Wendy Davis

A battle over network neutrality is heating up in Vermont -- one of at least eight states that recently moved to restore the Obama-era rules. VT's net neutrality law, passed last May, prohibits broadband access providers that contract with state agencies from violating the former rules -- including ones prohibiting blocking or throttling and charging higher fees for prioritized delivery. In 2018, industry associations sued in federal court to block VT's law.

A coalition of cable and wireless organizations are asking a judge to invalidate Vermont's new network neutrality law on the grounds that the measure goes against federal policy. VT lawmakers “purposefully acted to undermine federal law,” the American Cable Association, CTIA -- The Wireless Association, NCTA -- The Internet & Television Association, New England Cable & Telecommunications Association and USTelecom -- The Broadband Association write in court papers filed Jan 23 with US District Court Judge Christina Reiss in VT.

Tech companies appear to be concerned that they might face some unintended consequences as a result of a battle over whether President Donald Trump violates the First Amendment by blocking critics on Twitter. In court papers submitted the week of Aug 13, the Silicon Valley group Internet Association is urging a federal appellate court to clarify that Twitter can continue to block users -- regardless of whether Trump may legally do so.

California should reject requests by industry groups to water down the state's new privacy law, a coalition of 20 advocacy groups said in a new letter to lawmakers. "The sky is not falling, as industry suggests," said the ACLU of California, Berkeley Media Studies Group, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and other advocacy groups. "The law and its particulars do not pose a threat to the California economy," they write.

Internet service providers are stepping up their fight against a California net neutrality proposal that would explicitly prohibit providers from exempting material from consumers' data caps. The proposed law, approved last month by the state Senate and currently before the Assembly, restores Obama-era net neutrality rules that ban throttling, blocking, and charging higher fees for prioritized delivery. The measure also would explicitly ban "zero-rating" -- or the practice of exempting certain material from data caps.

Digital rights groups and news associations are slamming a judge's recent ruling that Time, Yahoo and other publishers may have infringed copyright by embedding a tweet that contained a photo in news stories. 

 CTIA - The Wireless Association is joining Verizon and Comcast in asking the Federal Communications Commission to prohibit states from subjecting broadband providers to privacy rules. "The Commission ... should preempt any state or local broadband-specific regulation, irrespective of whether the state or locality claims that its regulation promotes or supplements federal goals," CTIA said.

Attorneys for a group of children have agreed to withdraw a long-running privacy lawsuit against Viacom. The document withdrawing the case, filed with US District Court Judge Stanley Chesler in New Jersey, doesn't indicate whether any money changed hands.

Congress's decision to repeal the nationwide broadband privacy rules appears to have spurred lawmakers in at least a dozen states to introduce new measures that would protect residents' online privacy. Now, at least one Republican on the Federal Communications Commission wants the agency to enact regulations that would prohibit states from enacting their own privacy rules.

"I believe states should be ... barred from enacting their own privacy burdens on what is by all means an interstate information service," Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said earlier in May in a speech delivered to the American Legislative Exchange Council. "It is both impractical and very harmful for each state to enact differing and conflicting privacy burdens on broadband providers, many of which serve multiple states, if not the entire country."

A federal appellate court has sided with CNN in a dispute over whether its iTunes app violated a federal privacy law by allegedly sharing data about consumers with the analytics company Bango. A three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that people who download CNN's iTunes app aren't "subscribers" to the service. Therefore, the court ruled, the company didn't violate the Video Privacy Protection Act, which prohibits video companies from sharing personally identifiable information about "subscribers," "renters," or "purchasers." The decision upheld a trial judge's dismissal of iPhone user Ryan Perry's class-action complaint against CNN.