The EU General Data Protection Regulation poses a $500 billion threat to noncompliant U.S. businesses, CompliancePoint said Tuesday. There are more than 27.9 million small businesses registered with the U.S. Census Bureau and International Trade Administration, and 98 percent of businesses export goods internationally, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration. Under the GDPR, companies face noncompliance fines up to $20 million per infraction, or 4 percent of global revenue, whichever is more.
The Supreme Court will hear an online privacy case in which Google is asking the high court to uphold an $8.5 million settlement directed to charitable and academic organizations instead of alleged victims, the court said Monday (see 1708230003). Google agreed to an $8.5 million class-action settlement in 2013 with 129 million plaintiffs, who claimed the platform violated their privacy by revealing personal search engine data to third parties. A lower court upheld the settlement. Google agreed to a "cy-pres" deal, with $3.2 million earmarked for attorneys' fees and $5.3 million for academic and charitable organizations, who agreed to use the money to increase public awareness, education or internet privacy R&D. A cy-pres designation is used when the individual payments are considered too small to justify direct compensation for plaintiffs. Challenging the settlement in Frank v. Gaos is Competitive Enterprise Institute Litigation Director Ted Frank, who claimed the settlement was enough to fund a claims process or lottery distribution to class members but "improperly favored the third-party charities.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was right to uphold the settlement, Google said, as the cy-pres awards “will benefit a much greater proportion [and quite possibly all] of the class.” Challengers raised issues about Google’s business relationships with most of the cy pres recipients, which include Stanford University, Harvard University and the World Privacy Forum.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is in Michigan and Indiana this week to discuss broadband deployment. In Michigan, Carr is meeting with aides to Gov. Rick Snyder and with Rep. Fred Upton, both Republicans, and Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell, plus state lawmakers. He attended a broadcasters dinner in Lansing Monday and Tuesday was visiting an egg farm. On Wednesday, Carr travels to Indiana to spend a day with Republican Sen. Todd Young as they tour broadband facilities. On Thursday, Carr is to meet with Gov. Eric Holcomb (R). Carr has been tweeting throughout the trip.
Consumer groups, law enforcement, researchers and industry representatives will explore cryptocurrency scams June 25 in Chicago at an FTC workshop at DePaul University, the agency announced Monday.
Nearly 60 percent of marketers' digital advertising budgets is devoted to digital video, the Interactive Advertising Bureau said Monday. Digital video investment has been “climbing steadily” since 2016 and is projected to be 68 percent of digital advertising budgets by the end of the year, IAB said.
The Department of Transportation grant of economic authority to unmanned aircraft systems operators for transporting property through the air is “an important step to expedite UAS delivery operations in the U.S.,” the Small UAV Coalition said Monday. “The Coalition has long encouraged DOT to take this step and is pleased that it will be available to operators as the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP) gets underway.”
Cambridge Analytica-linked firm Global Science Research had one-time application programming interface access to a random five-month sample of public tweets in 2015, a Twitter spokeswoman responded Monday about a report. An internal review from Twitter determined GSR, owned by Cambridge researcher Aleksandr Kogan (see 1804100054), lacked access to any private data from Twitter users, she said. The sample spanned tweets from December 2014 to April 2015. Twitter removed advertising from all Cambridge Analytica-linked accounts, the spokeswoman said: “Cambridge Analytica operates using a business model that inherently conflicts with acceptable Twitter Ads business practices. Cambridge Analytica may remain an organic user on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules." Cambridge Analytica tweeted Monday that the firm “has never received Twitter data from GSR or Aleksandr Kogan, and has never done any work with GSR on Twitter data. GSR was only ever a contractor to Cambridge Analytica and we understand it did work for many other companies.”
Sony’s introduction and subsequent termination of the Dash personal internet viewer provoked a federal complaint Friday alleging the company is guilty of fraud and concealment for not telling consumers it wouldn’t go on supporting the product. The claims arise from the company's decision in July “to unilaterally and without recourse cut off its support” of the Dash, said the complaint (in Pacer), filed in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, and seeking class-action status. Sony terminated all functionality on the Dash through a “forced firmware update,” said the complaint. “As many disgruntled purchasers have posted on the internet, they are left with a paperweight, which cost between $100 and $200.” Consumers wouldn't have bought the Dash “if they knew that just within a few years,” Sony would “choose to stop supporting the product,” which was “only functional for a commercially unreasonable time,” it said. Introduced at January 2010 CES, the Dash tapped into cloud-based content, with no onboard storage (see 1103110137). Sony representatives didn’t comment Friday.
Chinese and Swedish firms are two recent examples of companies not providing “direct notice to parents of information collection practices,” said FTC Competition Bureau Senior Attorney Lesley Fair Friday. The agency sent warning letters to China’s Gator Group and Sweden’s Tinitell about potential violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule, concerning the companies’ application for tracking child location. “If you work with businesses covered by COPPA, is it time for a compliance check?” Fair asked.
Facebook unveiled a “sleep mode” for its Messenger Kids application Friday, letting parents control their children’s access to the application throughout the day. Parents will be able to schedule “off times” for the application from their Parent Control center in their Facebook account.