It’s a process most of us are familiar with, by now: you buy something online, and you get two emails from the site you bought it from. The first is an order confirmation, with an invoice, order number, or order summary in it. The second, a few hours or days later, is a shipping notification: a heads’ up that the package is coming your way, with info about what carrier is bringing it and when you can expect your goods to land at your doorstep. [More]
Government Policy
Patent Troll Sues Basically Anyone Who Notifies You When Your Package Ships
By 10.28.16 — Updated: 11.1.16
Report: Defense Department Overpaid $54 Million For EpiPens
By 10.28.16
It looks like taxpayers didn’t just overpay for EpiPens purchased through Medicaid. According to a new report, the Department of Defense has been paying almost full retail price for the expensive emergency allergy treatment. [More]
Amazon Contractor Agrees To Pay Drivers $100K In Phantom Lunch Breaks
By 10.28.16
What if your employer deducted lunch breaks from your time sheet, but you weren’t allowed to actually take any time for lunch? That’s what New York’s attorney general says happened to employees of Cornucopia Logistics, a contractor that handles deliveries for Amazon and for its grocery delivery service in New York City. The company has settled with the state, and will pay affected workers and former workers $100,000 in back wages for the practice. [More]
New Rules Aim To Make It Easier For Students To Seek Financial, Legal Relief From Failed Colleges
By 10.28.16
In the last few years, multiple for-profit college chains have closed with little or no warning given to their students, while others remain on the brink of closure. And many of the for-profit schools that remain bar wronged students from ever suing the college in a court of law. Today, the Department of Education finalized the massive overhaul of its “Borrower Defense” rules in an effort to make it easier for students to hold colleges financially and legally responsible for their actions. [More]
After 60 Days, What Has The “Robocall Strike Force” Accomplished?
By 10.27.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
Two months ago, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson accepted the challenge of FCC Chair Tom Wheeler to head up an industry-led “Strike Force” to finally do something meaningful to curb unwanted, often illegal, robocalls, and to give consumers free tools they can use to try to block these calls. The team was given 60 days to get this ship headed in the right direction, and now that time has passed a verdict is in: Much was accomplished, but consumers still don’t have the tools they need. [More]
Professional Pooper Scooper Accused Of Impersonating Secret Service Agent To Score Hotel Discount
By 10.27.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
A Pennsylvania man who reportedly runs a business picking up dog droppings has apparently stepped into a major mess of his own making. According to federal prosecutors, he used forged documents to pretend to be a Secret Service agent to score a discount hotel room and then to try to get out of a traffic violation. [More]
23 Lawmakers Want To Know What DOJ Would Do With Expanded Hacking Authority
By 10.27.16
The U.S. Congress has a month to decide on what it should do about a pending rule change that would arguably grant federal law enforcement agencies more authority to remotely hack into computers. Congress can let this amended rule go into effect by doing nothing, so before they let their idleness get the better of them, a group of nearly two-dozen members of the House and Senate are now pushing the Justice Department for more details. [More]
FCC To Propose Rules That Could Restore Consumers’ Right To Sue Phone, Broadband Providers
By 10.27.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
While the big headline of this morning’s monthly FCC meeting was the release of the Commission’s final rules on broadband privacy, the agency’s leadership also let it be known that it’s planning to take on one of the industry’s most controversial issues: The right of consumers to have their day in court. [More]
FCC Adopts New Privacy Rule Limiting What ISPs Can Do With Your Personal Data
By 10.27.16 — Updated: 10.28.16
Privacy is a complicated thing, especially online. While we all know companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon — edge providers, in the parlance of regulators — collect and use our data, fewer of us think about how much the owners of the metaphorical pipes can see passing through them. So to that end, the FCC voted today to adopt rules designed to limit how much of internet subscribers’ data ISPs can sell, share, and trade, and to let customers have some more control over the uses of their personal information. [More]
AT&T, Time Warner Stock Prices Fall Slightly Amid Merger Skepticism
By 10.24.16
Before the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner was official, it was already being decried by people in both presidential campaigns, consumer advocates, lawmakers, and former regulators. Amid this backlash to the news, both companies’ values have taken a bit of a ding today. [More]
Alaska Air Manages To Fight Off JetBlue’s Effort To Nab Havana Flight
By 10.24.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
Now that the Department of Transportation has given approval to eight airlines to start scheduled passenger flights to Cuba’s capital city of Havana, one might think that the elbowing and jockeying for spots would be over. Not so, as some airlines are still trying to nab coveted flights from other carriers — and failing, in the case of JetBlue. [More]
The Inside Story Of How Samsung Botched The Galaxy Note 7 Recall
By 10.24.16
One important decision by Samsung executives turned the Galaxy Note 7 from a big but manageable product defect to a brand-destroying disaster. Reports from all over the world were coming in of Galaxy Note 7 fires, along with pressure from mobile carriers and from customers to do something about it. Yet the company didn’t know exactly what was causing the batteries to explode. [More]
Sen. Elizabeth Warren: $465M Mylan EpiPen Settlement Is “Shamefully Weak… Shockingly Soft”
By 10.24.16
Earlier this month, drugmaker Mylan disclosed a $465 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice over allegations that the company had defrauded the Medicaid system by mis-categorizing its high-priced EpiPen allergy treatment. The DOJ has still yet to confirm this settlement or provide any details, and critics of the deal say it looks like Mylan is getting off easy. [More]
Dear New Yorkers: Your Short-Term Airbnb Listing Could Lead To $7,500 Fine
By 10.21.16 — Updated: 10.24.16
It’s already illegal for New York residents to list their unoccupied apartments on Airbnb for less than 30 days, but now it’s illegal and it could cost them: Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday signed into law a measure that penalizes hosts up to $7,500 for such listings. [More]
FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Talks Privacy, 5G & Set-Top Box Reform
October 21, 2016
When Tom Wheeler was appointed FCC Chair in 2013, some questioned whether a former frontman for both the cable and telecom industries could possibly keep consumers’ needs in mind when dealing with the companies he’d known intimately for decades. John Oliver even likened the naming of Wheeler as FCC Chair to “needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.” Yet, not only has Wheeler demonstrated that he’s not a dingo, he’s also gone toe-to-toe with the companies he once represented, enacting new net neutrality rules that regulate broadband as a utility, challenging phone companies to put an end to robocalls, going after wireless providers for misleading “unlimited” plans, and trying to shake up the pay-TV monopoly on set-top boxes. [More]
DOJ, States To Sue Moody’s Credit Rating Agency For Role In Mortgage Meltdown
By 10.21.16 — Updated: 10.31.16
What drove the mortgage bubble in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis wasn’t just ill-prepared home-buyers signing on to subprime, adjusted-rate mortgages they couldn’t afford, or the lenders who effectively gave up on underwriting these loans so as to bundle and resell as many of them as possible. There were also credit rating agencies that gave these mortgage-backed bonds the seal of approval, even when they were worthless. [More]
Backpage Executives Seek Dismissal Of Pimping Charges
By 10.20.16 — Updated: 10.21.16
Earlier this month, the Attorney General of California took the unusual step of charging the CEO of classifieds site Backpage and two of the company’s major shareholders with pimping and conspiracy to commit pimping. At the time, AG Kamala Harris said that Backpage was “unlawfully designed…to be the world’s top online brothel.” Now the company’s lawyers are seeking dismissal of those charges. [More]
Report: Kroger Isn’t Interested In Buying A Few Hundred Walgreens Stores
By 10.19.16
If you know anyone who’s interested in buying around 650 grocery stores, Walgreens and Rite Aid would like to hear about it. The two drugstore chains need to find a buyer for between 500 and 1,000 stores to get their merger approved by the Federal Trade Commission, and no one is interested. [More]
