An anonymous reader shared this report from the Los Angeles Times: In recent years — as longstanding efforts to recycle plastics have faltered — Exxon Mobil has touted advanced recycling as a groundbreaking technology that will turn the tide on the plastic crisis. But despite its seemingly eco-friendly name, the attorney general's lawsuit denounced advanced recycling as a "public relations stunt" that largely involves superheating plastics to convert them into fuel.

At Exxon Mobil's only "advanced recycling" facility in Baytown, Texas, only 8% of plastic is remade into new material, while the remaining 92% is processed into fuel that is later burned. [California attorney general Rob] Bonta's lawsuit seeks a court order to prohibit the company from describing the practice as "advanced recycling," arguing the vast majority of plastic is destroyed. Many environmental advocates and policy experts lauded the legal action as a major step toward ending greenwashing by Exxon Mobil — the world's largest producer of single-use plastic polymer... Advanced recycling, which is also called chemical recycling, is an umbrella term that typically involves heating or dissolving plastic waste to create fuel, chemicals and waxes — a fraction of which can be used to remake plastic. The most common techniques yield only 1% to 14% of the plastic waste, according to a 2023 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Exxon Mobil has largely used reclaimed plastic for fuel production while ramping up its virgin plastic production, according to Bonta.
The executive director of California Communities Against Toxics complains Exxon Mobil's "advanced" recycling is "the same technology we've had since the Industrial Revolution... a blast furnace." (The article also quotes her as asking "How is that better than coal?") And a UCLA researcher who studied the issue blames misperceptions about plastic recycling on "an industry-backed misinformation campaign." He agrees that the reality is "having to burn more oil to turn that plastic back into oil, which you then burn."

California's attorney general "alleges Exxon Mobil has had a patent for this technology since 1978, and the company is falsely rebranding it as 'new' and 'advanced'... It recently reemerged after the company learned that the term 'advanced recycling' resonated with members of the public..."

Bryan Choi, an associate professor of law and computer science focusing on software safety, proposes shifting AI liability onto the builders of the systems: To date, most popular approaches to AI safety and accountability have focused on the technological characteristics and risks of AI systems, while averting attention from the workers behind the curtain responsible for designing, implementing, testing, and maintaining such systems...

I have previously argued that a negligence-based approach is needed because it directs legal scrutiny on the actual persons responsible for creating and managing AI systems. A step in that direction is found in California's AI safety bill, which specifies that AI developers shall articulate and implement protocols that embody the "developer's duty to take reasonable care to avoid producing a covered model or covered model derivative that poses an unreasonable risk of causing or materially enabling a critical harm" (emphasis added). Although tech leaders have opposed California's bill, courts don't need to wait for legislation to allow negligence claims against AI developers. But how would negligence work in the AI context, and what downstream effects should AI developers anticipate?
The article suggest two possibilities. Classifying AI developers as ordinary employees leaves employers then sharing liability for negligent acts (giving them "strong incentives to obtain liability insurance policies and to defend their employees against legal claims.") But AI developers could also be treated as practicing professionals (like physicians and attorneys). "{In this regime, each AI professional would likely need to obtain their own individual or group malpractice insurance policies." AI is a field that perhaps uniquely seeks to obscure its human elements in order to magnify its technical wizardry. The virtue of the negligence-based approach is that it centers legal scrutiny back on the conduct of the people who build and hype the technology. To be sure, negligence is limited in key ways and should not be viewed as a complete answer to AI governance. But fault should be the default and the starting point from which all conversations about AI accountability and AI safety begin.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader david.emery for sharing the article.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: A federal judge in California has ordered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to strengthen regulations for fluoride in drinking water, saying the compound poses an unreasonable potential risk to children at levels that are currently typical nationwide. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen in San Francisco on Tuesday sided (PDF) with several advocacy groups, finding the current practice of adding fluoride to drinking water supplies to fight cavities presented unreasonable risks for children's developing brains.

Chen said the advocacy groups had established during a non-jury trial that fluoride posed an unreasonable risk of harm sufficient to require a regulatory response by the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act. "The scientific literature in the record provides a high level of certainty that a hazard is present; fluoride is associated with reduced IQ," wrote Chen, an appointee of Democratic former President Barack Obama. But the judge stressed he was not concluding with certainty that fluoridated water endangered public health. [...] The EPA said it was reviewing the decision. "The court's historic decision should help pave the way towards better and safer fluoride standards for all," Michael Connett, a lawyer for the advocacy groups, said in a statement on Wednesday.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: The Dutch Supreme Court has requested guidance from the EU's top court on geo-blocking, VPNs, and copyright in a case involving the online publication of Anne Frank's manuscripts. The CJEU's response has the potential to reshape the online content distribution landscape, impacting streaming platforms and other services that rely on geo-blocking. VPNs services will monitor the matter with great interest too. [...] While early versions are presumably in the public domain in several countries, the original manuscripts are protected by copyright in the Netherlands until 2037. As a result, the copies published by the Dutch Anne Frank Stichting, are blocked for Dutch visitors. "The scholarly edition of the Anne Frank manuscripts cannot be made available in all countries, due to copyright considerations," is the message disallowed visitors get to see.

This blocking effort is the result of a copyright battle. Ideally, Anne Frank Stichting would like to make the manuscripts available worldwide, but the Swiss 'Fonds' has not given permission for it to do so. And since some parts of the manuscript were first published in 1986, Dutch copyrights are still valid. In theory, geo-blocking efforts could alleviate the copyright concerns but, for the Fonds, these measures are not sufficient. After pointing out that people can bypass the blocking efforts with a VPN, it took the matter to court. Around the world, publishers and streaming services use geo-blocking as the standard measure to enforce geographical licenses. This applies to the Anne Frank Stichting, as well as Netflix, BBC iPlayer, news sites, and gaming platforms. The Anne Frank Fonds doesn't dispute this, but argued in court that people can circumvent these restrictions with a VPN, suggesting that the manuscripts shouldn't be published online at all. The lower court dismissed this argument, stating the defendants had taken reasonable measures to prevent access from the Netherlands. The Fonds appealed, but the appeal was also dismissed, and the case is now before the Dutch Supreme Court.

The Fonds argues that the manuscript website is (in part) directed at a Dutch audience. Therefore, the defendants are making the manuscripts available in the Netherlands, regardless of the use of any blocking measures. The defendants, in turn, argue that the use of state-of-the-art geo-blocking, along with additional measures like a user declaration, is sufficient to prevent a communication to the public in the Netherlands. The defense relied on the opinion in the GO4YU case, which suggests that circumventing geo-blocking with a VPN does not constitute a communication to the public in the blocked territory, unless the blocking is intentionally ineffective.

Steam just removed its forced arbitration policy, opening the door for lawsuits against its parent company, Valve. From a report: In an update on Thursday, Steam says its subscriber agreement "now provides that any disputes are to go forward in court instead of arbitration." Many companies include a forced arbitration clause in their user agreement, waiving a person's right to a trial in court. Arbitration involves settling a dispute outside a legal system before an impartial third party. This method is often faster but may not get the best results for consumers, as arbitrators don't need to consider the law when issuing a decision.

A New York federal court has ordered (PDF) the operators of shadow library LibGen to pay $30 million in copyright damages to publishers. The default judgment also comes with a broad injunction that affects third-party services including domain registries, browser extensions, CDN providers, IPFS gateways, advertisers, and more. These parties must restrict access to the pirate site. An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon granted the default judgment without any changes. The anonymous LibGen defendants are responsible for willful copyright infringement and their activities should be stopped. "Plaintiffs have been irreparably harmed as a result of Defendants' unlawful conduct and will continue to be irreparably harmed should Defendants be allowed to continue operating the Libgen Sites," the order reads. The order requires the defendants to pay the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per work, a total of $30 million, for which they are jointly and severally liable. While this is a win on paper, it's unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.

To address this concern, the publishers' motion didn't merely ask for $30 million in damages, they also demanded a broad injunction. Granted by the court yesterday, the injunction requires third-party services such as advertising networks, payment processors, hosting providers, CDN services, and IPFS gateways to restrict access to the site. [...] The injunction further targets "browser extensions" and "other tools" that are used to provide direct access to the LibGen Sites. While site blocking by residential Internet providers is mentioned in reference to other countries, ISP blocking is not part of the injunction itself. In addition to the broad measures outlined above, the order further requires domain name registrars and registries to disable or suspend all active LibGen domains, or alternatively, transfer them to the publishers. This includes Libgen.is, the most used domain name with 16 million monthly visits, as well as Libgen.rs, Libgen.li and many others.

At the moment, it's unclear how actively managed the LibGen site is, as it has shown signs of decay in recent years. However, when faced with domain seizures, sites typically respond by registering new domains. The publishers are aware of this risk. Therefore, they asked the court to cover future domain names too. The court signed off on this request, which means that newly registered domain names can be taken over as well; at least in theory. [...] All in all, the default judgment isn't just a monetary win, on paper, it's also one of the broadest anti-piracy injunctions we've seen from a U.S. court.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Among the first AI companies that the Federal Trade Commission has exposed as deceiving consumers is DoNotPay -- which initially was advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer" with the ability to "sue anyone with the click of a button." On Wednesday, the FTC announced that it took action to stop DoNotPay from making bogus claims after learning that the AI startup conducted no testing "to determine whether its AI chatbot's output was equal to the level of a human lawyer." DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims.

DoNotPay accepted no liability. But to settle the charges that DoNotPay violated the FTC Act, the AI startup agreed to pay $193,000, if the FTC's consent agreement is confirmed following a 30-day public comment period. Additionally, DoNotPay agreed to warn "consumers who subscribed to the service between 2021 and 2023" about the "limitations of law-related features on the service," the FTC said. Moving forward, DoNotPay would also be prohibited under the settlement from making baseless claims that any of its features can be substituted for any professional service. "The complaint relates to the usage of a few hundred customers some years ago (out of millions of people), with services that have long been discontinued," DoNotPay's spokesperson said. The company "is pleased to have worked constructively with the FTC to settle this case and fully resolve these issues, without admitting liability."

WordPress hosting service WP Engine on Monday sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic after the latter's CEO Matt Mullenweg called WP Engine a "cancer to WordPress" last week. From a report: The notice asks Automattic and Mullenweg to retract their comments and stop making statements against the company. WP Engine, which (like Automattic itself) commercializes the open-source WordPress project, also accused Mullenweg of threatening WP Engine before the WordCamp summit held last week. "Automattic's CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic -- his for-profit entity -- a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described 'scorched earth nuclear approach' toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond, the letter read. "When his outrageous financial demands were not met, Mr. Mullenweg carried out his threats by making repeated false claims disparaging WP Engine to its employees, its customers, and the world," the letter added.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday alleging the company carried out a "decades-long campaign of deception" in which the oil and gas giant misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling. The complaint accuses the company of using slick marketing and misleading public statements for half a century to claim recycling was an effective way to deal with plastic pollution, according to a press release from Bonta's office published Monday. It alleges the company continues to perpetuate the "myth" of recycling today. The case, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, seeks to compel ExxonMobil "to end its deceptive practices that threaten the environment and the public," the statement said.

Bonta is also asking the court to rule ExxonMobil must pay civil penalties, among other payments, for the harm inflicted by plastic pollution in California. "Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage -- in ways known and unknown -- to our environment and potentially our health," Bonta said. "For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn't possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health," he said. [...]

Lawsuits against oil and gas companies for their role in climate change and air pollution are becoming more common, but Monday's is the first in the country to take on a fossil fuel company for its messaging around plastic recycling. The statement said that ExxonMobil "falsely promoted all plastic as recyclable, when in fact the vast majority of plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically." The lawsuit also alleges Exxon "continues to deceive the public by touting "advanced recycling" as the solution to the plastic waste and pollution crisis." Advanced -- or chemical -- recycling is a technology promoted by many oil companies, but which has been plagued by missed targets, closed or shelved plants and reports of fires and spills. [...] At the heart of the suit is the allegation ExxonMobil's messaging caused consumers to buy and use more single-use plastic than they otherwise would have. In response to the lawsuit, ExxonMobil pointed the finger back at California, which it said has an ineffective recycling system that officials have known about for decades: "They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills."

ExxonMobil contends chemical recycling does work. "We're bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn't be recycled by traditional methods," the company said in a statement.

A copy of the Attorney General's complaint can be found here (PDF).

In the antitrust trial alleging Google had an ad-selling monopoly, "government lawyers have said some of their strongest evidence is in Google's own internal communications," reports the Wall Street Journal: [In 2010] a new crop of ad-tech companies were threatening Google's bottom line. "One way to make sure we don't get further behind in the market is picking up the one with the most traction and parking it somewhere..." [wrote YouTube Chief Executive Neal Mohan, who previously ran Google's display-ads business]. Google ended up buying one such company, AdMeld, for $400 million in 2011. Google shut down AdMeld two years later, after incorporating some of the startup's technology into its ad exchange, known commonly as AdX.

The Justice Department argued that AdMeld was part of a larger trend: Google acquiring nascent rivals to corner the market and then locking customers into using its products by conditioning access to one software tool on them paying for another... In a 2016 email introduced by the government, Google executive Jonathan Bellack asked colleagues: "Is there a deeper issue with us owning the platform, the exchange, and a huge network? The analogy would be if Goldman or Citibank owned the NYSE [New York Stock Exchange]...." The Justice Department also cited a 2018 email from another then-executive, Chris LaSala, who raised concerns internally over the 20% cut that Google takes from many of its AdX customers, saying Google was extracting "irrationally high rent" from users. "I don't think there is 20% of value in comparing two bids," wrote LaSala. "AdX is not providing additional liquidity to the market. It is simply running the auction."

Another former Google executive, Eisar Lipkovitz, testified that Google's omnipresence in ad-tech gives rise to conflicts of interest. Lipkovitz was rebuffed when he tried to get Google to lower the cut it took from AdX, he testified in a prerecorded deposition. The Justice Department finished presenting its case on Friday. Other witnesses included Google customers. One was Stephanie Layser, a former News Corp executive, who said she felt she had no choice but to use Google technology because the search giant has such market power that switching to another ad server would have meant losing out on millions in advertising revenue.
Google's lawyer countered that "There will be no witness in this case who can say with clarity where this industry is going in the next five years."

Or, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, "It makes no sense to focus on display ads, Google argues, when the industry is shifting to apps, social media and streaming services. Far from monopolizing the space, Google is actually losing ground, Google lawyer Karen Dunn said in her opening trial statement..."

X's struggles in Brazil got this update from the Guardian Wednesday: In a statement tweeted from X's global government affairs account, the company said the restoration of service was an "inadvertent and temporary" side-effect of switching network providers.
But Friday "After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk's social network, X, has capitulated," writes the New York Times. "In a court filing on Friday night, the company's lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil's Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site."

"The company's lawyers said X had complied with the court's orders — blocking designated accounts, paying fines, and naming a new formal representative in the country," writes TechCrunch (citing reporting by the New York Times): In a filing of its own, the Supreme Court reportedly responded by telling X it had not provided the proper paperwork and giving it five days to do so....

X came back online in Brazil earlier this week, although Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told TechCrunch that the timing of the company's recent switch to Cloudflare infrastructure is just a "coincidence." During the ban, Brazilian users sought out social media alternatives, leading to dramatic growth at Bluesky and Tumblr.
The New York Times believes "The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand."

Although I'm curious about that missing paperwork...

Longtime Slashdot reader SonicSpike shares a report from Politico: The creator of a video that used artificial intelligence to imitate Kamala Harris is suing the state of California after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed laws restricting the use of digitally altered political "deepfakes," alleging First and 14th Amendment violations. Christopher Kohls, who goes by the name "Mr Reagan" on X, has been at the center of a debate over the use of AI-generated material in elections since he posted the video in July, calling it a parody of a Harris campaign ad. It features AI-generated clips mimicking Harris' voice and saying she's the "ultimate diversity hire." The video was shared by X owner Elon Musk without calling it parody and attracted the ire of Newsom, who vowed to ban such content.

The suit (PDF), filed Tuesday in federal court, seeks permanent injunctions against the laws. One of the laws in question, the Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception Act, specifies that it does not apply to satire or parody content. It requires large online platforms to remove or label deceptive, digitally altered media during certain periods before or after an election. Newsom spokesperson Izzy Gardon said in a statement that Kohls had already labeled the post as a parody on X. "Requiring them to use the word 'parody' on the actual video avoids further misleading the public as the video is shared across the platform," Gardon said. "It's unclear why this conservative activist is suing California. This new disclosure law for election misinformation isn't any more onerous than laws already passed in other states, including Alabama."

Joe_Dragon shares a report: Four more large Internet service providers told the US Supreme Court this week that ISPs shouldn't be forced to aggressively police copyright infringement on broadband networks. While the ISPs worry about financial liability from lawsuits filed by major record labels and other copyright holders, they also argue that mass terminations of Internet users accused of piracy "would harm innocent people by depriving households, schools, hospitals, and businesses of Internet access."

The legal question presented by the case "is exceptionally important to the future of the Internet," they wrote in a brief filed with the Supreme Court on Monday. The amici curiae brief was filed by Altice USA (operator of the Optimum brand), Frontier Communications, Lumen (aka CenturyLink), and Verizon. The brief supports cable firm Cox Communications' attempt to overturn its loss in a copyright infringement lawsuit brought by Sony. Cox petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case last month.

Sony and other music copyright holders sued Cox in 2018, claiming it didn't adequately fight piracy on its network and failed to terminate repeat infringers. A US District Court jury in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels. Cox won a partial victory when the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacated the $1 billion verdict, finding that Cox wasn't guilty of vicarious infringement because it did not profit directly from infringement committed by users of its cable broadband network. But the appeals court affirmed the jury's finding of willful contributory infringement and ordered a new damages trial.

schwit1 shares a report from SpaceNews: The FAA announced Sept. 17 that it notified SpaceX of $633,009 in proposed fines for violating terms of its launch licenses during the June 2023 Falcon 9 launch of the Satria-1, or PSN Satria, broadband satellite and the July 2023 Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, or EchoStar-24, broadband satellite. Both launches were successful.

For the Satria-1 launch, the FAA said in its enforcement notice (PDF) to the company that SpaceX had requested in May 2023 changes to its communications plan to allow the use of a new launch control center at the company's "Hangar X" facility at the Kennedy Space Center and to skip a poll of launch controllers at two hours before liftoff. The FAA notified SpaceX shortly before the scheduled launch that it would not be able to approve those changes and modify the license in time, although the enforcement notice did not state why. SpaceX went ahead and used the Hangar X control center and skipped the "T-2 hours" poll for the launch. The agency concluded that violated two conditions of its launch license, which allowed for civil penalties of up to $283,009 each. The FAA said it planned to fine SpaceX a combined $350,000 for that launch.

A month later, SpaceX conducted the Falcon Heavy launch of Jupiter-3, but nine days before the launch the company requested a modification to its launch license to allow it to use a new tank farm for RP-1 fuel at KSC's Launch Complex 39A, according to a separate enforcement notice. The FAA notified SpaceX two days before the scheduled launch that the agency would not be able to modify the license in time, but SpaceX nonetheless used the new tank farm for the launch. The agency said it proposed to fine SpaceX the maximum $283,009 for that violation. Instead of participating in administrative procedures, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said it would take the FAA to court. "SpaceX will be filing suit against the FAA for regulatory overreach," he posted on X.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider two bills Thursday that would effectively nullify the Supreme Court's rulings against patents on broad software processes and human genes. Open source and Internet freedom advocates are mobilizing and pushing back. The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (or PERA, S. 2140), sponsored by Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-Del.), would amend US Code such that "all judicial exceptions to patent eligibility are eliminated." That would include the 2014 ruling in which the Supreme Court held, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing, that simply performing an existing process on a computer does not make it a new, patentable invention. "The relevant question is whether the claims here do more than simply instruct the practitioner to implement the abstract idea of intermediated settlement on a generic computer," Thomas wrote. "They do not." That case also drew on Bilski v. Kappos, a case in which a patent was proposed based solely on the concept of hedging against price fluctuations in commodity markets. [...]

Another wrinkle in the PERA bill involves genetic patents. The Supreme Court ruled in June 2013 that pieces of DNA that occur naturally in the genomes of humans or other organisms cannot, themselves, be patented. Myriad Genetics had previously been granted patents on genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer, BRCA1 and BRCA2, which were targeted in a lawsuit led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The resulting Supreme Court decision -- this one also written by Thomas -- found that information that naturally occurs in the human genome could not be the subject to a patent, even if the patent covered the process of isolating that information from the rest of the genome. As with broad software patents, PERA would seemingly allow for the patenting of isolated human genes and connections between those genes and diseases like cancer. [...] The Judiciary Committee is set to debate and potentially amend or rewrite PREVAIL and PERA (i.e. mark up) on Thursday.

Late last month, Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to suspend operations in Brazil after a months-long dispute with X owner Elon Musk. The conflict centered on Musk's refusal to appoint a legal representative in the country and his refusal to take down disinformation and far-right accounts. However, on Wednesday, X bypassed the court-ordered block by utilizing third-party cloud services, allowing many Brazilian users to access the platform without the need for a virtual private network (VPN). From a report: The number of Brazilians accessing X is unknown, according to [Abrint, the Brazilian Association of Internet and Telecommunications Providers]. "I believe the change was probably intentional. Why would X use a third-party service that ends up being slower than its own?" said Basilio Perez, a board member at Abrint.

Any revised order from Brazil's national telecommunications agency Anatel, which is responsible for implementing the court ruling, will need to be more specific, because blocking cloud access is complex and may jeopardize government agencies and financial services providers, Perez said.

Anatel has identified the problem and is working to first notify content delivery network providers, followed by telecom companies to block access again to X in Brazil, according to a person familiar with the situation. The same person said it is not clear how long it will take for the providers to comply with the order...

In a statement tweeted from X's global government affairs account, the company said the restoration of service was an "inadvertent and temporary" side-effect of switching network providers.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, the FBI took control of a botnet made up of hundreds of thousands of internet-connected devices, such as cameras, video recorders, storage devices, and routers, which was run by a Chinese government hacking group, FBI director Christopher Wray and U.S. government agencies revealed Wednesday. The hacking group, dubbed Flax Typhoon, was "targeting critical infrastructure across the U.S. and overseas, everyone from corporations and media organizations to universities and government agencies," Wray said at the Aspen Cyber Summit cybersecurity conference on Wednesday.

"But working in collaboration with our partners, we executed court-authorized operations to take control of the botnet's infrastructure," Wray said, explaining that once the authorities did that, the FBI also removed the malware from the compromised devices. "Now, when the bad guys realized what was happening, they tried to migrate their bots to new servers and even conducted a [Distributed Denial of Service] attack against us."

Former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud, admitting he misled investors about the viability of the company's $9.95-a-month movie subscription service, and faces up to five years in prison. His co-defendant, former Helios and Matheson CEO Ted Farnsworth, faces similar charges and is scheduled for trial in March 2025; Farnsworth has been in federal custody since August 2023 due to bond violations involving misuse of company funds. Variety reports: Farnsworth and Lowe were the architects of MoviePass' doomed all-you-can-watch offering, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in investor losses in 2017 and 2018. Investigators found that Lowe tried to stem the losses by throttling the service, forcing high-volume users to reset their passwords and verify their tickets. The two men were charged in November 2022 on counts of wire fraud and securities fraud. According to Lowe's plea agreement, the government estimates the total losses from the scheme at $303 million -- though Lowe contends it is less than that. Lowe remains free on bond, and is due back in court in Miami on March 21 for a status conference. Lowe published a memoir in 2022 in which he reflected on the downfall of MoviePass, entitled "Watch and Learn: How I Turned Hollywood Upside Down with Netflix, Redbox, and Moviepass."

The New York Times looks at "a third-generation family firm" in Paraguay "with 280 workers that packages hot sauce, soy beans...and seven kinds of salt for sale in Paraguayan supermarkets."

Its mascot — on t-shirts, coffee cups, and "in heavy demand at Paraguayan weddings" — is a mouse named Mickey. 51-year-old Viviana Blasco — one of five siblings who run the business — told the Times that it all began back in 1935: Ms. Blasco's grandfather, Pascual, the son of Italian immigrants, saw an opportunity to spread some joy — and turn a profit. He opened a tiny shop selling fruit and homemade gelato. It was called Mickey... Pascual, she said, often vacationed in Buenos Aires — Argentina's cosmopolitan capital... "On one of his trips, he must have seen the famous mouse," Ms. Blasco said... A few years later, Pascual opened the Mickey Ice Cream Parlor, Café and Confectioners. By 1969, Mickey was selling rice, sugar and baking soda in packages now decorated with the eponymous mouse.
"Mickey resonates with Paraguayans' sense of nostalgia, said Euge Aquino, a TV chef and social media influencer who uses its ingredients to make comfort food like pastel mandi'o (yuca and beef empanadas)... Mickey's popularity, she said, also has a lot to do with the mascot handing out candy outside the factory gates every Christmas: a tradition dating back to 1983." By now, a "peaceful coexistence" reigns between Mickey and its United States doppelgänger, said Elba Rosa Britez, 72, the smaller company's lawyer. This truce was hard-won. In 1991, Disney filed a trademark violation claim with Paraguay's Ministry of Business and Industry that was rejected. The company then filed a lawsuit, but in 1995 a trademark tribunal ruled in Mickey's favor. There, one judge agreed that Paraguayans could easily confuse the Disney Mickey and the Paraguayan Mickey. But Disney didn't reckon on a "legal loophole," Ms Britez explained. The Mickey trademark had been registered in Paraguay since at least 1956 — and Pascual's descendants had since renewed it — without protest from the multinational. In 1998, Paraguay's Supreme Court issued its final ruling. Through decades of uninterrupted use, Mickey had acquired the right to be Mickey.

"I jumped for joy," Ms Britez said. Mickey's legal immunity in Paraguay, Ms. Blasco acknowledged, might not extend to selling its products abroad. "We've never tried."
"Some lining up to meet the mascot said Mickey's David-vs-Goliath triumph against Disney filled them with national pride..."

23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023. BleepingComputer reports: The proposed class action settlement (PDF), filed Thursday in a San Francisco federal court and awaiting judicial approval, includes cash payments for affected customers, which will be distributed within ten days of final approval. "23andMe believes the settlement is fair, adequate, and reasonable," the company said in a memorandum filed (PDF) Friday.

23andMe has also agreed to strengthen its security protocols, including protections against credential-stuffing attacks, mandatory two-factor authentication for all users, and annual cybersecurity audits. The company must also create and maintain a data breach incident response plan and stop retaining personal data for inactive or deactivated accounts. An updated Information Security Program will also be provided to all employees during annual training sessions. "23andMe denies the claims and allegations set forth in the Complaint, denies that it failed to properly protect the Personal Information of its consumers and users, and further denies the viability of Settlement Class Representatives' claims for statutory damages," the company said in the filed preliminary settlement.

"23andMe denies any wrongdoing whatsoever, and this Agreement shall in no event be construed or deemed to be evidence of or an admission or concession on the part of 23andMe with respect to any claim of any fault or liability or wrongdoing or damage whatsoever."