[{"description":"CALL member Erica Friesen, Research and Instruction Librarian & Online Learning Specialist at the Lederman Law Library at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario recently wrote an article on \" Thoughts on the New Lexis+ Brief Analysis Tool: For Law Students and Novice Researchers \". It originally appeared on Slaw.ca on September 28, 2022. It is republished here with permission of the author. New academic year; new legal research tools. Something new always comes out right as another cohort of students is gearing up to begin their law degree. And, as with many new product launches these days, “artificial intelligence” is often a prominently displayed term with accompanying materials. As legal publishers continue to launch AI-driven research tools in Canada, what do students and other novice researchers need to know to be prepared for their first forays into legal research? Lexis recently launched the latest version of their legal research platform, Lexis+ Canada, for Canadian law schools. It features significant updates that employ artificial intelligence, including a “Brief Analysis” tool in line with similar products offered by Westlaw Edge (on the US platform) and vLex (already available in Canada). According to Lexis+, this tool helps researchers “expedite completion of briefs and other legal documents.” Once your document is uploaded, it spits out a report including the following categories: 1) recommended cases, 2) cases and legislation cited in your document, 3) jurisdiction, and 4) extracted and recommended concepts. While I do not intend to comment on the utility of this tool for practitioners, I have no doubt that students beginning law school or working in summer or articling positions are bound to encounter this new feature sooner or later. When you do, you may have questions: should I be using this tool? How or how not? The landing page for this tool in Lexis+ contains no information on how this tool works and the Lexis+ Canada “Help” database so far contains minimal documentation. Confusion or uncertainty is understandable with such opacity. To gain some insight, let’s run an experiment: take two case comments written by different authors on the same Supreme Court case from 2004. [1] An older decision means that we should retrieve an abundance of recommendations from the intervening 18 years. Both comments include an overview of the area of law at the time of this decision as well as an analysis of how this particular decision would change the area of law. Once Lexis analyzed these documents, I exported the resulting report and compared the results for each comment. Here are the two documents, in case you’d like to run the experiment yourself: Comment A: Teresa Scassa, “Recalibrating Copyright Law?: A Comment on the Supreme Court of Canada’s Decision in CCH Canadian Limited et al. v. Law Society of Upper Canada ”, Case Comment, (2004) 3:2 CJLT 89. Comment B: WL Hayhurst, “The Canadian Supreme Court on Copyright: CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada ”, Case Comment, (2004-2005) 41 Can Bus LJ 134. Recommended Cases “Recommendations” is the section of the Brief Analysis report that lists additional case law for you to consider adding to your legal document. Brief Analysis recommended 58 unique cases in total between Comment A and Comment B. However, only 10 of those cases were the same between the two documents (after adjusting for “recommended” cases that were actually cited in the other document). See Figure 1 . Key takeaway: Legal research and writing is an art, not a science. AI-driven tools like these run on the material that you upload, so you can expect substantially different results depending on the quality of analysis and the decisions you made in producing the original document. This does not mean that there is no value in using the tool, but you cannot expect it to help you build something from nothing. Recommendations are based on the content in the document,","id":3241473,"source":"Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L'Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit CALL/ACBD Blog","titre":"CALL Member Article: Thoughts on the New Lexis+ Brief Analysis Tool: For Law Students and Novice Researchers","url":"https://www.callacbd.ca/CALL-Blog/12957419","pubDate":"Mon, 26 Oct 2026 07:55:49 +0100"},{"titre":"Using Vinyl & Spotify to Understand Legal Information Online","url":"https://www.callacbd.ca/CALL-Blog/12614092","pubDate":"Mon, 26 Oct 2026 07:55:48 +0100","description":"Hannah Steeves, the Instruction & Reference Librarian at the Sir James Dunn Law Library, Dalhousie University (Halifax), recently wrote an article on \"Using Vinyl & Spotify to Understand Legal Information Online\" . It originally appeared on Slaw.ca on February 15, 2022 . Most legal research is done online through a combination of open and subscription databases. Legal information is available at our fingertips through Justice Laws, LEGISinfo, CanLII, Westlaw, Lexis, ProView, SOQUIJ, [insert your preferred database here], and the list goes on. The availability of electronic resources has radically changed—and will continue to change—the way legal professionals conduct research. However, despite my enthusiasm for the improved accessibility and retrievability, I think the lack of engagement that new legal researchers have with print resources creates comprehension issues. The disconnect between a source’s print and electronic formats reduces their understanding of the process used to create the document. Understanding this process helps us understand the organization of information and makes a researcher more efficient. New legal researchers are often introduced directly to the electronic version of a source without fully understanding how it came to be. For example, a student might learn about legislation and be shown how to trace a legislative history using Justice Laws without ever interacting with the print, bound statutes. They are missing the benefits of seeing the tangible organization of annual, revised, and consolidated statutes. Another example is having a student use ProView without ever flipping through a physical binder and understanding how loose-leaf releases work. Although they know each source is unique, they all present approximately the same online. Unfortunately, limited class time and COVID-19 have made it nearly impossible to get students into the library to conduct research with print sources. I try to grab print copies of case reporters, volumes of statutes, and loose-leafs to show students in person or on Zoom, but the effect is not the same as engaging with the print source directly. Instead, when I meet with students, I often see ~18 tabs open in their browsers with sites ranging from course materials, Google, CanLII, and their preferred subscription platform. They ask me, “ Why does this have to be so complicated?” And they’re right! It does seem complicated, at first glance. If we had created these resources using our modern digital environment, they would be organized differently. Print established the rules, and the digital versions have been bound by them. When I try to explain why the digital versions might seem unnecessarily complex, but that understanding how to use the print sources will improve their navigation of the digital versions, I use the following analogy. First, assuming Spotify is the most common music app, I ask students whether they’re more likely to download/stream full albums or singles. Once they’ve answered, I explain that the point of this question is to determine that they understand that a single song is situated within an album—the album is a collection of songs. Next, I ask if they know why artists produce albums. This one takes a bit of waiting, and in a classroom setting a music aficionado may bring up the concept album (and rightly so!), but usually there’s someone who knows that the standard album is a result of the time limitations set by vinyl, specifically the 33 rpm LP record . (Or maybe they Google it as I’m waiting for an answer—who am I to judge?) With a brief explanation, it becomes clear that vinyl restricted artists to around 44 minutes of playing time, and this explains the standard album format still used today. The next step is to connect the persistence of the album through various eras of music. The album has survived the evolution of music distribution. Historically, it started with vinyl, but remained through transitions between audio cassette, the CD, through to","id":3241462,"source":"Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L'Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit CALL/ACBD Blog"},{"pubDate":"Mon, 26 Oct 2026 07:55:47 +0100","url":"https://www.callacbd.ca/CALL-Blog/12197599","titre":"Update from the Knowledge Management Special Interest Group: Web Tracking Tools","source":"Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L'Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit CALL/ACBD Blog","id":3241459,"description":"From time to time, this blog will highlight initiatives, ideas, or activities coming from members, committees or special interest groups (SIGs). Today: An Update About Web Tracking Tools , by Katie Thomas, Resource and Reference Librarian, Stikeman Elliott LLP (Toronto). The CALL Knowledge Management SIG had a session on November 30 th that looked at Web Tracking Tools. There are a lot of website tracking tools out there so it helps to have a guide to get you started. I based my presentation on the AALL Cool Tools (access only for attendees of American Association of Law Libraries 2021 conference) session where eight trackers were evaluated. In our session I asked the participants to write down sites they would like to track and they were all different. So, there is a need! First, what criteria should be used for evaluating? It depends. Every workplace is different and different things needs to be monitored. However, there are three that stand out. 1.   Ease of Use You don’t want to spend time setting things up and you want to understand WHAT you are setting up 2.   Price A lot of the tools are free and you can continue to have them free forever or, you can pay. Prices vary depending on functionality. 3.   Collaboration This allows you to work with colleagues tracking the same website. Say, if someone is on vacation. What to Track? Any number of things to track. Depends what you want to track! Here’s some that are popular: Prices (book, software, flights, stocks) Are they increasing / decreasing Text tracking Articles, preprints, legislation, case law, newspapers Competitors When does a competitor post commentary on a specific case Archiving Like Wayback, but you can customize for the websites you want Features? What do you want your tracker to do? Here are the popular features: Bulk adding of urls into the tracker Captcha bypass (or I am fed up counting fire hydrants) Password protected pages Proxy support, don’t want tracker to get blocked Tracking multiple elements on one page (there might be pricing data and text you want to capture changes to on the same page) Notification. Or would you prefer Slack, Discord, mobile N.B.: Be careful of “quick” and “instant” – understand what these mean (does quick mean within an hour or 5 minutes) Data export and reports Summary of web tracking tools"},{"url":"https://theconversation.com/frances-casseurs-why-the-term-fails-to-do-justice-to-the-extent-of-looting-and-spiralling-unrest-294805","titre":"France’s ‘casseurs’: why the term fails to do justice to the extent of looting and spiralling unrest","pubDate":"Thu, 22 Oct 2026 08:03:11 +0200","description":"Following widespread looting sprees and acts of violence occurring on the sidelines of the October 17 student protests, so-called “casseurs” seem to be the centre of attention. But the term, which comes from the French verb casser or “to break”, poses more questions than answers. The sociologist Paolo Stuppia examines the unprecedented situation many cities across France are having to contend with, and the complex combination of collective action whose motivations are unclear and the social media’s extreme agility. The Conversation: How unprecedented are the scenes of looting that we witnessed on the sidelines of the October 17 demonstrations? Paolo Stuppia: What may be unprecedented is the extent of the destruction of private property and the goods that have been stolen. It should be clear, however, that not all the looters can necessarily be sorted into identifiable groups, at least politically. Indeed, as the politician Xavier Crettiez, the sociologist Isabelle Sommier and the historian François Audigier emphasised in 2021 in their joint project Violences politiques en France , the targets of acts of violence that are considered to be politically motivated can be determined both by technical constraints and the militant culture of the people involved. Let us recall Italy in the 1970s when autonomous activists spoke of “self-reduction” (the act of seizing goods or essential services), Maoists in France spoke of proletarian reappropriation. Their raid on Fauchon’s luxury grocery store on place de la madeleine and the redistribution of goods to slums and workers’ hostels that ensued went down in history as their biggest claim to fame. Can we go as far as to say that the October 17 looting sprees were politically motivated ? Even if we do not have all the details concerning the profiles of the people arrested, videos posted on social media and stolen goods being resold online tend to rule out the idea. That said, at least some of the targets were chosen haphazardly. While some are symbols of capitalism, like luxury stores, insurance companies, banks, multinationals , others included a number of more localised stores, small shops selling toys or video games; for example, which are rarely targets for such incidents. If, especially since the alter-globalisation movement , we have seen the emergence of damage to property, primarily targeting symbols of capitalism and multinationals, in particular; this phenomenon goes hand in hand with “off the cuff” incidents by groups without any political affiliation, who join demonstrations to “get in on the act” in such a way that we are unable to determine whether it’s just a way of letting off steam or if it’s driven by a goal of redistributing goods – this weekend we witnessed some scenes of goods being redistributed, such as food being given to the homeless. What do we know about casseurs’ profiles? When did they appear in the demonstrations and when did the term first appear in the media? P.S.: Historically, the first research article on the casseur phenomenon can be traced back to the sociologist Gwenola Ricordeau . In France in the 1990s, as was the case during the student and high school movement of 1998, Ricordeau noticed that young people came to demonstrations to commit acts of vandalism or to mug people without having anything to do with the causes behind protest movements. They were driven by opportunism and also a desire to break up the monotony of everyday life. The fact of disqualifying people by designating them as “criminals on the street” therefore ultimately leads us to riot-like phenomena, with or without the “looting” element, which are part of the continuity of “suburban revolt” or “city riots” which have gradually developed in working-class neighbourhoods since the second half of the 1970s. As we demonstrated alongside the sociologist Valérie Becquet in our book Géopolitique de la jeunesse , it","id":3233179,"source":"The Conversation – Articles (FR)"},{"pubDate":"Wed, 14 Oct 2026 08:14:30 +0200","url":"https://hdl.handle.net/1866/46704","titre":"State of software diversity in ethereum","source":"Faculté de droit Travaux récents","id":3215934,"description":"dc.contributor.author: Gonzalez Fernandez, Nadia dc.date.issued: 2026-10 dc.description.abstract: La diversité logicielle contribue à améliorer la fiabilité et la sécurité des systèmes depuis les années 1960, notamment gr'ce à des modèles dans lesquels une autorité centrale mandate et certifie des implémentations indépendantes. Au cours de la dernière décennie, Ethereum a déployé la diversité à grande échelle sous une forme nouvelle : 11 clients indépendants y coexistent sans être mandatés ni certifiés par une autorité centrale, tout en bénéficiant de la diversité déjà présente dans l’écosystème open source. Cette thèse étudie Ethereum comme un exemple de ce modèle émergent de diversité logicielle, en examinant son adoption, son étendue dans le code des clients et les défis qu’elle soulève. Nous combinons des entretiens semi-directifs avec sept contributeurs impliqués dans le développement, la coordination et le suivi de la diversité des clients, avec la première analyse statique complète de la chaîne d’approvisionnement logicielle des 11 clients les plus utilisés. Deux principaux résultats se dégagent. Premièrement, la communauté Ethereum veille activement au maintien de cette diversité au moyen d’une spécification commune, d’un suivi continu de la distribution des clients, de financements dédiés et d’interventions visant à limiter leur concentration. Deuxièmement, notre analyse montre que cette diversité s’étend au code : huit moteurs de bases de données indépendants sont utilisés par les 11 clients, tandis que les équipes convergent volontairement vers les composants les plus difficiles à implémenter correctement et privilégient leur audit plutôt que la multiplication d’alternatives non vérifiées. Ainsi, Ethereum constitue un exemple de diversité logicielle étendue et activement entretenue par sa communauté.; Software diversity has improved reliability and security in systems since the 1960s, through models in which a central authority commissions and certifies independent implementations. Over the last decade, Ethereum has deployed diversity at scale in a new form: 11 independent clients coexist without any central authority commissioning or certifying them, while also leveraging the diversity already present in the open-source ecosystem. This thesis studies Ethereum as a case of this emerging software diversity model, asking how such diversity is adopted, how far it reaches into client code, and what challenges it introduces. We combine semi-structured interviews with seven contributors who build, coordinate, and monitor client diversity with the first comprehensive static analysis of the software supply chain of the 11 most widely used clients. Two results follow. First, the Ethereum community actively cares for and sustains its client diversity: interviewees describe coordination through a shared specification, continuous monitoring of client distribution, dedicated funding, and intervention against client concentration. For example, when Prysm exceeded 60% of the consensus layer, the community organized a campaign to redistribute validators away from it. Second, our supply chain analysis confirms that this diversity extends into the codebase: eight independent database engines back the 11 clients, and teams deliberately converge on the components hardest to implement correctly, funding their audit rather than multiplying unverified alternatives. Ethereum exhibits extensive software diversity that its community actively cares for and maintains. This sets an"},{"description":"Sign of the times? Protecting your company from B2B deception lfair December 9, 2019 | 2:09PM Sign of the times? Protecting your company from B2B deception By Lesley Fair They may look like invoices sent to business owners for posters they may need to display in the workplace. But we think of them as un voices – deceptively worded solicitations that tried to sell companies posters that are readily available for free. A law enforcement action just settled by the FTC and Florida Attorney General offers tips on protecting your business from this form of B2B deception. According to the FTC and AG, four defendants with ties to Texas and Florida – Starwood Consulting, Starwood Capital, Corporate Poster Supply, and Thomas Henry Fred, Jr. – sent letters to businesses across the country with the goal of tricking them into paying $84 for posters about labor practices. To perfect their pitch, the letters had the look of invoices from government agencies or other authorities and warned recipients that they had two choices: 1) buy the $84 posters; or 2) face hefty fines. In fact, posters similar to the ones in question were available for free from relevant government agencies. But according to the lawsuit, many businesses forked over $84 under the misimpression that they had to buy them from the defendants. The proposed settlement in the case includes provisions to prevent the defendants from using similar tactics to injure consumers in the future, including a ban on unsolicited direct mail. Based on the defendants’ financial condition, the $6 million judgment will be partially suspended upon the payment of $1.2 million. What can other businesses do to protect themselves from B2B deception? What’s your sign? Investigate first. If you think you may need to post signs, check with the relevant government agency. But don’t use a phone number or URL listed in a solicitation you get in the mail. Do your research and go to the legitimate .gov website for more information. Consider free options. It’s true that certain agencies may require businesses to display signs on the premises about subjects like labor practices. But if a poster is required, most likely it’s available for free from the agency’s website. One helpful resource is the Department of Labor’s FirstStep Poster Advisor , which walks businesses through industry-specific posters required by that agency and provides the signs at no charge to employers. You can order them online, call the agency toll-free for copies, or even download them directly and print them out. Why pay for something your business can get for free? Alert colleagues in the business community . Are you active in a trade association or local business group? Enlist them to educate members about similar solicitations and other forms of B2B deception, including bogus office supply invoices and imposter phone calls that claim your company will be shut down if you don’t pay an immediate fee. Read the FTC brochure Scams and Your Small Business (also available in Spanish ) for tips on spotting B2B","id":3204242,"source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/12/sign-times-protecting-your-company-b2b-deception","titre":"Sign of the times? Protecting your company from B2B deception","pubDate":"Thu, 08 Oct 2026 14:08:41 +0200"},{"url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2019/04/i-dressup-data-security-mess","titre":"i-Dressup and a data security mess-up","pubDate":"Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:06:59 +0200","description":"i-Dressup and a data security mess-up lfair April 24, 2019 | 3:08PM i-Dressup and a data security mess-up By Lesley Fair Kids love to play dress-up, but parents wouldn’t want them rummaging through the attic or climbing to the top shelf of the wardrobe without permission and proper supervision. The i-Dressup.com website offered users – including children – a virtual way to play dress-up and design clothes without those potential dangers. But according to an FTC complaint, Unixiz, Inc. , the company behind i-Dressup, violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act in ways that created different kinds of risks. COPPA puts two separate sets of protections in place to help keep parents in control of personal information collected from their kids online. First, COPPA-covered companies must clearly disclose their information policies and get parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13. Second, companies must provide reasonable and appropriate security for the data they collect. According to an FTC settlement, i-Dressup fell short on both COPPA requirements. The complaint alleges i-Dressup failed to provide sufficient notice on its site of the information it collected online from kids, how it used it, its disclosure practices, and other specifics required by the COPPA Rule. The company’s direct notices to parents were deficient, too. Among other things, they didn’t include the COPPA-required statement that if parents don’t provide consent within a reasonable time, i-Dressup will delete their online contact information from its records. Stick with the story because that failure turned out to be particularly troubling. In addition to letting users play online games, i-Dressup featured a community where they could “explore their creativity and fashion sense with unique personal profiles” and interact with others. To register, i-Dressup required people to submit a user name, password, birthdate, and email address. If the birthdate indicated the person was under 13, the email field changed to “Parent’s Email.” Once the under-13 user filled in the required fields and clicked “Join Now,” i-Dressup collected the personal information and sent a message to the address entered into the Parent’s Email field. The person receiving the email could consent by clicking the “Activate Now!” button. However, if the parent didn’t give consent, i-Dressup retained the personal information it had collected from the child online. The FTC says the company’s failure to delete that information violated Section 312.5(c)(1) of the COPPA Rule. In addition to violating COPPA’s parental consent provisions, i-Dressup allegedly violated the Rule’s data security requirements . According to the FTC, i-Dressup stored and transmitted users’ personal information (including passwords) in plain text. In addition, the company failed to perform network vulnerability testing of its network, even for well-known threats like SQL attacks; it didn’t implement an intrusion detection and prevention system; and it didn’t monitor for potential security incidents. The upshot? The company learned that a hacker had gained entry to its network and accessed information about 2.1 million users, including approximately 245,000 users who indicated they were under 13. To settle the case , i-Dressup and its owners will pay a $35,000 civil penalty. They’re also prohibited from violating COPPA in the future, and can’t sell, share, or collect any personal information until they implement a comprehensive data security program and get independent biennial assessments. In addition, they’ll have to provide the FTC with an annual certification of compliance. The message for sites and operators covered by COPPA is that an effective system of parental consent is only the first step toward compliance. Section 312.8 of the COPPA Rule also requires you to “establish and maintain reasonable","id":3203250,"source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts"},{"source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","id":3203252,"description":"FTC sues American Immigration Center for claiming false government affiliation lfair October 16, 2018 | 12:16PM FTC sues American Immigration Center for claiming false government affiliation By Lesley Fair When the FTC warns consumers about government imposter scams, we’re usually referring to bogus calls that falsely claim to come from the IRS or some other official office. But as a case just announced by the FTC demonstrates, that’s not the only kind of false government affiliation that can deceive consumers. A $2.2 million settlement with American Immigration Center reminds other businesses of the dangers of conveying a misleading connection to a government agency. When consumers wanted to renew their green cards or apply for naturalization, where did they go? Online, of course, where they input terms like “USCIS,” “INS,” or “US Immigration” to search for the proper government site. According to the FTC, that’s how they ran across results with tag lines like “USCIS Forms – Easy Online Forms for Green Card & Citizenship.” A click took them to sites with the outward appearance of official government webpages. First, there were the URLs – usimmigration.us, uscitizenship.info, etc. Then there was the red, white, and blue color scheme, the Statue of Liberty, passports, and pictures of then-President Obama. What’s more, people looking for, say, Green Card Renewal Form I-90, saw links with the exact name of the relevant document. According to the FTC, people paid between $120 to $300 and input a substantial amount of personal information, all under the impression they were filing documents directly with a government agency. Except that they weren’t. Despite the appearance of those pages, consumers were actually on one of many commercial sites the defendants used to sell their “software wizard” to fill out government immigration forms. And the money consumers paid didn’t go toward government filing fees. It went straight into the defendants’ pockets. In addition to the $2.2 million judgment, the defendants have agreed to clearly disclose that: 1) their sites aren’t affiliated with the government; 2) people must separately file immigration applications with the appropriate government agency; and 3) people must separately pay applicable filing fees to the government. The proposed order also bars the defendants – principal Cesare Alessandrini and Forms Direct, Inc., doing business as American Immigration Center – from stating or implying any affiliation with the government. What’s the message for other companies? Avoid an affiliation conflation. Look at your ads and websites from the point of view of your target audience. Could prospective customers be left with the misimpression that your company has an affiliation with a government agency? Steer clear of any purported connection to a local, state, or federal government office. Consider the big picture. The complaint in this case cited the words the defendants used to convey claims to consumers, as well as what their websites looked like. That’s because, according to the FTC Deception Policy Statement , “The Commission will evaluate the entire advertisement, transaction, or course of dealing in determining how reasonable consumers are likely to respond.” That specifically includes visual imagery and the omission of material information. Wise companies bear in mind the FTC’s long-established “net impression” standard and exercise caution in drafting their copy, selecting graphics, and choosing what they say – and what they don’t say – to consumers.","pubDate":"Thu, 08 Oct 2026 08:06:59 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2018/10/ftc-sues-american-immigration-center-claiming-false-government-affiliation","titre":"FTC sues American Immigration Center for claiming false government affiliation"},{"url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2014/10/first-ftc-rosca-case-challenges-bogus-bogo-free-claims","titre":"First FTC ROSCA case challenges bogus BOGO and \"free\" claims","pubDate":"Wed, 07 Oct 2026 08:05:50 +0200","source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","description":"First FTC ROSCA case challenges bogus BOGO and \"free\" claims wfg-adm109 October 21, 2014 | 12:02PM First FTC ROSCA case challenges bogus BOGO and \"free\" claims By Lesley Fair It’s called ROSCA – the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act – and it prohibits marketers from charging consumers for an online transaction unless the marketer has clearly disclosed all material terms of the deal and received the consumer’s express informed consent. Your e-commerce clients will want to know about the FTC’s first ROSCA case , filed recently in Nevada. According to the lawsuit, Health Formulas, LLC and a tangle of related California- and Nevada-based companies and individuals – consumers may know them as Simple Pure Nutrition – pitched a variety of products for weight loss, muscle building, virility, and skin care. The defendants advertised diet supplements like Pure Green Coffee Bean Plus and RKG Extreme as a shortcut to drop the pounds: “Burn fat without diet or exercise,” “Extreme weight loss!” “Shed pounds fast!” “Super concentrated double fat burning,” etc. Among the defendants’ more colorful business names: Weight Loss Dojo, Longhorn Marketing (sorry, Texas fans), Black Bull, and Unleash the Thunder. But unsubstantiated weight loss claims were just the start. The FTC says the defendants lured people in with bogus promises of a “free” trial or deceptive buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers. Then they tricked consumers into giving their credit or debit card information with the false implication that consumers had to “just pay shipping.”   Digits in hand, the defendants really went to town, allegedly signing consumers up without their authorization for a negative option program that billed their accounts over and over again, to the monthly tune of between $60 and $210. The FTC says the defendants violated ROSCA by using a negative option feature without providing clear and conspicuous disclosures, getting the consumer’s express informed consent, and offering a simple mechanism for stopping the recurring charges. The FTC’s complaint also cites the defendants’ hard-to-find and hard-to-understand fine-print “terms and conditions,” which consumers could reach only by scrolling through the equivalent of two printed pages and clicking on an obscure hyperlink. Assuming they found it – and that’s a big if – the typical “terms and conditions” document was 10 pages long. On some websites, consumers had to scroll down the payment page to see further fine-print disclosures about the cost of the products. The first sentence reiterated what consumers generally understood (“You must pay a shipping and handling fee of $4.95 for us to send you a full 30 day supply of Garcinia Cambogia Extract”) but it wasn’t until the middle of the paragraph that the defendants mentioned that the trial period lasts only 14 days, that it began when the items were shipped (not delivered), and that consumers would be charged after that. Other websites didn’t even include that information. According to the lawsuit, consumers who attempted to take the defendants up on their money-back guarantee were met with a series of undisclosed roadblocks. In addition to the ROSCA counts, the FTC says the defendants’ practices violated the Electronic Fund Transfer Act by debiting consumers’ accounts on a recurring basis without their prior written authorization. What’s more, the complaint charges that the defendants continued to call people after being told to cut it out, in violation of the Telemarketing Sales Rule’s entity-specific Do Not Call provisions. The FTC says they also violated the TSR through a series of deceptive upsells. A federal judge has entered a temporary restraining order and the FTC is seeking to put a permanent stop to the defendants’ illegal practices. If your clients have ROSCA questions, the","id":3201052},{"id":3199075,"description":"First Consumer Review Fairness case takes on promoter’s “big bucks on Amazon” claim lfair August 6, 2018 | 11:11AM First Consumer Review Fairness case takes on promoter’s “big bucks on Amazon” claim By Lesley Fair T he marketers behind a purported money-making promotion called Sellers Playbook appear to have skipped the chapter about complying with federal and state consumer protection laws. That’s the allegation in a complaint filed by the FTC and the Minnesota Attorney General . In addition, it’s the FTC’s first case charg ing violations of the Consumer Review Fairness Act. The roots of the allegations go back to another venture sued by the FTC earlier this year: FBA Stores, also known as Amazing Wealth System and Amazon Wealth Systems. The defendants in that case ran online ads and in-person workshops that claimed to reveal the secret s of making major money on Amazon. But few, if any, of the consumers who forked over thousands of dollars and implemented their “plug-and-play systems” earn ed the kind of cash the defendants claimed. Which brings us to Sellers Playbook, Exposure Marketing, Jessie Conners Tieva, and Matthew Tieva – Minnesota-based defendants charged with pitching the same kind of “secrets” to making big bucks on Amazon . According to the just-filed lawsuit , the striking similarities should come as no surprise. That ’s because defendant Jessie Tieva was a regular speaker at Amazing Wealth Systems’ workshops. How successful was she in getting consumers to sign up? The complaint charges that Ms. Tieva and her team generated more than $3.4 million in sales for Amazing Wealth Systems. And let’s be clear: We’re not talking about $3.4 million in sales by consumers who successfully implemented the system. We mean $3.4 million that consumers shelled out to the operators of Amazing Wealth Systems for which Tieva was paid a handsome commission. The complaint alleges that the new Sellers Playbook venture is, in effect, a copycat of the now-defunct Amazing Wealth Systems operation. The earning claims certainly have a familiar ring to them. Here’s how Sellers Playbook touted their “opportunity”: “Holy cow, guys. That’s when you start seeing the returns of what we want you to have, $20,000 a month,” “Potential Net Profit: $1,287,463.38,” “Starting with $1000...1 year later over $210,000,” and “How many of you would like to learn how to turn a $5- to $10,000 investment into a $25- to a $1.2 million return with your investment? Yeah. And you’re going to learn those strategies before you leave here today. There are a few other things Amazon Wealth Systems and Sellers Playbook have in common: 1) Neither company has any affiliation with Amazon; and 2) Both companies charged consumers hundreds of dollars – or even hefty five-figure fees – to sign up. Of course, few consumers make the kind of earnings the defendants claimed. According to the complaint, many of the webpages promoting Sellers Playbook contained an inconspicuous earnings disclaimer in grey near the bottom of the page. What’s more, at a live event, the defendants briefly displayed this slide, which one of the presenters downplayed with this statement: “That’s why they have us do this again. It makes the lawyers happy, disclaimers. But you got to do your part. Money’s not going to fall from the sky. But as long as you do a part, it’s going to happen.” T he complaint challenges the defendants’ earning claims as false or unsubstantiated under FTC law and the Minnesota Prevention of Consumer Fraud Act. What’s more, the lawsuit alleges multiple violations of the FTC’s Business Opportunity Rule . The FTC and the AG also charge that provisions in the defendants’ form contracts try to restrict consumers’ ability to post reviews of their products, services, or conduct , in violation of the Consumer Review Fairness","source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","pubDate":"Tue, 06 Oct 2026 08:06:23 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2018/08/first-consumer-review-fairness-case-takes-promoters-big-bucks-amazon-claim","titre":"First Consumer Review Fairness case takes on promoter’s “big bucks on Amazon” claim"},{"pubDate":"Mon, 05 Oct 2026 14:07:45 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2025/09/first-inform-consumers-act-enforcement-case-filed-against-online-marketplace-temu","titre":"First INFORM Consumers Act enforcement case filed against online marketplace Temu","source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","id":3198178,"description":"First INFORM Consumers Act enforcement case filed against online marketplace Temu kkrown September 5, 2025 | 10:00AM First INFORM Consumers Act enforcement case filed against online marketplace Temu Online marketplaces and third party sellers looking for a refresher on the INFORM Consumers Act should look no further than the recent settlement with Whaleco, Inc., which operates the online marketplace Temu. The complaint alleges the company failed to provide online shoppers with required information and tools. This is the first case brought to enforce the INFORM Act. The INFORM Act, which went into effect in 2023, seeks to make online transactions more transparent. Among other things, the law requires online marketplaces to collect, verify, and disclose certain information about high-volume third party sellers. ( Informing Businesses about the INFORM Consumers Act  has more on how the law defines terms, what’s required of online marketplaces, and the substantial penalties the FTC and state law enforcers may seek if online marketplaces violate the law.) In 2022, Temu launched its online marketplace in the United States, where consumers can view product listings on Temu’s homepage, through search results, and in gamified shopping experiences on the platform. According to the complaint, Temu violated the INFORM Act by failing to offer a mechanism for consumers to report suspicious activity — electronically and by phone — on the gamified product listings of many high-volume third party sellers and by failing to offer a telephonic mechanism on non-gamified product listings. The complaint also alleges that Temu did not post required identifying information about sellers on its gamified product listings or mobile site, and that Temu’s disclosures, when made, were difficult to find. According to the settlement, Temu will pay a $2 million civil penalty, provide a telephonic mechanism for consumers to report suspicious activity on listings, and make other required disclosures. Is your business covered by the INFORM Act? Make sure you:  Review the provisions of the INFORM Act thoroughly . Make sure you fully understand — and have measures in place to comply with — each of its requirements. Make required disclosures easy for consumers to notice . Required disclosures should stand out from any surrounding material and use plain language. Minimize or eliminate steps consumers need to take to reach required disclosures. Ensure required disclosures are available across all iterations of your platform . The INFORM Act mandates disclosures on all interfaces with product listings. And as your platforms evolve, regularly assess and update your compliance efforts. If your business sells through online platforms, check out  What Third Party Sellers Need to Know About the INFORM Consumers Act . This covers what sellers are impacted by the INFORM Act, what you can expect online platforms to require of you, and what information platforms must disclose about you to consumers. It also answers some questions you may have about the law. And if you spot a violation of the INFORM Act, r­eport it to the FTC using this  dedicated link"},{"pubDate":"Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:09:38 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2020/07/buckle-two-lane-look-car-buying","titre":"Buckle up for a two-lane look at car buying","source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","id":3194915,"description":"Buckle up for a two-lane look at car buying lfair July 30, 2020 | 1:04PM Buckle up for a two-lane look at car buying By Lesley Fair It’s one of the biggest purchases people make, but two new FTC staff reports examine some common pitfalls when consumers are in the market for a car. Buckle down and read the Bureau of Consumer Protection’s Buckle Up: Navigating Auto Sales and Financing , which focuses on the challenges buyers face in getting accurate, understandable information when shopping for a vehicle. Not in the auto business? Not so fast. The deep-dive analysis of  Buckle Up  and an accompanying report by BCP staff and the Bureau of Economics – The Auto Buyer Study: Lessons From In-Depth Consumer Interviews And Related Research  – offer insights into the perception and behavior of consumers in the study that can apply to other industries. The FTC’s interest in auto-related transactions goes back decades. (Check out Volume 1 of Federal Trade Commission Decisions for a 1919 case regarding deception in the sale of auto parts.) The FTC has brought law enforcement actions challenging illegal practices, held workshops and roundtables to hear from consumer groups and industry members, and educated buyers and sellers about their rights and responsibilities. One notable feature about the two new reports is that FTC staff went straight to the source and based their views, in part, on detailed interviews with consumers about their experiences when buying and financing a vehicle. You’ll want to read Buckle Up from bumper to bumper, but one key finding is that consumers may be unaware of key terms in sales and financing contracts. One reason may be the extent to which the negotiations process focuses primarily on the monthly payment. That approach can leave consumers in the dark about other important – sometimes even more important – financial variables like the down payment, the length of financing, the total sales price, and the annual percentage rate. So let’s say the consumer has decided on a vehicle and has come to an agreement on the price. All done? Consumers may think the checkered flag is in sight, but for the dealership, negotiations have just begun. First, as the report suggests, “price” can be an elusive concept in the context of car buying. Does it mean sticker price, out-the-door price, total sales price, or something else? Furthermore, it’s often in a last-lap meeting in the financing office that dealers raise the issue of add-ons – purchases like extended warranties, service plans, credit insurance, GAP policies, window etching, etc., that can add substantially to what consumers walking into the office thought the price was. Add-ons also may have limits or conditions and may not cover what consumers expect. The staff report suggests several reasons why add-ons were the single greatest area of confusion for consumers who participated in the study. According to the report, the talk turned to add-ons only after long hours (or days or weeks) of negotiations left consumers feeling both pressured to close the deal and confused by the details. Even the very nature of the products left many consumers bewildered. Are these add-ons mandatory? Are they free? Is the cost included in what consumers perceive as the already agreed-upon price? Does the dealership’s practice of bundling – offering add-ons as a package – mean buyers can’t pick and choose the add-ons they want? What about consumers’ opportunity to review the purchase and financing paperwork? As the report notes, “[T]he length of the auto-buying process, the amount of paperwork involved, and the technical industry jargon often coalesce to make meaningful review and engagement a challenging task.” Participants in the study cited the exhausting negotiation process, a sense of feeling rushed at the end, information overload that left some of them “overwhelmed,” and the difficulty of reviewing documents on a tablet or other"},{"source":"FTC USA Business Blog Posts","description":"Practice Fusion case suggests 6 health privacy pointers lfair June 8, 2016 | 9:01AM Practice Fusion case suggests 6 health privacy pointers By Lesley Fair Combine two of the most talked-about consumer protection topics – health privacy and consumer-generated online content – and what do you get? A proposed FTC settlement with Practice Fusion, the largest cloud-based electronic health records company in the country, and six compliance tips for others in the industry. One of San Francisco-based Practice Fusion’s primary products is an electronic records system for outpatient providers. In 2009, the company launched “Patient Fusion,” an online portal where patients whose providers were already using Practice Fusion could view or download their health information or transmit it to another provider. Patient Fusion also let patients send and receive secure messages from their providers. Fast forward several years and the company decided to expand Patient Fusion to include a public directory where current and prospective enrollees could search for doctors geographically or by specialty, read patient reviews of providers, and request appointments. But Practice Fusion had to ask itself a question familiar to many online companies: How do we get the content – in this case, patient reviews? That’s the focus of the FTC’s lawsuit. According to the complaint , Practice Fusion solicited data in a misleading way that led some patients to believe they were sending follow-up messages directly to their doctors about their diagnosis, medical treatment, prescriptions, etc. – and not contributing content to a public website. Practice Fusion, however, populated its new site with the information those people provided, some of which was highly sensitive. Here’s what happened. After appointments with their doctors, patients received emails titled “How was your visit?” The message continued, “To help improve your service in the future, please let us know how your visit went” and included a link with rating stars. The message ended this way: Thank you, Dr. [Name] In a footer, the message said “This email was sent to you by Patient Fusion®, a tool Doctor [Name] uses to deliver the highest quality of care to patients.” Below that in smaller print it said “Sent on behalf of Doctor [Name]’s office by: Practice Fusion.” If patients clicked the link, they were taken to a page that asked for feedback about things like how long they had to wait for their appointment, the doctor’s bedside manner, and whether their medical concern was addressed. There also was a text box where patients were invited to “leave a review for your provider.” Below that was a pre-checked box with the phrase “Keep this review anonymous.” What did some people put in that box? Highly sensitive information directly addressed to their doctors, not evaluations meant to be shared publicly. Here are just a few examples: “Dr [name], My Xanax prescription that I received on Monday was for 1 tablet a day but usually it’s for 2 tablets a day. I have not taken it to the pharmacy yet. Can I pick up a new one, or can I get a prescription called into a pharmacy? Thanks, [patient’s full name] “I called today and left a message regarding my daughter and no one has returned my call. I think she is depressed and has stated several times this week that she wishes she was dead. Could someone please call me [phone number]?” “The cefuroxime axetil does not seem to be doing anything for me. I did a little research and I think I have a yeast infection called candida. Not sure what to do about it yet. I guess I will first try to change my diet. Medication? [patient’s full name] “I would like to make an appointment for my back pain and possible shingles. Can you please call me @ [phone number]? Thank you! [patient's full name]” “I HAVE NO INFECTION [healthcare provider name].  EVERYTHING WENT","id":3194910,"titre":"Practice Fusion case suggests 6 health privacy pointers","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2016/06/practice-fusion-case-suggests-6-health-privacy-pointers","pubDate":"Sat, 03 Oct 2026 08:09:37 +0200"},{"pubDate":"Wed, 23 Sep 2026 07:48:09 +0200","titre":"The Genius Design of Alcatraz","url":"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YC-YyFGg8E","id":3170546,"description":"In this Deconstructed video, we rebuilt Alcatraz Island entirely in 3D, piece by piece, to understand how Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary actually operated at its peak in the 1950s. We explore the Cellhouse building, the prison cells, the dining hall, the shower room, the hospital, the administration building, and the infamous dungeon of Alcatraz, breaking down the prison’s internal layout and layered security systems, even down to the complex mechanical system that controlled every cell door. We also examine what life inside was really like and how three inmates managed to escape.We also created a detailed cutaway poster inspired by the video, showing the entire island of Alcatraz and how its buildings were arranged, from the main cellhouse and yard to the guard towers and support structures across the rock.👉 Get the poster here, every order helps support the channel so we can keep creating projects like this: https://crowdmade.com/collections/deconstructed/products/deconstructed-alcatraz-poster-deconstructed-r1*(Giveaway ended)🎁 We are also giving one away. Just subscribe, like this video, and leave a comment below telling us: What surprised you the most about Alcatraz? We will announce the winner in our next upload. Details below.Alcatraz Island is a small rocky outcrop located about 2 kilometers (1.25 miles) offshore from San Francisco. First developed in the mid-19th century, the island was initially used as a coastal defense site with the construction of Fort Alcatraz. Around 1910, the upper levels of the fort’s old citadel were removed, and a new cellhouse was built above its former basement level. The island later served as a military prison until 1933, when the federal government converted it into a federal penitentiary designed to isolate the most problematic inmates. Alcatraz was designed to be escape-proof. Built to hold inmates considered too dangerous for any other federal prison, it functioned as a self-contained community where prison staff and their families lived alongside the prison. The prison closed in 1963 because it was too expensive to operate. Today, Alcatraz is preserved as a historic site visited by more than one million people each year.Chapters00:00 – 00:53 The Escape-Proof Prison00:53 – 02:55 The Origins of Alcatraz02:55 – 07:25 The Island Layout07:25 – 15:19 Inside the Cellhouse15:19 – 21:14 Security Systems21:14 – 23:37 The Escape & ClosureA huge thank you to all our Patreon and YouTube Membership supporters. Your support helps us keep creating detailed, high-quality videos like this one. Join here to help us bring future projects to life:https://www.patreon.com/c/Deconstructed_Animations | https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCje6-Yak9u1msy5l7sE9pBA/join🎬Special thanks to our team:-Hubert M.: Animation and Modeling-Nicolas J.: Sound Design-Sydney O.: Script-Ben S.: Narration-Troy S.: Packaging-Hamza: Research-Lion & Louis: Direction & Editing🎁 Giveaway Rules:- No purchase necessary. Open worldwide.- Enter by commenting on this video and answering the question: What surprised you the most about Alcatraz?- The winner will be selected based on our judgment of the best comment.- The winner will be announced at the end of the next video and must contact us via email at deconstructed@intheblackmedia.com to claim their prize.- If the winner is under the age of majority in their country, parental permission is required to receive the prize.- This giveaway is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by YouTube.- Void where prohibited.📚 Photo and Document Credits:Images used in this video are part of the public domain and sourced from: Wikimedia Commons, National Park Services, FBI and FoundSFhttps://commons.wikimedia.orghttps://www.nps.govhttps://www.foundsf.orghttps://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/alcatraz-escape🧩 3D AssetsThird-party 3D assets used in this video have been purchased under royalty-free licenses.🎵 Music and SoundMusic and sound design used in this video are licensed via","source":"Droit - Scoop-It"},{"pubDate":"Sat, 05 Sep 2026 07:57:15 +0200","url":"https://www.slaw.ca/2026/09/04/tips-for-avoiding-catastrophic-language/","titre":"Tips for Avoiding Catastrophic Language","source":"Slaw","id":3135275,"description":"In my last post, The Dangers of Catastrophizing in Client Communications , I outlined the negative impact of catastrophizing on lawyer well being. While lawyers need to predict outcomes and envision worst-case scenarios, several conditions such chronic pain, anxiety, depression and fatigue are exacerbated by catastrophic thinking. I proposed that our catastrophic thinking could bleed into our client communications and cause them similar harm. We must strike a balance between utilizing our catastrophizing skillset and delivering options to clients in a way that allows them to make informed decisions without causing unnecessary anxiety. Substituting catastrophic language with more neutral language . . . [more] The post Tips for Avoiding Catastrophic Language appeared first on Slaw"},{"description":"The growth of self-representation in all adjudicative settings may ultimately require a new approach to adjudication that is even more fundamental than a root and branch overhaul of procedure and practice. What legislators and courts may need to consider is the development of forums that are focused on and limited to adjudicating cases involving SRLs. Such courts would channel cases involving SRLs into a specific forum where court participants, including the adjudicator and court staff and any required wrap-around services, would exclusively plan for and engage with litigants who do not have legal representation. One such experiment has been underway . . . [more] The post Imagining a Possible Future: Self-Represented Litigant Courts appeared first on Slaw","id":3116462,"source":"Slaw","url":"https://www.slaw.ca/2026/08/25/imagining-a-possible-future-self-represented-litigant-courts/","titre":"Imagining a Possible Future: Self-Represented Litigant Courts","pubDate":"Wed, 26 Aug 2026 07:58:50 +0200"},{"pubDate":"Mon, 03 Aug 2026 10:25:24 +0200","url":"https://theses.hal.science/INRIA2/hal-05703488v1","titre":"LLM-Assisted Ontology Engineering and Construction of a French Legal Knowledge Graph - INRIA 2","source":"Scoop.it - Documentation juridique (Stéphan Cottin)","id":3072818,"description":"Maintenance regulations are complex legal texts that are difficult to exploit when addressing a specific case and challenging to integrate into operational systems. This paper presents a two-stage LLM-assisted workflow for French maintenance regulations: ontology engineering from a SEMLEG-based core ontology, followed by construction of an ontology-grounded French legal knowledge graph. The first stage consists in the open extraction of typed entities and triples from a stratified corpus sample, the normalization of labels through embedding-based fusion, and the induction of candidate object properties with their signature (domain and range). The second stage uses the resulting ontology to guide the closed extraction of triples and RDF graph construction over the full corpus. Experiments with GPT-4.1 and mistral-large-2512 show robust structured outputs, near-complete class alignment, and a substantial reduction of duplicated entities and predicates after fusion. Fewer than 20% of triples introduce unseen properties, while lower exact signature compliance reveals new domain-range combinations for existing predicates. These results point to predicate normalization and the validation of newly observed relation signatures as key refinement steps for industrial maintenance settings. Maintenance regulations are complex legal texts that are difficult to exploit when addressing a specific case and challenging to integrate into operational systems. This paper presents a two-stage LLM-assisted workflow for French maintenance regulations: ontology engineering from a SEMLEG-based core ontology, followed by construction of an ontology-grounded French legal knowledge graph. The first stage consists in the open extraction of typed entities and triples from a stratified corpus sample, the normalization of labels through embedding-based fusion, and the induction of candidate object properties with their signature (domain and range). The second stage uses the resulting ontology to guide the closed extraction of triples and RDF graph construction over the full corpus. Experiments with GPT-4.1 and mistral-large-2512 show robust structured outputs, near-complete class alignment, and a substantial reduction of duplicated entities and predicates after fusion. Fewer than 20% of triples introduce unseen properties, while lower exact signature compliance reveals new domain-range combinations for existing predicates. These results point to predicate normalization and the validation of newly observed relation signatures as key refinement steps for industrial maintenance"},{"url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2026/marking-10-years-gdpr-evolution-european-data-protection-landscape_en","titre":"Marking 10 years of the GDPR: the evolution of the European data protection landscape","pubDate":"Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:14:32 +0200","source":"EDPB News","description":"Brussels, 27 April – Today marks the 10th anniversary of the GDPR’s adoption, the first comprehensive data protection framework spanning an entire continent, establishing clear rights for individuals and obligations for organisations across Europe. The moment that led to the creation of the EDPB The GDPR led to the establishment of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on 25 May 2018, replacing the Article 29 Working Party that was previously in charge of dealing with issues relating to the protection of personal data. The GDPR gave the Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) stronger enforcement powers and expanded the scope of their work from focusing mainly on national compliance complaints to routinely dealing with cross-border cases. In the past 10 years, the 31 European DPAs comprising the EDPB have worked together to ensure the consistent enforcement of the GDPR and a harmonised data protection approach across Europe.   A key role in an evolving digital landscape Today, the GDPR is part of a broader and evolving European digital framework, alongside other digital laws such as the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the AI Act . In a world shaped by artificial intelligence, platform economies, and increasing data-driven innovation, the GDPR ensures that technological progress goes hand in hand with the protection of individuals’ fundamental rights . An inspiration for the rest of the world The impact of the GDPR has extended far beyond Europe’s borders, inspiring similar frameworks across the globe and contributing to a growing international recognition of privacy as a fundamental right .   How the GDPR has shaped the data protection landscape: insights from Data Protection Authorities Have you ever wondered what the data protection landscape looked like before the GDPR and how DPAs prepared for its entry into force? How has life for Europeans changed since its adoption? Watch the video for insights and testimonies from Data Protection Authorities which contributed to the shaping of the data protection landscape in Europe.   Sorry, your browser doesn't support embedded","id":2850552},{"id":2792998,"description":"Public consultation on the draft BEREC Report on Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0 yannick.stephan Tue, 17/03/2026 - 09:26 Breadcrumbs Public Consultations & Calls for Inputs Deadline: Monday, 20 April 2026 (17:00 CEST) During the 66th BEREC plenary meeting (12-13 March 2026), the Board of Regulators approved the Draft BEREC Report on Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0 (BoR (26) 39) for public consultation. The report in a nutshell Virtual worlds (VW) and web 4.0 are at the basis of a transition to the 4th generation of internet based services, leading toward industry 4.0 and smart society. This shift is driven by artificial intelligence (AI) integration in networks and services. Hence, web 4.0 and immersive services are meant to have a significant economic and social impact by transforming the way in which industrial production evolves and automates its processes. At the same time, they transform the fruition of online content and applications by users. This draft BEREC Report provides a fully-fledged analysis. The first part of the draft Report dives into the connectivity developments as well as the transition to network-as-a-service (NaaS). It also provides examples of use cases cutting across industrial and societal applications. The second part deals with challenges posed to electronic communications networks/services (ECN/S) operators related either to the investment lines or to business models and market positioning. In such a scenario, focus is dedicated also to regulatory challenges, for instance the need to guarantee openness and interoperability and to foster investment. The Report builds on previous BEREC work, including the high-level position on artificial intelligence and virtual worlds provided as a contribution to the call for inputs on competition in generative AI and VW issued in 2024 by the European Commission (EC). The report is framed in the following 5 chapters and Conclusion: Introduction Chapter by providing a definition for VW, based on its key characteristics; Chapter 2 provides some concrete examples of use cases; Chapter 3 describes the connectivity challenges faced to enable VW and the network upgrades; Chapter 4 assesses the potential role of electronic communication providers in the provision of VW/Web 4.0 services, as well as any possible future profit streams and incentives; Chapter 5 examines the potential electronic communications regulatory challenges that may arise. Submit your contributions Interested parties are kindly asked to send their contributions via email to berec_virtualworld_pc@distro.berec.europa.eu no later than 20 April 2026 (17:00 CEST). Contributions should preferably be sent in English. To facilitate processing of the responses, the comments provided should clearly refer to the certain chapters/paragraphs of the document. After submitting the contribution, you will receive an acknowledgement email. In case you do not receive it, please contact the BEREC Office via the same email. All stakeholders are strongly encouraged to submit their contributions as early as possible – those received after the above-mentioned deadline will not be taken into account. In accordance with the BEREC policy on public consultations , BEREC will publish all contributions and a summary of the contributions, respecting confidentiality requests. Any such request should clearly indicate information that is considered confidential and should be accompanied by a non-confidential version. Privacy statement type Privacy Statement for Public Consultation Category Name Ongoing Public Consultations and Calls for Inputs Notify subscribers","source":"BEREC Office","pubDate":"Mon, 30 Mar 2026 19:32:59 +0200","titre":"Public consultation on the draft BEREC Report on Virtual Worlds and Web 4.0","url":"https://www.berec.europa.eu/en/public-consultations-calls-for-inputs/public-consultation-on-the-draft-berec-report-on-virtual-worlds-and-web-40"},{"titre":"CEF 2026: EDPB launches coordinated enforcement action on transparency and information obligations under the GDPR","url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2026/cef-2026-edpb-launches-coordinated-enforcement-action-transparency-and-information_en","pubDate":"Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:12:59 +0100","source":"EDPB News","description":"Brussels, 19 March - The EDPB has launched its Coordinated Enforcement Framework (CEF) action for 2026*. Following a year-long coordinated action on the right to erasure in 2025 , the CEF's focus this year will shift to compliance with the obligations of transparency and information under the GDPR . The GDPR ensures that individuals are informed when their data is being processed (under Art. 12, 13 and 14). This right to be informed is a core element of transparency and ensures that individuals have more control over their data. Next steps During 2026, 25 Data Protection Authorities (DPAs) across Europe will take part in this initiative. They will look closely to assess the compliance of controllers with their transparency obligations under the GDPR. Participating DPAs will soon contact controllers from different sectors across Europe, either through enforcement actions or fact-finding exercises. In the latter case, they might also decide to undertake additional follow-up actions if needed. During the second half of the year, participating DPAs will share and discuss their findings together, with a view to aggregate the results of their national actions and generate deeper insight into the topic. A consolidated report will then be drafted and submitted for adoption by the EDPB, allowing for targeted follow-ups on both national and EU levels. Background The CEF is a key action of the EDPB under its 2024-2027 Strategy , aimed at streamlining enforcement and cooperation among DPAs. In 2023, the EDPB published the report on its first coordinated action on the use of cloud-based services by the public sector . In 2024, the EDPB also published the report on the outcome of the second coordinated action on the designation and position of Data Protection Officers . In 2025, the EDPB issued the report on its third coordination action on the implementation of the right of access . In 2026, the EDPB has adopted a report on its Coordinated Enforcement Framework (CEF) action on the right to be forgotten (Art.17 GDPR) .   Note to editors: *The Board selected this topic during its October 2025 plenary","id":2769535},{"description":"The Federal Trade Commission is returning nearly $23 million to consumers nationwide who bought deceptively marketed overseas real estate lots in what the sellers pitched as Sanctuary Belize, a supposed luxury development in southern, coastal Belize, as well as its nearby sister development, Kanantik. The FTC is mailing 1,659 checks to defrauded investors. The average amount of each check for Sanctuary Belize consumers is $16,462 and the average amount of each check for Kanantik consumers is $6,346.39. Today’s announcement represents the second mailing to consumers who invested in the Sanctuary Belize scheme, with approximately  $10 million distributed previously . The first round of checks was sent only to consumers who bought property within Sanctuary Belize. Today’s checks are going to both Sanctuary Belize investors, as well as consumers who invested in Kanantik, a related development owned and operated by some of the Sanctuary Belize defendants, and other areas covered by the court relief in this case. In November 2018, the FTC filed a complaint charging that Andris Pukke, a prior FTC defendant, and several other corporate and individual defendants deceived consumers who invested in Sanctuary Belize by promising they were investing in a luxury development and resort. The defendants, however, failed to deliver on the promised amenities, and consumers who invested in Sanctuary property lost money and could not resell their lots. Following a trial in 2020, a federal court found that the defendants, who took in more than $100 million, duped consumers into buying Sanctuary Belize lots by falsely claiming it would be a safe investment, that the development would include luxury amenities and be completed soon, and that consumers could resell their lots. The defendants appealed,  but the Court of Appeals confirmed the deceptive scheme and the monetary judgment against Pukke and his associates, Peter Baker and John Usher. The District Court  ordered the receiver to send an initial round of payments , with the money coming from previous settlements. As part of a second round of payments, the Commission is sending a total of $22,865,008.34 to consumers. Checks totaling $20,028,170.25 are being sent to 1,202 claim applicants who invested in properties within Sanctuary Belize, and checks totaling $2,836,838.09 are being sent to 447 claim applicants who invested in properties in the Kanantik and other covered development areas. Consumers who receive checks in this second distribution should cash them within 60 days, as indicated on the check. Consumers with questions about their payments should email the redress administrator, Rust Consulting, which is being supported by Ankura Consulting Group, LLC, at Payment@SanctuaryBelizeRedress.com . Consumers with other questions about the Sanctuary Belize receivership can contact  info@sanctuarybelizereceivership.com . The application process for requesting a payment is closed, and the receiver is no longer accepting applications from consumers. Consumers can also visit the receivership website at  www.SanctuaryBelizeReceivership.com to find other resources such as","id":2679350,"source":"Federal Trade Commission - Protecting America's Consumers","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2026/02/ftc-sending-nearly-23-million-consumers-who-invested-deceptive-sanctuary-belize-kanantik-real-estate","titre":"FTC is Sending Nearly $23 Million to Consumers Who Invested in the Deceptive Sanctuary Belize and Kanantik Real Estate Development Schemes","pubDate":"Fri, 06 Feb 2026 09:48:14 +0100"},{"pubDate":"Wed, 10 Sep 2025 09:48:50 +0200","url":"https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/09/federal-trade-commission-chairman-andrew-n-ferguson-appoints-emma-mittelstaedt-burnham-associate","titre":"Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson Appoints Emma Mittelstaedt Burnham as Associate Director for Healthcare","source":"Federal Trade Commission Concurrence communiqués","id":2362099,"description":"Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson has appointed Emma Mittelstaedt Burnham as Associate Director for Healthcare in the Bureau of Competition. “I am delighted to appoint Emma as Associate Director for Healthcare in the Bureau of Competition. She is a talented attorney with many years of experience at the Department of Justice as a senior antitrust enforcer,” said FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson. “Emma will be an invaluable champion in the FTC’s ongoing fight to protect Americans’ access to affordable, high-quality healthcare.” Emma has significant experience leading the investigation and prosecution of complex antitrust conduct cases, having spent 11 years as a prosecutor at the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division. Most recently, she served as the Director of Criminal Enforcement, supervising the Antitrust Division’s price-fixing matters throughout the United States. She previously held the positions of Trial Attorney, Counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, Assistant Chief, and Acting Chief. Her prior work as a senior DOJ antitrust official included prosecuting antitrust violations in the healthcare sector. She led the Antitrust Division’s investigation into antitrust cartels in the generic pharmaceutical industry, which resulted in significant corporate prosecutions including the largest criminal penalties ever imposed for domestic cartel offenses and the first use of divestiture in a criminal settlement. Before joining the DOJ Antitrust Division, Emma was a criminal defense associate at law firms in Washington, DC, and Los Angeles. She graduated with honors from the University of Chicago Law School and Georgetown University and clerked for the Honorable Robert W. Gettleman in the Northern District of"},{"source":"EDPB News","id":2170441,"description":"Background information Date of final decision: 15 May 2025 National case Controller:  SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES Legal Reference(s): Article 7 (Conditions for consent), Article 6 (Lawfulness of processing) Decision: administrative fine and an order to cease electronic commercial prospecting in the absence of valid consent, together with a penalty of €10 000 per day overdue after a period of 9 months Key words: administrative fine, consent,  unsolicited communication   Summary of the Decision Origin of the case   As the French Supervisory Authority (SA) made commercial prospecting a priority topic for investigations in 2022, it focused on the practices of professionals in the sector, particularly those who resell data, including the many intermediaries in this ecosystem known as data brokers. The French SA carried out investigations on SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES which got prospect data mainly from data brokers, publishers of game contests and product testing sites (these actors are the first links in the chain, the primary collectors, who are responsible for collecting prospect data). SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES used this data to operate commercial prospecting by SMS or e-mail to individuals concerned, on behalf of its advertiser customer. It may also pass on some of this data to its customers, so that they can carry out their own commercial prospecting by telephone or post. Key Findings  Failure to comply with the obligation to obtain the consent of individuals to receive commercial prospecting by electronic means (Article L.34-5 of the French Post and Electronic Communications Code): The restricted committee considered that the misleading appearance of the forms used by data brokers made it impossible to obtain free and unambiguous consent, in compliance with the requirements of the GDPR, which would have formed the basis for the prospecting operations carried out by the company. Failure to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data (Article 7 of the GDPR): The company failed to provide the French SA with proof of consent from individuals whose data has been transferred to it by one of its main suppliers. As a result, the French SA was unable to examine the collection forms used by this supplier and, therefore, the validity of the consent of the data subjects.   Decision  Based on the findings of the inspection, the restricted committee – the French SA body responsible for issuing sanctions – considered that the company had failed to comply with obligations under the French Post and Electronic Communications Code (CPCE) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding the collection and proof of consent.  It imposed on SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES:  a €900 000 fine which was made public; and an order to cease electronic commercial prospecting in the absence of valid consent, together with a penalty of €10 000 per day overdue after a period of 9 months.  The amount of this fine takes into account the very large number of people concerned (several million), the company's historical position on the market, the financial benefit derived from the breaches, and the measures taken by the company to comply with some of its obligations since the checks were carried out. For further information:  •  Courtiers en données : sanction de 900 000 euros à l’encontre de la société SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES (French) •  Data brokers: SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES fined €900,000  (English)","pubDate":"Tue, 10 Jun 2025 09:51:20 +0200","titre":"The French SA fines SOLOCAL €900 000","url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2025/french-sa-fines-solocal-eu900-000_en"},{"source":"EDPB News","description":"Background information Date of final decision: 15 May 2025 National case Controller:  SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES Legal Reference(s): Article 7 (Conditions for consent), Article 6 (Lawfulness of processing) Decision: administrative fine and an order to cease electronic commercial prospecting in the absence of valid consent, together with a penalty of 10 000 € per day overdue after a period of 9 months Key words: administrative fine, consent,  unsolicited communication   Summary of the Decision Origin of the case   As the French Supervisory Authority (SA) made commercial prospecting a priority topic for investigations in 2022, it focused on the practices of professionals in the sector, particularly those who resell data, including the many intermediaries in this ecosystem known as data brokers. The French SA carried out investigations on SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES which got prospect data mainly from data brokers, publishers of game contests and product testing sites (these actors are the first links in the chain, the primary collectors, who are responsible for collecting prospect data). SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES used this data to operate commercial prospecting by SMS or e-mail to individuals concerned, on behalf of its advertiser customer. It may also pass on some of this data to its customers, so that they can carry out their own commercial prospecting by telephone or post. Key Findings  Failure to comply with the obligation to obtain the consent of individuals to receive commercial prospecting by electronic means (Article L.34-5 of the French Post and Electronic Communications Code): The restricted committee considered that the misleading appearance of the forms used by data brokers made it impossible to obtain free and unambiguous consent, in compliance with the requirements of the GDPR, which would have formed the basis for the prospecting operations carried out by the company. Failure to demonstrate that the data subject has consented to processing of his or her personal data (Article 7 of the GDPR): The company failed to provide the French SA with proof of consent from individuals whose data has been transferred to it by one of its main suppliers. As a result, the French SA was unable to examine the collection forms used by this supplier and, therefore, the validity of the consent of the data subjects.   Decision  Based on the findings of the inspection, the restricted committee – the French SA body responsible for issuing sanctions – considered that the company had failed to comply with obligations under the French Post and Electronic Communications Code (CPCE) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding the collection and proof of consent.  It imposed on SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES:  a 900 000 € fine which was made public; and an order to cease electronic commercial prospecting in the absence of valid consent, together with a penalty of 10 000 € per day overdue after a period of 9 months.  The amount of this fine takes into account the very large number of people concerned (several million), the company's historical position on the market, the financial benefit derived from the breaches, and the measures taken by the company to comply with some of its obligations since the checks were carried out. For further information:  •   Courtiers en données : sanction de 900 000 euros à l’encontre de la société SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES (French) •   Data brokers: SOLOCAL MARKETING SERVICES fined €900,000  (English)","id":2130472,"url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2025/french-sa-fines-solocal-900-000-eu_en","titre":"The French SA fines SOLOCAL 900 000 €","pubDate":"Wed, 21 May 2025 15:52:14 +0200"},{"description":"Brussels, 18 December - The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has adopted an opinion* on the use of personal data for the development and deployment of AI models . This opinion looks at 1) when and how AI models can be considered anonymous, 2) whether and how legitimate interest can be used as a legal basis for developing or using AI models, and 3) what happens if an AI model is developed using personal data that was processed unlawfully. It also considers the use of first and third party data. The opinion was requested by the Irish Data Protection Authority (DPA) with a view to seeking Europe-wide regulatory harmonisation. To gather input for this opinion, which deals with fast-moving technologies that have an important impact on society, the EDPB organised a stakeholders’ event and had an exchange with the EU AI Office. EDPB Chair Talus said: “AI technologies may bring many opportunities and benefits to different industries and areas of life. We need to ensure these innovations are done ethically, safely, and in a way that benefits everyone. The EDPB wants to support responsible AI innovation by ensuring personal data are protected and in full respect of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).” Regarding anonymity , the opinion says that whether an AI model is anonymous should be assessed  on a case by case basis by the DPAs. For a model to be anonymous, it should be very unlikely (1) to directly or indirectly identify individuals whose data was used to create the model, and (2) to extract such personal data from the model through queries. The opinion provides a non-prescriptive and non-exhaustive list of methods to demonstrate anonymity. With respect to legitimate interest , the opinion provides general considerations that DPAs should take into account when they assess if legitimate interest is an appropriate legal basis for processing personal data for the development and the deployment of AI models. A three-step test helps assess the use of legitimate interest as a legal basis. The EDPB gives the examples of a conversational agent to assist users, and the use of AI to improve cybersecurity. These services can be beneficial for individuals and can rely on legitimate interest as a legal basis, but only if the processing is shown to be strictly necessary and the balancing of rights is respected. The opinion also includes a number of criteria to help DPAs assess if individuals may reasonably expect certain uses of their personal data. These criteria include: whether or not the personal data was publicly available, the nature of the relationship between the individual and the controller, the nature of the service, the context in which the personal data was collected, the source from which the data was collected, the potential further uses of the model, and whether individuals are actually aware that their personal data is online. If the balancing test shows that the processing should not take place because of the negative impact on individuals, mitigating measures may limit this negative impact. The opinion includes a non-exhaustive list of examples of such mitigating measures, which can be technical in nature, or make it easier for individuals to exercise their rights or increase transparency. Finally, when an AI model was developed with unlawfully processed personal data, this could have an impact on the lawfulness of its deployment, unless the model has been duly anonymised. Considering the scope of the request from the Irish DPA, the vast diversity of AI models and their rapid evolution, the opinion aims to give guidance on various elements that can be used for conducting a case by case analysis. In addition, the EDPB is currently developing guidelines covering more specific questions, such as web scraping. Note to editors: *An Article 64(2) opinion addresses a matter of general application or produces effects in more than one Member","id":1792119,"source":"EDPB News","url":"https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2024/edpb-opinion-ai-models-gdpr-principles-support-responsible-ai_en","titre":"EDPB opinion on AI models: GDPR principles support responsible AI","pubDate":"Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:47:16 +0100"},{"description":"Key Takeaways: Decoding Organized Hypocrisy: An Overview In a world marked by intricate webs of deceit, disconnect between rhetoric and action, and strategic manipulation, David Penklis’ upcoming book, “Organized Hypocrisy,” offers a compelling exploration into this phenomenon. With a blend of scholarly analysis and real-world case studies, Penklis sheds light on the intricacies and implications of organized hypocrisy that permeate global affairs, government actions, and corporate strategies. Understanding the Concept of Organized Hypocrisy Organized hypocrisy, as defined by Penklis, refers to the systematic gap between stated beliefs, decisions, and actual behaviors across various spheres of influence. It’s a phenomenon deeply The post Unmasking the Hypocritical World: Insights from a New Book appeared first on Business Today","id":1282821,"source":"Business Today","url":"https://businesstoday.news/unmasking-the-hypocritical-world-insights-from-a-new-book/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=unmasking-the-hypocritical-world-insights-from-a-new-book","titre":"Unmasking the Hypocritical World: Insights from a New Book","pubDate":"Sat, 27 Apr 2024 10:39:47 +0200"}]