🇪🇺 Personal Data / Regulation: The EDPB has issued an urgent binding decision instructing the Irish data protection authority to take final measures against Meta Ireland Limited to impose a ban on the processing of personal data for behavioral advertising purposes. The ban will come into effect one week after the final measures are notified by the Irish DPA to Meta (Press Release of November 1, 2023).
🇫🇷 Sports Betting / Regulation : An investigation by the DGCCRF with the French Gaming Authority revealed deceptive practices on 36% of the controlled websites offering advice on online sports betting (Press Release of November 2, 2023).
🌎 IOC / Disinformation : The International Olympic Committee announces having faced articles spreading false information about it, shared on Telegram accounts and various social media platforms in multiple languages (Press Release of November 9, 2023).
🇺🇸 Meta / Regulation: Following the recent decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union requiring Facebook to seek the consent of users to display targeted advertising, Meta announces it will temporarily block advertisements targeting minors (Press Release of November 6, 2023).
🇪🇺 CJEU / Illicit content: The CJEU has delivered a judgment stating that a Member State cannot impose general and abstract obligations on a provider of a communication platform established in another Member State to combat illicit content on the Internet, concluding that such measures would jeopardize the principle of control in the originating Member State and violate the freedom to provide services, endangering mutual trust between Member States. (Press Release and CJEU Judgment Case C-376/22 of November 9, 2023).
🇺🇸 DSA / Regulation : X has released its first transparency report under the DSA, highlighting deficiencies in its moderation. The report underscores a lack of dedicated human moderation staff, with only 12 Arabic-speaking and 2 Hebrew-speaking moderators (X Transparency Report of November 5, 2023).
🇰🇷 Copyright / Justice: The South Korean company Naver Webtoon has announced the closure of approximately 150 illegal websites publishing online comics after obtaining personal information of the operators from Cloudflare (Press Release of November 6, 2023).
🇺🇸 Cybercrime / Application: Google announces the creation of badges for apps on the Play Store that have undergone a security review. (Press Release of November 2, 2023).
🇪🇺 Advertising / Regulation: Members of the European Parliament and the 27 EU member states have reached a political agreement on a future regulation regarding online political advertising. The new rules will impose transparency obligations, including the publication of the advertiser’s identity, the amount paid, and clear labeling of any political advertising on social networks. These obligations will only come into effect in 2025. (Press Release of November 7, 2023).
🇪🇺 Streaming / Justice: The IFPI and BVMI achieve a victory with the dismantling of a streaming manipulation service based in Germany (Press Release of November 9, 2023).
🇪🇺 Copyright / Justice: On November 3rd, the Higher Regional Court of Cologne ruled that the anonymisation service Cloudflare, as the operator of a content delivery network, was held responsible as an author. Cloudflare is required to refrain from providing access to a copyrighted music album via the domain ddl-music.to (Press Release of November 7, 2023).
🇫🇷 ANJ / Illegal offer: The study published by the French National Gaming Authority (ANJ) on the illegal offer of online gambling in France reveals that the gross gaming revenue generated by this illegal offer amounts to between 748 million and 1.5 billion euros, representing between 5% and 11% of the overall gambling market (Study on the illegal offer of online gambling accessible in France, November 2023).
🇫🇷 Cybercrime / Decree: A decree dated November 23rd establishes two new departments to combat cybercrime, operational from December 1, 2023. OFAC and COMCYBER-M will be tasked with developing departmental strategies and strengthening the operational coordination of cybercrime departments (Decree of November 23, 2023).
🇪🇺 MARD / Regulation: EUIPO has officially launched its Mediation Center to facilitate the resolution of intellectual property disputes. The center offers free alternative dispute resolution services, including mediation, conciliation and expert determination. The online ODR platform enables secure virtual interactions between mediators and parties (EUIPO press release, November 22, 2023).
🇪🇺 Meta / RGPD: On November 28, the NOYB association filed a complaint against Meta with the Austrian CNIL, on the grounds that the “Pay or Ok” alternative between behavioral advertising and payment for Facebook and Instagram users would not comply with the RGPD (Noyb press release of November 28).
🇺🇸 Google Play Store / DMCA: Despite the developer’s appeal, Google has decided to remove the “Downloader” app from the Play Store following a DMCA complaint, due to possible copyright infringement of works owned by Warner Bros (Press release November 29, 2023).
🇫🇷 Uber Pop / Justice: The French Supreme Court confirmed Uber France’s guilt and fined it 800,000 euros, including a suspended sentence of 400,000 euros for its former Uber Pop service, which put passengers in contact with amateur drivers, thereby recognizing a misleading commercial practice and complicity in the illegal practice of cab driving. Uber France claims to have rethought its model since the end of UberPop, now allowing only professional VTC and cab drivers to use its application. (Press Release of November 28, 2023).
🇪🇺 Data Act / Legislation: On November 27th, the Council of the EU validated the Data Act and adopted a new law on access to and fair use of data (Council of the EU press release, November 27).
🇪🇺 Video games / Legislation: The European Council has adopted conclusions aimed at strengthening the cultural and creative dimension of the European video game sector, calling for support for creativity, the protection of intellectual property rights, the development of video game companies and the promotion of a safe online environment (Conclusion of the European Council of November 24, 2023).
🇫🇷 Influencers / Regulation: The French government is proposing a total rewrite of the law on influencers due to contradictions with EU law. This bill aims to thoroughly modify the law and delete certain articles to take into account the European Commission’s remarks related to the implementation of the DSA (Bill of November 15, 2023, Bruno Lemaire).
🇺🇸 Search Engine / Justice: Google has filed a complaint against a group of internet users, accusing them of abusing the copyright infringement reporting system to delist pages of competitors. The perpetrators allegedly targeted over 620,000 URLs through at least 65 Google accounts created for this purpose, posing as representatives of large companies, well-known personalities, and sports teams. Google estimates losses ranging from 2 to 3 million dollars (U.S. Federal Court, Northern District of California, November 13, 2023).
🇺🇸 Ticketing / Justice: The U.S. Senate has subpoenaed Live Nation and Ticketmaster to disclose information regarding ticket prices, fees, and secondary sales (Press Release of November 20, 2023).
