Federal and state legislators should take a light-touch regulatory approach to AI because there are unsettled questions about free speech and innovation potential, a Trump-appointed trade judge, a religious group and tech-minded scholars said Tuesday.
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The U.S. Supreme Court mustn’t discourage states and Congress from trying to prevent children from accessing pornography online, the federal government said in an amicus brief Monday. However, SCOTUS should correct the 5th U.S. Circuit Court’s error of using rational-basis review to support a Texas law requiring age-verification on porn websites, said DOJ. The Supreme Court received a flurry of briefs this week from amici supporting the Free Speech Coalition's challenge of the Texas law. FSC is a porn industry trade association. The American Civil Liberties Union represents it.
The House Rules Committee will decide Tuesday whether to allow floor votes on a slate of tech and telecom amendments to the chamber’s version of the FY 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (HR-2670), including several requiring the State Department to do more to address the security of international telecom infrastructure and internet freedom. House Rules’ meeting on HR-2670 amendments will begin at noon in H-313 in the Capitol. The House is expected to vote on the measure later this week.
Expect an adequacy decision on U.S.-EU data transfers "soon," a European Commission official said on a Friday Atlantic Council Europe Center webinar. The EC is "very confident" the proposed framework will survive a challenge in the European Court of Justice (ECJ), said Lucrezia Busa, a member of Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders' cabinet. If it doesn't, several alternatives could be considered, including some sort of multilateral scheme, panelists said. An adequacy decision is a finding by the EC that a non-EU country's data protection regime affords privacy protections essentially equivalent to those granted under EU law.
The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative should add Meta to its 2022 Notorious Markets List (see 2202170053) due to the proliferation of counterfeit goods on platforms like Facebook Marketplace, Instagram and WhatsApp, trade groups told the agency in comments last week.
The EU and U.S. "found an agreement in principle" on trans-Atlantic personal data transfers, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen tweeted Friday. The U.S. made "unprecedented" commitments to put in place new safeguards to ensure that signals intelligence activities are "necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of defined national security objectives," and to create a new mechanism for EU individuals to seek redress if they believe they're unlawfully targeted by such activities, said a White House fact sheet. The deal addresses the concerns of the European Court of Justice in Schrems II, it said.
A bipartisan group of senators filed a bill Thursday meant, they said, to “prevent China from stealing intellectual property from American companies through their corrupt court system.” Introduced by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Tom Cotton, R-Ark.; Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii; and Rick Scott, R-Fla., the Defending American Courts Act targets China’s use of anti-suit injunctions, which “limit the ability of American companies to file or maintain claims related to patent infringement in U.S. courts or the International Trade Commission.” The bill bans “bad actors” from seeking review of the relevant patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, and “if they are found to have infringed the patent, the bill requires certain presumptions that make enhanced damages and attorney fees more likely.”
Democratic FCC nominee Gigi Sohn and FTC nominee Alvaro Bedoya cleared an initial confirmation hurdle Thursday after the Senate Commerce Committee voted 14-14 on both picks, but they still face a long road to floor approval, said lawmakers and other officials in interviews. Panel Democrats uniformly backed Sohn and Bedoya, but all Republicans opposed them. Six of the 14 Republicans attended the executive session, fulfilling expectations they wouldn’t boycott the meeting (see 2203020076). The committee also tied 14-14 on Consumer Product Safety Commission nominee Mary Boyle. It advanced National Institute of Standards and Technology director nominee Laurie Locascio and International Trade Administration nominee Grant Harris on voice votes.
Senate maneuvering on newly named Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson, FCC nominee Gigi Sohn and FTC nominee Alvaro Bedoya is expected to draw many telecom and tech policy stakeholders’ attention in the coming weeks. President Joe Biden nominated Jackson, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit judge, Friday to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson has little record on communications law matters but has played a larger role on administrative tech-focused legal matters, legal experts said.
The U.S. and EU treat Big Tech and China differently in the debate on data flows, speakers said at a virtual Progressive Policy Institute event Wednesday. From a privacy and diplomacy standpoint, Europe has painted itself into a corner, said European Centre for International Political Economy Director Hosuk Lee-Makiyama: It addressed U.S. platforms while ignoring that many people use TikTok, Zoom and similar companies, and that some personal data is going to China. While the EU and U.S. squabble, they're losing ground for future economic competitiveness, said Kristian Stout, International Center for Law & Economics innovation policy director. When the scale of NSA's Prism data collection was revealed, Europe and the U.S. demanded negotiations to scale back the practice (see 1307080059), said Lee-Makiyama: But neither party sought relief when China enacted its privacy law, so does that mean they trust President Xi Jinping? It's also inexplicable that Max Schrems has brought around 100 lawsuits, mostly against Google and Facebook, but has never sued any Chinese entity subject to that country's national security law, Lee-Makiyama said. Since the European Court of Justice struck down transfer mechanism Privacy Shield in Schrems II (see 2009100001), there's concern not only about a replacement but also about whether an alternative mechanism, standard contractual clauses (SCCs), will also be invalidated, said PPI Chief Economist Michael Mandel. The parties are essentially friendly trade partners, but the sticky question is where the EU is willing to give ground and whether the U.S. is likely to change its national security apparatus, said Stout. He said he's optimistic the EU will give some ground based on its trade commitments, because under EU law, privacy can't entirely trump national security. And if Europe has to give something, so does the U.S., he said: Overbroad surveillance data collection processes could be changed to enable the EU to grant an adequacy ruling; the lack of redress by European citizens for data misuse could come through proportional analyses in lawsuits that show that China, EU countries and other governments also engage in U.S.-like surveillance. If SCCs are invalided and there's no agreement on a revised PS, Lee-Makiyama said, he's pessimistic the EU general data protection regulation could be reversed because of its normative effect globally on cross-border data flows. The debate isn't whether there should be a GDPR, but whether it's being intertwined with trade and national security policies in a way that could lead to no trade if the discussion follows its natural conclusion, said Stout. The U.S. won't necessarily come closer to the EU position on privacy, but everyone wants a "reasonable compromise," said Lee-Makiyama.