The FTC is not wasting any time this year—here’s a new case about subscription offers. The agency sued personal finance app FloatMe and its co-founders today. FloatMe allegedly charged users without consent and used “dark patterns designed to thwart … attempts to cancel.”

The FTC says FloatMe’s cofounders knew FloatMe was “double or triple” charging consumers the subscription fees, due to “pushing out to members without fixing shit,” but let the issue linger for years.

And this part is important for any consumer-facing brand offering subscriptions—the FTC scrutinized FloatMe’s cancellation procedures. Remember, the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA) requires that consumers must be provided a “simple” mechanism to cancel. The FTC has emphasized that “simple” should mean that it’s as easy to cancel an online subscription as it is to enroll in it.

Back to FloatMe: The FTC says FloatMe’s cofounder admitted that they intentionally designed the cancellation process to be difficult:

FloatMe allegedly racked up customer complaints about its “faulty” cancellation procedures, including non-functional “cancel” buttons and other sources of “friction.”

And when customers did manage to request cancellations, “FloatMe often fails to honor the cancellation requests,” according to the Complaint.

Recall also that ROSCA requires clear and conspicuous disclosure of ALL material terms of a transaction that includes a negative option (i.e., subscription) offer. Here, like in the FTC’s case against MoviePass, the agency alleges that FloatMe violated ROSCA by failing to disclose material terms of the offer—including material terms that were not related to the subscription component:

And here are the other counts related to ROSCA:

The FTC isn’t the only one suing about noncompliant subscription practices. This continues to be a hot area for consumer class action litigation, too. Start the year off right by taking a close look at your auto-renewal offers to see if you’re taking on risks you don’t want.

Sway Fitness—a supplement brand “based on the Sway House”—is suing Blake Gray, Noah Beck, Bryce Hall, Griffin Johnson, and Josh Richards. Sway Fitness says the Sway House stars breached contracts by failing to create content supporting the brand and by promoting competitors.

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Sway Fitness says the creators caused more than $500,000 in damages, including $390,000 of product that GNC ordered but could not sell.

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Warner Music Group’s lawsuit against Iconic alleges that Iconic and its influencers used WMG’s copyright music without permission.

In total, WMG says Iconic has used more than 165 different copyrighted tracks owned by WMG across at least 169 videos. WMG says Iconic never sought to obtain licenses for the tracks.

Remember: Brands and influencers cannot used music from TikTok’s standard (i.e., non-commercial) music library for any sponsored content oar advertising without obtaining a license from whomever owns the rights to the music.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram have licensing deals with big record labels that allow users to include music in videos, but those licenses don’t allow for commercial usage:

Bang Energy was found liable for this exact type of infringement in a case brought by Universal Music Group earlier this year.

The lesson: if you’re a brand or a creator, do not use music in sponsored content or advertising without clearing the rights. Damages for willful copyright infringement can be up to $150,000 per infringing act (i.e., per post)!