10.6.2015

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THE SKINNY

 Killing Them Softly…

The European Court of Justice (you could say its basically Europe’s version of the U.S. Supreme Court) just made things extremely difficult for about 4,500 U.S. companies, including some of your faves like Facebook and Amazon.  The Court just said that the legal framework, known as the US-EU Safe Harbor, which U.S. companies have been relying on for 15 years to move data from Europe to the U.S. is no longer working and is therefore invalid.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T… 

This ruling really comes down to the Court reasoning that the U.S. no longer has any regard for Europeans’ privacy once their personal information lands State side, especially after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told everyone exactly what the U.S. intelligence agency was up to when it comes to surveillance.

What Does This Mean? 

In short, U.S. businesses need to lawyer up – European-style. It won’t be business as usual across the Atlantic.  For one, national regulators in EU Member States now have a say in whether a U.S. company’s data transfer is legit or not (e.g., Facebook’s got a little issue in Ireland where Irish regulators are investigating its practices because of some allegations brought by Austrian student Max Schrems).  According to reports, companies have been prepping for something like this for a while and have already started beefing up their contracts with language courtesy of the EU to avoid further legal exposure. Meanwhile, the U.S. and EU have been working for two years to amend the US-EU Safe Harbor to increase privacy protections, but this decision seriously undermines that.

WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON?

All I Do is Win, Win, Win … 

Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced a huge “W” for President Obama.  After years of negotiations, the U.S. and 11 other countries including Australia, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Canada, etc. agreed on a trade deal known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).  China wasn’t invited to the party. The countries involved in the deal represent about two-fifths of the global economy so TPP is intended to set some ground rules on how trade and commerce is going to work among all countries involved. TPP aims to do many things like opening up the Internet in places like Vietnam.  After yesterday’s announcement, industries such as the entertainment industry voiced their support. But, Internet companies have remained relatively mum on the agreement.  While reaching this agreement is definitely a milestone moment, there’s one small hiccup.  Congress still needs to approve it.

ALL BETS ARE OFF… 

Fantasy sports sites FanDuel Inc. and DraftKings Inc. are feeling the heat.  The pair of billion dollar startups are under scrutiny for some alleged employee insider trading. Things kicked off when one of DraftKings’ employees prematurely released company data prior to week three of NFL games.  He said it was a mistake, but the employee that same week banked about $350K from FanDeul’s site. So, now people think that employees at these companies are using internal information to place bets for an unfair advantage.  Both companies say they investigated the situation.  Based on their findings, they are denying any wrongdoing on the employee’s part and theirs.  FanDuel and DraftKings are adamant that this was a one-time deal that won’t happen again, but others are skeptical about who at these companies have access to that type of data. If only we were betting people …

THE STREETS ARE TALKIN’ 

Beam me up, Facebook.  The social media company’s Internet.org initiative announced plans to partner with French satellite company Eutelsat to bring wireless Internet access to sub-Saharan Africa.

Google is eyeing Symphony Communication Services, a messaging startup, for a potential investment. Meanwhile, Russia wants Google to adjust its Android agreements with mobile operators in the country within the next month for competition reasons.

Peeple, the app for rating people (aka the Yelp for people), heard you loud and clear. They’ve made some changes – namely, not allowing negative ratings.

Fresh off announcing its new leadership team, Twitter is rolling out Project Lightening aka Moments.  This new feature is basically a bunch of curated tweets around a specific topic.