An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The European Union's digital policy chief warned TikTok's boss Thursday that the social media app will have to fall in line with tough new rules for online platforms set to take effect later this year. EU Commissioner Thierry Breton held a video call with Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, the popular Chinese-owned video sharing app that's coming under increasing scrutiny from Western authorities over fears about data privacy, cybersecurity and misinformation. The two discussed the company's plans to comply with the bloc's Digital Services Act, which is set to take effect for the biggest online companies in September. The act is a set of sweeping rules that will require platforms to reduce harmful online content and combat online risks.

"With younger audiences comes greater responsibility," Breton said, according to a readout of the call. "It is not acceptable that behind seemingly fun and harmless features, it takes users seconds to access harmful and sometimes even life-threatening content." Breton added that, with millions of young users in Europe, TikTok has a "special responsibility" to ensure its content is safe. [...] Breton said he is also concerned about allegations TikTok is spying on journalists and transferring reams of personal user data outside of Europe, in violation of the 27-country bloc's strict privacy rules.

Bretaon said he "explicitly conveyed" to Shou that TikTok needs to "step up efforts to comply" with EU rules on data protection, copyright as well as the Digital Services At, which includes provisions for heavy fines or even a ban from the EU for repeat offenses that threaten the people's lives or safety. "We will not hesitate to adopt the full scope of sanctions to protect our citizens if audits do not show full compliance," he said.

Music streaming service Spotify, along with other media firms such as Deezer, urged the European Commission to take action against Apple for anticompetitive and unfair practices, in a joint industry letter on Wednesday. From a report: The letter, addressed to the European Union antitrust regulator's Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, demanded the Commission to act fast for the welfare of European consumers. Spotify has for years accused Apple of abusing its market position using its App Store rules to stifle competition. It has previously submitted antitrust complaints against Apple in various countries, alleging the 30% charge Apple requires developers to pay on its App Store has forced Spotify to "artificially inflate" its own prices. "We are writing to you to call for swift and decisive action by the European Commission against anticompetitive and unfair practices by certain global digital gatekeepers, and Apple in particular," read the letter, which was signed by chief executives of media firms Schibsted, Proton and Basecamp.

Microsoft is likely to receive an EU antitrust warning about its $69 billion bid for "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard, Reuters reported Monday, citing people familiar with the matter, that could pose another challenge to completing the deal. From the report: The European Commission is readying a charge sheet known as a statement of objections setting out its concerns about the deal which will be sent to Microsoft in the coming weeks, the people said. The EU antitrust watchdog, which has set an April 11 deadline for its decision on the deal, declined to comment.

AmiMoJo writes: Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has signed a new law that legalizes piracy of movies, music, TV shows and software owned by rightsholders from 'unfriendly countries'. The law also allows goods protected by intellectual property law to be imported from any country without obtaining permission from rightsholders.

Lukashenko's support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine led to new sanctions being imposed by the EU, U.S. and other countries. In common with Russia, Belarus relies on intellectual property owned by foreign rightsholders that are currently unable or unwilling to supply and/or license it. So, to ensure legal access to pirated movies, music, TV shows and software, the government drafted a new law to restrict intellectual property rights.

"France's data protection authority, CNIL, fined Apple €8 million (about $8.5 million) Wednesday," reports Gizmodo, "for illegally harvesting iPhone owners' data for targeted ads without proper consent." It's an unusual sanction for the iPhone maker, which has faced fewer legal penalties over privacy than its Big Tech competitors. Apple makes privacy a selling point for its devices, plastering "Privacy. That's iPhone." across 40-foot billboards across the world.... Apple failed to "obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals," the CNIL said in a statement. The CNIL's fine calls out the search ads in Apple's App Store, specifically. A French court fined the company over $1 million in December over its commercial practices related to the App Store....

With iPhones running iOS 14.6 and below, Apple's Personalized Advertising privacy setting was turned on by default, leaving users to seek out the control on their own if they wanted to protect their information. That violates EU privacy law, according to the CNIL.... The newer versions of the iPhone operating system corrected the problem, presenting users with a prompt before the advertising data was collected. Gizmodo also notes this response from an Apple spokesperson. "We are disappointed with this decision given the CNIL has previously recognized that how we serve search ads in the App Store prioritizes user privacy, and we will appeal. Apple Search Ads goes further than any other digital advertising platform we are aware of by providing users with a clear choice as to whether or not they would like personalized ads."

Gizmodo calls France's fine "a signal that Apple may face a less friendly regulatory future in Europe."

Meta is kicking off the New Year with more privacy fines and corrective orders hitting its business in Europe. The latest swathe of enforcement relates to EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints over the legal basis it claims to run behavioral ads. From a report: The Facebook owner's lead data protection watchdog in the region, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), announced today that it's adopted final decisions on two of these long-running enquiries -- against Meta owned social networking site, Facebook, and social photo sharing service, Instagram. The DPC's press release today announces financial penalties of ~$223 million for Facebook and ~$191 million for Instagram -- and confirms the European Data Protection Board (EDPB)'s binding decision last month on these complaints that contractual necessity is not an appropriate basis for processing personal data for behavioral ads.

These new sanctions add to a pile of privacy fines for Meta in Europe last year -- including a $281 million penalty for a Facebook data-scraping breach; $429 million for an Instagram violation of children's privacy; $18 million for several historical Facebook data breaches; and a $63.6 million penalty over Facebook cookie consent violations -- making for a total of $792 million in (publicly disclosed) EU data protection and privacy fines handed down to the adtech giant in 2022. But now, in the first few days of 2023, Meta has landed financial penalties worth more than half last year's regional total -- and more sanctions could be coming shortly.

A group representing internet service providers across Europe said on Tuesday that a proposal to make Big Tech companies pay towards telecom operators' network costs could create systemic weakness in critical infrastructure. From a report: Telecom operators have been pushing the European Union to implement new laws that would see U.S. tech firms like Alphabet's Google, Meta's Facebook, and Netflix bear some of the costs of Europe's telecoms network, arguing that they drive much of the region's internet traffic.

In September, European Commission's industry chief Thierry Breton said he would launch a consultation on so-called "fair share" payments in early 2023, before proposing legislation. Now, the European Internet Exchange Association said the proposals risked reducing the quality of service for internet users across Europe, and could "accidentally create new systemic weaknesses" in critical infrastructure, in a letter addressed to the European Commission's industry chief Thierry Breton and the Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager.

Google has told a tribunal in India that the country's antitrust investigators copied parts of a European ruling against the U.S. firm for abusing the market dominance of its Android operating system, arguing the decision be quashed, legal papers show. From a report: The Competition Commission of India (CCI) in October fined Alphabet's Google $161 million for exploiting its dominant position in markets such as online search and the Android app store, and asked it to change restrictions imposed on smartphone makers related to pre-installing apps.

In its filing to an Indian appeals tribunal, Google argues the CCI's investigation unit "copy-pasted extensively from a European Commission decision, deploying evidence from Europe that was not examined in India." "There are more than 50 instances of copypasting," in some cases "word-for-word," and the watchdog erroneously dismissed the issue, Google said in its filing which is not public but has been reviewed by Reuters. "The Commission failed to conduct an impartial, balanced, and legally sound investigation ... Google's mobile app distribution practices are pro-competitive and not unfair/ exclusionary."

Google is developing a free moderation tool that smaller websites can use to identify and remove terrorist material, as new legislation in the UK and the EU compels Internet companies to do more to tackle illegal content. From a report: The software is being developed in partnership with the search giant's research and development unit Jigsaw and Tech Against Terrorism, a UN-backed initiative that helps tech companies police online terrorism. "There are a lot of websites that just don't have any people to do the enforcement. It is a really labor-intensive thing to even build the algorithms [and] then you need all those human reviewers," said Yasmin Green, chief executive of Jigsaw. "[Smaller websites] do not want Isis content there, but there is a ton of it all over [them]," she added.

The move comes as Internet companies will be forced to remove extremist content from their platforms or face fines and other penalties under laws such as the Digital Services Act in the EU, which came into force in November, and the UK's Online Safety bill, which is expected to become law this year. The legislation has been pushed by politicians and regulators across Europe who argue that Big Tech groups have not gone far enough to police content online. But the new regulatory regime has led to concerns that smaller start-ups are not equipped to comply and that a lack of resources will limit their ability to compete with larger technology companies.

For much of the global economy, 2023 is going to be a tough year as the main engines of global growth -- the US, Europe and China -- all experience weakening activity, the head of the International Monetary Fund has warned. From a report: The new year is going to be "tougher than the year we leave behind," IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said on the CBS Sunday morning news program Face the Nation on Sunday. "Why? Because the three big economies -- the US, EU and China -- are all slowing down simultaneously," she said.

"We expect one-third of the world economy to be in recession. Even countries that are not in recession, it would feel like recession for hundreds of millions of people," she added. In October, the IMF cut its outlook for global economic growth in 2023, reflecting the continuing drag from the war in Ukraine as well as inflation pressures and the high interest rates engineered by central banks like the US Federal Reserve aimed at bringing those price pressures to heel. Georgieva said that China, the world's second-largest economy, is likely to grow at or below global growth for the first time in 40 years as Covid-19 cases surge following the dismantling of its ultra-strict zero-Covid policy. "For the first time in 40 years, China's growth in 2022 is likely to be at or below global growth," Georgieva said.

Guess what's finally entering America's public domain today? Appropriately enough, it's Marcel Proust's 1927 novel Remembrance of Things Past.

Also entering the public domain today are thousands of other books, plus the music and lyrics of hundreds of songs, and even several silent movies.

Fritz Lang's sci-fi classic Metropolis enters the public domain today — and so does the Laurel & Hardy comedy Battle of the Century (which culminates with one of Hollywod's first pie fights), according to Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain: This is actually the second time that Metropolis has gone into the US public domain. The first was in 1955, when its initial 28-year term expired and the rights holders did not renew the copyright. Then in 1996 a new law restored the copyrights in qualifying foreign works. Metropolis, along with thousands of other works, was pulled out of the public domain, and now reenters it after the expiration of the 95-year term, with the once missing scenes available for anyone to reuse.
They also note that some material is in the public domain from the beginning, including government works like the images from the James Webb telescope.

But for other works, today is a big and important day, writes the Associated Press: Alongside the short-story collection "The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes," books such as Virginia Woolf's "To The Lighthouse," Ernest Hemingway's "Men Without Women," William Faulkner's "Mosquitoes" and Agatha Christie's "The Big Four" — an Hercule Poirot mystery — will become public domain as the calendar turns to 2023. Once a work enters the public domain it can legally be shared, performed, reused, repurposed or sampled without permission or cost.

The works from 1927 were originally supposed to be copyrighted for 75 years, but the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act delayed opening them up for an additional 20 years. While many prominent works on the list used those extra two decades to earn their copyright holders good money, a Duke University expert says the copyright protections also applied to "all of the works whose commercial viability had long subsided."

"For the vast majority — probably 99% — of works from 1927, no copyright holder financially benefited from continued copyright. Yet they remained off limits, for no good reason," Jennifer Jenkins, director of Duke's Center for the Study of the Public Domain, wrote in a blog post heralding "Public Domain Day 2023." That long U.S. copyright period meant many works that would now become available have long since been lost, because they were not profitable to maintain by the legal owners, but couldn't be used by others. On the Duke list are such "lost" films like Victor Fleming's "The Way of All Flesh" and Tod Browning's "London After Midnight...."
Also entering the public domain today:


- Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop
- A. A. Milne's Now We Are Six (illustrations by E. H. Shepard)
- Franklin W. Dixon's The Tower Treasure — the first Hardy Boys book
- Herman Hesse's Steppenwolf (German version)
- The song "My Blue Heaven"
- Songs by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong
- Alfred Hitchcock's early silent movie The Lodger


The UK-based newspaper the Observer adds: For those readers who do not reside in the US, there is perhaps another reason for celebrating today, because copyright terms are longer in the US than they are in other parts of the world, including the EU and the UK. And therein lies a story about intellectual property laws and the power of political lobbying in a so-called liberal democracy.... The term was gradually lengthened in small increments by Congress until 1976, when it was extended by 19 years to 75 years and then in 1998 by the Sonny Bono Act. So, as the legal scholar Lawrence Lessig puts it, "in the 20 years after the Sonny Bono Act, while 1 million patents will pass into the public domain, zero copyrights will pass into the public domain by virtue of the expiration of a copyright term"....

[T]he end result is that American citizens have had to wait two decades to be free to adapt and reuse works to which we Europeans have had easy access....

The issue highlighted by Public Domain Day is not that intellectual property is evil but that aspects of it — especially copyright — have been monopolised and weaponised by corporate interests and that legislators have been supine in the face of their lobbying. Authors and inventors need protection against being ripped off. It's obviously important that clever people are rewarded for their creativity and the patent system does that quite well. But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?

India said on Thursday that under its ongoing G20 presidency, it will prioritize the development of a framework for global regulation of unbacked crypto assets, stablecoins and decentralized finance and will explore the "possibility of [their] prohibition" in a potentially large setback for the nascent industry. From a report: India began its year-long presidency of the Group 20 early this month. The group, which comprises 19 nations across continents and the EU, represents 85% of the world's GDP. It also invites non-member countries including Singapore and Spain and international organizations such as World Bank and the IMF.

The Reserve Bank of India, the Indian central bank, said in a report today that crypto assets are highly volatile and exhibit high correlations with equities in ways that dispute the industry's narrative and claims around the virtual digital assets being an alternative source of value due to their supposed inflation-hedging benefits. The Indian central bank warned that policymakers across the globe are concerned that the crypto sector may become more interconnected with mainstream finance and "divert financing away from traditional finance with broader effect on the real economy."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Space.com: Take a grand tour of the solar system tonight (Dec. 28) as each of the planets in the solar system will be visible at the same time. As 2022 comes to an end, skywatchers can take in the rare sight of all of the planets in our solar system (aside from Earth) together in the sky. Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are all currently visible simultaneously with the naked eye. The two outermost planets, Uranus and Neptune, can meanwhile be observed with binoculars or a telescope.

The five planets visible with the naked eye -- Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars, in that order -- will line up in the sky starting from the southwestern horizon. Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system, will be difficult to see with the eye, but it's possible if dark sky conditions are right. Uranus, visible only through binoculars or a telescope, can be found between Mars and Jupiter, while Neptune will be visible through optics between Saturn and Jupiter. The Virtual Telescope Project is hosting a free "grand tour of the solar system" livestream starting at 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT) on Wednesday (Dec. 28). The live webcast is also available on their YouTube channel.

The report notes that this "grand tour" happens roughly every one to two years, on average. "In June 2022, skywatchers were treated to five planets -- Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn -- arranged in a rare alignment the likes of which hadn't occurred since 1864," the report adds.

Zimbabwe has prohibited the export of raw lithium from its mines so it can cash in on value addition and stop losing billions of dollars in mineral proceeds to foreign companies. Quartz reports: The ministry of Mines and Mining Development on Dec. 20 published a circular under the Base Minerals Export Control Act that seeks to "ensure that the vision of the president to see the country becoming an upper-middle income economy has been realized." The government says it is losing $1.8 billion in mineral revenues due to smuggling and externalization to South Africa and the United Arab Emirates. Gold is the most smuggled mineral.

With continued high international demand, Zimbabwe is projected to become one of the world's largest lithium exporters, with the government hoping to meet 20% of the world's total demand for lithium when it fully exploits its known lithium resources. Mineral exports account for about 60% (pdf) of Zimbabwe's export earnings while the mining sector contributes 16% to its GDP, according to a 2021 mining report by the London School of Economics.

"No lithium-bearing ores, or unbeneficiated lithium whatsoever, shall be exported from Zimbabwe to another country except under the written permit of the minister," mining minister Winston Chitando says in the circular. However, according to deputy mining minister Polite Kambamura, mining companies that are building processing plants will be excluded from the directive. "If we continue exporting raw lithium we will go nowhere. We want to see lithium batteries being developed in the country," he said. "We have done this in good faith for the growth of industry."

b0s0z0ku writes: The European Union is proposing a law requiring easily replaceable batteries in new appliances and portable electronic devices. The law also sets targets for collection and recycling of those batteries, requiring 73% compliance by 2030. "Companies would get plenty of notice, however, as the requirement would only come into force 3.5 years after the legislation takes effect," adds 9to5Mac. "Companies will also be legally required to accept and recycle old batteries."

Additionally, the European Commission is "expected to consider outlawing the use of non-rechargeable portable batteries," though this would likely come with many exceptions and wouldn't happen before the end of the decade.

Further reading: EU Sets December 28, 2024, Deadline For All New Phones To Use USB-C for Wired Charging

Karl Sebastian Greenwood, co-founder of sham "Bitcoin-killer" OneCoin, pleaded guilty in Manhattan federal court to charges of conspiring to defraud investors and to launder money. "Greenwood was arrested in Thailand in July 2018 and subsequently extradited to the US," reports The Register. "OneCoin's other co-founder, 'Cryptoqueen' Ruja Ignatova (Dr. Ruja Ignatova -- she has a law degree), remains a fugitive on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and on Europol's Most Wanted list." From the report: "As a founder and leader of OneCoin, Karl Sebastian Greenwood operated one of the largest international fraud schemes ever perpetrated," said US Attorney Damian Williams in a statement. "Greenwood and his co-conspirators, including fugitive Ruja Ignatova, conned unsuspecting victims out of billions of dollars, claiming that OneCoin would be the 'Bitcoin killer.' In fact, OneCoins were entirely worthless." The US has charged at least nine individuals across four related cases, including Greenwood and Ignatova, with fraud charges related to OneCoin. Authorities in China have prosecuted 98 people accused of trying to sell OneCoin. Police in India arrested 18 for pitching the Ponzi scheme.

According to the Justice Department, Greenwood and Ignatova founded OneCoin in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2014. Until 2017 or so, they're said to have marketed OneCoin as a cryptocurrency to investors. The OneCoin exchange was shut down in January 2017, but trades evidently continued among affiliated individuals for some time. The OneCoin.eu website remained online until 2019. In fact, OneCoin was a multi-level marketing (MLM) pyramid scheme in which network members received commissions when they managed to recruit people to buy OneCoin. The firm's own promotional materials claim more than three million people invested. And between Q4 2014 and Q4 2016, company records claim OneCoin generated more than $4.3 billion in revenue and $2.9 billion in purported profits. At the top of the MLM pyramid, Greenwood is said to have earned $21 million per month. Greenwood and others claimed that OneCoin was mined using computing power like BitCoin and recorded on a blockchain. But it wasn't. As Ignatova allegedly put it in an email to Greenwood, "We are not mining actually -- but telling people shit."

OneCoin's value, according to the Feds, was simply set by those managing the company -- they manipulated the OneCoin exchange to simulate trading volatility but the price of OneCoin always closed higher than it opened. In an August 1, 2015 email, Ignatova allegedly told Greenwood that one of the goals for the OneCoin trade exchange was "always close on a high price end of day open day with high price, build confidence -- better manipulation so they are happy." According to the Justice Department, the value assigned to OneCoin grew steadily from $0.53 to approximately $31.80 per coin and never declined.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: European antitrust regulators have opened an in-depth investigation into U.S. chipmaker Broadcom's proposed $61 billion bid for cloud computing company VMware, the European Commission said on Tuesday. "The Commission is particularly concerned that the transaction would allow Broadcom to restrict competition in the market for certain hardware components which interoperate with VMware's software," the Commission said in a statement.

The Commission said its preliminary investigation indicates the transaction may allow Broadcom to restrict competition for the supply of certain components by degrading interoperability between VMware software and competitors' hardware to the benefit of its own hardware. This and other factors could lead to higher prices, lower quality and less innovation for business customers, and ultimately consumers, the Commission said. The Commission now has 90 working days, until May 11, 2023, to take a decision. Broadcom on Tuesday reiterated that it continued to expect the transaction would close in its fiscal year 2023, adding it would continuing to work with the European Commission.

It said it was making progress with regulatory filings around the world, having received legal merger clearance in Brazil, South Africa, and Canada and foreign investment control clearance in Germany, France, Austria, and Italy. "The combination of Broadcom and VMware is about enabling enterprises to accelerate innovation and expand choice by addressing their most complex technology challenges in this multi-cloud era, and we are confident that regulators will see this when they conclude their review," it said in a statement. The proposed acquisition underlines Broadcom's ambition to diversify into enterprise software, but comes as regulators worldwide ramp up scrutiny of deals by Big Tech.

Amazon will make major changes to its business practices to end competition probes in Europe by giving customers more visible choices when buying products and, for Prime members, more delivery options, European Union regulators said Tuesday. From a report: The EU's executive Commission said it accepted the legally binding commitments from Amazon to resolve two antitrust investigations. The deal allows the company to avoid a legal battle with the E.U.'s top antitrust watchdog that could have ended with potentially huge fines, worth up to 10% of annual worldwide revenue.

The agreement marks another advance by EU authorities as they clamp down on the power of Big Tech companies, and comes just a day after the Commission accused Facebook parent Meta of distorting competition in the classified ads business. "Today's decision sets the rules that Amazon will need to play by in the future instead of Amazon determining these rules for all players on its platform," the EU's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said at a press briefing in Brussels. "With these new rules, competing independent retailers, carriers and European customers will have more opportunities and choice." The agreement only applies to Amazon's business practices in Europe and will last for seven years. Amazon will have to make the promised changes by June.

Longtime Slashdot reader WindBourne writes: EU is creating a tariff on certain imported goods based on their CO2 emissions that went into production and transportation. While many have opposed this, others have been correctly pointing out that little would change until nations started charging other nations for their polluting the world. In some ways, this already has a number of attributes going for it. With Kyoto, Europe forced that emissions from bio would count at the point where it was harvested and not where it was burned/utilized. This was because Europe is a major importer of bio products for heating and electricity. With this tariff, it will apply any use of bio, including H2, at point of usage, not of production.

What remains to be seen is:
1) How they will apply it to size (Nation? State? City?)?
2) What data will be used (Information from the local government? Satellite?)?
3) How the data will be normalized (GDP? Per capita?)?
4) How to calculate emissions per good (Total emissions? Worst item? Certain parts?)?

This will no doubt cause a number of nations to scream about it, as well as smaller nations, but hopefully, more nations will join in as well. Looks like the world is finally going to get serious about stopping greenhouse gas emissions. "The measure will apply first to iron and steel, cement, aluminum, fertilizers, electricity production and hydrogen before being extended to other goods," notes CNN. "Under the new mechanism, companies will need to buy certificates to cover emissions generated by the production of goods imported into the European Union based on calculations linked to the EU's own carbon price."

Details of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism can be found here.

Meta Platforms was hit with a formal complaint from European Union antitrust watchdogs for allegedly squeezing out classified ad rivals by tying the Facebook Marketplace to its own social network. From a report: The European Commission said Monday it issued a so-called statement of objections to Meta, paving the way for potential fines or changes to the firm's business model. "With its Facebook social network, Meta reaches globally billions of monthly users and millions active advertisers," EU Antitrust Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said in an email announcing the escalation of the case. "Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace," meaning "Facebook users have no choice but to have access to Facebook Marketplace."

The EU watchdog said it's also concerned that Meta imposes unfair trading conditions which allow it to use data on competing online classified ad services. The case is the latest in a long-running Europe-wide crackdown on the market power of tech firms such as Google, Apple and Amazon that's led to multiple probes, fines and beefed-up laws. The EU previously fined Facebook for failing to provide correct information in the merger review of the WhatsApp takeover. Meta is also the subject of investigations in the UK and Germany.