With the second Trump Administration set to take power in January 2025, one can expect a pendulum swing in many aspects of technology policy. For example, while it is expected that President Trump will will continue efforts by the Biden Administration to limit China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology, the
CFPB Issues Final “Open Banking” Rule Governing Third Party Use of Consumer Banking Information
- Uses of lnformation Limited to “What is Reasonably Necessary”
- Use of Deidentified Data Not Within Scope
- Screen Scraping Survives
After a yearslong lead-up, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published its final “open banking” rule in October. The rule effectuates the section of the Consumer Financial Protection Act, which charged…
California Enacts Additional Generative AI Bills Touching on Training Data
After several weeks of handwringing about the fate of SB 1047 – the controversial AI safety bill that would have required developers of powerful AI models and entities providing the computing resources to train such models to put appropriate safeguards and policies into place to prevent critical harms – California…
California Enacts Generative AI Law Addressing “Digital Replicas” of Performers
On September 17, 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 2602 into California law (to be codified at Cal. Lab. Code §927). The law addresses the use of “digital replicas” of performers. As defined in the law, a digital replica is:
a computer-generated, highly realistic electronic representation that is readily identifiable…
Court Rules That Scraping of Public Data by Competitor Constitutes Trade Secret Misappropriation
In an ongoing dispute commenced in 2016, the Eleventh Circuit for the second time in the lifetime of the litigation considered trade secret misappropriation and related copyright claims in a scraping case between direct competitors.
The case involved plaintiff Compulife Software, Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Compulife”) – in the business of…
Colorado Expands “Right-to-Repair” Law
On May 28, 2024, Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law the “Consumer Right to Repair Digital Electronic Equipment” bill (HB24-1121). The legislation expands the state’s 2023 right to repair law, which currently applies to agricultural equipment and powered wheelchairs. Generally, the law will broaden the ability of…
A Final Bow for Section 230? Latest Plea for Reform Calls for Sunset of Immunity Law
Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (the “CDA” or “Section 230”), known prolifically as “the 26 words that created the internet,” remains the subject of ongoing controversy. As extensively reported on this blog, the world of social media, user-generated content, and e-commerce has been consistently…
The King is Back (in the Digital Era) | The ELVIS Act, Generative AI and Right of Publicity
On March 21, 2024, in a bold regulatory move, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (“ELVIS”) Act (Tenn. Code Ann. §47-25-1101 et seq.) – a law which, as Gov. Lee stated, covers “new, personalized generative AI cloning models and services that enable human…
California Court Issues Another Noteworthy Decision Dismissing Breach of Contract and Tort Claims in Web Scraping Dispute
On May 9, 2024, a California district court dismissed, with leave to amend, the complaint brought by social media platform X Corp. (formerly Twitter) against data provider Bright Data Ltd. (“Bright Data”) over Bright Data’s alleged scraping of publicly available data from X for use in data products sold…
Agentic Artificial Intelligence: Looking Ahead to Potential Practical and Legal Issues When AI Gets Autonomous
Generative AI has been most synonymous in the public mind with “AI” since the commercial breakout of ChatGPT in November 2022. Consumers and businesses have seen the fruits of impressive innovation in various generative models’ ability to create audio, video, images and text, analyze and transform data, perform Q&A chatbot…