Ars Technica

YouTube is a private forum and therefore not subject to free-speech requirements under the First Amendment, a US appeals court ruled. "Despite YouTube's ubiquity and its role as a public-facing platform, it remains a private forum, not a public forum subject to judicial scrutiny under the First Amendment," the court said.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wants a do-over on his 2005 decision in a case that had a major impact on the power of federal agencies and regulation of the broadband industry. In National Cable & Telecommunications Association v. Brand X Internet Services, better known as Brand X, Justice Thomas wrote the 6-3 majority opinion that upheld a Federal Communications Commission decision to classify cable broadband as an information service. But in a dissent on a new case released Feb 24, Justice Thomas wrote that he got Brand X wrong.

AT&T's mandatory-arbitration clause is unenforceable in a class-action case over AT&T's throttling of unlimited data, a panel of US appeals court judges ruled. The nearly five-year-old case has gone through twists and turns, with AT&T's forced-arbitration clause initially being upheld in March 2016.

Ethos Capital voluntarily committed to limit price hikes on .org registrations for the next eight years. Ethos framed this as a concession to the public, and strictly speaking, a 10 percent price hike limit is better for customers than completely uncapped fees. But 10 percent annual increases are still massive—far more than inflation or plausible increases in the cost of running the infrastructure powering the .org registry. Ethos Capital's proposed limits are also much more than historical increases in the .org fee.

Overturning the Federal Communications Commission’s opt-in privacy rule resulted in lower prices for wired and wireless Internet service. Both these declines are about $40 per subscriber over the life of the subscription, which is similar to independent estimates of the per-subscriber cost of obtaining personal data consent from retail customers that are the basis for our quantitative analysis. By removing vertical pricing regulations, the Trump Administration’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order will increase real incomes by more than $50 billion per year and consumer welfare by almost $40

T-Mobile says the Federal Communications Commission screwed up 4G measurements in a report that accused the carrier of exaggerating its mobile coverage. The FCC report "incorrectly implies, based on a flawed verification process, that we overstated coverage," T-Mobile said in an FCC filing Feb 17. The FCC staff report, issued in Dec 2019, found that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular exaggerated their 4G coverage in official filings. As the FCC said, "Overstating mobile broadband coverage misleads the public and can misallocate our limited universal service funds."

The broadband industry is suing Maine to stop a Web-browsing privacy law similar to the one killed by Congress and President Donald Trump in 2017. Industry groups claim the state law violates First Amendment protections on free speech and the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. The Maine law was signed by Gov Janet Mills (D-ME) in June 2019 and is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2020.