Court case

Google came up on the losing end of a previously-undisclosed third showdown with the federal government over demands for data stored overseas, a federal court in Washington has revealed. The disclosure of yet another court fight over the issue comes as the US Supreme Court is preparing to decide as soon as Oct whether to weigh in on the question of whether U.S. law permits authorities to use U.S. courts to obtain electronic records kept outside of the country.

Court filings made public show that in July Chief Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia rejected Google's challenge to a search warrant seeking company data stored abroad. Judge Howell agreed to hold the company in contempt for defying her order and to fine the firm $10,000 a day. However, the arrangement is largely symbolic, since a contempt order is needed to appeal such a ruling and she suspended the fine pending such an appeal. In fact, the firm and prosecutors jointly proposed the arrangement.

Can calling government offices or officials to insult them — especially after being told to stop — be punished the way that calling a private individual to insult them might be? I think the answer should be “no,” and the lower court precedents on the subject seem to agree; but in two recent cases, government officials seem to think that such speech can indeed be criminalized.

The country of Azerbaijan is suing two French journalists for defamation in France for describing the oil-rich state as a “dictatorship.” The move could set an important precedent, in France at least, for foreign governments seeking to curb freedom of the press beyond their shores. The targets of the lawsuit, which critics have decried as an attempt to “export censorship,” are investigative filmmaker Laurent Richard and TV presenter and reporter Elise Lucet.

A federal judge in Massachusetts has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed earlier in 2017 against tech news website Techdirt. The claim was brought by Shiva Ayyadurai, who has controversially claimed that he invented e-mail in the late 1970s. Techdirt (and its founder and CEO, Mike Masnick) has been a longtime critic of Ayyadurai and institutions that have bought into his claims. "How The Guy Who Didn't Invent Email Got Memorialized In The Press & The Smithsonian As The Inventor Of Email," reads one Techdirt headline from 2012. Numerous articles that dubbed Ayyadurai a "liar" and a "charlatan" followed. That, in turn, led to Ayyadurai's January 2017 libel lawsuit.

In the Sept 6 ruling, US District Judge F. Dennis Saylor found that because it is impossible to define precisely and specifically what e-mail is, Ayyadurai's "claim is incapable of being proved true or false." The judge continued: "One person may consider a claim to be 'fake' if any element of it is not true or if it involves a slight twisting of the facts, while another person may only consider a claim to be 'fake' only if no element of it is true."

The European Court of Justice gave Intel a lifeline in its appeal of the €1bn European Union fine for illegal price rebates by sending the case back to the General court to reconsider the chip-maker’s arguments against the 2009 decision.

The ruling raises the burden of proof for Europe’s antitrust watchdog to make a case against pricing incentives offered by dominant companies, increasing the commission’s workload to make its case in its open investigations into Google and Qualcomm. “This is a rebuff for the commission in its wish to apply form-based reasoning without considering the business realities,” said Alec Burnside of law firm Dechert. Price cuts or rebates for volume-buying are standard practice in many companies but current EU rules are unclear whether these discounts are illegal by design or only if they harm competition.

After the Trump Administration announced that it would begin to unwind an Obama-era program that shields younger undocumented immigrants from deportation, Microsoft vowed to defend its workers in court. Microsoft's president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, said that the company is committed to protecting its 39 employees who have Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status, also known as “dreamers.” “If Congress fails to act, our company will exercise its legal rights properly to help protect our employees,” Smith wrote. “If the government seeks to deport any one of them, we will provide and pay for their legal counsel.” Smith added that Microsoft will explore whether it can intervene directly in any such deportation case. “In short, if Dreamers who are our employees are in court, we will be by their side.”

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly tore into President Trump’s voter commission for reneging on a promise to fully disclose public documents before a July 19 meeting, ordering the government to meet new transparency requirements and eliciting an apology from administration lawyers.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly of Washington said the Election Integrity Commission released only an agenda and proposed bylaws before its first meeting at the White House complex. But once gathered, commissioners sat with thick binders that included documents the public had not seen, including a specially-prepared report and a 381-page “database” purporting to show 1,100 cases of voter fraud, both from the Heritage Foundation, and also received a typed list of possible topics to address from the panel vice chairman, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. Judge Kollar-Kotelly said the panel’s after-the-fact argument was “incredible” when it said it did not believe documents prepared by individual commissioners for the July meeting had to have been posted in advance.

A federal judge on Aug 29 dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin against The New York Times, saying Palin’s complaint failed to show that a mistake in an editorial was made maliciously. “What we have here is an editorial, written and rewritten rapidly in order to voice an opinion on an immediate event of importance, in which are included a few factual inaccuracies somewhat pertaining to Palin that are very rapidly corrected,” Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan said in his ruling. “Negligence this may be; but defamation of a public figure it plainly is not.”

The US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit remanded the SNR Wireless v. Federal Communications Commission case to the FCC. Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge Harold Feld said, “We’re extremely pleased that the D.C. Circuit agreed with our analysis that although the FCC had the authority to deny the small business credit, the agency should have given DISH Network, SNR Wireless and Northstar a chance to remedy the problem. As we noted in our amicus brief, the small business credit put licenses in the hands of new competitors and constituted the single largest win of FCC licenses by minority-owned businesses like SNR Wireless and Northstar."

Is the data you share publicly on social networking sites like an announcement in a public place, where speech and information gathering are protected under the First Amendment? Or is it more like something uttered on private real estate, where the owner can prohibit trespassers as they wish? That quandary recently emerged in a California courtroom, where two of the country’s most eminent constitutional lawyers squared off in a high-stakes battle between a data giant and a tiny startup.