By Haeluya Hadero, Business Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) --TikTok on Thursday pushed back against U.S. government arguments that the popular social media platform is not shielded by the First Amendment, comparing its platform to prominent American media organizations owned by foreign entities.
Last month, the Justice Department argued in a legal brief filed in a Washington federal appeals court that neither TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, nor the platform’s global and U.S. arms — TikTok Ltd. and TikTok Inc. — were entitled to First Amendment protections because they are “foreign organizations operating abroad” or owned by one.
TikTok attorneys have made the First Amendment a key part of their legal challenge to the federal law requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok to an approved buyer or face a ban.
On Thursday, they argued in a court document that TikTok’s U.S. arm doesn’t forfeit its constitutional rights because it is owned by a foreign entity. They drew a parallel between TikTok and well-known news outlets such as Politico and Business Insider, both of which are owned by German publisher Axel Springer SE. They also cited Fortune, a business magazine owned by Thai businessman Chatchaval Jiaravanon.
“Surely the American companies that publish Politico, Fortune, and Business Insider do not lose First Amendment protection because they have foreign ownership,” the TikTok attorneys wrote, arguing that “no precedent” supports what they called “the government’s dramatic rewriting of what counts as protected speech.”
In a redacted court filing made last month, the Justice Department argued ByteDance and TikTok haven’t raised valid free speech claims in their challenge against the law, saying the measure addresses national security concerns about TikTok’s ownership without targeting protected speech.
The Biden administration and TikTok had held talks in recent years aimed at resolving the government’s concerns. But the two sides failed to reach a deal.
TikTok said the government essentially walked away from the negotiating table after it proposed a 90-page agreement that detailed how the company planned to address concerns about the app while still maintaining ties with ByteDance.
However, the Justice Department has said TikTok’s proposal “failed to create sufficient separation between the company’s U.S. operations and China” and did not adequately address some of the government’s concerns.
The government has pointed to some data transfers between TikTok employees and ByteDance engineers in China as why it believed the proposal, called Project Texas, was not sufficient to guard against national security concerns. Federal officials have also argued that the size and scope of TikTok would have made it impossible to meaningfully enforce compliance with the proposal.
TikTok attorneys said Thursday that some of what the government views as inadequacies of the agreement were never raised during the negotiations.
Separately the DOJ on Thursday evening asked the court to submit evidence under seal, saying in a filing that the case contained information classified at “Top Secret” levels. TikTok has been opposing those requests.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled to begin on Sept. 16.
A new initiative will allow UK deaf audiences to see captioned films before general release
For once, deaf audiences are being prioritized at U.K. cinemas.
Paramount Pictures UK will be showing their movies with captions the day before general release, meaning deaf and hard of hearing cinemagoers across the country will be able to watch them first.
The distributor is starting with the robot animation "Transformers One" on Oct. 10. Subtitled screenings of Paramount's upcoming films, "Gladiator II," "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" and "The Smurfs Movie," will follow over the next few months.
Rebecca Mansell, chief executive of the British Deaf Association, called the initiative ground-breaking. Deaf, deafened and hard of hearing audiences have been struggling to attend the few available subtitled film showings because they are often scheduled at inconvenient times, she said.
"It fits in with the cinema's needs, but not necessarily when the Deaf community want to go," she said. "The deaf community always feel that they are the last ones to know, the last ones to watch something, the last ones for everything. And now we're going to be the first. It's definitely a really exciting moment."
Around 18 million people in the U.K. are registered as deaf, deafened or hard of hearing, according to the association.
Paramount has also been running deaf awareness training with cinema managers and staff in U.K. cities so that they can better communicate with customers.
Yvonne Cobb, a TV presenter and celebrity ambassador for the British Deaf Association, was running the training at a large cinema in central London's Leicester Square Wednesday.
She said the three-hour training session wasn't enough for staff to become fluent in British Sign Language, but workers were able to learn basic signs, how to interact with deaf... Read More