These days, some of tech’s most important decisions are being made inside courtrooms. Google and Facebook are fending off antitrust accusations, while patent suits determine how much control of their own products they can have. The slow fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threatens platforms like Twitter and YouTube with untold liability suits for the content they host. Gig economy companies like Uber and Airbnb are fighting for their very existence as their workers push for the protections of full-time employees. In each case, judges and juries are setting the rules about exactly how far tech companies can push the envelope and exactly how much protection everyday people have. This is where we keep track of those legal fights and the broader principles behind them. When you move fast and break things, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when you end up in court.
That was a message Akasha Song, aka Joseph Clements, shared with customers in April 2022 on the closed dark web profile pages for his DMT storefront, Shimshai, as the feds were closing in on his operation.
Ripping off content to train AI wasn’t going to fly with either MAGA populists or MAGA media.
After filing an appeal, Apple is now asking the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to pause the Epic vs. Apple injunction requirements that prevent the company from restricting external links in iOS apps and charging fees on purchases made outside the App Store.
Apple says compliance will cost the company “hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually,” and that the “extraordinary intrusions into Apple’s business will cause grave, irreparable harm” without a stay.
In between insisting that corporations need to end DEI efforts, Starbuck is suing because Meta AI “repeatedly published—and continues to publish—provably false and defamatory statements falsely accusing Starbuck of participating in the January 6th Capitol riot and having been arrested for a misdemeanor.”
Meta global policy head Joel Kaplan -- who said in January its products would have “no new fact checks and no fact checkers” -- apologized for the incorrect results. Does anyone have an idea about how the company could avoid this kind of problem?
The Trump administration has cut off access to data used globally for warnings about disasters and shortages.
Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter want to take their fight to the Supreme Court, and they think they can win.
Protecting broadband access is out — fighting diversity and the free press are in.
But the folks behind the mid-2000s anti-piracy campaign that once compared pirating software to stealing a car might have, reports Torrent Freak. A social media investigation suggests the campaign used a knockoff of a commercial font. Its creator, Just Van Rossum, told the outlet:
“I knew my font was used for the campaign and that a pirated clone named XBand-Rough existed. I did not know that the campaign used XBand-Rough and not FF Confidential, though. So this fact is new to me, and I find it hilarious,”
[torrentfreak.com]
If you’re an aspiring lawyer in California, it probably did: the State Bar recently admitted that some of the multiple-choice questions in their recent bar exam were written with AI assistance. A “speechless” Mary Basick, assistant dean at UC Irvine Law School, told the L.A. Times that several students had complained that the questions seemed AI-generated. “I defended the bar,” she said. “‘No way! They wouldn’t do that!’”
Trump’s assault on rule of law and plans for mass deportation collide in a months-long shake-up at the DOJ.
404 Media reports US police departments are utilizing Overwatch — an AI tool that “deploys lifelike virtual agents” to “infiltrate and engage criminal networks” — to collect incriminating evidence against anyone from suspected drug and human traffickers, to “radicalized” political activists and “college protesters.”
One example of a “radicalized” AI persona that developer Massive Blue says it has created is one pretending to be a 36-year-old child-free divorced woman, described as outspoken, lonely, and body positive. Her hobbies include baking and, vaguely, “activism.”
We’re getting started with day three of Meta’s antitrust trial with some controversy. A Snap attorney complains to Judge Boasberg that Meta released slides with inadvertently flawed redactions. He also accuses Meta’s lead attorney of openly referencing Snap’s competitive assessments that should have been private.
An Apple attorney echoes Snap’s charges of “egregious” disclosures, saying Apple can’t be confident that Meta will protect its internal information moving forward. Google’s attorney says its data has been jeopardized by Meta, too.
Albert Sangier’s Nate service claimed it enabled customers to “skip the checkout” using artificial intelligence, but reporting by The Information in 2022 revealed that “between 60 percent and 100 percent” of transactions were actually handled manually — primarily by workers in the Philippines. And this isn’t the only company to be caught doing it.
The DOJ has now charged Sangier with securities fraud and wire fraud following an FBI investigation, describing his company as “a scheme filled with smoke and mirrors.”
In February, the Trump administration started turning Associated Press reporters away from media events at the White House after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Now, District Judge Trevor McFadden has ordered the White House to end the practice, spotted Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
[bsky.app]
