It’s possible social media platforms could be considered common carriers when delivering emails or direct messages, the U.S. Supreme Court's conservative justices said Monday.

Since an April data breach at Emmanuel College in Boston, Sopiya Shrestha has experienced an uptick in spam calls concerning fraudulent communications, said her negligence class action Thursday (docket 1:24-cv-10434) against the school's trustees in U.S. District Court for Massachusetts in Boston.

Comcast used “deficient data security practices” by relying on Citrix’s “flawed software applications” that resulted in a “massive and preventable” October data breach, alleged a fraud class action Thursday (docket 2:24-cv-00793) in U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

An Ohio court can and should call Google Search a common carrier, the state argued Friday. In a separate opposition brief, Google protested that it’s nothing like a common carrier: "Google is not a 'dumb pipe' or 'mere conduit.' The Ohio Chamber of Commerce supported the company, arguing in a Thursday amicus brief that Ohio’s attempt to regulate the search company would be “anti-business.”

A Feb. 16 motion for injunction by the plaintiffs in three nearly identical copyright class actions that were consolidated Nov. 9 in In Re: OpenAI ChatGPT Litigation requests “extraordinary and drastic relief,” said defendant OpenAI in its opposition to the motion Thursday (docket 3:23-cv-03223) in U.S. District Court for Northern California in San Francisco.

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) is resisting calls by five individual TikTok users and TikTok itself to personally depose him during the discovery phase of the two consolidated cases that challenge the constitutionality of the state's TikTok ban, said Knudsen’s response Thursday (docket 9:23-cv-00061) in U.S. District Court for Montana in Missoula.

The Texas Association of Business (TAB) petitioned the 5th U.S. Circuit Appeals Court for review of the FCC’s updated data breach notification rules. The rules were adopted Dec. 13, released Dec. 21 and published in the Federal Register Feb. 12, said TAB's Thursday filing (docket 24-60085). They are effective March 13 (see 2402090035).

Expect a U.S. Supreme Court majority to side with the tech industry in its content moderation fight against social media laws in Florida and Texas, experts told us in interviews last week.

Home security company Vivint failed to disclose to a customer that he would be required to buy additional products to receive its service and refused to allow him to cancel home monitoring, alleged a Jan. 12 fraud class action (docket 1:24-cv-01010) removed Wednesday from Burlington County, New Jersey, Superior Court to U.S. District Court for New Jersey in Camden.

Debt collection service IC System continued to inaccurately report late-payment charges on a Charter Communications customer’s account after he disputed the information to credit reporting firms Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, said a complaint Wednesday (docket 6:24-cv-00371) against IC System, Charter and Equifax in U.S. District Court for Middle Florida in Orlando.