On September 27, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a new privacy law that has significant repercussions for nearly every business in the United States that operates a commercial website or online service and collects “personally identifiable information” (which means, under the law, “individually identifiable information about an individual consumer collected

Ever on the forefront of consumer privacy protection, California is again making news in the privacy world with the California Attorney General’s recent publication of “Privacy on the Go: Recommendations for the Mobile Ecosystem,” which includes privacy recommendations for app developers, app platform providers, mobile ad networks, makers of operating systems and mobile carriers.  With this publication, California joins the FTC and the GSMA as entities that have published non-binding guidance with respect to mobile privacy (which we blogged about here and here, respectively).

On July 3, 2012, Orange County Superior Court Judge Nancy Wieben Stock issued a ruling dismissing a California “Shine the Light” consumer protection law case without leave to amend, making it the first “Shine the Light” case to come to a final decision in a trial court. Judge Stock dismissed the case against XO Group Inc. by filing a ruling sustaining demurrers to both of the plaintiff’s two causes of action in the initial Complaint without leave to amend. The ruling holds that, based on the facts that the plaintiff admitted in her Complaint and that her attorney confirmed at oral argument, there is no possibility of showing that XO Group violated the Shine the Light law.