U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit Upholds FCC’s April 2011 Pole...
In a significant victory for cable and telecommunications providers, today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in a unanimous opinion, upheld the FCC’s April 2011 decision...
View ArticleCalifornia District Court Finds National Security Letter Statute...
Last week, in In re National Security Letter, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California found unconstitutional two sections of the federal law allowing the FBI to issue...
View ArticleFormer Subscriber Has No Right to Damages for Video Provider’s Failure to...
In Padilla v. DISH Network L.L.C., a former subscriber alleged DISH failed to destroy his personally identifiable information (PII) upon cancellation of service, and failed to continue sending annual...
View Article9th Circuit Joffe v. Google "Street View" Decision Raises Questions About...
Last week, the Ninth Circuit held that the Wiretap Act prohibits the kind of “interception” and collection of transmissions from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks that Google reportedly followed in compiling...
View ArticleMore Online Trouble for Service Providers?
Google is facing increased scrutiny of its data collection and use practices, which may be a warning to all Internet and online service providers. Last week, Judge Koh in San Jose held Google...
View ArticleUpdate: Google Not Going Down Without a Fight
Google is seeking further review in two cases we wrote about last week on alleged Wiretap Act violations. In the Gmail case, where Google was charged with improperly reviewing subscribers’ emails,...
View ArticleSCOTUS Denies Cert in Challenge to Facebook's "Beacon" Class Action Settlement
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a case challenging the fairness of a cy pres settlement of a class action against Facebook related to Facebook’s “Beacon” program that was launched in late...
View ArticleCanada Adopts Final Regulations, Announces Expansive Anti-Spam Law Will Start...
Canada’s Department of Industry has published long-awaited Governor in Council regulations and announced key compliance dates necessary to implement Canada’s anti-spam law (CASL), which was enacted...
View ArticleGoogle Street View Class Action Survives: Ninth Circuit Holds Wi-Fi is Not...
In the latest development in the Google Street View case, the Ninth Circuit once again upheld the lower court’s decision that Google’s collection of unencrypted Wi-Fi does not fit within an exception...
View ArticleGoogle "Street View" case may be headed for SCOTUS Review
Google held true to its promise to seek SCOTUS review of the Ninth Circuit’s interpretation of the term “radio communications” in the Wiretap Act when it filed its Petition for Certiorari last week....
View ArticleGoogle Street View Plaintiffs on the Hunt for “a Needle in a Haystack” to...
Back in April, Google filed a Petition for Certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court in the Street View case, seeking review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision holding that unencrypted Wi-Fi signals are...
View ArticleImproving Data Breach Security, from the Customer’s Wallet on Up: In Wake of...
In early September, Home Depot announced that it had suffered a severe security incident, which resulted in a massive data breach that exposed the payment card information of Home Depot customers...
View Article“Th-th-th-that’s All, Folks!” Federal Judge Dismisses Class Action against...
On October 8, Georgia Federal District Judge Thomas Thrash, Jr., dismissed a putative class action against The Cartoon Network, Inc., where the plaintiff alleged that the animation company violated the...
View ArticlePresident Obama Proposes National Data Breach Law, Unveils New Consumer and...
On January 12 President Obama visited the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) where he unveiled several new data security and privacy initiatives, including proposed legislation to create a national data...
View ArticleWhen Plaintiffs Try to Fit Square Pegs in Round Holes – U.S. District Court...
On Tuesday, Jan.20, New Jersey Federal District Judge Stanley R. Chesler dismissed with prejudice the last remaining allegations in a multidistrict class action against Viacom and Google, formally...
View ArticleQuoth the Maven: “Without More!” Federal Judge Dismisses Dow Jones VPPA Class...
A Growing Chorus of Federal Courts Finds User IDs, by themselves, Do Not Count as Personally Identifiable Information under the VPPA Recently, a federal district judge joined a number of his colleagues...
View ArticleFCC Enforcement Bureau Dismisses ILEC Pole Attachment Complaint
Earlier this week the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau dismissed without prejudice a pole attachment complaint filed by Verizon Florida LLC (“Verizon”) against Florida Power and Light (“FPL”). It was the FCC’s...
View ArticleRewind and Replay: Plaintiffs Appeal Dismissal of VPPA Suits against Viacom,...
Plaintiffs in two recently dismissed class actions alleging violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act (“VPPA”) filed notices of appeal this week, asking the Third and Eleventh Circuit Courts of...
View ArticleAppellate Courts Being Drawn Into VPPA Fray
Last week the Third and Eleventh Circuit Courts of Appeals assigned case numbers to the appeals of In re Nickelodeon Privacy Litigation and Locklear v. Dow Jones & Co., Inc., two recently dismissed...
View ArticleImpact of Reclassification on Pole Attachments
The Order recognizes that the deployment of communications networks and broadband infrastructure depends heavily on access to utility poles on reasonable rates, terms and conditions. Accordingly, the...
View Article