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Judge Considers Rejecting Part of TikTok Settlement
Confirmed
In Short: A federal judge is considering rejecting the part of TikTok's $400 million settlement that would end a consent decree.
Federal Judge Robert L. Wilkins expressed reservations about the $400 million settlement reached between TikTok and the Justice Department last month.
Under the agreement, TikTok would pay $300 million immediately and an additional $100 million upon vacating a 2019 consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission.
The 2019 decree required TikTok, then known as Musical.ly, to report on its compliance with children's privacy laws through 2029.
Judge Wilkins said he was inclined to reject the part of the deal that would end the consent decree, according to USA Today.
The Justice Department sued TikTok and its parent company ByteDance in 2024, alleging violations of children's online privacy laws.
TikTok's settlement comes amid other legal battles involving tech companies.
A federal magistrate judge has ordered Paramount and state attorneys general to meet for two days of settlement talks in late October in their ongoing antitrust battle over Paramount's proposed $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Writers Guild of America is also a party to these settlement talks.
Separately, the EU announced sanctions against Israeli settlements and their supporters, including the Nachala Settlement Movement and its director, Daniella Weiss.
The sanctions also target the Hashomer Yosh NGO and its president, Avichai Suissa, for supporting violent outposts and settlements.
The Amana cooperative association of the settler movement Gush Emunim was also sanctioned for its role in initiating and facilitating violent outposts and settlements.
One plume rose to an altitude of 20,000 feet while drifting northeast, affecting parts of Jakarta, Banten, West Java, and surrounding waters.
What this adds
The judge's inclination to reject the part of the settlement that would end the consent decree adds uncertainty to the resolution of the case.
The settlement talks between Paramount and state attorneys general add pressure on Paramount to resolve the antitrust issues.
The EU sanctions on Israeli settlements and their supporters add to the international pressure on Israel to address settlement activities.
The unexpected issues faced by authors with their settlement payments add to the complexities of the copyright settlement process.
What's confirmed
- Volcanic ash spread across parts of the capital Jakarta and Lampung province on the southern tip of Sumatra island, Indonesia’s Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation said.
- Jakarta: Indonesia’s Anak Krakatau volcano erupted early Sunday, prompting the cancellation of all flights at Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport as volcanic ash drifted across parts of western Indonesia.
- The nearest settlement is more than 16 kilometers (10 miles).
What's still developing
- Ukraine has also been seeking security guarantees from its partners as part of any potential settlement.
- Another way of looking at it would be recognition that the Government is going with the flow of public opinion, which a YouGov poll shows approving the ban on trade with Israeli settlements by 52 per cent to 17 per cent against.
- Some pundits see all government actions through the myopic lens of party politics, so they suspect that sanctions on Israeli settlements are simply a bid to dash the Greens and steal their pro-Palestinian political clothes before the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.
- Deadline noted that the court-supervised process does not foreclose an earlier private deal between the parties.
- In 2025, the expansion of Israeli settlements reached its highest level since at least 2017, when the United Nations began tracking data.
- The announcement on Thursday is part of an EU sanctions package agreed earlier this month to punish Israeli settlers and Hamas leaders.
- A second cloud reached 50,000 feet (15,200 meters) and was moving westward and northwestward, covering parts of Banten, Lampung and Bengkulu provinces, the southern Sunda Strait and sections of the Indian Ocean west of Sumatra.
- Anthropic settled a copyright class action suit last year, after a judge ruled that training AI models on copyrighted material is legal under fair use doctrine, but pirating that material was not.
- They claimed one of my books on the Anthropic Settlement that reverted back at least 17 years ago AND on the same day I got a credit alert saying they had been added as my employer!
- The settlement talks will occur nearly a month after the $7 million-per-day ticking fee start tabulating, which puts real pressure on Paramount to get this done.