supreme court

Mon
11
Mar
John Lister's picture

Supreme Court Debates Site Moderation vs Censorship

Two state laws governing the way social media companies moderate content could be under threat. Questioning by Justices in a Supreme Court cases suggested they may not be convinced the laws are constitutional. The case, examining laws in Florida and ... Texas, covers one of the most longstanding dilemmas of the Internet age: whether website owners are publishers or a platform. This affects questions such as whether the site owner is responsible for defamation or other breaches of the law involving content, plus the extent to which the First Amendment applies. In this case, both states brought in ... (view more)

Wed
01
Feb
John Lister's picture

Social Media Moderation Elicits Free Speech Probe

The Supreme Court has asked the government for advice over two cases involving social media. The court is reviewing challenges to laws that could effectively ban moderation on sites. The state laws in Florida and Texas both limit the ability of ... social media companies to moderate some content, though they would work in different ways. The Florida law covers online platforms with more than 100 million users. It says companies must publish their moderation rules and apply them consistently to all users. It also says companies cannot ban any user who is an active political candidate for a future ... (view more)

Tue
14
May
John Lister's picture

Supreme Court Rules on Apple's App Price Fixing

The Supreme Court has ruled that lower courts can hear a case claiming Apple's pricing policy for its apps breaches anti-trust laws . The claimants say Apple has a monopoly, and its mandatory commission drives up prices unfairly. The case centers on ... two main differences between apps on Apple mobile devices and those on rival systems such as Google's Android. The first is that it is virtually impossible to install an app on an iPhone or iPad from a sources other than the official iTunes App Store - something Apple cites as being important for security reasons. The second is that publishers ... (view more)

Tue
06
Jun
John Lister's picture

Supreme Court to Rule on Cellphone Location Data

The Supreme Court is to examine whether the government must get a search warrant before making cellphone carriers hand over a customer's location history . It's the final step in a six-year case centered on a robbery conviction. Timothy Carter was ... convicted thanks to police evidence showing location data from his phone. In total they had 12,898 records of his location covering a 127-day period. The data came from MetroPCS, which was his cellphone carrier, as well as from Sprint which shared data from when he had received roaming coverage. Data Treated Differently to Phone Itself ... (view more)

Wed
11
Nov
John Lister's picture

Should Police have Access to Cell Data without Warrant?

The Supreme Court has refused to consider a case that could have decided if the government needs a warrant to track a person's location through their cellphone. That means lower courts may continue to make case-by-case decisions on the issue. A man ... named Quartavious Davis had asked the Supreme Court to hear his case. He was sentenced to 1,941 months in prison for taking part in multiple robberies. As part of their investigation, local police acquired Davis's cellphone records from MetroPCS and were able to link him to seven crime scenes. An appeals court rejected Davis's argument, ... (view more)

Thu
05
Mar
John Lister's picture

Supreme Court Could Rethink Online Sales Tax

A Supreme Court judge says its time to re-examine laws that make it difficult or impossible to impose sales tax on many online sales. The decision could mean some states start collecting the tax without waiting for the law to change. Justice Anthony ... Kennedy made the comments in a Supreme Court ruling on a case involving the way Colorado attempts to collect sales taxes from companies based outside the state that sell goods to Colorado residents. At issue is Colorado's policy that any firm which does not collect and pay such taxes must provide extensive paperwork anyway. The ruling itself ... (view more)

Wed
29
Jun
Dennis Faas's picture

Supreme Court OKs Violent Game Sales to Minors

The Supreme Court recently reached a ruling that will be seen by many as a victory for makers of violent video games. At least seven states have passed legislation that bans the sale of violent games, but in every case that legislation was ... overturned by a lower court. California, which passed such a law in 2005 and was immediately blocked from enforcing it, was the first to appeal to the Supreme Court. The California law caused immediate controversy: while it only banned sales where the content was "patently offensive," the threshold also required prosecutors to show a game lacked "serious ... (view more)

Fri
24
Jun
Dennis Faas's picture

Winklevoss Twins (Almost) Give Up Facebook Suit

As of Wednesday, the Winklevoss brothers abandoned an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and it appeared that they had finally given up their long-running crusade to win further compensation from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. A day later, however, ... a new court document has been filed which aims to prove that Zuckerberg hid instant messages that may have helped prove their original case. How Facebook Came to Be As depicted in the movie "The Social Network," the Winklevoss twins were once involved in a very similar project with Zuckerberg, and their falling out led to years of legal wrangling ... (view more)

Fri
10
Jun
Dennis Faas's picture

Microsoft Loses $290M in MS Office Patent Battle

Microsoft has failed in a Supreme Court bid to overturn a $290 million patent violation ruling. Not only is it the largest such award ever upheld, but this final ruling has significant consequences for patent law. The case involves XML documents, an ... advanced version of the HTML webpage code that allows data to be tagged to designate its content rather than just the way it appears on screen. The code makes it much easier to organize document content (for example, in a database). Microsoft Office XML Support Began with Office 2003 Microsoft built support for reading XML documents into the 2003 ... (view more)

Thu
02
Dec
Dennis Faas's picture

Microsoft Heads To Supreme Court Over MS Word Patent

In a bid to avoid an enormous $290 million fine, Microsoft is challenging the Supreme Court's handling of patent infringement cases. The company was hit with the financial penalty after it was found that Microsoft Word violated an XML tag patent ... owned by Canadian company i4i. Having failed in a federal appeal, Microsoft is no longer able to challenge the ruling that it did indeed violate the patent. However, Microsoft has continued to argue that the patent is not valid. It claims to have evidence that products using the technology patented by i4i were on sale more than a year before the ... (view more)

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