Texas’ social media law violates the First Amendment and would eviscerate platforms' editorial discretion over content shown to users, tech industry groups argued Friday before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in docket 21-51178 (see 2203280023). The First Amendment guarantees privately owned publishers the right to exercise editorial discretion, said NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association. There's no “hosting” exception to the First Amendment, and Supreme Court precedent doesn’t support requiring private companies to host others’ speech, the filing said: The new law discriminates based on viewpoint, content and speaker.

Utah’s multistate antitrust lawsuit against Google’s app store threatens to undermine competition with Apple’s App Store and harm consumers, Google argued Thursday before the U.S. District Court in San Francisco in docket 3:21-cv-05227 (see 2111020064). Google provides Android to smartphone manufacturers for free, creating incentives for developers to invest in apps, making virtually every sector of the economy more efficient, Google said: It's a “leading source of critical competition” to Apple’s iOS and App Store. “Far from generating anticompetitive harm, Android and Google Play bring enormous benefits to developers and users -- and they do so at zero cost to users and minimal cost to developers, including the States, in the vast majority of cases,” Google wrote.

Global Q4 cloud infrastructure spending increased 13.5% year over year to $21.1 billion, and was up 8.8% for full-year 2021 to $73.9 billion, reported IDC Thursday. Q4 was the second straight quarter of year-over-year growth “as supply chain constraints have depleted vendor inventories over the past several quarters,” it said. “As backlogs continue to grow, pent-up demand bodes well for future growth as long as the economy stays healthy, and supply catches up to demand.” IDC forecast 2022 cloud infrastructure spending to grow 21.7% to $90 billion.

OMB disagrees with GAO recommendations to update inspector general reporting guidance to increase cybersecurity rating consistency and precision, the GAO said Thursday. OMB didn’t concur with the recommendation, saying the agency would like to give IGs “flexibility to adapt their reviews.” GAO believes the recommendations are warranted “to provide a more consistent and accurate picture of agencies' cybersecurity performance.” OMB countered that its guidance “establishes a foundational set of standards for IG audits while giving IGs the freedom to expand or adapt their reviews based upon their agencies’ unique missions, resources, and challenges.”

FedEx will partner with Elroy Air to test autonomous drone “middle-mile” cargo delivery beginning in 2023, said the companies Wednesday. Elroy describes itself as building the first “end-to-end autonomous vertical take-off and landing aerial cargo system.” The program’s main thrust will be moving shipments between “sortation locations,” said FedEx. “The exponential growth of e-commerce has accelerated the demand for reliable, efficient transportation and logistics solutions throughout all stages of the supply chain.”

DOD should issue guidance and agreements that “define roles and responsibilities” for artificial intelligence collaboration, the GAO recommended Wednesday. DOD believes AI will “transform warfare, and failure to adopt AI technology could hinder national security,” the GAO said. The agency recommended DOD guidance, a comprehensive strategy and a “high-level plan or roadmap for its AI inventory process.” DOD concurred with all of GAO’s recommendations. Legislators and agencies have been exploring how to define AI standards.

A bipartisan bill authorizing the government to set mandatory technical measures for online platforms to combat piracy would undermine the balance of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, industry groups, advocates and academics wrote Congress Tuesday. Computer & Communications Industry Association, Public Knowledge, CTA, NetChoice, American Library Association and R Street Institute signed. The Strengthening Measures to Advance Rights Technologies (Smart) Copyright Act (S.3880) authorizes the librarian of Congress to designate technical measures through a public rulemaking process, creating new liability for service providers hosting content (see 2203180069). “Within months of the designation of a technical measure, sophisticated infringers would find workarounds, while service providers would be on an endless cycle of ‘designated technical measure’ rulemakings,” the groups wrote.

The lack of “any visible cyber activity” from Moscow is one of many “surprises about the campaign that Russia is waging against Ukraine,” Keir Giles, Chatham House senior consulting fellow-Russian and Eurasian affairs, said Friday on a Conference Board podcast. “There are a lot of areas of Russian capability that were expected to be deployed against Ukraine that somehow haven’t materialized.” The impact of major Russian cyber operations against Ukraine would be “huge,” and many experts are speculating “that is actually why Russia is being restrained and is holding off from mounting the campaigns that were expected,” said Giles. “If Russia conducts cyberattacks against Ukraine only, it may be very hard for them to contain the effects to Ukraine only.” Giles worries that in the “later stages of Russia’s war on the West” there will materialize cyberattacks from Moscow that “are far less restrained,” he said. “If and when Russia does move on from Ukraine, and it comes away from Ukraine thinking that at least it had met some of its objectives, then the next stage of the attack on the West will almost certainly include those cyberattacks that are far less discriminating.” If Russia succeeds in removing access to the internet “in large sectors of large countries,” the economic impact obviously will be significant, said Giles. “Everybody that is data-dependent or that manages civilian telecommunications infrastructure needs to be prepared,” he said.

States waited too long to bring antitrust claims against Facebook’s already-approved acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, which initially didn’t raise competitive issues, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued Monday with industry groups before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in docket 21-7078 (see 2203150046). The chamber signed its brief in support of Facebook with the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Business Roundtable. The states seek a “wholesale” exemption from Clayton Act applications “no matter how unreasonable the delay or how prejudicial its effect,” the groups wrote. Facebook made a similar argument in its last rebuttal against states seeking actions against the deals. “By expanding the enforcement field from a reasonable time to eternity, dispensing with laches guarantees more enforcement actions concerning old conduct,” the chamber wrote. They denied claims the platform’s refusal to deal with certain rivals constituted an antitrust violation, saying Facebook never terminated a prior profitable course of dealing with the rivals in question: “Absent termination of a prior profitable course of dealing, allegations based on a refusal to deal do not state a valid antitrust claim.”

A lawsuit claiming Facebook benefited from a user’s image without consent fails to allege the platform had editorial discretion in the third-party advertisement in question, Meta argued Friday in docket 2:19-cv-04034 (see 2203070067). Philadelphia news anchor Karen Hepp sued Facebook in 2018 for running an ad from the dating app FirstMet, which used her image without consent. The U.S. District Court in Philadelphia should dismiss her lawsuit because she doesn’t have a “plausible claim” the platform used her image for commercial or advertising purposes, Meta argued. The case has implications for Communications Decency Act Section 230 (see 2203250048).