April 2019 WILMap Updates

In the context of an investigation into the robbery of a wallet and mobile telephone, Spanish police requested the investigating magistrate in charge of the case to grant them access

A federal judge in California ruled this month that the government cannot force Facebook to break the encryption on its popular Messenger voice app in a criminal case in which

MEPs voted on updated rules on audiovisual media services, protecting children better, with stricter rules on advertising, and 30% European content in video-on-demand. From the European Parliament .

Alphabet Inc. ’s Google, Facebook Inc. , Twitter Inc. pledged to work together with other tech and advertising companies to fight the spread of “fake news” online in Europe, largely

According to news reports, the repeal bill was voted down because opposition senators felt that the law addressed a pressing need and should be reformed rather than repealed, with one

There’s a lot of talk these days about “content moderation.” Policymakers, some public interest groups, and even some users are clamoring for intermediaries to do “more,” to make the Internet

Rather than just addressing particular political pain points of fake news or cybercrime, the government should look to bolster the security of India's digital economy overall. From The Wire .

Prompted by the set of Canadian and U.S. court decisions in Equustek v. Google , the audience at a recent copyright conference discussed whether a plaintiff could obtain a global

ON SUNNY evenings in Brussels, young Eurocrats mingle on the bar terraces of the Place du Luxembourg outside the European Parliament. The continent’s future leaders pay little heed to the

At least two Twitter accounts linked to the man suspected of sending explosive devices to more than a dozen prominent Democrats were suspended on Friday afternoon. From TechCrunch .

This decision is from July but just showed up in Westlaw. Mezey sued Twitter for suspending his account. The opinion doesn’t provide any background about the account or why Twitter

Facebook has removed 82 pages, groups and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that originated out of Iran. From TechCrunch .

Alex Stamos on the risks of giving his former employer and other giant platforms the power to determine what people can—and can’t—say online. From MIT Technology Review .

Congressman Ro Khanna’s proposed Internet Bill of Rights pushes forward in a positive manner individual rights on the internet. It provides guidelines for critical elements where the United States’ and

The state has passed a law that sets higher security standards for net-connected devices made or sold in the region. It demands that each gadget be given a unique password

It is happening. Amid rising concern about the overwhelming size, power and ethics all of online intermediaries, governments and regulators are debating a comprehensive new regulatory framework for the Internet.

California governor Jerry Brown signed regulations into law last Friday (Sept. 30) that should make it easier for Californians to know whether they’re speaking to a human or a bot.

A wide consensus has emerged that regulatory framework for platforms like Google and Facebook needs to change. Calls for action are coming from a range of different stakeholders in the

A new app has been recently launched by Google, aimed at protecting users from state-sponsored censorship and limitations on freedom of information. The app, called Intra, was created by Jigsaw

On September 24, 2018, the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia dismissed a case challenging the constitutionality of the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking

Imagine ending up in jail with no understanding of what the charges against you are, no idea what legal process you will be facing, and no idea what happens if

They posed as fans of pop stars and national heroes as they flooded Facebook with their hatred. One said Islam was a global threat to Buddhism. Another shared a false

In an otherwise innocuous part of Facebook’s expansive Silicon Valley campus, a locked door bears a taped-on sign that reads “War Room.” Behind the door lies a nerve center the

Twitter said on Wednesday (17 October) that it had identified 3,841 accounts affiliated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm” that has been indicted by US

The Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill would restrict freedom of expression and press freedom, threaten the protection of journalistic sources, and undermine academic research in Britain. It would limit the

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has spoken out against the European Parliament’s copyright reform initiative, claiming that the legislation will limit free speech for fledgling content creators. From TBI Vision .

A peer-reviewed study of almost 1m Android apps has revealed how data from smartphones are harvested and shared, with nearly 90 per cent of apps set up to transfer information

I think we can all agree that Silicon Valley needs more adult supervision right about now. Is the solution for its companies to hire a chief ethics officer? While some

Wael Abbas, a human rights activist focused on police brutality in Egypt, has been under arrest since May on charges of spreading fake news and “misusing social media.” Andy Hall,

Facebook is erasing popular alternative media pages that had millions of likes and suspending anti-war and anti-police brutality accounts, in coordination with Twitter. Journalist Max Blumenthal says this is part

Should social media platforms be subject to a statutory duty of care, akin to occupiers’ liability or health and safety, with the aim of protecting against online harms? In a

There’s a simple story for how the media is driving political polarization. Unlike in yesteryear, when there were three nightly newscasts and two local newspapers, the media today is fragmented,

Glassdoor is a consumer review site for employees reviewing employers. The plaintiff in this case is a franchisor. Purported employees of a franchisee posted six negative reviews about the franchisee

Britain’s information watchdog has asked Facebook’s lead European regulator to investigate how the company targets, monitors and shows adverts to users, saying it was concerned about some practices at the

Facebook has long promoted itself as a tool for bringing people together to make the world a better place. Now the social media giant has acknowledged that in Myanmar it

As a result of updates by the EU to its rules for audiovisual media services , traditional television and new services such as on-demand broadcasting will compete on a level

Two startups are using algorithms to track when images are edited—from the moment they’re taken. From MIT Technology Review .

The spread of “junk news” on Twitter and Facebook has increased since the 2016 election, despite the companies’ investments in people and technology to try to control disinformation that could

Less than a week before the midterms, Facebook has come under fire for huge loopholes in a feature that is supposed to require political advertisers to disclose the source of

"Yeah, sure, sorry, whatever, " muttered Twitter, while making the "wanking" hand motion. From BoingBoing .

When mobile phone service providers offer free access to news content, are citizens better informed? Are these bundled offerings a good way for independent news producers to expand their audiences?

The French government is to "embed" a team of regulators inside Facebook to work out how best to tackle online hate speech, President Emmanuel Macron announced on Monday. From Euronews

The freedom of expression organisation ARTICLE 19 and a further 70 civil society groups have written to the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, to ask the company to improve the

Facebook has removed 82 pages, groups and accounts for “coordinated inauthentic behavior” that originated out of Iran. From TechCrunch .

Sheryl Sandberg was seething. Inside Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, top executives gathered in the glass-walled conference room of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg. It was September 2017, more than a

Facebook hired a PR firm that attempted to discredit the company’s critics by claiming they were agents of the billionaire George Soros, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. From

The declaration takes stock of the current challenges for the free press, which are shared by traditional and digital journalism. It reinforces the key role that journalists play in democratic

On November 26, Russia’s federal media censor announced administrative charges against “Google, LLC” for failing to comply with a law that requires online search engines to purge any hyperlinks to

Europe’s sweeping new privacy rules are fueling an explosion in complaints by individuals, reports of data breaches by companies, and greater awareness among Europeans about data protection. From Politico.eu .

Parliament has used its legal powers to seize internal Facebook documents in an extraordinary attempt to hold the US social media giant to account after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly

A 16-year-old South Sudanese girl was sold off for marriage to the highest bidder on Facebook in November, raising concerns that the platform has become a “latter-day slave market.” From

Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced a plan to create an independent body to make decisions about what kinds of content his site’s users will be allowed to post.

In his testimony to the US Senate last spring, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that his company doesn’t sell user data, as if to reassure policymakers and the public. But

Hate speech, misinformation, harassment, terrorism, sexual exploitation: The public’s demand that social media do more about these and other daunting problems is growing. Many feel that social media are failing

Google’s top news executive has refused to rule out shutting down Google News in EU countries, as the search engine faces a battle with Brussels over plans to charge a

Every political advert on Facebook will now be required to come from someone who has proved they live in the UK, and carry a disclaimer revealing who paid for it,

The revision of EU’s Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD), adopted earlier this month after a legislative journey of more than two years, introduces (among other things) a completely new element

When Mark Zuckerberg appeared before the US Congress this spring he insisted he was not running a media company. But it is getting easier to say why he does. Facebook,

In a special press conference today at Westminster, Members of the ‘International Grand Committee’ on Disinformation and ‘Fake News’ signed a declaration on the Principles of the Law Governing the

Amazon has “failed to provide sufficient answers” about its controversial facial recognition software, Rekognition — and lawmakers won’t take the company’s usual silent treatment for an answer. From TechCrunch .

The UK government has spent almost £100,000 of taxpayers’ money in the last week buying Facebook adverts in a bid to convince the public to support Theresa May’s Brexit deal

In Afghanistan, deliberate disinformation circulated by authorities and poor media practices are fuelling hate speech. On November 25, hundreds of Hazara demonstrators took the streets of Daykundi, Bamiyan, Mazar-e Sharif,

Facebook just quietly adopted a policy that could push thousands of innocent people off of the platform. The new “ sexual solicitation ” rules forbid pornography and other explicit sexual

IN AN UNPRECEDENTED move Wednesday, British lawmakers published hundreds of pages of internal Facebook emails and other documents that previously had been ordered sealed as part of an ongoing legal

The Australian Parliament passed a contentious encryption bill on Thursday to require technology companies to provide law enforcement and security agencies with access to encrypted communications. From The New York

There’s a reason why, when courts function properly, they offer more due process than corporations when it comes to making decisions about free expression. Deciding what speech can take place

As you may have heard by now, on Monday, Tumblr announced that in just a couple weeks it will be banning porn from its platform as part of a change

NEW RULES PROPOSED by the Indian government to rein in tech giants and combat fake news could have a profoundly chilling effect on free speech and privacy online. From Wired.

On 17 January, the # CopyrightWeek theme is ‘Safe Harbors’. The starting point is that: “Safe harbor protections allow online intermediaries to foster public discourse and creativity. Safe harbor status

The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation Ltd. (GCMMF), which owns the Amul brand has issued a legal notice to Google India and Godaddy.com for fraudulent practices on their platform by

On 4 December 2018 the European Court of Human Rights (‘the Court’) found a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights in Magyar Jeti Zrt v.

U.S. regulators have met to discuss imposing a record-setting fine against Facebook for violating a legally binding agreement with the government to protect the privacy of its users' personal data,

When it came to our online lives, 2018 was revealing in its dysfunction. The just-expired year’s parade of scandals at Facebook alone was relentless — Cambridge Analytica , its inflation

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear a case regarding whether Yelp is culpable for removing defamatory reviews from its site, resolving a case that could have affected web

For more than two decades, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) has allowed the internet, and the digital economy as we know it, to thrive by ensuring that

Two important elements of U.S. law that protect internet intermediaries are reflected in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA, signed November 30, 2018). From Global Trade Magazine .

Social media companies are to be told to sign a legally binding code of conduct as ministers seek to force them to protect young people online, it has been reported.

Let’s recall: On January 18, negotiations about the new EU copyright law came to an abrupt halt after member state governments failed to settle on a common position on Article

The U.K. government is rushing to finalize a draft law against online harms such as cyberbullying and child exploitation, but key details of the proposal have yet to be nailed

It has been over ten years since China irrevocably changed the nature of the internet. It did this by coercing major American internet platforms to either enable Chinese government censorship

Major tech platforms have improved their efforts to fight disinformation but they need to do more, Digital Commissioner Mariya Gabriel said at a Brussels conference Tuesday. From Politico.eu .

U.S. laws regulating online speech offer broad protections for private companies, but experts worry free expression may be threatened by "better safe than sorry" voluntary censorship. From Big Think .

Jeff Paine, Managing Director of Asia Internet Coalition, has released an open statement (pdf) regarding India’s current proposed intermediary liability guidelines, expressing deep concern regarding users’ privacy and free speech.

Last week, the Indian government proposed sweeping changes to the legal protections for “intermediaries”, which affect every internet company today. Intermediary liability protections have been fundamental to the growth of

The fourth evaluation on the EU Code of Conduct shows that this Commission initiative delivers successful results. From Modern Diplomacy .