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Elon Musk's X temporarily became accessible again in Brazil despite government orders requiring Internet service providers to block the social network. X's revival was enabled by the company switching to a different network provider, namely Cloudflare, but Cloudflare reportedly made changes that allow ISPs to resume their blocking of X.

"When X was shut down in Brazil, our infrastructure to provide service to Latin America was no longer accessible to our team," X's Global Government Affairs account said last night. "To continue providing optimal service to our users, we changed network providers. This change resulted in an inadvertent and temporary service restoration to Brazilian users. While we expect the platform to be inaccessible again shortly, we continue efforts to work with the Brazilian government to return very soon for the people of Brazil."

X's statement that restoration of service in Brazil was "inadvertent" surprised Abrint, a trade group for Brazilian ISPs. The BBC quoted Abrint official Basílio Rodriguez Pérez as saying, "everything that happened during the day led us to believe that it was on purpose."

Enlarge / The Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, in May 2023. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto)

Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks.

While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access." The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday.

The amici curiae brief was filed by Altice USA (operator of the Optimum brand), Frontier Communications, Lumen (aka CenturyLink), and Verizon. The brief supports cable firm Cox Communications' attempt to overturn its loss in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony. Cox petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last month.

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AT&T agreed to pay a $13 million fine because it gave customer bill information to a vendor in order to create personalized videos, then allegedly failed to ensure that the vendor destroyed the data when it was no longer needed. In addition to the fine, AT&T agreed in a consent decree announced today by the Federal Communications Commission to stricter controls on sharing data with vendors.

In January 2023, years after the data was supposed to be destroyed, the vendor suffered a breach "when threat actors accessed the vendor's cloud environment and ultimately exfiltrated AT&T customer information," the FCC said. Information related to 8.9 million AT&T wireless customers was exposed.

Phone companies are required by law to protect customer information, and AT&T should not have merely relied on third-party firms' assurances that they destroyed data when it was no longer needed, the FCC said.

Enlarge / Russia President Vladimir Putin presents flowers to editor-in-chief of Russian broadcaster RT Margarita Simonyan after awarding her with the "Order of Alexander Nevsky" during a ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 23, 2019. (credit: Getty Images | Evgenia Novozhenina)

Meta yesterday announced a ban on Russian state media outlets RT (formerly Russia Today) and Rossiya Segodnya, taking action three days after the US government imposed sanctions on the outlets for covert influence activities.

"After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets: Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," Meta said in a statement provided to Ars. Meta is the owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.

Meta already blocked RT and Rossiya Segodnya's Sputnik network across Europe in March 2022, following a ban imposed by European Union government officials. YouTube blocked the channels worldwide. At the time, Vladimir Putin's government was telling Russian media outlets not to call the invasion of Ukraine "an attack," "invasion," or "declaration of war."

Enlarge / Supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro participate in an event in the central area of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on September 7, 2024. Bolsonaro backers called for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. (credit: Getty Images | NurPhoto )

Brazil seized about $2 million from a Starlink bank account and another $1.3 million from X to collect on fines issued to Elon Musk's social network, the country's Supreme Court announced Friday.

Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes previously froze the accounts of both companies, treating them as the same de facto economic group because both are controlled by Musk. The Starlink and X bank accounts were unfrozen last week after the money transfers ordered by de Moraes.

Two banks carried out orders to transfer the money from Starlink and X to Brazil's government. "After the payment of the full amount that was owed, the justice (de Moraes) considered there was no need to keep the bank accounts frozen and ordered the immediate unfreezing of bank accounts/financial assets," the court said, as quoted by The Associated Press.

Enlarge / TV camera during a game between the San Francisco 49ers and Baltimore Ravens on December 25, 2023 in Santa Clara, California. (credit: Getty Images | Robin Alam/ISI Photos )

DirecTV and Disney agreed to a new distribution contract on Saturday, ending a two-week blackout during which DirecTV subscribers lost access to ABC, ESPN, and other Disney-owned channels. A joint announcement said the companies reached an agreement in principle and that "Disney's full linear suite of networks has been restored to DirecTV, DirecTV Stream and U-verse customers while both parties work to finalize a new, multi-year contract."

While Disney previously accused DirecTV of "undervaluing" its content, DirecTV said during the blackout that it was seeking flexibility to sell slimmed-down channel packages that don't force customers to buy channels they don't want. The joint announcement of the resolution said the new deal "provides greater choice, value, and flexibility to [the companies'] mutual customers."

The deal includes ABC and ESPN networks, Disney-branded channels, Freeform, FX networks, and National Geographic channels. DirecTV will be able to "offer multiple genre-specific options—sports, entertainment, kids & family—inclusive of Disney's linear networks along with Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+," the companies said.

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Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, in his first public comments since being arrested by French authorities, said that Telegram is not an "anarchic paradise" but promised that the platform will enhance its moderation of harmful content.

While Telegram has room for improvement, "the claims in some media that Telegram is some sort of anarchic paradise are absolutely untrue," Durov wrote on Telegram yesterday. "We take down millions of harmful posts and channels every day. We publish daily transparency reports (like this or this). We have direct hotlines with NGOs to process urgent moderation requests faster."

The links Durov provided go to Telegram channels that report the number of groups and channels banned for terrorist content and child-abuse content. Telegram has been criticized by groups such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for allegedly not cooperating on removal of child sexual abuse material.