Court case

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit has denied a petition from Prometheus Radio Project that it effectively stay the Federal Communications Commission's November vote to deregulate local broadcast ownership.  The court suggested the jury was still out on the FCC's response to the court's direction on ownership diversity and that Prometheus did not make a case for direct action from the court.

The Federal Communications Commission told the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that it did consider the impact of its broadcast local ownership deregulation on minority and female ownership and that that consideration and its adoption of a definition of eligible entity meets that court's mandate. "[T]he Commission carefully analyzed whether each of its rule changes would have a “material impact on minority and female ownership," said the FCC's legal team. The FCC told the court it could consider the arguments for or against the rule change in the regular order of challenges to tho

The National Association of Broadcasters and Sinclair have asked a federal court to allow them to weigh in on the request from critics of the Federal Communications Commission's broadcast deregulatory decision that the court block that deregulation.

The deregulatory changes the Federal Communications Commission recently adopted to its media ownership rules are due to take effect on Feb. 7. Prometheus Radio Project and Media Mobilizing Project, however, have filed an appeal of those rule changes in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and, as expected, have now asked the Court to delay the FCC’s implementation of those changes.

The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit told the Federal Communications Commission to respond to a request that the court stay implementation of the FCC's December media regulation rule rollback. In a petition for an emergency writ of mandamus, Prometheus Radio Project and Media Mobilizing Project had asked the court to block the Feb.

Facebook has won the backing of European Union courts after the European Court of Justice dismissed a potential class action lawsuit from Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems.  The EU’s highest court ruled that Schrems — a dogged campaigner against Facebook’s handling of users’ personal data — could not bring a consumer lawsuit on behalf of 25,000 Facebook users for alleged privacy breaches. Instead, the ECJ said Schrems could only file an individual case against Facebook for allegedly illegally handling data relating to his personal Facebook account in Austria.

Prometheus Radio Project has filed suit against the Federal Communications Commission's recent decision to eliminate the newspaper-broadcast crossownership and loosen other broadcast regulations, saying the FCC "ignores evidence in the record, misinterprets evidence, and fails to consider important aspects of the record." Joined by the Media Mobilizing Project, Prometheus wants the court to reverse the decision and require the FCC to "fully comply" with the courts direction in remanding a previous Quadrennial decision after Prometheus challenged it. Prometheus argues that the Pai FCC also f

Can a federal court decide whether the White House is breaking presidential record-keeping laws, such as by using encrypted apps that automatically erase messages once they’re read or issuing executive orders to avoid creating a paper trail accessible to the public? Government attorneys told a federal judge in Washington that the answer is a sweeping “no,” in a case that could help determine whether open-government laws are keeping pace with frontiers in communications technology.

[Commentary] With each congressional office getting thousands of calls for Network Neutrality and close to zero supporting Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai — and with Net Neutrality looking like a real issue in the 2018 elections — we’ve got a shot at passing the resolution. If you haven’t yet called your members of Congress, please do it now. And, yes, the president would need to sign this bill. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, so I’ll just say we welcome that fight.

[Commentary] The Restoring Internet Freedom order was a triumph of ideology over sense, sacrificing the interests of internet users and innovators on the altar of deregulatory purity. Some leading broadband providers, recognizing that they got more from the FCC than they’d bargained for, pledged never to use their newfound freedom to interfere online. But that’s not enough. Ideally, Congress would do something it should have done a decade ago: update federal communications law to give the FCC a mandate and clear authority to protect net neutrality.