Court case

Each quarter, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) determines the Universal Service Fund (USF) surcharge that is placed on customers’ telecommunications bills. The surcharge is calculated by estimating the cost of the agency’s various universal service programs, divided by the industry’s anticipated telecommunications revenue. As those programs have grown, and that revenue has shrunk, the surcharge has risen from 3 percent in 1998 to a whopping 33 percent in 2021.

Google agreed to a record $391.5 million privacy settlement with a 40-state coalition of attorneys general for charges that it misled users into thinking they had turned off location tracking in their account settings even as the company continued collecting that information. Under the settlement, Google will also make its location tracking disclosures clearer starting in 2023. The attorneys general said that the agreement was the biggest internet privacy settlement by US states.

The Federal Communications Commission, which has responsibility for protecting Americans from potential radiation hazards generated by wireless transmitters and cellphones, has repeatedly sided with the telecommunications industry in denying the possibility of virtually any human harm.

US District Court Judge Daniel Domenico in Colorado, a Trump appointee, has thrown out a lawsuit accusing Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) of violating the First Amendment by blocking a constituent on Twitter. judge Domenico essentially ruled that Rep Boebert was free to block people at will from her @laurenboebert account because it is “held out and operated as a personal and campaign account.” The judge said in his ruling that the block wasn't done by the government, because the Twitter account wasn't an official government account.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York upheld the chapter 11 restructuring of Windstream Holdings Inc., finding bondholder complaints about the debt-cutting plan moot because reversing it would mean unwinding transactions that have already taken place. The court backed Windstream's 2020 restructuring, which put Elliott Management Corp. and other senior creditors in control of the business while wiping out junior bondholders owed roughly $2.4 billion. 

Computer companies and edge providers are asking the US Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue of whether state governments can impose what the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is branding "must-carry" for online platforms and a "road map" for those wishing to fill the internet with offensive content edge providers would have to carry. Cable operators have long been subject to must-carry rules governing carriage of broadcast stations, carriage those operators have also argued is compelled speech that violates the First Amendment.

Big telecommunication companies (telcos) and almost every large cable company use what the industry calls "hidden fees." These fees are not mentioned when advertising for a service but are put onto customer bills. There is a class action lawsuit in California that shows why broadband providers are not worried about using hidden fees. In times past, when the big companies were regulated, they might have been ordered to make a 100% refund of a fee that regulators decided was questionable.

The first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax in Maryland is no more after less than two years in practice. The tax was struck down in the Anne Arundel County Circuit Court after Judge Alison Asti sided with subsidiaries of Comcast and Verizon, finding that the policy violated the First Amendment, the Internet Tax Freedom Act, and the Dormant Commerce Clause. By only taxing advertising when it is served digitally, the tax discriminated against e-commerce and violated the federal Internet Tax Freedom Act, Judge Asti said. He also ruled the tax violated the Dormant Commerce Clause—which pro

Illinois Bell Telephone Company, which does business as AT&T Illinois, agreed to pay $23 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into alleged misconduct involving the company’s efforts to unlawfully influence former Illinois Speaker of the House Michael J. Madigan.

The US Supreme Court will decide whether social media companies can be sued for hosting and recommending terrorist content, taking up two cases that challenge their liability protections. The cases mark the court’s first test of the broad immunity social media companies have enjoyed under a provision known as Section 230, part of the 1996 Communications Decency Act. But the law has drawn criticism from both Democrats and Republicans amid questions about whether social media companies have become too powerful. In one case, Alphabet Inc.’s Google is trying to defeat a suit involving Nohemi Go