Tech Law

OPINION

The High Stakes of Oracle’s Appeal

So now Oracle is appealing the Pentagon's award to Amazon of its $10 billion JEDI contract to provide cloud computing solutions. "The Court of Federal Claims opinion in the JEDI bid protest describes the JEDI procurement as unlawful, notwithstanding dismissal of the protest solely on the legal techn...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

Cloud Users: Read the Click Agreement Terms

There is no data showing how many people actually read through click agreements, terms of service and privacy policies before clicking the alluring "accept" button. However, there's research that indicates fewer than 1 percent of people report taking the time to review online terms. Most folks cons...

I have been warning about online companies invading our privacy for years. Some very large companies now are under scrutiny by the U.S. government. As the pressure increases, Amazon seems to have come up with a creative solution. It has been offering to pay users $10 for permission to track them. In...

GitHub is blocking users in Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria from accessing its services to comply with U.S. trade control laws. The Microsoft-owned company disclosed the action on a support page as a courtesy, noting that GitHub users ultimately are responsible for ensuring that their use ...

Finance and accounting technology became the No. 1 software budgeting priority for small and mid-sized businesses, according to a survey conducted last year. Almost 54 percent of respondents were budgeting to invest in accounting tools in the next 12 to 24 months, with those in the retail industry s...

INSIGHTS

Timely Antitrust Investigation

The DoJ is opening antitrust investigations into some of the biggest tech companies around, including Facebook, Google, Amazon and others. This is nothing that either the public or the companies involved should fret about. It is part of the evolution of the tech sector. We've been through this kind ...

Amazon is keenly interested in protecting the intellectual property rights of its third-party sellers because the company depends upon them for their long-term success. In a recent newsletter to shareholders, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos explained that third-party sellers currently make up a majority of th...

The DoJ has announced an antitrust probe into big tech, following several months of rumors that it was about to do so. The DoJ plans to review how the leading online platforms achieved market power and whether they have engaged in practices that reduced competition, stifled innovation, or otherwise ...

A flaw in a Facebook app designed for children under 13 years old allows kids to chat online with people unapproved by their parents. The messaging app is designed to give parents control over who their kids text and video chat with online, but a bug in the software lets a contact approved to chat w...

The FTC announced that Equifax has agreed to pay a minimum of $575 million as part of a global settlement of claims against it arising from a 2017 data breach that affected 147 million Americans. The settlement with the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 50 states and territories pot...

TECHNOLOGY LAW CORNER

Isn’t It Time to Buy Cyber Insurance?

Every day we read stories about data breaches and cyberattacks on business and government websites, and the resulting the loss of personally identifiable information. Cybercrime is on the rise, and given the ever-evolving methods of attack, meaningful relief and reliable measures to fend off cybercr...

Ravelry, an online knitting community that has more than 8 million members, last month announced that it would ban forum posts, projects, patterns, and even profiles from users who supported the Trump administration. "We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open...

State motor vehicle departments have become a rich source of facial recognition data for and FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Researchers at Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology reportedly used public records requests to gather a cache of documents that show the age...

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