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 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.

Comcast met with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's staff the week of Oct 30 in an attempt to prevent states from issuing network neutrality rules.

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.

In 2016, three judges on a federal appellate court issued a stunning ruling that blocked the Federal Trade Commission from prosecuting AT&T for allegedly duping customers. The judges said in their opinion that the FTC couldn't proceed against AT&T because the agency lacks jurisdiction against common carriers. The ruling stemmed from what appeared to have been a straightforward deception claim: The FTC argued that AT&T misled consumers by selling them unlimited data, but throttling their broadband connections after they used between 3 and 5 GB a month.

The most surprising thing about the appellate judges' ruling was that the alleged deception occurred between 2011 and 2014 -- before mobile broadband was considered a common carrier service. The FTC is now asking for a new hearing in front of at least 11 of the 9th Circuit's judges. That request is backed by lawmakers, public interest groups and a different federal agency -- the Federal Communications Commission. Late during the week of April 17, the FCC filed a new round of papers with the 9th Circuit, arguing that the three judges who issued the original opinion incorrectly interpreted the law.