The Federal Trade Commission today announced a public inquiry into alleged censorship online, saying it wants "to better understand how technology platforms deny or degrade users' access to services based on the content of their speech or affiliations, and how this conduct may have violated the law."

"Tech firms should not be bullying their users," said FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who was chosen by President Trump to lead the commission. "This inquiry will help the FTC better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds."

The FTC announcement said that "censorship by technology platforms is not just un-American, it is potentially illegal." Tech platforms' actions "may harm consumers, affect competition, may have resulted from a lack of competition, or may have been the product of anti-competitive conduct," the FTC said.

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Cable company Altice agreed to give Warner and other record labels the names and contact information of 100 broadband subscribers who were accused of pirating songs.

The subscribers "were the subject of RIAA or third party copyright notices," said a court order that approved the agreement between Altice and the plaintiff record companies. Altice is notifying each subscriber "of Altice's intent to disclose their name and contact information to Plaintiffs pursuant to this Order," and telling the notified subscribers that they have 30 days to seek relief from the court.

If subscribers do not object within a month, Altice must disclose the subscribers' names, phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses. The judge's order was issued on February 12 and reported yesterday by TorrentFreak.

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President Trump yesterday issued an executive order declaring sweeping power over agencies that were created to operate independently from the White House. The order declares that "officials who wield vast executive power must be supervised and controlled by the people's elected President," and that "it shall be the policy of the executive branch to ensure Presidential supervision and control of the entire executive branch."

An accompanying fact sheet issued by the White House said the order applies to "so-called independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)." The Federal Election Commission is also expected to be affected by the order.

The White House said it will require independent agencies to submit draft regulations for review, except for the monetary policy functions of the Federal Reserve. Independent agencies are also ordered to "consult with the White House on their priorities and strategic plans." The order claims more White House control over how agencies spend their budgets.

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OpenAI is considering granting new voting rights to its nonprofit board in a move that could help it fight an unsolicited takeover bid from Elon Musk, the Financial Times reported last night. Citing people familiar with the discussions, the FT wrote that CEO "Sam Altman and other board members are weighing a range of new governance mechanisms after OpenAI converts into a more conventional for-profit company."

"Giving the nonprofit's board outsized voting power would ensure it retain[s] control of the restructured company and [is] able to over-rule other investors including existing backers such as Microsoft and SoftBank," the FT wrote. "While no firm decisions have been made, special voting rights would also ensure OpenAI can fight off hostile bids from outsiders such as Musk."

We contacted OpenAI about the report and will update this article if it provides any comment.

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Condé Nast and several other media companies sued the AI startup Cohere today, alleging that it engaged in "systematic copyright and trademark infringement" by using news articles to train its large language model.

"Without permission or compensation, Cohere uses scraped copies of our articles, through training, real-time use, and in outputs, to power its artificial intelligence ('AI') service, which in turn competes with Publisher offerings and the emerging market for AI licensing," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Southern District of New York. "Not content with just stealing our works, Cohere also blatantly manufactures fake pieces and attributes them to us, misleading the public and tarnishing our brands."

Condé Nast, which owns Ars Technica and other publications such as Wired and The New Yorker, was joined in the lawsuit by The Atlantic, Forbes, The Guardian, Insider, the Los Angeles Times, McClatchy, Newsday, The Plain Dealer, Politico, The Republican, the Toronto Star, and Vox Media.

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The US DOGE Service's access to the private data of ordinary Americans and federal employees is being challenged in several lawsuits filed this week.

Three new complaints seek court orders that would stop the data access and require the deletion of unlawfully accessed data. Two of the complaints also seek financial damages for individuals whose data was accessed.

The US DOGE Service, Elon Musk, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell were named as defendants in one suit filed yesterday in US District Court for the Southern District of New York.

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Verizon has defeated a lawsuit filed by a utility pole worker who claims that lead cables made him sick.

A federal judge on Friday granted Verizon's motion to dismiss the complaint, which sought class action status on behalf of other utility pole workers. However, the judge said the plaintiff may have standing to bring his claims in state court instead of federal court.

The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania in September 2023, about two months after a Wall Street Journal report said that at least 2,000 lead-covered telephone cables installed decades ago by multiple phone companies had not been removed.

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T-Mobile yesterday announced more details of its new service powered by Starlink and said Verizon and AT&T customers can use the satellite offering, too. The standard price will be $15 a month as an add-on for T-Mobile customers, and $20 a month for people who don't have T-Mobile as their primary carrier.

While we've written numerous articles about the Starlink/T-Mobile collaboration over the past two and a half years, the service's beta test and a Super Bowl commercial are raising awareness that it exists. In this article we'll answer some questions you might have about T-Mobile Starlink (yes, T-Mobile Starlink is the official name of the service).

What is this thing anyway?

Over the past 13 months, SpaceX's Starlink division has launched about 450 Direct to Cell satellites that can provide service to mobile phones in areas where there are no cell towers. Starlink is partnering with cellular carriers in multiple countries, and T-Mobile is its primary commercial partner in the US.

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CenturyLink hasn't broken its annoying habit of leaving customers without service for weeks or months and repeatedly failing to show up for repair appointments.

We've written about CenturyLink's failure to fix long outages several times in the past year and a half. In each case, desperate customers contacted Ars because the telecom provider didn't reconnect their service. And each time, CenturyLink finally sprang into action and fixed the problems shortly after hearing from an Ars reporter.

Unfortunately, it keeps happening, and CenturyLink (also known as Lumen) can't seem to explain why. In only the last two months, we heard from CenturyLink customers in three states who were without service for periods of between three weeks and over four months.

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The United Kingdom issued a secret order requiring Apple to create a backdoor for government security officials to access encrypted data, The Washington Post reported today, citing people familiar with the matter.

UK security officials "demanded that Apple create a backdoor allowing them to retrieve all the content any Apple user worldwide has uploaded to the cloud," the report said. "The British government's undisclosed order, issued last month, requires blanket capability to view fully encrypted material, not merely assistance in cracking a specific account, and has no known precedent in major democracies."

Apple and many privacy advocates have repeatedly criticized government demands for backdoors to encrypted systems, saying they would harm security and privacy for all users. Backdoors developed for government use would inevitably be exploited by criminal hackers and other governments, security experts have said.

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Robocallers posing as employees of the Federal Communications Commission made the mistake of trying to scam real employees of the FCC, the FCC announced yesterday. "On the night of February 6, 2024, and continuing into the morning of February 7, 2024, over a dozen FCC staff and some of their family members reported receiving calls on their personal and work telephone numbers," the FCC said.

The calls used an artificial voice that said, "Hello [first name of recipient] you are receiving an automated call from the Federal Communications Commission notifying you the Fraud Prevention Team would like to speak with you. If you are available to speak now please press one. If you prefer to schedule a call back please press two."

You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time.

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US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been demanding an overhaul of a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program, and now his telecom policy director has been chosen to lead the federal agency in charge of the grant money.

"Congratulations to my Telecom Policy Director, Arielle Roth, for being nominated to lead NTIA," Cruz wrote last night, referring to President Trump's pick to lead the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Roth's nomination is pending Senate approval.

Roth works for the Senate Commerce Committee, which is chaired by Cruz. "Arielle led my legislative and oversight efforts on communications and broadband policy with integrity, creativity, and dedication," Cruz wrote.

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The Federal Communications Commission demanded that CBS provide the unedited transcript of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris that is the subject of a complaint to the FCC and a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump.

CBS News on Wednesday received a letter of inquiry in which the FCC requested "the full, unedited transcript and camera feeds" of the Harris interview, The New York Times reported today. "We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do," a CBS News spokesperson told media outlets.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr repeatedly echoed Trump's complaints about alleged media bias before the election and has taken steps to punish news broadcasters since Trump promoted him to the chairmanship. Complaints against CBS, ABC, and NBC stations were dismissed under former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, but Carr reversed those dismissals in his first week as chair. Carr also ordered investigations into NPR and CBS.

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A longtime Treasury Department official is leaving his job after a dispute with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has reportedly been seeking access to federal payment systems.

"The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department is departing after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems," The Washington Post reported today, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The departing official is Fiscal Assistant Secretary David Lebryk, who has served in nonpolitical Treasury Department roles during his career of more than 30 years. President Donald Trump named Lebryk the acting secretary of the Treasury, an additional role he held for a week before political appointee Scott Bessent was confirmed by the Senate. But Lebryk "announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues obtained by The Washington Post," the newspaper reported.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has ordered an investigation into NPR and PBS in a move that Democrats described as an attempt to intimidate the media.

"I am writing to inform you that I have asked the FCC's Enforcement Bureau to open an investigation regarding the airing of NPR and PBS programming across your broadcast member stations," Carr wrote in a letter yesterday to the leaders of NPR and PBS.

Carr alleged that NPR and PBS are violating a federal law prohibiting noncommercial educational broadcast stations from running commercial advertisements. "I am concerned that NPR and PBS broadcasts could be violating federal law by airing commercials," Carr wrote. "In particular, it is possible that NPR and PBS member stations are broadcasting underwriting announcements that cross the line into prohibited commercial advertisements."

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US Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) today proposed a law that would let copyright owners obtain court orders requiring Internet service providers to block access to foreign piracy websites. The bill would also force DNS providers to block sites.

Lofgren said in a press release that she "work[ed] for over a year with the tech, film, and television industries" on "a proposal that has a remedy for copyright infringers located overseas that does not disrupt the free Internet except for the infringers." Lofgren said she plans to work with Republican leaders to enact the bill.

Lofgren's press release includes a quote from Charles Rivkin, chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association (MPA). As we've previously written, the MPA has been urging Congress to pass a site-blocking law.

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The Trump administration today withdrew a controversial order to freeze funding for a wide range of government programs, according to multiple news reports. Acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Matthew Vaeth reportedly wrote in today's memo, "OMB Memorandum M-25-13 is rescinded. If you have questions about implementing the President's Executive Orders, please contact your agency General Counsel."

A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked the funding freeze with an administrative stay that lasts until February 3 and scheduled a hearing for February 3 to decide whether to block the freeze for longer. States were already having trouble accessing Medicaid after the Monday order, and the future of many other programs has been in doubt.

A $42.45 billion broadband deployment program that has been in the works for years seemed to be threatened by the now-rescinded funding freeze and could undergo changes even though the freeze was rescinded today. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program was created by Congress in November 2021 and is being implemented by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

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US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is trying to block a plan to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, claiming it will lead to unsupervised Internet usage, endanger kids, and possibly restrict kids' exposure to conservative viewpoints. "The government shouldn't be complicit in harming students or impeding parents' ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content," Cruz said.

Cruz, chairman of the Commerce Committee, yesterday announced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution that would nullify the hotspot rule issued by the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC voted to adopt the rule in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, saying it was needed to help kids without reliable Internet access complete their homework.

Cruz's press release said the FCC action "violates federal law, creates major risks for kids' online safety, [and] harms parental rights." While Rosenworcel said last year that the hotspot lending could be implemented under the Universal Service Fund's existing budget, Cruz alleged that it "will increase taxes on working families."

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr has dropped the previous administration's proposal to ban bulk billing deals that require tenants to pay for a specific provider's Internet service.

In March 2024, then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed a ban on arrangements in which "tenants are required to pay for broadband, cable, and satellite service provided by a specific communications provider, even if they do not wish to take the service or would prefer to use another provider."

Rosenworcel's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking was opposed by Internet providers and sat on the FCC's list of items on circulation throughout 2024 without any final vote, despite the commission having a 3–2 Democratic majority at the time. Carr, who was elevated to the chairmanship by President Trump, emptied the list of items under consideration by commissioners on Friday.

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When New York's law requiring $15 or $20 broadband plans for people with low incomes took effect last week, Optimum customer William O'Brien tried to sign up for the cheap Internet service. Since O'Brien is in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), he qualifies for one of the affordable plans that Internet service providers must offer New Yorkers who meet income eligibility requirements.

O'Brien has been paying Optimum $111.20 a month for broadband—$89.99 for the broadband service, $14 in equipment rental fees, a $6 "Network Enhancement Fee," and $1.21 in tax. He was due for a big discount under the New York Affordable Broadband Act (ABA), which says that any ISP with over 20,000 customers must offer either a $15 plan with download speeds of at least 25Mbps or a $20 plan with at least 200Mbps speeds, and that the price must include "any recurring taxes and fees such as recurring rental fees for service provider equipment required to obtain broadband service and usage fees."

Despite qualifying for a low-income plan under the law's criteria, O'Brien's request was denied by Optimum. He reached out to Ars, just like many other people who have read our articles about bad telecom customer service. Usually, these problems are fixed quickly after we reach out to an Internet provider's public relations department on the customer's behalf.

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