A federal bankruptcy judge has signed off on Gawker's $31 million invasion of privacy settlement with Hulk Hogan, stemming from the site's decision to post excerpts of a sex tape featuring the former wrestler. The move comes several months after Hogan won a $140 million verdict, which forced Gawker into bankruptcy. Hogan's lawsuit was funded by PayPal co-founder and Trump-backer Peter Thiel.

The Senate adjourned for the year without voting to reconfirm FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, a net neutrality supporter and one of three Democrats currently on the Commission. Unless the Senate approves her this month by unanimous consent, she will exit the agency by the end of the year, leaving the FCC with two Democrats and two Republicans. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a Democrat, is expected to step down as chairman next year, but could remain with the agency until his term expires in 2018.  

Siding with Warner Bros., Disney and 20th Century Fox, a federal judge has issued an injunction prohibiting tech company VidAngel from continuing to operate its "family-friendly" streaming video service. VidAngel said its service allows users to filter material like nudity and violence from DVDs they purchased. (VidAngel sold DVDs to users for 20, and then bought them back for $19, according to The Hollywood Reporter.) But the studios argued that VidAngel infringes copyright by operating as an "unlicensed VOD streaming service."

Verizon says it won't push out new software that will render Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 unusable. Samsung recalled the Note 7 earlier this year, but only 93% of the devices sold in the U.S. have been returned to date. "We will not push a software upgrade that will eliminate the ability for the Note7 to work as a mobile device in the heart of the holiday travel season," Verizon said on its Web site. "We do not want to make it impossible to contact family, first responders …

Twitter reinstated white nationalist Richard Spencer's account on Saturday, four weeks after he was banned from the service. The original ban was for creating more than one account with "overlapping uses," according to BuzzFeed. Spencer heads the white nationalist think tank The National Policy Institute.

Comcast Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanaugh said this week that the recent net neutrality rules, which reclassified broadband as a Title II utility service, didn't hurt the company. “I think in terms of what actually happens,” Cavanaugh reportedly said, “it’s the fear of what Title II could have meant, more than what it actually did mean.”

Charter Communications CEO Tom Rutledge cheered the prospect of fewer regulations under President-elect Donald Trump. “That’s cool,” he reportedly told investors Tuesday at a conference. “I was surprised at the how captured I was in the psychology of the regulatory environment,” Rutledge said. “And you start to think: It’s gone.” Rutledge also suggested the company agreed to a merger condition that prohibits it from imposing usage caps for seven years due to the former regulatory climate at the FCC. “Under that environment, I thought it was …

Almost half of the wireline Internet connections in the U.S. are slower than 25 Mbps -- the FCC's definition of broadband -- according to the agency's latest report on broadband. Six million households can't service service at speeds faster than 6 Mbps, while 17 million homes have speeds under 10 Mbps.

The chief operating office of WideOpenWest, Cash Hagen, says broadband caps are coming to home Internet connections. "It's not a matter of if we all do it at some point, but when, how and how the customers adapt to that," Hagen said at a Light Reading webinar.

T-Mobile's U.S. chief financial officer said today he supports a repeal of the net neutrality rules. “It would provide the opportunity for significant innovation and differentiation,” CFO Braxton Carter said today at a conference.