August 2011

Aiming to keep its T-Mobile acquisition on track, AT&T said that it has filed eight federal suits aimed at thwarting a law firm’s attempt to block the deal via arbitration.

The suits were filed in eight jurisdictions across the U.S. where the Bursor & Fisher law firm has filed arbitration cases. The law firm has been seeking to attack AT&T’s planned T-Mobile acquisition by bringing arbitration cases on behalf of individual AT&T customers. The firm recently said that it had signed up more than 1,000 customers looking to attack the deal. AT&T has maintained that the arbitration clause in its contract with customers cannot be used for such efforts.

AT&T said: "The bottom line here is an arbitrator has no authority to block the merger or affect the merger process in any way. AT&T’s arbitration agreement with our customers — recently upheld by the Supreme Court — allows individual relief for individual claims. Bursor & Fisher is seeking class-wide relief wrapped in the guise of individual arbitration proceedings, which is specifically prohibited by AT&T’s arbitration agreement. Accordingly, the claims are completely without merit. We have filed suit in order to stop this abusive action.”

When it comes to local news on the digital platform, legacy media are getting it wrong, wrong, wrong.

That’s the message of a new report, “Challenges in News Migration to Digital Media,” authored by Sam Milkman, president of Lafayette (PA)-based knowDigital, a brand research firm owned by Coleman Insights. Traditional media are failing on numerous fronts, Milkman said, ranging from the metrics they’re using to measure success to their inability to fully capitalize on key “images,” such as breaking news or weather, that distinguish their brand on its legacy platform. Most local news sites, he added, are serving merely as utility extensions of the brand rather than entertaining and engaging platforms in their own right.

A developer of mobile applications, including children’s games for the iPhone and iPod touch, will pay $50,000 to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the FTC’s COPPA Rule by illegally collecting and disclosing personal information from tens of thousands of children under age 13 without their parents’ prior consent.

This is the Commission’s first case involving mobile applications, known as apps. The FTC’s complaint charged that W3 Innovations, LLC, doing business as Broken Thumbs Apps, and company president and owner Justin Maples, develop and distribute mobile apps for the iPhone and iPod touch that allow users to play games and share information online. According to the FTC, several of the apps, including the Emily’s Girl World, Emily’s Dress Up, Emily’s Dress Up & Shop, and Emily’s Runway High Fashion, were directed to children and were listed in the Games-Kids section of Apple, Inc.’s App Store. There have been more than 50,000 downloads of these apps, which allowed children to play classic games such as Cootie Catcher and Truth or Dare, and to create virtual models and design outfits. The Emily apps encouraged children to email “Emily” their comments and submit blogs to “Emily’s Blog” via email, such as “shout-outs” to friends and requests for advice. The FTC alleges that the defendants collected and maintained thousands of email addresses from users of the Emily apps. In addition to collecting and maintaining children’s email addresses, the FTC alleges that the defendants also allowed children to publicly post information, including personal information, on message boards. These interactive apps send and receive information via the Internet, and are online services covered by the COPPA Rule, according to the FTC complaint

The Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition has issued an advisory opinion letter stating that it has no present intention to challenge the Council of Better Business Bureaus’ (CBBB) proposed “accountability program,” which would hold companies engaged in online behavioral advertising accountable for compliance with the “Self-Regulatory Principles for Online Behavioral Advertising.”

These principles were released in July 2009 by a coalition of industry associations, and are administered by the Digital Advertising Alliance. According to the staff letter, the CBBB’s proposed accountability program has the potential to benefit consumers by increasing transparency of, and consumer control over, certain aspects of online behavioral advertising, and there appears to be little or no potential for competitive harm associated with the proposed program. Although companies will conform their online behavioral advertising practices to a specific standard under the CBBB program, that conformity likely will enhance consumer autonomy without limiting choice of competitively offered goods and services that consumers may desire, the letter states.