Italy’s administrative authority on personal data protection, Garante Privacy, on Friday asked its Irish counterpart, the Irish Data Protection Commission (Irish DPC), to solicit answers from Facebook to a series of questions on the privacy implications of its new smart glasses before the company markets them on the Italian market. Facebook’s smart glasses, called Ray-Ban [...]

The Governor of Texas, Greg Abbot, Thursday signed into law a bill prohibiting social media platforms from censoring users’ digital expression based on viewpoints or geographic location. The law comes two months after a Florida federal judge in July blocked similar legislation by Governor Ron DeSantis. Section 143A.002 of the new law prohibits social media [...]

A federal judge on Friday ordered a permanent injunction against Apple’s app store requiring them to cease their policy of charging 30% commission on in-app payments. Epic Games challenged this practice, claiming that it constituted a monopoly over its own system of distributing apps and its own system of collecting payments. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers [...]

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on Wednesday ruled that an artificial intelligence (AI) machine cannot be an inventor under the Patent Act. The action was a motion for summary judgement concerning two patent applications filed by Stephen Thaler for an AI machine called DABUS. DABUS was listed as the inventor [...]

The Madras High Court Tuesday observed that queerphobia is being affirmed in the curriculum of the country’s medical courses, leading to judgement and prejudice against LGBTQIA+ communities. The court was hearing a petition from a lesbian couple seeking court protection from their relatives who disapproved of their relationship and had filed “missing girl” complaints with [...]

The Office of Communications (Ofcom), UK’s communication services regulator, on Friday imposed two fines of £100,000 on Chinese state-owned broadcaster Star China Media Limited (SCML) for failing to comply with the country’s broadcasting rules on fairness and privacy. In January 2016, the SCML’s CCTV News service (later renamed the China Global Television Network, or CGTN) [...]

The Delhi High Court issued a notice to the Indian central government on Friday, seeking a reply to WhatsApp’s challenge against the new Information Technology Rules which were created by the government in February 2021. Tech companies have challenged the constitutionality of Rule 4(2) and related provisions requiring social media intermediaries to identify the first originator [...]

Amnesty International on Thursday published a report detailing the Bangladesh government’s crackdown on freedom of expression online by use of the country’s controversial Digital Security Act (DSA). The DSA was introduced in October 2018 and contains some wide-ranging provisions that enable the authorities to trample on the guarantee of freedom of speech and expression. Under [...]

The legislation and judiciary committee (“the committee”) of South Korea’s National Assembly on Wednesday approved a bill banning app store operators such as Apple and Google from charging software developers commissions on in-app purchases. The bill is an amendment of the Telecommunications Business Act and seeks to prevent app-store operators from unfairly using their market [...]

The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), China’s top market regulator, on Tuesday issued draft regulations for banning unfair competition on the internet and restricting the use of user data. The regulations have been drafted under the Law Against Unfair Competition, the Electronic Commerce Law, and the Administrative Punishments law. Business operators have been prohibited [...]