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Veterans Affairs Snubs GAO?

Client Alert | less than 1 min read | 10.24.11

In Aldevra, GAO held that the Veterans Benefits, Health Care, and Information Technology Act of 2006 and implementing regulations required the Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct procurements as service-disabled, veteran-owned, small-business set-asides (if market research first showed that two or more SDVOSB’s could perform the work), before purchasing from the Federal Supply Schedule.  In a rare instance of an agency defying a GAO recommendation, the VA has reportedly decided that, because “Executive Branch agencies are not bound by GAO's legal advice,” the GAO decision should not be followed, advising VA acquisition and procurement professionals “to continue using the Federal Supply Schedules Program.”

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Client Alert | 6 min read | 08.03.26

The Pipe, Not the Posts: How Section 230’s Protections Extend to Generative AI Platforms

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (“Section 230”) protects online platforms from liability for user-generated speech. Based on the premise that platforms generally do not create original content but instead curate their users’ own speech, Section 230’s protections have historically applied to a platform’s algorithmically assembled, selected or sequenced content; algorithms or features that amplified or directed user generated speech to particular users were generally protected. Indeed, the old rule of thumb was the more a platform used algorithms or automation, the more likely user generated speech remained user generated speech. GenAI has the potential to change that calculus. A platform that ingests user generated content and publishes a transformed output, can blur Section 230’s line between publication and creation. The central question is whether Section 230 protects GenAI, which analyzes, but does not alter, user-created content to produce an outcome, and its corresponding outputs....

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