+++ Class Action Lawsuit against Google over Consumer Browser Privacy Continues
+++ The New York Times is Considering a Lawsuit against OpenAI over AI Training Practices
+++ Technology Lobbying Group sues Arkansas Lawmakers over new Child Protection Law
Class Action Lawsuit against Google over Consumer Browser Privacy Continues
Google is accused of leveraging its suite of products, analytics, cookies, and apps to collect user data and behavior even when users operate in incognito mode or other private mode settings that suggest user privacy. The lawsuit seeks at least $5,000 of damages per user for violations of federal wiretapping and California privacy laws. On Monday, Google failed to dismiss the legal action, which could run up to $5 billion in damages, when a U.S. District Court Judge ruled Google failed to provide information about its data collection practices. In particular, how it handles users’ browser and search history.
Read the full report on reuters.com.
Read the case Brown et al v Google LLC et al, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 20-03664.
The New York Times is Considering a Lawsuit against OpenAI over AI Training Practices
Anonymous sources for NPR imply the New York Times will take legal action against OpenAI for copyright infringement. Allegedly, negotiations between the media conglomerate and the AI research lab to use news reporting content as training data for AI models are stalling. OpenAI’s practice to scrape data from publicly available sources on the internet, including NYT content, could be considered outside the fair use doctrine, allowing content creators to appropriate copyrighted works provided the new content is transformative.
Read the full report on npr.org.
Technology Lobbying Group sues Arkansas Lawmakers over new Child Protection Law
Arkansas legislators passed the “Social Media Safety Act”, a new regulation that requires social media companies to perform age verification checks on new users. If a user is under the legal age of 18, the law requires parental consent and social media companies must obtain it. Otherwise, minors in Arkansas are prohibited from becoming account holders on social media platforms. A lobbying group founded in 2001 representing multinational technology companies Amazon, Google, Meta (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads, etc), TikTok, and X among others filed suit challenging the new regulation stating “SB396 imposes onerous obligations on social media companies that severely burden both minors’ and adults’ First Amendment rights to speak, listen, and associate without government interference on the widely used online services that it covers.” The SB396 is set to go into effect on Sept. 1.
Read the full report on ap.com.
Read the full text of Senate Bill 396.
Read the case NetChoice v. Attorney General Tim Griffin, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas, No. 5:23-cv-05105-TLB D.
In Other News (or things you should read)
- Richard Allen’s regulate.tech blog: How to regulate the internet without breaking it
- Benjamin Wittes, Robert Chesney, Jack Goldsmith’s lawfare: Hard national security choices
- Julie Zerbo’s the fashion law (TFL)
- Justin Hendrix’ tech policy press: technology and democracy.