| On the Lighter Side Japanese City Responds To Bear Attacks With Robowolves: In response to a rise in black bear attacks as a result of an acorn shortage in the Japanese wilderness, the city of Takikawa, Japan, installed robotic wolves to deter bear attacks. |
| Joel R. Reidenberg Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP Tom Norton Executive Director, Fordham CLIP Erica Chan Daniel Gerken Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP |