Courts

A lawsuit against Meta claims the company is deceiving users about the privacy of its WhatsApp messaging service. The legal action alleges that, contrary to the platform's marketing of end-to-end encryption, Meta can access, store, and review user communications. This complaint was lodged in a federal court in the United States and involves individuals from nations including Brazil, India, Mexico, Australia, and South Africa. Meta has rejected these allegations, stating that the claims are without merit and that user messages are secured by default. (Source: bitdefender.com ) Allegations of ...view more

A healthcare giant has reached a $10.5 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit. Kaiser Permanente was accused of sending unsolicited, non-emergency text messages to people who had opted out of receiving them. The legal action claimed these automated messages violated the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). This federal law places limits on unsolicited marketing calls and the deployment of automatic dialing systems. (Source: lifehacker.com ) The lawsuit called the messages an "invasion of privacy, harassment, aggravation and disruption of daily life." It said Kaiser had not taken ...view more

Apple has lost a significant legal battle in the UK and could be forced to pay up to 1.5 billion Euros ($1.97 billion USD) in damages. A collective action lawsuit, brought on behalf of 36 million UK iPhone and iPad users, successfully argued that Apple abused its dominant market position through its App Store policies. The claimants contended that consumers were overcharged for apps and in-app content due to these practices. The Competition Appeals Tribunal ultimately sided with the claimants in its ruling. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) Ruling Deems Fees 'Excessive and Unfair' The case, led by ...view more

A Windows 10 user is suing Microsoft for the "forced obsolescence" of cutting support for his two laptops. Lawrence Klien says it's an anticompetitive attempt to dominate the generative AI market. The lawsuit seems to be more about making a point than changing Microsoft's plans. It isn't seeking a financial fortune and the timeline makes it almost impossible it will have a practical effect. Klein makes many valid points in his filing, most of which will be familiar to those who've followed the story. His two laptops cannot upgrade to Windows 11 because they don't have TPM (trusted platform ...view more

A court has blocked a "click to cancel" rule that would have made it easier to end unwanted memberships and subscriptions. The rule, introduced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), would have made canceling as easy as signing up in the first place, meaning a simple website button in some cases. The rule was scheduled to take effect on July 14, 2025, but was blocked by a federal appeals court. The block wasn't based on the measures themselves, but rather the procedural technicalities of the way the FTC made the rule. Auto-Renewals Restricted Officially titled the Negative Opinion Rule, the ...view more

An AI company acted lawfully by training its models on published books without the author's consent, a judge has ruled. But Anthropic will be on the hook for downloading more than seven million pirated books to use in the training data. The case was brought by three authors who said Anthropic had breached their copyright by adding the text of their books to a training database for Claude. That's a large language model (LLM), which works a little like autocorrect on a phone's texting tool. The difference, other than the speed and power, is that the LLM doesn't predict words based on one person ...view more

All 50 states have now introduced a "right to repair" bill aimed at making it easier for users to fix their own electronic devices. But only six have passed laws, with lawmakers in many states having abandoned their efforts. The specific wording of a right to repair bill varies significantly from case to case. Some of the most common principles include users having the legal right to source components or hire a third-party specialist to perform a repair. In other cases, users may have the right to access repair manuals. A common point of debate is what happens with warranties. In some cases, ...view more

The Supreme Court is to rule on a law that would effectively ban TikTok in the US. The timing of the hearing means there may be little room for nuance. The law follows ongoing debate about whether the Chinese-owned app poses a threat to US security. The app is already banned on devices owned by the US federal government and those in many states, though previous state laws that would have banned TikTok from app stores have been blocked. Critics of the app believe it accesses more customer data than is necessary for its stated purpose and that there's a risk the Chinese government may have or ...view more

Google has suffered a major court defeat over its Play store. It will mean much greater access for third party app stores and apps, though could prompt a continuing argument about security. The ruling came in a case brought by Epic Games, makers of the popular game Fortnite. It's had similar battles with Apple and its possible this case will have an effect there too. Epic had argued that Google unfairly exploited a monopoly over access of app developers to the Android system by the way it controlled the official Play store. It said that monopoly existed despite the fact that Android users can ...view more

A man who earned $12 million in royalties after "writing" hundreds of thousands of songs has been charged with fraud. Michael Smith allegedly created the songs with artificial intelligence, then used bots to "listen" to the music on streaming services to generated revenue. The case against Smith is not that the music itself was "not real" but rather that he was falsely claiming credit for listeners. Prosecutors say that not only did he steal money from the streaming sites, but that legitimate songwriters missed out. That's because some streaming sites divide a fixed ...view more