The FCC’s digital discrimination rule “has gone far beyond what Congress intended” when it enacted the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the National Association of Manufacturers said in an amicus brief Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The brief supports the 20 industry petitioners that want the rule vacated as unlawful in part, they say, because the FCC imposed it without clear congressional intent (see 2404230032).
The Foundation for Moral Law, a religious liberties nonprofit, thinks that the federal government’s handling of COVID-19 information “has led to unprecedented infringements on our fundamental freedoms,” said its U.S. Supreme Court amicus brief Monday (docket 23-1062) in Changizi v. Department of Health and Human Services.
TechFreedom urged the FCC not to use an “obscure provision” on digital discrimination, buried deep in the “enormous” Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, to “smuggle onerous common-carrier regulations” onto the internet. TechFreedom’s position was detailed as part of an amicus brief Tuesday (docket 24-1179) in the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
NTCA takes special interest in the impact of the FCC’s Nov. 20 digital discrimination order on its small-business members, the association’s amicus brief argued in the 8th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court (docket 24-1179) said Monday. The brief supports the 20 industry petitioners that want the order vacated as unlawful (see 2404230032). The “potential adverse effects” of the order implementing Section 60506 of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act “risk particular impact to small businesses that generally lack access to resources and economies of scale that can enable larger businesses to absorb substantial market or regulatory changes,” NTCA’s brief said. But those impacts “are neither envisioned nor authorized by the statute, whose language contemplates a far more limited scope of implementation,” it said. Compliance with certain of the standards presented in the FCC’s order “is effectively impossible since the processes by which those measures can be achieved are wholly inconsistent with the normal and ordinary practices within which NTCA members conduct their business,” it added. The standards contemplate the ability of small private businesses “to have access to the confidential business considerations of other businesses,” it said: “This result, too, is neither contemplated nor accommodated in the statutory language.” The 8th Circuit should hold the order as "unlawful" and set it aside, said NTCA.
If Montana’s statewide TikTok ban, SB-419, were to go into effect, it would shut down “a unique and popular platform for speech” used by “several hundred thousand” Montanans, said TikTok’s answering brief Monday (docket 24-34) in the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court. Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s (R) appeal seeks to vacate the district court injunction that blocks him from enforcing SB-419 (see 2403020001).
Microsoft and OpenAI are “purloining” millions of copyrighted newspaper articles without permission and without payment to “fuel the commercialization” of their generative AI products, including ChatGPT and Copilot, alleged eight major local newspapers in a copyright infringement suit Tuesday (docket 1:24-cv-03285) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan. A similar New York Times lawsuit has been pending against Microsoft and OpenAI in the same court since Dec. 27 (see 2312270044).
The Republican National Committee relies on its “tortured reading” of the 9th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court’s 2023 opinion in Trim v. Reward Zone to “rewrite” the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and “overturn” 15 years of 9th Circuit precedent, said plaintiff-appellant Jacob Howard’s reply brief Friday (docket 23-3826) in support of his appeal to reverse the dismissal of his TCPA case (see 2402080021).
The League of Women Voters seeks a preliminary injunction barring defendants Steve Kramer, broadband provider Lingo Telecom and robocall broadcaster Life Corp. from producing, generating or distributing AI-generated robocalls impersonating any person, without that person’s express, prior written consent, said its motion Friday (docket 1:24-cv-00073) in U.S. District Court for New Hampshire in Concord.
MaxLinear’s “opportunistic” motion to dismiss Comcast’s third amended complaint should be denied, said Comcast’s memorandum of law Wednesday (docket 1:23-cv-04436) in U.S. District Court for Southern New York in Manhattan in support of its opposition to the motion.
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta for the District of Columbia, in a ruling Wednesday (docket 1:20-cv-03010), granted in part and denied in part the New York Times' Jan. 19 motion to unseal more than two dozen trial exhibits introduced as evidence in September’s bench trial in the case brought by DOJ and the attorneys general of 48 states (see 2309120075).