Trump To Order Review of Law Protecting Social Media Firms After Twitter Spat

President Trump will sign an executive order later today that mandates a review of a law that shields companies like Twitter, Google and Facebook from being held liable for the content appearing on their platforms after fact checks for the first time were added to two of his tweets. From a news report: The executive order Trump is expected to sign…

Nintendo Files Lawsuits In Crackdown Against Switch Hackers

Nintendo of America filed two lawsuits on Friday against Nintendo Switch hack resellers that sell software to play pirated video games, according to court documents obtained by Polygon. From the report: The first lawsuit was filed Friday in an Ohio court against Tom Dilts Jr., the alleged operator of the website UberChips. The second lawsuit was filed in a Seattle court…

Calls By College Students For Tuition Refunds Are Growing Louder

Long-time Slashdot reader jyosim writes:
Students want their money back since their classes have moved online. Or they want partial refunds, and their calls have been getting louder. “Petition movements at more than 200 campuses are calling for partial refunds of tuition, typically asking for 50 percent back,” reports EdSurge. “And some student protesters are now even filing class-action lawsuits to try…

Justice Department, State Attorneys General Likely to Bring Antitrust Lawsuits Against Google

phalse phace shares a report from The Wall Street Journal: Both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet’s Google (Warning: source paywalled; alternative source) — and are well into planning for litigation. The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer, some of the people…

How a Corporation Suddenly Faced ‘Flood’ of Lawsuits From Thousands of Gig Workers

Long-time Slashdot reader PalmAndy shared the New York Times profile of two pioneers in “mass arbitration.” One Silicon Valley founder created FairShake, an automated system to help consumers launch hundreds of arbitration cases against corporations like Comcast and AT&T. And then there’s attorney Travis Lenkner (and his firm Keller Lenkner), who says most companies never thought consumers would actually use arbitration….

Signal Threatens To Dump US Market If EARN IT Act Passes

Signal is warning that an anti-encryption bill circulating in Congress could force the private messaging app to pull out of the U.S. market. PC Magazine reports: Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the free app, which offers end-to-end encryption, has seen a surge in traffic. But on Wednesday, the nonprofit behind the app published a blog post, raising the alarm…

The Supreme Court Says States Cannot Be Sued For Copyright Infringement

sandbagger shares a report from PetaPixel: The Supreme Court of the United States dealt a major blow to photographers’ copyright protections when it declared that states cannot be sued for copyright infringement because they have “sovereign immunity.” The opinion came down as part of a writ of certiorari regarding the case of Allen v Cooper. A writ of certiorari is basically…

More essential coronavirus links: March 17-23

A roundup of information from physicians, scientists and journalists. Source: https://earthsky.org/human-world/more-essential-coronavirus-links-march-17-23…

Before Clearview Became a Police Tool, It Was a Secret Plaything of the Rich

Investors and clients of the facial recognition start-up freely used the app on dates and at parties — and to spy on the public. From a report: One Tuesday night in October 2018, John Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain, was having dinner at Cipriani, an upscale Italian restaurant in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood, when his daughter, Andrea,…

Facebook, Google and Twitter Rebel Against Pakistan’s Censorship Rules

When Pakistan’s government unveiled some of the world’s most sweeping rules on internet censorship this month, global internet companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter were expected to comply or face severe penalties — including the potential shutdown of their services. Instead, the tech giants banded together and threatened to leave the country and its 70 million internet users in digital darkness….