Country of origin cases

Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions. Lawsuits added since the last update are in bold.

The White House Office of the National Cyber Director released guidance Tuesday, dubbing it a "roadmap," addressing "key vulnerabilities" in border gateway protocol (BGP) security. ONCD urged "every network operator use a risk-based approach to address BGP vulnerabilities" through the adoption of resource public key infrastructure (RPKI), which includes route origin authorization and origination, calling it a "mature, ready-to-implement approach to mitigate BGP’s vulnerabilities."

TikTok engages in “expressive activity” when its algorithm curates content. Accordingly, the platform can’t claim Section 230 immunity from liability when that content harms users, the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday (docket 22-3061). A three-judge panel remanded a district court decision dismissing a lawsuit from a mother of a 10-year-old TikTok user who unintentionally hung herself after watching a “Blackout Challenge” video on the platform. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania dismissed the case, holding TikTok was immune under Communications Decency Act Section 230. The Third Circuit reversed in part, vacated in part and remanded the case back to the district court. Judge Patty Schwarz wrote the opinion, citing U.S. Supreme Court findings about “expressive activity” in Moody v. NetChoice (see 2402270072). SCOTUS found that “expressive activity includes presenting a curated compilation of speech originally created by others.” Schwarz noted the court’s holding that a platform algorithm reflects “editorial judgments” about compiling third-party speech and amounts to an “expressive product” that the First Amendment protects. This protected speech can also be considered “first-party” speech under Section 230, said Schwarz. According to the filing, 10-year-old Nylah Anderson viewed the Blackout Challenge on her “For You Page,” which TikTok curates for each individual user. Had Anderson viewed the challenge through TikTok’s search function, TikTok could have been viewed as more of a “repository of third-party content than an affirmative promoter of such content,” Schwarz wrote. Tawainna Anderson, the child’s mother who filed the suit, claims the company knew about the challenge, allowed users to post videos of themselves participating in it and promoted videos to children via an algorithm. The company didn’t comment.

Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.

With Europe's AI Act now law, all companies that provide or use AI systems and do business in the EU must begin considering compliance. The measure is rankling the U.S. business sector and government. One major compliance sticking point is a data-quality requirement aimed at rooting out systemic bias, said a European IT attorney.

Air5 company focused on aligning wired and wireless networks, names Jeff Brown, ex-AutoPylot Technologies and former Verizon, as CEO … Eric Kolte, ex-Blue Origin, joins Titans Space as founding chief development officer ... Samsara cloud company announces Lacework’s Meagen Eisenberg as chief marketing officer … FreeWheel, global tech platform for the TV industry, taps Kris Magel, ex-Samba TV, as head of global agency partnerships … ACA Connects elects board, including new members Jonathan Bullock, Hotwire; Katherine Gessner, MCTV; and John Walburn, Cable One; also appoints Cogeco’s Paul Cowling to replace Leslie Brown of Cogeco’s Breezeline … Walt Disney Co. board names board member James Gorman to chair its succession planning committee.

A July order by the FCC rejecting a petition for reconsideration by the Competitive Carriers Association of the commission’s 2022 order rules to improve the delivery of outage information to public safety answering points (see 2211170051) is now effective, a Wednesday notice in the Federal Register said. CCA argued that it was unreasonable to require originating service providers (OSPs) to initially notify PSAPs of 911 outages within 30 minutes of discovering an outage, the notice said: The FCC found CCA’s arguments “unpersuasive and concluded that the Commission was reasonable in adding a time limit to the OSP notification rules.” The FCC also rejected CCA’s argument that the commission should create a centralized database “before OSPs would be required to exercise special diligence in maintaining PSAP contact information,” the notice said.

Communications Litigation Today is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.

Communications Litigation Today is tracking the below lawsuits involving appeals of FCC actions.

Streaming services increasingly are cracking down on password sharing as they see the success that Netflix has had with its initiative, industry analysts tell us. Executives at streamers tell Wall Street the effort will help drive revenue growth.