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.
An incoming change will criminalize the creation and sharing of sexually explicit deepfakes as part of efforts to tackle “vile online abuse,” the UK Ministry of Justice said on Tuesday.
It’s also going after people who take intimate images or videos without someone’s consent, with offenders facing up to two years behind bars.
The company sent a statement to The Verge emphasizing that it doesn’t agree with some allegations in a lawsuit it’s paying millions to settle. It has admitted that Siri recordings were shared with Apple contractors — but it promised years ago that the system was changed.
Kwon has been extradited to this US to face fraud charges. The charges contain a description of the overlapping network of allegedly fraudulent entities Kwon juggled before Terra / Luna came crashing to Earth.
Apple filed papers on Monday to participate in the Department of Justice’s victorious antitrust case against Google, which is now in its penalty phase. Google will need to make significant business changes, such as ending default search deals on devices like iPhones, which Google is OK with.
Apple? Well, its agreement with Google reportedly was worth $20 billion in 2022.
Netflix filed the lawsuit in Califonia federal court Monday, claiming Broadcom subsidiary VMware has cloud software that infringes on five Netflix patents. As reported by Reuters, Netflix says VMware’s vSphere platform for deploying and managing virtual machines infringes on Netflix patents related to virtual-machine communications.
Microsoft is still asking a judge in its AI copyright tussle to produce discovery on how New York Times reporters use chatbots, and it introduced an interesting 2023 Slack chat in a memorandum: apparently the Times product team told developers to avoid using other LLMs because it was rolling out its own. It’s not clear if this would become one of the tools the company has since announced.
Welch said as much in a post on Friday, breaking a two-week silence after she abruptly signed off an X Spaces event to address investor concerns over the abrupt implosion of her newly launched Hawk Tuah-themed meme coin, according to Rolling Stone.
Burwick Law, which filed the suit, said in a statement it’s accusing her partners of securities violations and using her fame to take advantage of investors.
The House is currently scrambling to pass a spending bill that would avert a shutdown. There is a better way. A more fun way. A meme.
Sean O’Kane writes that two focus on chief designer Jeff Hammoud, with one claiming HR failed to discipline him for being “prone to irrational outbursts of anger” that were “often directed at women in leadership.”
These previously unreported lawsuits and settlements follow the now-settled lawsuit from 2021, where a former exec said Rivian had a “toxic bro culture that marginalizes women.”
A design has been removed from Teepublic because of a copyright complaint from UnitedHealth, Gizmodo reports. The design is a drawing of Luigi Mangione in a heart, and doesn’t involve any UnitedHealth logos.
Cash App creator and former Square CTO Bob Lee died in April 2023 after being stabbed under the Bay Bridge in San Francisco.
Now, after a two-month trial, the New York Times, KRON4, and ABC7 Bay Area report that the jury deliberated for a week before finding Momeni, a tech consultant, guilty of second-degree murder.
Three years ago, I was surprised to find out Ozy Media existed, much less that its COO was caught impersonating a YouTube exec while trying to secure a $40 million investment from Goldman Sachs.
Now, its CEO has been sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison after being convicted over the summer on fraud and identity theft charges.
[The New York Times]
An extremely beige influencer’s allegations she was imitated by another, also extremely beige, influencer have cleared an early legal hurdle:
The judge apparently found plausible Gifford’s allegation that Sheil imitated her “outfits, poses, hairstyles, makeup, and voice” in a way that enabled Gifford’s followers to identify Gifford as the person whose identity was appropriated.
Be careful out there, beigefluencers.
[Technology & Marketing Law Blog]
The same three judges who ruled last week that a TikTok divest-or-ban law is Constitutional ruled against the company again today and declined to temporarily pause it from taking effect on January 19th.
In response, TikTok said again that it’s taking the case to the Supreme Court.
The shooter had a message, and the internet was happy to spread it.
It’s been two years since Apple dropped its plan to detect child abuse imagery using client-side iCloud scanning.
Now, the New York Times reports on a class-action lawsuit filed in California saying it harmed a group of 2,680 victims by failing to “implement those designs or take any measures to detect and limit” CSAM, like using Microsoft’s PhotoDNA.
Under law, victims of child sexual abuse are entitled to a minimum of $150,000 in damages, which means the total award...could exceed $1.2 billion
[The New York Times]
While investigating apps that let livestream viewers pay to watch child abuse, The New York Times reports that it found “more than 80 apps that advertised children” on the Apple and Google app stores.
The livestream apps downloaded from Apple and Google illustrate an even darker aspect of the social media technology boom, particularly for children living in poverty in developing countries. There, with the ease of a smartphone, parents and other adults can connect with pedophiles in the United States and elsewhere who pay to watch — and direct — criminal behavior.
Trigger warning: This Times story includes descriptions of child sexual abuse.
[The New York Times]
The con man used the name of a real FBI agent to scam victims attached to an “@usa.com” email instead of the real @fbi.gov.
In April, the FTC announced a new rule that could allow it to help people scammed via government and business impersonations. Seniors are often targeted, but so are others, like The Cut’s financial columnist, who lost $50,000 to a man impersonating a CIA agent.
As 404 Media and others note, Elon Musk’s X has inserted itself into The Onion’s acquisition of Infowars, arguing that neither Alex Jones nor the estate handling his bankruptcy owns the associated social media accounts.
Since X simply grants a license for their use, the lawyers say that can’t be transferred without permission.
Tesla notified a California judge that it had reached a conditional settlement with Rivian, reports Bloomberg, four years after accusing Rivian in a lawsuit of intentionally poaching Tesla employees and stealing trade secrets.
Conditions of the settlement weren’t revealed in the filing, and Tesla expects that a request to dismiss the suit will be filed by December 24th, Bloomberg notes.
The former congressman selected as Trump’s attorney general has come up in connection to a defamation lawsuit filed by one of his friends, as the New York Times reports a hacker has obtained evidence shared among lawyers on the case:
The file of 24 exhibits is said to include sworn testimony by a woman who said that she had sex with Mr. Gaetz in 2017 when she was 17, as well as corroborating testimony by a second woman who said that she witnessed the encounter.
[The New York Times]
