The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit set oral argument in programmers' challenge of FCC confidentiality rules in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/DirecTV deals for Feb. 20, said a court order. The date matches the expedited schedule requested by the parties involved. The FCC has told the court that the case needs to be resolved to allow prompt review of the proposed deals.
The Supreme Court reversed a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision and unanimously ruled that warehouse workers filling orders for Amazon don’t have to be paid for time spent going through security checks. Integrity Staffing v. Busk stemmed from a lawsuit brought by workers employed by Integrity Staffing Solutions, who claimed they were entitled to compensation under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) for the time spent waiting to undergo and to go through security screenings. But “an activity is integral and indispensable to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform ... if it is an intrinsic element of those activities and one with which the employee cannot dispense if he is to perform his principal activities,” Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Tuesday in the court opinion. Because the employees’ time spent waiting to undergo, as well as undergoing, Integrity Staffing’s security screenings doesn’t meet these criteria, the appeals decision was reversed, he said. That time isn’t compensable under the FLSA, he said. The 9th Circuit asserted that post-shift activities that ordinarily would be classified as “non-compensable postliminary activities are nevertheless compensable as integral and indispensable to an employee’s principal activities if those postshift activities are necessary to the principal work performed and done for the benefit of the employer.” That court erred by focusing on whether an employer required a particular activity, Thomas said. That an employer could conceivably reduce the time spent by employees on any preliminary or postliminary activity doesn’t change the nature of the activity “or its relationship to the principal activities that an employee is employed to perform,” he said. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan submitted a joint concurring statement. The allegations in this case "were simply not true," an Amazon spokeswoman said. Data show that employees typically walk through security with little or no wait, "and Amazon has a global process that is designed to ensure the time employees spend waiting in security is less than 90 seconds," she said.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit granted an FCC request (see 1411260051) for an expedited briefing schedule in the court’s consideration of programmers’ petition for review of the commission’s confidentiality policies in the AT&T/DirecTV and Comcast/Time Warner Cable transactions, said an order issued Monday. Final briefs in the case are due Jan. 13, as was requested by the FCC and consented to by the programmers. Oral argument would be some weeks later. The FCC has pushed for the case to be resolved quickly to allow the reviews of the Comcast/TWC and AT&T/DirecTV to be completed quickly.
The Supreme Court faces a tough question in determining the intent of a threat while one sits behind a computer, said Steve Freeman, Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director-legal affairs, in an interview. Freeman was referencing the oral argument the high court heard Monday in Elonis v. U.S. ADL filed a brief on behalf of the U.S. government. The case hinges on whether threatening Facebook posts by Anthony Elonis against his wife are protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Without “body language” or other indicators, it’s difficult to determine the intent of the threat, said Freeman. Such cases must be determined on a “fact-specific” basis, he said. The Supreme Court’s decision in the case may not arrive until June, he said. The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Democracy & Technology and Cato Institute were among groups that filed a joint brief on behalf of Elonis.
BMG Rights Management and Round Hill Music sued Cox Communications for failing to penalize subscribers who repeatedly infringe copyrighted materials, said documents filed Wednesday at U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia. The music publishers alleged that Cox failed to comply with the Copyright Alert System, which lets ISPs terminate Internet services to repeat infringers. “Despite its published policy to the contrary, Cox's actual policy is to refuse to suspend, terminate, or otherwise penalize subscriber accounts that repeatedly commit copyright infringement through its network in any meaningful numbers,” the publishers said. Cox didn't comment.
The FCC asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for an expedited briefing schedule for content companies’ petition for review of the commission’s order releasing confidential programming documents connected with the proposed mergers of AT&T/DirecTV and Comcast/Time Warner Cable. An emergency stay in the case has put the FCC’s shot clocks for completing merger reviews on hold. The petitioners in the case, which include CBS, Disney and Viacom, have consented to the proposed schedule, the FCC said. Under the FCC’s proposed schedule, the final briefs in the case would be filed Jan. 13, with the court likely issuing an opinion some weeks later. Since the programmers’ case sought to block access only to the video programming confidential information, the commission will allow access during the stay to highly confidential information that doesn’t contain VPCI, the motion said.
Microsoft’s motion to dismiss Getty Images' lawsuit was denied by the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, in court documents filed Monday. Getty sued Microsoft Sept. 4, after Microsoft’s test version of its Bing Image Widget let Web developers link Bing Image search results to their websites. Getty alleged that the widget infringed 62 of its copyrighted works. Microsoft argued that Getty “failed to allege a single instance of infringement by a third-party Widget user” of any of the 62 works, said Judge Denise Cote in a 9-page opinion. That Getty didn’t identify the third-party sites that linked the images, nor the dates when those images were posted, doesn’t subvert Getty’s copyright claims, said Cote. The docket number is 14-cv-7114.
HDMI Licensing and the producers of the InfoComm show jointly asked the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas for a stay through Jan. 31 in their three-month-old legal battle because they have started talks to settle the case, said a stipulation motion filed at the court Friday. Though a "potential resolution" of the case is "at hand," it may "require some time to effectuate," the motion said. Both sides want to avoid an "extended or extensive litigation," so they've "agreed to exchange certain materials and negotiate in good faith over the next two months," it said. A nasty war of words between the two sides has marked the court battle. The InfoComm 2014 AV show in mid-June gave "safe haven" to exhibitors that are "direct infringers" of HDMI trademarks by letting them market, promote and sell unlicensed HDMI products on the show floor, shielded from investigators, HDMI Licensing alleged in a complaint filed in September (see 1409150044). InfoComm countersued a month later (see 1410170054), accusing HDMI Licensing of "blatant extortion" for the manner in which it treated "as a common criminal" any company on the InfoComm show floor that used the HDMI acronym.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that an administrative subpoena can be used to obtain Internet service subscriber data. The case, on appeal from the U.S. District Court in St. Paul, Minnesota, hinged on the constitutional rights of Guy Wheelock, who was convicted of receiving child pornography. Wheelock challenged the use of the administrative subpoena -- rather than a warrant -- to obtain his Internet subscriber information, and his 15-year mandatory minimum sentence. The 8th Circuit upheld the constitutionality of that sentence. “With Comcast in possession of his subscriber data, Wheelock cannot claim a reasonable ‘expectation of privacy in [the] government’s acquisition of his subscriber information, including his IP address and name from third-party service providers,’” the 10-page decision said. “Because Wheelock had no reasonable expectation of privacy in the subscriber information, a warrant was not necessary,” it said.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a California ballot initiative (Proposition 35) violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment rights of sex offenders, noted an Electronic Frontier Foundation news release. EFF and the American Civil Liberties Union sued the state of California after the passage of Prop 35, also known as the Californians Against Sexual Exploitation Act, in 2012, it said. The act required all California sex offenders, including those whose crimes weren’t online, to “turn over a list of all their Internet user names and online service providers to law enforcement,” said EFF. The 9th Circuit’s unanimous three-judge panel's opinion upheld an earlier ruling by the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The case is Doe v. Harris; docket 13-15263.