Internet Governance
Supreme Court Won’t Hear Net Neutrality: The highest court denied certiorari to telecom companies’ challenge to a lower court decision that upheld federal net neutrality rules set during the Obama administration on the basis that the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality made the challenge moot.
Uber Races To Put Autonomous Cars On The Road: More than seven months after a fatal crash involving one of its autonomous vehicles, the ride-hailing company released a voluntary safety report under U.S. Department of Transportation guidelines and has sought permission to resume self-driving car tests in Pennsylvania; safety improvements purportedly include automatic braking that detects objects more quickly and stricter monitoring of safety drivers.
Privacy
Dutch Police Access Encrypted Messages: Law enforcement in the Netherlands stated that a “breakthrough in the interception and decryption of encrypted communication” enabled police to read over 258,000 live messages exchanged between criminals on BlackBox Security’s IronChat, an app “billed as providing end-to-end encryption” that runs on a device costing thousands of dollars; Dutch media reported that a version of IronChat had potentially serious vulnerabilities that allowed the police to break the encryption.
Information Security and Cyberthreats
Facebook Blocks Russian Trolls Ahead Of Midterms: After receiving a tip from the F.B.I., the social network removed more than 100 Facebook and Instagram accounts “due to concerns that they were linked to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency”—the same organization accused of interfering with the 2016 presidential election; the collaboration marks the first time that Facebook publicly acknowledged acting on an influence campaign as a result of intelligence received from a government agency.
Intellectual Property
Google’s Anti-Piracy Measures Pay Off: A new report highlighting the company’s anti-piracy products reveals that YouTube paid $3 billion to copyright owners through Content ID, a system that scans uploads against a database of content owners’ files, detects when an upload uses another person’s intellectual property, and then allows the owner to earn from the upload; Google also reported that it removed 3 billion URLs from Search after releasing a tool that allows copyright owners to report illicit websites, and that it disapproved of 10 million advertisements suspected of linking to infringing websites in 2017.
Free Expression and Censorship
Gab Is Back Online: Social network Gab found a new domain registrar after its prior domain host, GoDaddy, dropped the site following revelations that Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers maintained an anti-Semitic profile on the network; Rob Monster, founder and CEO of Gab’s new domain host Epik.com, wrote that he “did not take the decision lightly,” but believes “de-platforming is digital censorship.”
Chrome 71 To Block Ads: The new browser, due for release in December, will block all website ads that Google classifies as “abusive,” including those that cause the browser to misbehave by generating fake system messages, automatically redirecting users, or attempting to steal personal information; Google will give site owners a thirty-day period to remove the advertisement, and failure to do so will cause Chrome to block every ad on the website.
Practice Note
Licensing SEPs To Chipmaker Competitors: A California federal judge ruled that Qualcomm must license its standard-essential patents (SEPs) to competing modem-chip sellers, siding with the Federal Trade Commission in its argument that Qualcomm violated its fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) licensing commitments; the court observed that Qualcomm itself received such licenses to supply components and emphasized in prior litigation that an SEP holder may not discriminate in licensing its SEPs.
On The Lighter Side
AI News Anchors: China’s state-run press agency used footage from humans to generate AI anchors that read the news using synthesized voices.
Joel R. Reidenberg
Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Chair and Professor of Law
Founding Academic Director, Fordham CLIP
Tom Norton
Executive Director, Fordham CLIP
Tommine McCarthy
Subrina Chowdhury
Editorial Fellows, Fordham CLIP