Reporting

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) said the coronavirus pandemic has “accelerated” the need to expand broadband into rural parts of the country as more of the country works remotely. “I mean, first of all, tech companies realized that remote work is more possible. Facebook has said that they're going to go all remote, or at least half of their staff of their employees are going to be remote. Twitter has said the same thing.

A group of publishers sued Internet Archive, saying that the nonprofit group’s trove of free electronic copies of books is robbing authors and publishers of revenue at a moment when it is desperately needed. Internet Archive has made more than 1.3 million books available for free online, according to the complaint, which were scanned and available to one borrower at a time for a period of 14 days.

“Social determinants of health” is a hot topic among government and health system executives. The phrase usually refers to basic food, housing and transportation disparities that can lead adjoining ZIP codes to have drastically different life expectancies. But could lack of broadband Internet access also be considered a social determinant of health?

Private parties have a right to challenge a merger after it has been completed, the Justice Department (DOJ) told an appeals court, in a case with big implications for future antitrust break-ups. Jeld-Wen, one of the country’s biggest manufacturers of doors, is seeking to overturn a court order that would unwind its 2012 merger with rival Craftmaster International and require it to pay $176 million in lost profits to Steves & Sons, a customer who sued over the deal.

Democratic congressional staffers are signaling fresh optimism that some money for broadband will make it into another coronavirus relief package long mulled on Capitol Hill. Republicans are “proceeding politically a little more cautiously right now” in deference to GOP leadership, but “we know privately that there are Republicans that would be very supportive of spending more money on E-Rate or Lifeline or Rural Healthcare,” said Joey Wender, senior policy adviser to Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).

President Donald Trump's effort to regulate social media companies' content decisions may face an uphill battle from Federal Communications Commission regulators who have previously said they cannot oversee the conduct of internet firms. In August 2018, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said, "The government is not here to regulate these platforms. We don't have the power to do that." Former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican, wrote on Twitter that the review ordered by President Trump is "based on political #speech management of platforms.

President Donald Trump is asking the Federal Communications Commission to review Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the law that gives social media companies their legal protection. The president wants rules that'll let the agency investigate complaints that social media companies discriminate against certain speech on their platforms. Any role in policing social media will be awkward for the FCC, which has cast itself as anti-regulation under Ajit Pai, its Trump-appointed chairman.

Recently, 11 local broadcasters were caught airing “news” segments that were actually advertisements praising Amazon’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Experts say the ads—which featured an Amazon public relations representative pretending to be a reporter—not only violated the law, but are a shining example of how media consolidation is slowly destroying quality local journalism. The ads were part of an Amazon press release lauding the company for its “innovation” during the COVID-19 crisis.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai challenged Twitter over a bellicose posting from Iran’s top leader hours after the company put a warning about glorifying violence on a tweet from President Donald Trump. “Serious question for @Twitter: Do these tweets from Supreme Leader of Iran @khamenei_ir violate “Twitter Rules about glorifying violence”? Chairman Pai said in a tweet. He attached screen shots of May 22 tweets from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei predicting the eventual elimination of Israel.

Former Vice President Joe Biden still wants to repeal Section 230, the pivotal internet law that provides social media companies like Facebook and Twitter with broad legal immunity over content posted by their users, a campaign spokesperson said. Still, the campaign emphasized key disagreements with the executive order signed by President Donald Trump May 28.