An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: TikTokasked the Supreme Court on Monday to temporarily block a law that would effectively ban it in the United States in a matter of weeks. Saying that the law violates both its First Amendment rights and those of its 170 million American users, TikTok, which is controlled by a Chinese parent company, urged the justices to maintain the status quo while they decide whether to hear an appeal. "Congress's unprecedented attempt to single out applicants and bar them from operating one of the most significant speech platforms in this nation presents grave constitutional problems that this court likely will not allow to stand," lawyers for TikTok wrote in their emergency application.

President Biden signed the law this spring after it was enacted with wide bipartisan support. Lawmakers said the app's ownership represented a risk because the Chinese government's oversight of private companies would allow it to retrieve sensitive information about Americans or to spread propaganda, though they have not publicly shared evidence that this has occurred. They have also noted that American platforms like Facebook and YouTube are banned in China, and that TikTok itself is not allowed in the country.

They provide training data to top AI companies including OpenAI and Meta, according to its web site. Founded in 2016, San Francisco-based Scale AI now has over 900 employees, eventually growing beyond "unicorn" status with over $1.35 billion in ivnestments. In May the company's valuation was over $14 billion, with investors including Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, Cisco, Intel, and AMD (as well as earlier investments from Y Combinator and $100 million from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund). SFGate calls them "a buzzy San Francisco startup with high-dollar ties across the tech industry".

But SFGate also report Scale AI "was sued Tuesday by a former worker with allegations that the company is committing wage theft and misclassifying workers." Steve McKinney filed the suit against Scale and several top executives, including 27-year-old billionaire CEO Alexandr Wang, in San Francisco Superior Court. With the filing, the former contractor aims to be a lead plaintiff for a class-action lawsuit against Scale; a judge will need to certify his proposed class of current and former contractors within California...

McKinney, whose complaint says he was paid on an hourly basis and worked on a project eventually sold to Meta, is accusing Scale of amassing its clout and cash by exploiting workers. "Scale AI is the sordid underbelly propping up the generative AI industry," the complaint says, before rattling off a list of allegations about its treatment of contractors. The document accuses Scale of bait-and-switch hiring promises; demanding off-the-clock, unpaid work; denying overtime pay; and unfairly booting contractors from projects...

The Tuesday complaint calls Scale's control over its contractors "Orwellian." The company makes contractors download a tool to track much of their computer use, including by taking periodic screenshots, the suit alleges. The lawsuit also alleges that Scale reassigns the workers to varyingly paid projects and docks pay if a task takes more than it was supposed to, plus posits that Scale is in violation of California's "ABC" test, which monitors use of the designation "independent contractor." It argues that contracted "Taskers" like McKinney should be classified as employees instead...

The complaint, along with arguing for class-action certification, seeks restitution, punitive damages and changes to Scale's worker classification model.
The article adds that "Per Fortune, Scale's armies of contractors marked up images for Cruise and Waymo to help autonomous cars understand their surroundings..."

"A man is accused of several felony charges after he allegedly posed as an Uber driver and then stole hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency from customers in Scottsdale," reports Arizona news channel Fox 10.

"Prosecutors have called it an 'extremely sophisticated electronic fraud,'" reports Gizmodo, " and it's a strange approach to scamming that makes it sound unique in several ways." Nuruhussein Hussein, 40, allegedly picked up two unsuspecting people who were looking for Uber rides they'd ordered in Scottsdale — one in March and the other in October according to Fox 10 — by shouting their names on the street outside a hotel. It's not clear how Hussein may have known these people were looking for rides and court documents give no indication how he accomplished this or knew the victims would have crypto accounts, according to Fox 10, though a hotel does make sense as a target-rich environment for those looking to get picked up.

Once the victims were in the car, Hussein allegedly obtained the phones of the victims through some kind of pretense, including problems with his own phone and the need to look something up as well as a need to connect with the Uber app, according to NBC News. Hussein would then allegedly open up the victim's Coinbase account. "While manipulating the unsuspecting victim's phone the suspect transferred cryptocurrency from their digital wallet to his digital wallet," police reportedly explained in a statement.

An anonymous reader shared this report from the SF Standard: San Francisco police found Open AI whistleblower Suchir Balaji, 26, dead in his Lower Haight apartment November 26, SiliconValley.com reported on Friday. Police said there is "no evidence of foul play. "The manner of death has been determined to be suicide," David Serrano Sewell, director of the office of the city's chief medical examiner, told The Standard by email.

Balaji, a former researcher for the company, accused OpenAI of using copyrighted material to train ChatGPT shortly after he quit the company in August. The New York Times profiled Balaji in a story focused on his whistleblowing in October. Multiple lawsuits against Open AI are expected to present information Balaji unearthed as key evidence.
More details from TechCrunch: After nearly four years working at OpenAI, Balaji quit the company when he realized the technology would bring more harm than good to society, he told The New York Times. Balaji's main concern was the way OpenAI allegedly used copyright data, and he believed its practices were damaging to the internet.

"We are devastated to learn of this incredibly sad news today and our hearts go out to Suchir's loved ones during this difficult time," said an OpenAI spokesperson in an email to TechCrunch...

On November 25, one day before police found Balaji's body, a court filing named the former OpenAI employee in a copyright lawsuit brought against the startup. As part of a good faith compromise, OpenAI agreed to search Balaji's custodial file related to the copyright concerns he had recently raised.

Leaders of the U.S. House of Representatives committee on China told Apple and Google's parent Alphabet to prepare to remove TikTok from U.S. app stores on January 19, following a federal appeals court decision upholding legislation requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest the platform or face a ban.

Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg abruptly left a key WordPress community platform after a federal court ordered his company to restore rival WP Engine's access to WordPress.org and remove a controversial login requirement. The preliminary injunction mandates Automattic eliminate a checkbox that forced users to declare they had no connection to WP Engine before accessing the platform.

Mullenweg departed the Post Status Slack forum following the ruling, writing he was "sick and disgusted to be legally compelled to provide free labor" to WP Engine, according to 404 Media. "It's hard to imagine wanting to continue to working on WordPress after this," he added. The order gives Automattic 72 hours to comply, including reinstating WP Engine's employee credentials and plugin access. The ruling marks a significant development in an escalating dispute between the WordPress parent company and the web hosting provider.

WP Engine just won a preliminary injunction against WordPress.com parent company Automattic. On Tuesday, a California District Court judge ordered Automattic to stop blocking WP Engine's access to WordPress.org resources and interfering with its plugins. From a report: The preliminary injunction comes after WP Engine, a third-party WordPress hosting service, filed a lawsuit that accused Automattic and its CEO, Matt Mullenweg, of "multiple forms of immediate irreparable harm." It later asked the court to stop Mullenweg from restricting WP Engine's access to WordPress.org.

Mullenweg waged a public campaign against WP Engine in September, accusing the service of misusing the WordPress trademark and not contributing enough to the WordPress community. After blocking WP Engine from WordPress.org's servers, Automattic took control of WP Engine's ACF Plugin.

Over 300 musicians have signed an open letter defending the Internet Archive against a $621 million copyright infringement lawsuit over its preservation of 78 rpm records. The letter, organized by Fight for the Future, opposes the lawsuit filed by major record labels including Universal Music Group and Sony Music.

The labels claim the Archive's Great 78 Project, which digitizes shellac discs from the 1890s-1950s, amounts to widespread copyright infringement. Musicians argue the lawsuit prioritizes corporate profits over artists' interests.

Bruce Perens, original co-founder of the Open Source Initiative, has responded to questions from Slashdot readers about a new alternative he's developing that hopefully helps "Post Open" developers get paid.

But first, "One of the things that's clear from the Slashdot patter is that people are not aware of what I've been doing, in general," Perens says. "So, let's start by filling that in..."

Read on for the rest of his wide-ranging answers....

"TikTok has lost its bid to strike down a law that could result in the platform being banned in the United States," reports CNN.

A U.S. federal appeals court just unanimously ruled in favor of the new U.S. law requiring TikTok's China-based owners to either sell the app next month or face an effective ban in the United States. Denying TikTok's argument that the law was unconstitutional, the judges found that the law does not "contravene the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States," nor does it "violate the Fifth Amendment guarantee of equal protection of the laws"... After the [January 25] deadline, U.S. app stores and internet services could face hefty fines for hosting TikTok if it is not sold. (Under the legislation, President Biden may issue a one-time extension of the deadline.)

In a statement, TikTok indicated it would appeal the decision. "The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans' right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," said company spokesperson Michael Hughes. "Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people. The TikTok ban, unless stopped, will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025"....

"People in the United States would remain free to read and share as much PRC propaganda (or any other content) as they desire on TikTok or any other platform of their choosing," the judges said. "What the Act targets is the PRC's ability to manipulate the content covertly. Understood in that way, the Government's justification is wholly consonant with the First Amendment."
The judges also wrote that "in part precisely because of the platform's expansive reach, Congress and multiple Presidents determined that divesting it from the PRC's control is essential to protect our national security... Congress judged it necessary to assume that risk given the grave national-security threats it perceived."

CNN notes that ByteDance "has previously indicated it will not sell TikTok."

11 years ago his hard drive ended up in a U.K. landfill — with 8,000 bitcoin. It's now worth $800 million... and James Howell wants it back.

The Guardian reports that his "bid to become extremely rich reached a judge on Tuesday with a team of lawyers arguing that it was still possible to launch a hunt for his missing hard drive containing the bitcoin." They claimed that rather than searching for a "needle in a haystack", the position of the bitcoin hoard had been narrowed down to a small area and there was a "finely tuned" plan to retrieve it... [Howells] has been asking Newport city council for help in getting the hard drive back, and even said he would share the money with the authority, to no avail... James Goudie KC, representing the council, said Howells had no legal claim to the hard drive. He said: "Anything that goes into the landfill goes into the council's ownership."

Goudie said Howells' offer to share some of the bitcoin with Newport council amounted to a bribe. He said: "He is trying to buy something the council is not in a position to sell...." Before the hearing, a spokesperson for Newport council said: "The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area. "Responding to Mr Howells' baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services."
Howells was 28 when he lost the hard drive, and has said he may as well keep trying to recover it — because he'll always know that it's out there. Howells' legal teams are "working pro bono," the article notes, "on the basis that they get a share of the bitcoin profits if successful..." And TechSpot points out that "There's also the question of whether the data on the drive would still be accessible after more than a decade of sitting under a pile of rotting garbage.

"Howells has a team of data recovery engineers who are also working pro bono..."

Thanks to Slashdot reader jjslash for sharing the news.

In March, 2023 the Internet Archive lost in court, with a judge ruling they couldn't scan entire books and then lend them as ebooks. The Internet Archive appealed to a higher court, which also ruled against them in September of 2024.

Today, the Internet Archive made an announcement: that "While we are deeply disappointed with the Second Circuit's opinion in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the Internet Archive has decided not to pursue Supreme Court review." We will continue to honor the Association of American Publishers agreement to remove books from lending at their member publishers' requests.

We thank the many readers, authors and publishers who have stood with us throughout this fight. Together, we will continue to advocate for a future where libraries can purchase, own, lend and preserve digital books.

59-year-old Alex Mashinsky, the founder/former CEO of cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, "pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two counts of fraud," reports Reuters.

He'd been indicted in July on seven counts of fraud, conspiracy and market manipulation charges, according to the article, and federal prosecutors in Manhattan "said he misled customers of Celsius to persuade them to invest, and artificially inflated the value of his company's proprietary crypto token." On Tuesday, during a hearing before U.S. District Judge John Koeltl, Mashinsky said he pleaded guilty to two out of the seven counts he was initially charged with: commodities fraud, and a fraudulent scheme to manipulate the price of CEL, Celsius' in-house token. In court, Mashinsky admitted to giving Celsius customers "false comfort" by giving an interview in 2021 in which he said Celsius had received approval from regulators for its "Earn" program, which it had not. That program offered to deploy customers' cryptocurrency assets to yield investment returns. He said he also failed to disclose that he had been selling his holdings of CEL, the platform's in-house token.

"I know what I did was wrong, and I want to try to do whatever I can to make it right," Mashinsky said. As part of his plea deal with prosecutors, Mashinsky agreed not to appeal any sentence of 30 years or less — the maximum he faces for the two counts. Koeltl is set to sentence him on April 8, 2025.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan have said Mashinsky also personally reaped approximately $42 million in proceeds from selling his holdings of the Cel token. "Mashinsky made tens of millions of dollars selling his own CEL at artificially high prices, while his customers were left holding the bag when the company went bankrupt," Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan, said in a statement on Tuesday... Founded in 2017, Celsius filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in July 2022 after customers rushed to withdraw deposits as crypto prices fell. Many were initially unable to access their funds... Celsius' former chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, pleaded guilty in September 2023 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors' investigation.
"The company exited bankruptcy on Jan. 31, and has pivoted to Bitcoin mining..."

A ransomware attack on the multinational Stoli Group in August helped push two of the vodka-maker's U.S. subsidiaries into bankruptcy, according to the company's CEO. From a report: In a Texas bankruptcy court filing on November 29, CEO Chris Caldwell attributed a range of external factors to the financial woes of Stoli Group USA and Kentucky Owl (KO) -- which are facing $84 million in debt. But one of the most prominent was a ransomware attack this year that damaged the parent company's IT system.

"In August 2024, the Stoli Group's IT infrastructure suffered severe disruption in the wake of a data breach and ransomware attack," Caldwell said in the filing. "The attack caused substantial operational issues throughout all companies within the Stoli Group, including Stoli USA and KO, due to the Stoli Group's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system being disabled and most of the Stoli Group's internal processes (including accounting functions) being forced into a manual entry mode." Caldwell said the systems will be restored âoeno earlier than in the first quarter of 2025.â

A handful of countries should be held legally responsible for the ongoing impacts of climate change, representatives of vulnerable states have told judges at the international court of justice (ICJ). From a report: During a hearing at the Peace Palace in The Hague, which began on Monday, Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu's special envoy for climate change and environment, said responsibility for the climate crisis lay squarely with "a handful of readily identifiable states" that had produced the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions but stood to lose the least from the impacts.

The court heard how Pacific island states such as Vanuatu were bearing the brunt of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent and severe disasters. "We find ourselves on the frontlines of a crisis we did not create," Regenvanu said. The hearing is the culmination of years of campaigning by a group of Pacific island law students and diplomacy spearheaded by Vanuatu. In March last year the UN general assembly unanimously approved a resolution calling on the ICJ to provide an advisory opinion on what obligations states have to tackle climate change and what the legal consequences could be if they fail to do so.

Over the next two weeks, the court will hear statements from 98 countries, including wealthy developed states with the greatest historical responsibility for the climate emergency, such as the UK and Russia, and states that have contributed very little to global greenhouse gas emissions but stand to bear the brunt of their impact, including Bangladesh and Sudan as well as Pacific island countries.

A new lawsuit filed by a current Apple employee accuses the company of spying on its workers via their personal iCloud accounts and non-work devices. From a report: The suit, filed Sunday evening in California state court, alleges Apple employees are required to give up the right to personal privacy, and that the company says it can "engage in physical, video and electronic surveillance of them" even when they are at home and after they stop working for Apple.

Those requirements are part of a long list of Apple employment policies that the suit contends violate California law. The plaintiff in the case, Amar Bhakta, has worked in advertising technology for Apple since 2020. According to the suit, Apple used its privacy policies to harm his employment prospects. For instance, it forbade Bhakta from participating in public speaking about digital advertising and forced him to remove information from his LinkedIn page about his job at Apple.

America's FBI "has been investigating a longtime Exxon Mobil consultant," reports Reuters, "over the contractor's alleged role in a hack-and-leak operation that targeted hundreds of the oil company's biggest critics, according to three people familiar with the matter." The operation involved mercenary hackers who successfully breached the email accounts of environmental activists and others, the sources told Reuters. The scheme allegedly began in late 2015, when U.S. authorities contend that the names of the hacking targets were compiled by the DCI Group, a public affairs and lobbying company working for Exxon at the time, one of the sources said. DCI provided the names to an Israeli private detective, who then outsourced the hacking, according to the source.

In an effort to push a narrative that Exxon was the target of a political vendetta aimed at destroying its business, some of the stolen material was subsequently leaked to the media by DCI, Reuters determined. The Federal Bureau of Investigation found that DCI shared the information with Exxon before leaking it, the source said. Some environmental activists interviewed by Reuters say the hacking operation disrupted preparations for lawsuits by cities and state attorneys general against Exxon and other energy companies... The stolen material continues to be used today to counter litigation claiming the oil giant misled the public and its investors about the risks of climate change...

The investigation into the hack-and-leak operation comes amid growing concern among law enforcement agencies worldwide about how such cyberespionage schemes threaten to taint judicial proceedings. The FBI has been investigating the broader use of mercenary hackers to tamper with lawsuits since early 2018, Reuters has previously reported. The Israeli private detective hired by DCI, Amit Forlit, was arrested this year at London's Heathrow Airport and is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of hacking and wire fraud... Federal prosecutors have secured a related conviction: that of Forlit's former business associate, private investigator Aviram Azari. Azari pleaded guilty in 2022 to wire fraud, conspiracy to commit hacking and aggravated identity theft, which included targeting the environmental activists.

British members of parliament have voted to legalize assisted dying, approving a contentious proposal that would make the United Kingdom one of a small handful of nations to allow terminally ill people to end their lives. From a report: Lawmakers in the House of Commons voted by 330 to 275 to support the bill, after an hours-long debate in the chamber and a years-long campaign by high-profile figures that drew on emotional first-hand testimony.

Britain is now set to join a small club of nations to have legalized the process, and one of the largest by population to allow it. The bill must still clear the House of Lords and parliamentary committees, but Friday's vote marked the most important hurdle.

It allows people with a terminal condition and less than six months to live to take a substance to end their lives, as long as they are capable of making the decision themselves. Two doctors, and then a High Court judge, would need to sign off on the choice. Canada, New Zealand, Spain and most of Australia allow assisted dying in some form, as do several US states including Oregon, Washington and California.

A broad coalition of Canada's major news organizations, including the Toronto Star, Metroland Media, Postmedia, The Globe and Mail, The Canadian Press and CBC, is suing tech giant OpenAI, saying the company is illegally using news articles to train its ChatGPT software. From a report: It's the first time all of a country's major news publishers have come together in litigation against OpenAI. The suit, filed in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice Friday morning, seeks punitive damages, disgorgement of any profits made by OpenAI from using the news organizations' articles, and an injunction barring OpenAI from using any of the news articles in the future.

"Journalism is in the public interest. OpenAI using other companies' journalism for their own commercial gain is not. It's illegal," said a joint statement from the media organizations, which are represented by law firm Lenczner Slaght.

Canada's Competition Bureau is suing Alphabet's Google over alleged anti-competitive conduct in online advertising, the antitrust watchdog said on Thursday. From a report: The Competition Bureau, in a statement, said it had filed an application with the Competition Tribunal seeking an order that, among other things, requires Google to sell two of its ad tech tools. It is also seeking a penalty from Google to promote compliance with Canada's competition laws, the statement said.

Google said the complaint "ignores the intense competition where ad buyers and sellers have plenty of choice and we look forward to making our case in court." [...] "Our advertising technology tools help websites and apps fund their content, and enable businesses of all sizes to effectively reach new customers," Dan Taylor, VP of Global Ads, Google said in a statement.