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  2. June 2016

June 2016

The Clinton campaign’s totally bogus claim about its press availability

[Commentary] It's been six months since Hillary Clinton held a news conference, and reporters are beginning to complain. The likely Democratic presidential nominee told CNN's Jake Tapper that she is "sure" she will conduct one soon. But the Clinton campaign's contention is that disgruntled journalists are arguing semantics here.

Technically, yes, it has been a long time since the candidate's last formal news conference, but she routinely answers questions in other settings, press secretary Brian Fallon argued on CNN. A news conference, he said, "oftentimes is just defined by whether you have a banner behind you or a podium in front of you." Fallon added this: "Oftentimes ... we will do an 'avail' — what would be known as an avail to the people in your business — where she informally comes out after an event has concluded, after she's taken some photos and some selfies, and she will literally stand there for 15, 20 minutes and answer questions from her traveling press corps, including the embeds from the various networks." Except this is not true. If Clinton were truly in the habit of fielding questions from reporters for an extended period of time — a period of time that resembles the duration of a news conference — then griping about the informal nature of the sessions would indeed be harder to justify. Talking to reporters in a scrum isn't particularly conducive to live television — and the comparison here is to Trump's regularly scheduled news conferences, which cable channels often air live — but at least Clinton would be submitting herself to a similar level of questioning.

Supreme Court rejects Google appeal in class action dispute

The US Supreme Court rejected Google Inc's bid to throw out a class action lawsuit involving claims that the company deceived California advertisers about the placement of Internet ads through its Adwords service. The court's decision not to hear the case leaves in place a September 2015 ruling by the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals that the litigation could move forward as a class action representing advertisers who used the service between 2004 and 2008.

The 2008 lawsuit accused Google of violating California fair advertising laws because it misled advertisers about where the ads would be placed. The Adwords service was primarily aimed at placing ads next to relevant Google Internet search results. But the plaintiffs said Google should have disclosed that ads would also appear in undesirable places such as error pages and undeveloped websites known as parked domains. A federal district court judge in 2012 ruled that the case could not move forward as a class action in part because each advertiser would receive different damages. Each advertiser would have paid a different sum for the ads in question, the judge said. The appeals court reversed the district court, prompting Google to ask the Supreme Court to intervene.

Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter account is hijacked

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg briefly had his Twitter account hijacked. Screenshots preserved by the technology website Engadget appeared to show someone using the little-used account to say Zuckerberg was “in the LinkedIn database” and inviting the social media mogul to get in touch. Facebook released a statement saying that none of the company's systems or accounts was accessed and that Zuckerberg's affected accounts have since been re-secured.

CAN-SPAM: A study in “mask” communication

We loved Scooby-Doo as much as the next person, but each episode seemed to end the same way. Just when Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne nabbed the culprit, he took off a mask to disclose his identity – or so we thought until he removed yet another mask to reveal who he really was. The FTC has filed a lawsuit against an operation that allegedly used illegal spam and fake news sites to peddle purported diet products and employed multiple online “masks” to deceive consumers about what they’re really up to.

Florida-based Colby Fox, Christopher Reinhold, Tachht, Inc., and Teqqi LLC sold Original Pure Forskolin, Original White Kidney Bean, and Mango Boost Cleanse on their websites. They also promoted their products through affiliate marketers, who steered consumers to the defendants’ sites and got a cut of the sales their links generate. One common tactic used by the defendants and their affiliates is to send what the complaint calls “unsolicited commercial electronic mail messages,” but they don’t look like garden variety spam.

American Airlines thinks it found faster inflight Internet

American Airlines is moving to improve Internet on its planes. The goal is to make it about as speedy as it is for most people at home. The world's largest airline signed a deal with ViaSat, a satellite Internet provider, to provide high speed service to 100 of its newest planes, the 737 MAX. Boeing is due to start delivering the new jets to American in 2017.

ViaStat (VSAT) already provides service to United, JetBlue and Virgin America. Its higher speed allows better video streaming on services such as Netflix and Amazon. American also reached a deal with Gogo to upgrade speeds on 140 of the 560 jets on which GoGo now provides service. The new Gogo service, known as 2Ku, will be available on American's mainline jets. Only smaller regional jets will continue to have the previous generation Gogo service. American sued Gogo earlier this year, arguing that it wanted to shift to ViaSat. But American dropped the suit soon after filing as it negotiated services with both Gogo and ViaStat.

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