fines
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Meta fined €265 million over Facebook data scraping in the EU
Meta has been hit with a €265 million ($277 million) fine for failing to prevent millions of Facebook users' data from being scraped.
Amazon avoids fines and other penalties in Illinois warehouse collapse
Amazon won't face fines and other penalties following the collapse of an Illinois warehouse that killed six workers during a tornado.
Sony fined $2.4 million over illegal return policy in Australia
Sony Europe broke the rules outlined by the Australian Consumer Law, and now must pay a $2.4 million fine.
France fines Google $167 million over unpredictable advertising rules
After a four-year investigation, France's competition watchdog is fining Google €150 million ($167 million) for opaque and unpredictable advertising rules, Reuters reports. The investigation began after French company Gibmedia accused Google of suspending its Google Ads account without notice. According to Reuters, the French regulator alleges that, by changing its terms of use and rules at will, Google abused its market power. Google plans to appeal the decision.
EU fines ASUS, Philips and others for online price fixing
Days ago, the EU Commission fined Google a record-setting €4.3 billion ($5 billion) for antitrust violations. Now it's handed down a combined €111 million in fines to four electronics manufacturers for fixing online resale prices for their devices and appliances, which is a breach of European Union competition laws.
Airbnb cuts half of San Francisco listings as new laws kick in
San Francisco's strict short-term home rental laws just kicked in on Wednesday, and are already having a big effect on SF-based Airbnb. Listing plunged from over 10,000 to around 5,500, dropping around 4,760 listings, the site told the San Francisco Chronicle. Wednesday midnight was the deadline for hosts to register homes with the city for a $250 fee, or face fines as high as $1,000 a day.
Court fines Apple for withholding evidence against Qualcomm
Apple and Qualcomm aren't exactly the best of friends, so it's quite surprising to hear that Cupertino is facing fines for failing to produce evidence for a lawsuit against the chipmaker. According to Bloomberg, a San Jose, California court has ordered Apple to pay $25,000 for each day (starting from December 16th) it fails to turn over documents the Federal Trade Commission needs for its lawsuit. The agency sued Qualcomm earlier this year over anti-competitive practices: it offered the tech titan, for instance, lower royalty fees if it exclusively uses its baseband chips for the iPhone.
Ofcom proposes free cash for lengthy broadband outages
Under new proposals by Ofcom, Brits could soon receive automatic compensation for slow broadband repairs and missed engineer appointments. The measures are part of a larger crackdown on the UK's telephone and internet service providers. Openreach, the arm of BT that handles broadband infrastructure, was forced to become its own, "legally separate company" earlier this month. Now, Ofcom is effectively saying that it needs to do better than before, or face financial repercussions.
NFL could fine its own teams for social media posts
Sports reputation as being DVR-proof has led some leagues to try and tightly control how and where their highlights show up online. While the NBA is relatively loose about allowing its clips on YouTube or Twitter, the NFL has gone after websites for posting video or GIFs before, and the Olympics banned outlets from posting GIFs this summer. Now, a leaked memo obtained by TheMMQB and Mashable reveals how the NFL can go after its own teams for posts by their social media accounts. Now, teams can be fined for exceeding the limits on video and any moving content (read: GIFs) posted during the 60 minutes before a game or during the game.
UK government considers fining providers with confusing T&Cs
Although companies are legally required to list terms and conditions when a customer buys something, they can often be confusing or outright misleading. ISPs and mobile operators are especially guilty of this and a lot of the time consumers ignore them completely. The UK government has decided now is the time to act, so it's launched a new consultation to make things simpler for consumers and possibly fine online companies that don't comply.
Qualcomm set to axe up to 10 percent of its workforce
Qualcomm has been besieged by problems lately and quite a few of its employees may soon pay the price. It's planning to lay off around 10 percent of its workforce -- several thousand employees -- according to The Information. The WSJ is also reporting that the company will conduct a comprehensive review of its operations and may split into two separate businesses: chip production and patent licensing. Qualcomm profits dropped drastically last quarter due to delays in the launch of its flagship Snapdragon 810 chip and the loss of one of its largest customers, Samsung. The company was ordered to pay a $975 million antitrust fine in China and is facing the same problem in the EU.
Transport inspectors say Uber blocked their accounts to avoid fines
Uber likes to play chicken with local ride-sharing laws, hoping to keep its service in cities long enough to generate positive public buzz. Case in point is Queensland and Western Australia, where UberX is illegal and carries fines of up to $1,700 (AUS) for infringing drivers. According to emails obtained by ABC News in Australia, Uber has actively blocked the accounts of transport inspectors to avoid the penalties, which it pays on behalf of drivers. One inspector said "due to blocking by Uber, only two covert rides were undertaken... time was spent purchasing new credit cards, activating Gmail accounts and setting up two more phones."
Sprint could face $105 million fine over unauthorized customer billing
Sprint can't catch a break. As if its financial woes weren't enough, the outfit was recently accused of letting consumers get billed for "tens of millions" of dollars in unauthorized charges for premium text messages between 2004 and 2013. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's official charges, according to The New York Times, are that Sprint's billing system allowed third-parties to "cram" unauthorized fees onto your monthly statement. That's not all: The Federal Communications Commission is getting in on the action too, with the NYT's sources claiming that Sprint will face $105 million in refunds and restitution as a result of those unauthorized bill additions -- a bit more than it charged AT&T. We're going to imagine the government won't let the Now Network pay its fines $9.99 per month. [Image credit: JeepersMedia/Flickr]
Minor criminals in Elite: Dangerous will incur fines, compound interest
Frontier has published the 30th edition of its Elite: Dangerous newsletter. This issue features tidbits on ship decals, new code systems meant to enforce law and order within radar range of authority ships or space stations, and potential fines for minor criminal offenders. Fines will "give the authorities a proportionate level of response rather than shooting to kill regardless of the severity of a crime. Minor crimes and non-threatening infractions will incur a fine, which can be paid off to your local space station authority representative," Frontier explains. "If you don't pay off your fines, they will initially attract compound interest and then, once the authorities lose patience with your tardiness they will be converted into a bounty, and lead to you being hunted down." There's a lot more to this week's newsletter, so follow the links below to give it a read! [Thanks Cotic!]
Sweden fines pirate $650,000 for illegally sharing a single film
Sure, it's no Somalia, but Sweden's been fighting plenty of its own battles against piracy -- of the digital variety. The former home of Pirate Bay, the infamous online repository for everything the RIAA and MPAA stand against, has just fined an unnamed 28-year-old man 4.3 million krona (about $650,000) for uploading a single film to a torrent site. Granted, an anti-piracy group called Rights Alliance described the man as the country's "worst ever" pirate, according to a BBC report, so just because this fine covers only one film, he's likely responsible for ripping off plenty more. In fact, the same court that assigned the fine also convicted the man of sharing 517 other flicks -- that charge brought a rather tame punishment, including a suspended jail sentence and 160 hours of community service.
Sony agrees to pay £250K fine in UK for 2011 data breach, begrudgingly
Remember the 2011 attack that crippled Sony's PlayStation Network, leaked almost a quarter million users' information and generally was a nuisance? It's still cleaning up after that mess. Earlier this year, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) slapped the company's European wing with a £250,000 fine ($377,575), saying it should have been better prepared for the attack -- now Sony's agreed to pay up. The electronics giant still maintains that the charge is without merit, but ceded to the penalty to avoid disclosing details about its security procedures. Apparently, the two months of free PS+ wasn't enough to make everybody forget.
Microsoft deliberately wasted energy at data center to avoid fine, says NY Times
Microsoft's desire to avoid a fine combined with a power company's strict electricity usage rules resulted in the software giant deliberately wasting millions of watts of power, according to the New York Times. Redmond's Quincy data center, which houses Bing, Hotmail and other cloud-based servers, had an agreement in place with a Washington state utility containing clauses which imposed penalties for under-consumption of electricity. A $210,000 fine was levied last year, since the facility was well below its power-use target, which prompted Microsoft to deliberately burn $70,000 worth of electricity in three days "in a commercially unproductive manner" to avoid it, according to its own documents. The utility board capitulated and reduced the amend to $60k, but the messy situation seems a far cry from Redmond's pledge to become carbon neutral by this summer. [Image credit: New York Times]
Sharp settles LCD price fixing dispute with Dell and others for $200 million
In an LCD panel price fixing tiff that's been raging on for what seems like time incarnate, Sharp has settled with Dell and two unnamed companies for $198.5 million to make it go away. Japanese panel makers like LG, Samsung and Toshiba are also defendants in the legal dragnet, and numerous fines and settlements totaling more than a billion dollars have already been paid out to the likes of AT&T and the US Department of Justice. This decision comes hot on the heels of an $87 million setback in court for Toshiba -- a ruling that may have taken the edge off of Sharp's defense.
EU competition head gives Google a 'matter of weeks' to offer an antitrust fix
The European Union has been taking a leisurely pace investigating Google over possible antitrust abuses, but it's now accelerating to a full-on sprint. European Commission competition head Joaquin Almunia has given Google just a "matter of weeks" to propose how it would patch things up and soften fears that it was unfairly pushing its own web services over others. If Google makes the Commission happy, Almunia says, the whole investigation might wrap up and avoid fines. Google hasn't responded yet, but we wouldn't guarantee that it makes a deal: its execs have usually argued that there's nothing keeping users from going to another search site, and the company has been eager to emphasize that competition still exists. That said, Google only has to see what happened to Microsoft to know how expensive an EU antitrust fight can be.
Apple features 'communication to protect consumers' in Italy
Apple has apparently complied with a recent ruling by the Italian government that the company did not do enough, when selling its extended one-year warranties in stores, to let customers know that its products already came with a two-year warranty, as per consumer laws there. The company has posted an official message on its website in Italy, designated a "Communication to Protect Customers," that outlines exactly what rights customers have to that two-year warranty, and that the Apple Store pushed its paid warranty onto customers anyway. It's unknown, however, whether Apple will pay the around $1.2 million fine that Italian authorities have levied against the company for this behavior. This notice could be Apple trying to get out of paying the actual money. So far there's no indication that fines have been paid, or even that the company has changed its tactics in Italian stores. We'll have to see what actions the government takes after this. Of course, if the government does pursue fines against Apple, $1.2 million is about as "drop in the bucket" as it gets for a company with $98 billion in the bank. If Italian authorities do pursue this further, it might be easier for Apple to just write a check than worry about it for too long.
