On 26 August 2026, Meta filed a proposed Consent Judgment with the Federal Court overseeing In re: Social Media Adolescent Addiction/Personal Injury Products Liability Litigation (N.D. Cal.), settling claims brought by dozens of state Attorneys General that accuses Facebook and Instagram to addict children and mislead the public about the risks. The company -as reported by mainstream press- will pay up to roughly $17–18 billion over ten years, restrict teen accounts to daily time limits and overnight blackouts, roll out "enhanced" age-checking, and expand parental controls. Meta admits no wrongdoing.

Minor creators hold copyright over their content, lack the legal capacity to licence it, and remain theoretically liable for infringing others' — all at once. Banning them from platforms resolves none of this [ full paper here]

The use of digital platforms by teenagers is a well-documented phenomenon, characterized by two key trends: a significant increase in usage and the associated dangers, which have been addressed by various governments and organizations (OECD 2020; BIK 2020). These studies have also included pre-teens (aged 9 to 12) in their samples, revealing that pre-teens use platforms significantly less than their older counterparts—about 50% less. However, these findings only capture a fraction of the actual online behaviour of tweens and teens, as evidenced by the COX survey, which shows that 95% of tweens go online daily.

The Court of Justice of the European Union has been suspected of carrying out a harmonising agenda (e.g. making EU law more homogeneous) instead of simply interpreting EU law. Two things have been reproached to the Court, in copyright matters: 1) that it has failed to develop a coherent copyright jurisprudence (lacking domain expertise, copyright specific reasoning, and predictability); 2) that the Court has pursued an activist, harmonising agenda by using teleological (the purpose of the law) interpretation of European law rather than – less discretionary – semantic (the letter of the law) and systematic (other legislation, e.g. international treaties) legal approaches.

"Orphan works," which are works where the copyright holder is unknown or cannot be located, pose a significant challenge to the digitization and dissemination of cultural heritage material worldwide. This issue has been a priority on the copyright agenda of legislators for over a decade, leading to the EU Orphan Works Directive of 2012 and the UK Orphan Works Licensing Scheme of 2014. These laws allow cultural institutions to use certain orphan works in their collections (e.g., books, films, sound recordings). However, to determine if a work is an orphan, institutions must conduct a "diligent search" for potential rights holders. This process requires substantial effort in terms of time and expertise, which is why the directive has not fully resolved the orphan works problem.