Tech Law

Jana on Thursday announced it has raised $57 million in Series C funding, enabling it to continue its plans to connect developing countries to the Web. Verizon Ventures led the funding round, with backing from Spark Capital and Publicis Groupe. The backing will give Jana -- which provides free, unre...

CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday took Apple's battle with the FBI directly to the public, penning an open letter in defense of the company's resistance to a court order mandating it to create a way to access data in the iPhone used by the San Bernardino terrorists. A federal magistrate issued the order becau...

Any effort to ban encryption or provide government agencies with backdoor access would be unenforceable and prone to failure, according to a Harvard University report released last week. Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Security, collaborator Kathleen Seidel, and...

Laws usually are established after interpersonal or business activities collide with the real or perceived rights of others. After parties with different positions fight about who's right and who's wrong, legislatures create laws to solve the legal issues raised, and courts enforce them or create th...

Google is expanding the right of Europeans to be forgotten on the Internet to domains outside their countries, according to news reports Thursday. Searches made from European IP addresses for people whom Google has granted a right to be forgotten will turn up zero links, regardless of which version ...

T-Mobile's Binge On streaming video service violates Net neutrality rules, according to a report authored by Barbara van Schewick, director of The Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School. Among the reasons the Binge On service may be problematic: It doesn't offer unlimited video strea...

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on Wednesday announced that he'd shared with colleagues a long sought-after proposal to loosen the set-top box's grip on home entertainment. The proposal seeks to spur competition and consumer choice in an arena dominated by large cable and satellite television providers. Wh...

A coalition of 59 organizations on Wednesday sent a letter to U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler calling on him to get cracking on privacy protection rules for consumers. The groups include consumer advocates such as Consumer Watchdog and the Chicago Consumer Coalition as we...

The Federal Trade Commission is extending its regulatory reach to the e-commerce impact of big data. For years, the FTC has asserted vigorously its authority to apply consumer protection laws to emerging developments in the IT realm. Now it is signaling that it will apply that same vigor to big data...

Privacy advocates from around the globe have taken heart from reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook pushed hard against the Obama administration's efforts to reach a compromise on encryption during a recent Silicon Valley meeting. Cook earlier this month joined a delegation of social media and technology ...

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday announced a deal that would require Uber to encrypt geolocation information about its riders, as well as enhance its data security practices. The AG opened an investigation into Uber in 2014, in response to allegations that the service had trac...

China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce on Tuesday launched the latest in a series of investigations against Microsoft for possible violations of the country's antimonopoly law. Back in July 2014, about 100 SAIC officials burst into four Microsoft offices in various parts of China and...

Before the Internet, messages were spread by television and newspaper ads and highway billboards. Today that is done through social media. Virtually everyone knows about it, and many people use it. Does it make any sense that a U.S. government agency could violate any laws for using social media to ...

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is engaged in an internal struggle over how it should assess the effect on consumers when businesses fail to provide proper e-commerce security. The outcome of the debate, which surfaced last month, will have a significant impact on the commission's ability to initi...