A sixth class action emanating from Samsung’s Sept. 2 disclosure that its networks incurred a data breach earlier in the summer was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. Bakersfield, California, resident Tammy Gutierrez alleges Samsung “did not use reasonable security procedures and practices appropriate to the nature of the sensitive, unencrypted information it was maintaining” on its networks, causing personally identifiable information (PII) belonging to her and other potential class members “to be exposed,” said her complaint (docket 3:22-cv-05719). Samsung could have prevented the breach “by properly encrypting or otherwise implementing policies, procedures and computer data security programs that provided the level of protection reasonably necessary for a company of this sophistication and the custodian of large amounts of PII,” it said. “It is well known that PII, including name and contact information in particular, is an invaluable commodity and a frequent target of hackers.” Samsung didn't comment.

EarthLink "has agreed to request its wholesale providers to use commercially reasonable efforts to block access" to video privacy site YTS on their U.S. servers providing service for EarthLink, the defendant ISP and plaintiff movie production firms suing it told the U.S. District Court in Atlanta in a docket 1:22-cv-02576 joint stipulation for dismissal Tuesday.

The Copyright Act preempts right of publicity claims by radio personality John Edward Melendez, also known as "Stuttering John," the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday, upholding a lower court's rejection of Melendez's docket 21-1769 complaint against Sirius XM for alleged violations of his right of publicity under California common and statutory law. The court said Melendez didn't show any use of his name or likeness by the satellite operator other than via rebroadcasts of the copyrightable material from its archives of The Howard Stern Show. Deciding were Judges Raymond Lohier, Beth Robinson and Joseph Bianco, who penned the decision.

The Supreme Court will consider two appeals of appellate court decisions on social media companies' legal protections when their platforms are used in conjunction with terror attacks. On Monday, SCOTUS granted certiorari in docket 21-1333 in an appeal of a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision tossing out a suit against Google's YouTube for hosting and recommending ISIS proselytizing and recruitment videos. Plaintiff in the litigation and SCOTUS petitioner is the estate of Nohemi Gonzalez, a U.S. citizen who was killed in ISIS attacks there in 2015. The petitioner asked SCOTUS to revisit the 9th Circuit's holding that the Communications Decency Act's Section 230 protects YouTube's algorithm for recommending videos. Google didn't comment. The court also granted cert Monday in docket 21-1496, in which Twitter is appealing another 9th Circuit decision. In that decision, the appellate court found Twitter and co-defendants Facebook and Google could be held liable for aiding and abetting an act of terrorism. Twitter and the others were sued by American relatives of Nawras Alassaf, a Jordanian killed in an ISIS attack in Istanbul in 2017. “These cases underscore how important it is that digital services have the resources and the legal certainty to deal with dangerous content online," Computer and Communications Industry Association President Matt Schruers said in a statement. “Section 230 is critical to enabling the digital sector’s efforts to respond to extremist and violent rhetoric online, and these cases illustrate why it is essential that those efforts continue.” SCOTUS "can really do something useful by constraining Section 230 protections to hosting content instead of targeting content," tweeted Matt Stoller, American Economic Liberties Project research director.

The FTC and Meta agreed to an intricate “protocol” of ground rules for deposing witnesses remotely in the agency’s lawsuit to block Meta’s Within Unlimited buy, according to a joint stipulation (docket 5:22-cv-04325) filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Jose. The protocol will apply to all remote fact-based and expert depositions held during the discovery phase of the trial, said the stipulation. The deposing party is responsible for hiring and covering the cost of the court reporter, videographer and any other vendor required to help with the deposition and to comply with the terms of the protocol, it said. The court reporter will participate in the deposition remotely, “and will not be physically present in the same room as the witness,” it said. All deposition participants “will use secure, end-to-end encryption videoconferencing,” it said. Audio dial-in will be available for deposition participants unable to participate via videoconferencing, “provided that the witness, the attorney taking the deposition, and the attorney defending the deposition must participate with their video switched on,” it said. The videoconferencing platform will be hosted exclusively by the court reporting service, it said. The only recording of the deposition will be through the court reporting service, and the parties will instruct the court reporter “to record only when the deposition is on the record,” it said. Witnesses “will not have the ability to privately communicate by chat, email, text message or other means” with other deposition participants or anyone else while the deposition is on the record, it said. U.S. District Judge Edward Davila in San Jose signed an order Friday granting the joint stipulation.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik in Seattle signed an order Thursday directing his clerk to assign a civil action number to a Sept. 16 ex parte application from Chinese company Sailed Technology for permission to serve deposition and discovery subpoenas on Amazon for alleged patent infringement. Amazon filed a motion Wednesday to deny Sailed’s application, and “in light of the contested nature of this proceeding,” assigning the case a docket number is appropriate, said Lasnik. “Sailed seeks highly invasive and confidential discovery without providing Amazon with an opportunity to respond and correct the record -- an unfairly prejudicial outcome that the Court should not allow,” said Amazon’s motion to deny. The court should order Sailed to refile its application as a “noticed motion” to be heard on a regular calendar, said Amazon. Sailed has brought multiple patent infringement actions in Nanjing, China, alleging Amazon Echo- and Fire-series products infringe one or more Sailed patents, said the ex parte application. Amazon is a named defendant in these actions and Amazon’s name is printed on the package of accused products, it said.

By our count, a fifth federal class action has been brought in the past two weeks to hold Samsung to account for the data breach it disclosed Sept. 2 in public notices and in private emails to account holders in which the confidential personally identifiable information (PII) of millions of customers was exposed to hackers, including first and last names, dates of birth, postal addresses, precise geolocation data, email addresses and phone numbers. The latest complaint, filed Thursday (docket 1:22-cv-05767) in U.S. District Court in Camden, New Jersey, was brought by Joseph Rollins, a Browns Mills, New Jersey, resident, who bought a Samsung Galaxy S10 smartphone and was notified by Samsung that his PII “was among the confidential data that cybercriminals illegally accessed and stole from Samsung’s servers,” said his suit. Rollins “is very concerned about identity theft as well as the consequences of such identity theft and fraud resulting from the data breach,” said his complaint. Rollins has received “an increased number of phishing emails and spam telephone calls” since July, from entities including pharmacies, solar businesses and extended warranty companies, it said. July is when Samsung first became aware of the hack, it said in its Sept. 2 notifications, prompting virtually all the complainants to hold the company to task for waiting weeks before disclosing the data breach to the public. The five class-action suits were filed in various jurisdictions in New York and New Jersey.

A bill that would make case searches free on the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (Pacer) service is estimated to add $77 million to the federal deficit by 2032, reported the Congressional Budget Office Monday. The bill, titled the Open Courts Act, would require the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AOUSC) and the General Services Administration to develop a centralized case management system for all federal court records that the public could access at no cost. To help pay for it, the judiciary would temporarily increase some fees for access to court documents for high-volume Pacer users, though the fees would be completely eliminated in 2026. Also in this year, the judiciary would be authorized to impose a new fee structure for filing civil and bankruptcy cases in federal courts to account for the lack of Pacer case viewing revenue. The bill also imposes mandates on entities that file federal cases or use the case management system. Developing the new system would require $230 million over 10 years, CBO said. The money would be spent on private vendors to help develop the software, plus more judiciary information technology staff to manage the deployment and maintenance of the system, and other costs including cloud storage and software licenses. As a result of the elimination of Pacer fees in 2026, CBO estimated, the AOUSC would require more money to continue providing public access to the court documents. In the years 2017-2021, AOUSC spent around $80 million annually to provide these services. Though those expenses are expected to decline by a third over the next decade via the efficiencies of the new system, AOUSC still would need about $82 million in 2026 and $496 million over the decade ending 2032 to continue to provide the services.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia should direct Meta to file joint monthly status reports with the FTC so the company won’t delay resolving issues with the agency during the discovery phase of its antitrust lawsuit, the FTC said in a filing Thursday in docket 1:20-cv-03590. Meta replied, saying it’s unnecessary to amend the status report schedule and doing so would place an “unfair” burden on the company. The FTC noted the court required joint status reports in May and August, which prompted the two sides to “resolve lingering discovery disputes in the days before the reports were due. The FTC said its hope is future reports would have the same “salutary effect.” The company delayed addressing other discovery issues since the last joint status report in August, the agency said. There's “no need to amend the Scheduling Order to require more frequent status reports and ... doing so will impose an unfair burden on Meta and present the Court with unripe disputes,” Meta said. The FTC is seeking information about “inaccurate or deficient privilege claims,” collaborative work environments, the company’s document preservation efforts, production timelines and deposition negotiations.

Texas’ social media law shouldn’t take effect, with Supreme Court review possibly in the cards, NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) told the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. In an unopposed motion Thursday in case 21-51178, the web groups said they plan to seek a writ of certiorari at the Supreme Court, which is also considering a petition to review a similar Florida law (see 2209220001). Defendant Texas doesn’t oppose a stay if the plaintiffs don’t seek an extension to file the cert petition, CCIA and NetChoice said: “Granting a stay will prevent irreparable harm to Plaintiffs’ member companies while the Supreme Court reviews the vital constitutional issues raised by legislation such as HB-20.” Supreme Court review is plainly merited due to a split between the 5th and 11th circuits, they said.