An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A US judge has fined two lawyers and a law firm $5,000 after fake citations generated by ChatGPT were submitted in a court filing. A district judge in Manhattan ordered Steven Schwartz, Peter LoDuca and their law firm Levidow, Levidow & Oberman to pay the fine after fictitious legal research was used in an aviation injury claim. Schwartz had admitted that ChatGPT, a chatbot that churns out plausible text responses to human prompts, invented six cases he referred to in a legal brief in a case against the Colombian airline Avianca.

The judge P Kevin Castel said in a written opinion there was nothing "inherently improper" about using artificial intelligence for assisting in legal work, but lawyers had to ensure their filings were accurate. "Technological advances are commonplace and there is nothing inherently improper about using a reliable artificial intelligence tool for assistance," Castel wrote. "But existing rules impose a gatekeeping role on attorneys to ensure the accuracy of their filings." The judge said the lawyers and their firm "abandoned their responsibilities when they submitted nonexistent judicial opinions with fake quotes and citations created by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, then continued to stand by the fake opinions after judicial orders called their existence into question." Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that its lawyers "respectfully" disagreed with the court that they had acted in bad faith. "We made a good-faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth," it said.

The US Supreme Court sided with a Coinbase unit in a ruling that reinforces the ability of companies to channel customer and employee disputes into arbitration. From a report: The justices, voting 5-4, ruled that lawsuits filed in federal court must be put on hold while a defendant presses an appeal that would send the case to arbitration. Writing for the court, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said allowing district courts to move forward as the appeal is ongoing would reduce the benefits of arbitration. "If the district court could move forward with pre-trial and trial proceedings while the appeal on arbitrability was ongoing, then many of the asserted benefits of arbitration (efficiency, less expense, less intrusive discovery, and the like) would be irretrievably lost," Kavanaugh wrote. Business groups rallied behind Coinbase in the case, saying that letting litigation go forward would impose unnecessary costs. Consumer advocates said judges should have the discretion to decide which claims should proceed during appeal, as courts do with other areas of the law. Coinbase is battling claims by Abraham Bielski, who said the crypto company should compensate him for $31,000 he lost after he gave a scammer remote access to his account. In a second suit that was before the high court, Coinbase is accused of holding a $1.2 million Dogecoin sweepstakes without adequately disclosing that entrants didn't have to buy or sell the cryptocurrency.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Thursday argued in federal court for a preliminary injunction to temporarily block Microsoft's acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard, which would stop the deal from closing before the government's case against it is heard by an administrative judge. From a report: "If this deal is completed, the combined company ... is likely to have the ability, an incentive, to harm competition in various markets related to consoles, subscription services and the cloud (for gaming)," FTC lawyer James Weingarten said in the government's opening arguments in what is expected to be a five-day evidentiary hearing.

The FTC argues it needs a judge to block Microsoft and Activision Blizzard from closing their $69 billion merger until the agency's in-house court gets to rule on whether the combination hurts competition in the videogame industry. The FTC says the combination would give Microsoft's Xbox videogame console exclusive access to Activision games, leaving Nintendo consoles and Sony Group's PlayStation out in the cold. "I think you will see that every piece of evidence shows that it only makes sense for Xbox to make these Activision games to as many people on as many platforms as possible," Microsoft lawyer Beth Wilkinson said in opening arguments, adding that if an injunction is granted it could result in a three-year administrative proceeding that would kill the deal.

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sued Amazon for illegally inducing consumers to sign up for its Prime service and then hindering them from canceling the subscription, the most aggressive action against the company to date by the agency's chair, Lina Khan. From a report: The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, argues that Amazon had used design tactics on its website known as "dark patterns" to nudge people into subscribing to Prime, the F.T.C. said in a release. And when consumers wanted to cancel, they had to go through a byzantine process to do so.

"Amazon tricked and trapped people into recurring subscriptions without their consent, not only frustrating users but also costing them significant money," Ms. Khan said in a statement. The lawsuit was the first time that the F.T.C. has taken Amazon to court under Ms. Khan, who rose to fame with a viral critique of the company and who is ramping up scrutiny of the e-commerce giant. Ms. Khan has said the power that big tech companies have over online commerce requires regulators to be far more aggressive and has begun taking actions against them./i.

Trial lawyer Kyle Roche has led an interesting life, according to the New York Times. He once earned $100 million selling bitcoin. He helped win a case against Craig Wright (who claims to be Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto) through his law firm Roche Freedman. And Roche also founded a startup that lets people bet on the outcome of (civil) lawsuits, "to make access to justice more affordable."

But something very bad for his career happened in January of 2022 when two businessmen flew Roche from Miami to the U.K. to discuss an investment. When he woke up the next morning, Roche said, he felt groggy... The brain fog was odd because he didn't think he'd had all that much to drink. As he flew back to Miami a few days later, Roche couldn't shake the feeling that something was amiss.

Months passed. Then, one day last summer, Roche's world detonated. A website called Crypto Leaks posted two dozen videos of him that had been secretly recorded during his meetings with Villavicencio and Ager-Hanssen. The videos portrayed Roche and his law firm, Roche Freedman, as being in the pocket of one of their crypto clients [Ava Labs]... In other clips, Roche made it sound like his sole concern, even when representing other clients, was to promote Ava Labs' interests...

One after another, companies that Roche Freedman had sued filed motions to disqualify the firm from their cases. In October, the first of those motions succeeded: A federal judge in New York tossed Roche Freedman from a case it had filed against Tether, the operator of the world's most used "stablecoin." Within days, Roche was forced to resign from the law firm he had founded. With his career in tatters, he said, he enrolled in ethics classes and began to see a therapist.
Roche calls the recorded remarks baseless bluster to impress a prospective investor (and alleges in court there are signs of deep fake alterations). While Roche "was felled by his own loose lips and his overly cozy relationship with a client," the Times reports "he also was the victim of an elaborate international setup." On April 3, 2020, Roche Freedman filed lawsuits seeking class-action status against seven issuers of digital coins, alleging they had pumped what amounted to unregistered securities with false statements and then dumped them, leaving retail investors holding the bag... Those suits were just an opening salvo: Sixteen months later, Roche filed his biggest securities fraud case yet. It alleged that a British entrepreneur, Dominic Williams, and entities he controlled had swindled investors out of billions of dollars by aggressively promoting, and then dumping, a digital coin tied to a grandiose plan to revolutionize computing. Williams had boldly proclaimed that his Internet Computer blockchain — a decentralized network of computers powered by a digital token called ICP — would supplant the big cloud services offered by Amazon and Microsoft and become humanity's primary computing platform. But after an initial surge that briefly made it one of the most valuable cryptocurrencies, ICP had plummeted 92% — a collapse that Roche's lawsuit attributed to "massive" selling by Williams and other insiders. (Williams denied the allegations.)
The Times reports that Roche's prospective investor Ager-Hanssen, "in addition to running his venture capital firm, has long had a sideline digging up dirt on behalf of wealthy clients entangled in business disputes in Britain and Scandinavia. On multiple occasions, he has secretly recorded his targets. For example, in a 2014 interview, he recounted how he had snared the adversary of a Swedish financier with a hidden microphone and boasted that he employed former intelligence officers from the CIA, MI6 and Mossad..." Roche believes them because he thinks he knows who hired Ager-Hanssen: Williams, the British entrepreneur who was the target of Roche Freedman's biggest pump-and-dump lawsuit... On May 12, 2022, Williams wrote on Twitter that he was "coming for" his critics. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. That was the same day the cryptoleaks.info domain name was registered. Then, on June 9, 2022, the Crypto Leaks website went live. Billing itself as the defender of "the honest crypto community," it posted two reports that aligned with Williams' interests...

The first espoused a complicated theory about the ICP token crash that Williams had previously floated on Twitter. The second attacked the Times for an article it had published about the crash. Williams tweeted a link to that Crypto Leaks report, calling it "Gobsmacking." The Dfinity Foundation, a Swiss nonprofit that Williams created to oversee his blockchain, has since sued the Times for defamation in New York. The Times is seeking to dismiss the suit. The videos of Roche were the crux of Crypto Leaks' third exposé. After they were published, Williams and Dfinity filed a motion to disqualify Roche Freedman as plaintiffs' counsel in the pump-and-dump lawsuit, saying Roche's comments demonstrated "a disregard for the integrity of the judicial system...."

Last month, the judge overseeing the pump-and-dump case granted Williams' motion and disqualified Freedman Normand Friedland as plaintiffs' counsel.

An anonymous reader shared this report from The Penny Hoarder: If you Googled anything between 2006 and 2013, then Google owes you money for violating your privacy. Those are the terms of a class-action lawsuit that Google has settled for $23 million.

How much money does Google owe you? Well, it depends on how many people come forward to claim their share of the settlement. The current estimated payout is about $7.70 per person.

Of course, that number could go up or down before it's all over. If fewer people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go up. But if more people than expected file claims, the payout amount will go down because more people are sharing the settlement money... The deadline to file a claim is July 31...

Basically, the class-action lawsuit alleges that Google Search "improperly shared your search queries with third-party websites and companies" during the time period in question. This has to do with how Google allegedly included your search query in the link that's created whenever you click on a website in a Google search. This involves something called a "referrer header."

Even though Google settled the case, it still denies any wrongdoing or liability. As part of the lawsuit settlement, Google is updating its FAQ page.
Some interesting history from SFGate: The lawsuit was filed in 2010 over allegations that Google shared its users' search terms with third-party websites based on its use of referrer headers, which essentially shows websites how a user found them. In 2015, the case reached an $8.5 million settlement in the Northern District of California, with a vast majority of the settlement going to a collection of internet privacy groups, because the amount allocated for each individual would have been mere pennies. But the case was brought all the way up to the Supreme Court after Ted Frank, a conservative activist and vocal class action suit critic, disputed the settlement being sent to those nonprofit groups instead of the users affected by the suit. In 2019, the case made its way back down to the district court, where the preliminary settlement was approved in 2022...

The final approval hearing for the settlement, which includes whether the class action representatives will receive $5,000 and the representing attorneys will receive 25% of the $23 million sum, is scheduled for Oct. 12.
From the Settlement agreement: If the Settlement becomes final, Settlement Class Members will be releasing Google (and certain others related to Google, such as Google directors, officers and employees) from all of the settled claims. This means that you will no longer be able to sue Google (or the other released parties) regarding any of the settled claims if you are a Settlement Class Member and do not timely and properly exclude yourself from the Settlement Class...


YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AND OPTIONS IN THIS SETTLEMENT:

FILE A CLAIM BY JULY 31, 2023
This is the only way to get a payment under the Settlement.

DO NOTHING
Get no payment under the Settlement and give up your right to compensation for the claims and allegations in this case.

EXCLUDE YOURSELF BY JULY 31, 2023
Get no payment under the Settlement. This is the only option that allows you to be a part of any other lawsuit against Google about the claims and allegations in this case.

OBJECT BY JULY 31, 2023
Write to the Court about why you think the Settlement should not be approved. You may also ask to speak in Court about the fairness of the Settlement.

Daniel Ellsberg, a military analyst who leaked what came to be known as the Pentagon Papers, died on Friday at the age of 92. The cause was pancreatic cancer. The New York Times reports: The disclosure of the Pentagon Papers -- 7,000 government pages of damning revelations about deceptions by successive presidents who exceeded their authority, bypassed Congress and misled the American people -- plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy. It led to illegal countermeasures by the White House to discredit Mr. Ellsberg, halt leaks of government information and attack perceived political enemies, forming a constellation of crimes known as the Watergate scandal that led to the disgrace and resignation of President Richard M. Nixon. And it set up a First Amendment confrontation between the Nixon administration and The New York Times, whose publication of the papers was denounced by the government as an act of espionage that jeopardized national security. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the freedom of the press.

Mr. Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy and other crimes and tried in federal court in Los Angeles. But on the eve of jury deliberations, the judge threw out the case, citing government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping, a break-in at the office of Mr. Ellsberg's former psychiatrist and an offer by President Nixon to appoint the judge himself as director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. "The demystification and de-sanctification of the president has begun," Mr. Ellsberg said after being released. "It's like the defrocking of the Wizard of Oz." The story of Daniel Ellsberg in many ways mirrored the American experience in Vietnam, which began in the 1950s as a struggle to contain communism in Indochina and ended in 1975 with humiliating defeat in a corrosive war that killed more than 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians. [...] Over the years, Ellsberg was mentioned on Slashdot several times. In late 2000, Ellsberg was mentioned in a story about Clinton's veto of what would have been a new law to prevent leaks of classified information.

Ellsberg also expressed his support for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2010 and called Edward Snowden the "greatest patriot whistleblower of our time."

He was also featured in a Slashdot story for his view on the growing role of internet companies in the public sphere. In 2011, Ellsberg said companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter need to take a stand and push back on excessive requests for personal data.

The pitch for vertical farming had all the promise of a modern venture capital dream: a new way to grow crops that would use robots and artificial intelligence to conserve water, combat food insecurity and save the environment. But after firms poured billions of dollars into these startups, pushing valuations into the stratosphere, the industry is now facing a harsh new reality: funding is drying up, profits remain elusive, and creditors are circling. From a report: AeroFarms last week became the latest, most high-profile example of the challenges facing the business, filing for bankruptcy after building a massive new facility in Virginia that drained its cash, according to court papers. Its collapse comes on the heels of lettuce grower Kalera seeking court protection in April. And in May, publicly traded AppHarvest, which operates high-tech greenhouses, received a notice of default from one of its investors, according to a regulatory filing. The company contests the default notice, but if it can't reach an agreement with its creditors, the firm warned it could become "bankrupt or insolvent."

"We really were in a hype cycle," said Vonnie Estes, vice president of innovation for the International Fresh Produce Association. Venture capitalists entered the scene in a frenzy, likening these companies to software firms, and expecting comparable returns. "There was a lot of money that rushed in without really understanding that this is actually just farming." Industry experts still say that indoor farming is a crucial piece of agriculture's future, especially as climate change spurs more destructive wildfires and floods. Nonetheless, the ability of vertical farms to carve out meaningful market share on a national scale could be years away, they note.

Alphabet's Google on Friday sued a Los Angeles man and his companies in San Jose, California federal court, claiming he created hundreds of fake business listings on its platforms and sold them to real businesses to lure in unsuspecting customers. From a report: Fake reviews have been a recurring problem on internet commerce sites. Google said in a statement that it filed the lawsuit against Ethan QiQi Hu to "help put an end to these types of malicious schemes." Google's lawsuit said Hu creates sham businesses that appear in its search engine and Google Maps, using an "elaborate set of props" to verify them on video calls with the tech giant's agents. The lawsuit said Hu keeps a tool bench as a prop to verify fraudulent listings for garage repair, tree cutting and plumbing, and essential oils for verifying fake aromatherapy and reiki therapy businesses. Google said Hu buys thousands of fake positive reviews to make the businesses appear legitimate. He then allegedly sells the profiles as "leads" to real businesses in the same fields, which receive contacts from potential customers who reach out to the fake businesses.

Two men who helped run the once wildly popular pirating website Megaupload were each sentenced by a New Zealand court on Thursday to more than two years in prison. From a report: The sentencing of Mathias Ortmann and Bram van der Kolk ended an 11-year legal battle by the men to avoid extradition to the United States on more serious charges that included racketeering. The men last year struck a deal with prosecutors from New Zealand and the U.S. in which they pleaded guilty to being part of a criminal group and causing artists to lose money by deception. Meanwhile Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload, is continuing to fight the U.S. charges and threat of extradition. He has said he expects his former colleagues to testify against him as part of the deal they struck.

U.S. prosecutors say Megaupload raked in at least $175 million -- mainly from people who used the site to illegally download songs, television shows and movies -- before the FBI shut it down in early 2012 and arrested Dotcom and other company officers. Ortmann was sentenced to 2 years and 7 months while van der Kolk was sentenced to 2 years and 6 months. Each had faced a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison but argued they should be allowed to serve their sentences in home detention.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: Apple may be forced to change the name of its new mixed reality headset in China unless it can come to an agreement with Huawei, which already owns the "Vision Pro" trademark in the country. Originally spotted by MyDrivers, the trademark was originally granted to Huawei on May 16, 2019, and gives the company exclusive rights to its use in China from November 28, 2021 to November 27, 2031. Huawei actively uses the trademark in China, and offers a number of products under the Vision name, including smart TVs and smart glasses. If Apple intends to sell its headset in China and call it Vision Pro, it may have to enter into negotiations with Huawei to release the trademark for a price. Apple has had a similar trademark issue with a Chinese company in the past. "Apple in 2012 paid Proview Technology $60 million for the rights to the 'iPad' trademark in China," reports MacRumors. "The payment followed several court cases in which Apple unsuccessfully argued that it had already acquired the rights for the name as part of a deal with Proview's Taiwanese arm."

A U.S. judge has granted the FTC request to temporarily block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, scheduling a hearing for a preliminary injunction and preventing the deal from closing until a court ruling is made. Reuters reports: U.S. District Judge Edward Davila scheduled a two-day evidentiary hearing on the FTC's request for a preliminary injunction for June 22-23 in San Francisco. Without a court order, Microsoft could have closed on the $69 billion deal as early as Friday. Davila said the temporary restraining order "is necessary to maintain the status quo while the complaint is pending (and) preserve this court's ability to order effective relief in the event it determines a preliminary injunction is warranted and preserve the FTC's ability to obtain an effective permanent remedy in the event that it prevails in its pending administrative proceeding."

Microsoft and Activision must submit legal arguments opposing a preliminary injunction by June 16; the FTC must reply on June 20. Davila said the bar on closing will remain in place until at least five days after the court rules on the preliminary injunction request. The case reflects the muscular approach to antitrust enforcement taken by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Techdirt: So, this is bad. Over the last few years, we've written plenty about the so-called "inter partes review" or "IPR" that came into being about a decade ago as part of the "America Invents Act," which was the first major change to the patent system in decades. For much of the first decade of the 2000s, patent trolls were running wild and creating a massive tax on innovation. There were so many stories of people (mostly lawyers) getting vague and broad patents that they never had any intention of commercializing, then waiting for someone to come along and build something actually useful and innovative... and then shaking them down with the threat of patent litigation. The IPR process, while not perfect, was at least an important tool in pushing back on some of the worst of the worst patents. In its most basic form, the IPR process allows nearly anyone to challenge a bad patent and have the special Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) review the patent to determine if it should have been granted in the first place. Given that a bad patent can completely stifle innovation for decades this seems like the very least that the Patent Office should offer to try to get rid of innovation-killing bad patents.

However, patent trolls absolutely loathe the IPR process for fairly obvious reasons. It kills their terrible patents. The entire IPR process has been challenged over and over again and (thankfully) the Supreme Court said that it's perfectly fine for the Patent Office to review granted patents to see if they made a mistake. But, of course, that never stops the patent trolls. They've complained to Congress. And, now, it seems that the Patent Office itself is trying to help them out. Recently, the USPTO announced a possible change to the IPR process that would basically lead to limiting who can actually challenge bad patents, and which patents could be challenged.

The wording of the proposed changes seems to be written in a manner to be as confusing as possible. But there are a few different elements to the proposal. One part would limit who can bring challenges to patents under the IPR system, utilizing the power of the director to do a "discretionary denial." For example, it would say that "certain for-profit entities" are not allowed to bring challenges. Why? That's not clear. [...] But the more worrisome change is this one: "Recognizing the important role the USPTO plays in encouraging and protecting innovation by individual inventors, startups, and under-resourced innovators who are working to bring their ideas to market, the Office is considering limiting the impact of AIA post-grant proceedings on such entities by denying institution when certain conditions are met." Basically, if a patent holder is designated as an "individual inventor, startup" or "under-resourced innovator" then their patents are protected from the IPR process. But, as anyone studying this space well knows, patent trolls often present themselves as all three of those things (even though it's quite frequently not at all true). [...] And, again, none of this should matter. A bad patent is a bad patent. Why should the USPTO create different rules that protect bad patents? If the patent is legit, it will survive the IPR process. The Electronic Frontier Foundation issued a response to the proposed changes: "The U.S. Patent Office has proposed new rules about who can challenge wrongly granted patents. If the rules become official, they will offer new protections to patent trolls. Challenging patents will become far more onerous, and impossible for some. The new rules could stop organizations like EFF, which used this process to fight the Personal Audio 'podcasting patent,' from filing patent challenges altogether."

The digital rights group added: "If these rules were in force, it's not clear that EFF would have been able to protect the podcasting community by fighting, and ultimately winning, a patent challenge against Personal Audio LLC. Personal Audio claimed to be an inventor-owned company that was ready to charge patent royalties against podcasters large and small. EFF crowd-funded a patent challenge and took out the Personal Audio patent after a 5-year legal battle (that included a full IPR process and multiple appeals)."

The Associated Press reports: Two apologetic lawyers responding to an angry judge in Manhattan federal court blamed ChatGPT Thursday for tricking them into including fictitious legal research in a court filing... [Attorney Steven A. Schwartz] told U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel he was "operating under a misconception ... that this website was obtaining these cases from some source I did not have access to." He said he "failed miserably" at doing follow-up research to ensure the citations were correct.

"I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases," Schwartz said...

The judge confronted Schwartz with one legal case invented by the computer program. It was initially described as a wrongful death case brought by a woman against an airline only to morph into a legal claim about a man who missed a flight to New York and was forced to incur additional expenses. "Can we agree that's legal gibberish?" Castel asked.

Schwartz said he erroneously thought that the confusing presentation resulted from excerpts being drawn from different parts of the case. When Castel finished his questioning, he asked Schwartz if he had anything else to say. "I would like to sincerely apologize," Schwartz said. He added that he had suffered personally and professionally as a result of the blunder and felt "embarrassed, humiliated and extremely remorseful."

He said that he and the firm where he worked — Levidow, Levidow & Oberman — had put safeguards in place to ensure nothing similar happens again.
An attorney for the law firm also told the judge that lawyers have historically had a hard time with technology, particularly new technology. "And it's not getting easier."

Binance.US, the U.S. affiliate of cryptocurrency exchange Binance, announced that it would halt dollar deposits and urged customers to withdraw their funds by Tuesday following a request from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to freeze its assets. Reuters reports: Binance.US, the purportedly independent partner of Binance, said in a tweet on Thursday that its banking partners were preparing to stop dollar withdrawal channels as early as June 13. The SEC sued Binance, its CEO and founder Changpeng Zhao, and Binance.US's operator on Monday, in a dramatic escalation of a crackdown on the industry by U.S. regulators. The SEC sued major U.S. exchange Coinbase a day later.

Binance.US said in the tweeted customer notice that it would no longer accept dollar deposits as part of plans to change to a "crypto-only exchange". It called the SEC's civil charges "unjustified" and said it would "vigorously defend" itself. The SEC alleged in 13 charges on Monday that Binance had in a "web of deception" artificially inflated trading volumes and diverted customer funds, as well as failing to restrict U.S. customers from its platform. The SEC on Tuesday asked a federal court to freeze Binance's U.S. assets. Binance.US called the motion "unwarranted", saying it had addressed SEC concerns over the safety of customer assets.

The SEC said it had not received "sufficient reassurance" that Binance.US's customer assets were controlled by its operator, BAM Trading, "rather than under the control or influence of Binance or Zhao, a person who has openly expressed his desire to avoid compliance with U.S. law." Zhao and Binance had "free reign" to handle Binance.US assets, the SEC said. "They have exercised this control over U.S. investor assets with no oversight or controls to ensure that those assets are properly secured," it added. . It has said it would "defend our platform vigorously," saying the SEC was limited in reach as Binance was not a U.S. exchange. Binance.US's customer assets total more than $2.2 billion held in crypto and some $377 million in U.S. dollar bank accounts, the SEC said.

OpenAI is facing a defamation lawsuit filed by Mark Walters, who claims that the AI platform falsely accused him of embezzling money from a gun rights group in statements delivered to a journalist. The lawsuit argues that ChatGPT is guilty of libel and alleges that the AI system "hallucinated" and generated false information about Walters. The Register reports: "While research and development of AI is worthwhile, it is irresponsible to unleash a system on the public that is known to make up 'facts' about people," his attorney John Monroe told The Register. According to the complaint, a journalist named Fred Riehl, while he was reporting on a court case, asked ChatGPT for a summary of accusations in a complaint, and provided ChatGPT with the URL of the real complaint for reference. (Here's the actual case [PDF] the reporter was trying to save time on reading for those curious.)

What makes the situation even odder is that the case Riehl was reporting on was actually filed by a group of several gun rights groups against Washington's Attorney General's office (accusing officials of "unconstitutional retaliation", among other things, while investigating the groups and their members) and had nothing at all to do with financial accounting claims. When Riehl asked for a summary, instead of returning accurate information, or so the case alleges, ChatGPT "hallucinated" that Mark Walters' name was attached to a criminal complaint -- and moreover, that it falsely accused him of embezzling money from The Second Amendment Foundation, one of the organizations suing the Washington Attorney General in the real complaint.

ChatGPT is known to "occasionally generate incorrect information" -- also known as hallucinations, as The Register has extensively reported. The AI platform has already been accused of writing obituaries for folks who are still alive, and in May this year, of making up fake legal citations pointing to non-existent prior cases. In the latter situation, a Texas judge said his court would strike any filing from an attorney who failed to certify either that they didn't use AI to prepare their legal docs, or that they had, but a human had checked them. [...] According to the complaint, Riehl contacted Alan Gottlieb, one of the plaintiffs in the actual Washington lawsuit, about ChatGPT's allegations concerning Walters, and Gottlieb confirmed that they were false. None of ChatGPT's statements concerning Walters are in the actual complaint.

The false answer ChatGPT gave Riehl alleged that Walters was treasurer and Chief Financial Officer of SAF and claimed he had "embezzled and misappropriated SAF's funds and assets." When Riehl asked ChatGPT to provide "the entire text of the complaint," it returned an entirely fabricated complaint, which bore "no resemblance to the actual complaint, including an erroneous case number." Walters is looking for damages and lawyers' fees. We have asked his attorney for comment. As for the amount of damages, the complaint says these will be determined at trial, if the case actually gets there.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: During the pandemic, the demand for smart TVs dwindled as the supply chain for critical TV components became unreliable and consumers began tightening up on frivolous spending. Amid this smart TV demand slump, one of the world's top TV chipmakers, Taiwan-based Realtek, was hit with multiple meritless lawsuits by an alleged patent troll, Future Link Systems. These actions, Realtek said, drained its resources, made Realtek appear unreliable as a TV-chip supplier, and created "the harmful illusion of supply chain uncertainties in an already constrained industry." Determined to defend its reputation and maintain its dominant place in the market, Realtek filed a lawsuit (PDF) this week in a US district court in California. In it, the TV chipmaker alleged that Future Link launched "an unprecedented and unseemly conspiracy" with the world's leading TV-chip supplier, Taiwan-based MediaTek, and was allegedly paid a "bounty" to file frivolous patent infringement claims intended to drive Realtek out of the TV-chip market.

The scheme allegedly worked like this: Future Link "intentionally and knowingly" asked a US district court in Texas and the US International Trade Commission "for injunctions prohibiting importation of Realtek TV Chips and devices containing the same into the United States," Realtek alleged. This allowed MediaTek to reap the benefits of diminished competition in that market, Realtek claimed. Today, Reuters reported that MediaTek has officially responded to Realtek's allegations, vowing to defend itself against the lawsuit and claiming that MediaTek will supply evidence to dispute Realtek's claims.

Realtek's lawsuit seeks a jury trial to fight back against MediaTek and Future Link, as well as IPValue Management, which the complaint said owns and operates Future Link. The TV chipmaker alleged that defendants violated unfair competition laws in California, as well as federal laws. Any damages won from the lawsuit will be donated to charity, Realtek said. Realtek's complaint likens MediaTek to "robber barons of the Industrial Age," allegedly seeking to destroy competition and secure a monopoly in the TV-chip market. "With this action, Realtek seeks to stop a modern robber baron and its hired henchmen, protect itself from ongoing injury, and guard against the destruction of competition in the critical semiconductor industry by holding defendants accountable for their conspiracy," the complaint said.

Apple and "Fortnite" maker Epic Games have both asked a U.S. appeals court to reconsider its April ruling in an antitrust case that could force Apple to change payment practices in its App Store. From a report: Apple and Epic, in separate court filings, mounted challenges to a ruling by a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Lawyers for the two companies said the panel should rehear the case or the court should convene "en banc," as an 11-judge panel, to reconsider the dispute. The April three-judge ruling upheld a 2021 order in California federal court in Epic's lawsuit which accused Apple of unlawfully requiring software developers to pay up to 30% in commissions on consumers' in-app purchases.

The trial judge found that Apple violated a California state unfair competition law, but not U.S. antitrust provisions. Apple's new filingchallenged a nationwide injunction over conduct Apple said was "procompetitive and does not violate the antitrust laws." Epic's 9th Circuit filing argued that its claims against Apple directly implicate the "core purpose" of U.S. antitrust law to foster competition. Epic also argued that the appeals court did not conduct a "rigorous" balancing between asserted asserted consumer benefits and anticompetitive effects of Apple's practices.

Enigma software group has won a crucial case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, allowing it to proceed with its lawsuit against Malwarebytes for flagging its anti-spyware software as a 'potentially unwanted program.' The lawsuit alleges that Malwarebytes has engaged in anti-competitive conduct under the Lanham Act and tortious interference with Enigma's business. TechSpot reports: The ruling has been lambasted by some legal experts, who believe it could hamper cybersecurity service providers from doing their job effectively. Talking to The Register, Eric Goldman, professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, claimed that the Ninth Circuit's decision was erroneous, as it failed to differentiate between facts and opinions properly. According to him, in deciding in favor of Enigma, the Ninth Circuit failed to comprehend how the cybersecurity industry operates, and how security companies use the terms 'malicious' and 'threat.' He also felt that thanks to the judgment, there will now be more disputes over such classifications in the future, making the job of cybersecurity companies tougher than ever before.

Goldman further argued that the Ninth Circuit's decision would mean anti-malware software vendors will now simply minimize their financial and legal risks by leaving out supposed anti-threat programs from their list of suspect apps even if they display dangerous behavior, which could pose a major threat to consumers. Some smaller players could also exit the industry altogether, which would further hurt consumers by reducing competition. Goldman was also critical of the Supreme Court for denying Malwarebytes' appeal, and called out Justice Clarence Thomas in particular for writing what he called a "gratuitous error-riddled statement about Section 230 that spurred many regulators to pursue their censorship agendas." Enigma said in a statement: "Malwarebytes (has) disparaged Enigma's products for commercial advantage by making misleading statements of fact. ... Trying to wrap them in a First Amendment flag does not make them any less offensive or any less actionable."

Eric Goldman, professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told The Register in an email, "This case is like a wrecking ball for internet law." He added: "The Ninth Circuit already damaged Section 230 by creating an exception to its coverage (for 'anticompetitive animus') that no one understands and has not benefited anyone. Then, when the Supreme Court denied the appeal, Justice Thomas wrote a gratuitous error-riddled statement about Section 230 that spurred many regulators to pursue their censorship agendas. Now, the Ninth Circuit has redefined the standards for what constitutes a statement of 'fact' as opposed to an opinion in a way that hurts businesses in the anti-threat software space and well beyond."

"If each classification could similarly support weaponization in court by businesses unhappy with the classifications, then anti-threat software vendors will avoid the financial and legal risks by lowering their cybersecurity standards or exiting the industry," said Goldman. "That puts all of us at greater risk."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The world got a first glimpse into the US government's far-reaching surveillance of American citizens' communications -- namely, their Verizon telephone calls -- 10 years ago this week when Edward Snowden's initial leaks hit the press. [...] In the decade since then, "reformers have made real progress advancing the bipartisan notion that Americans' liberty and security are not mutually exclusive," [US Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR)] said. "That has delivered tangible results: in 2015 Congress ended bulk collection of Americans' phone records by passing the USA Freedom Act." This bill sought to end the daily snooping into American's phone calls by forcing telcos to collect the records and make the Feds apply for the information.

That same month, a federal appeals court unanimously ruled that the NSA's phone-records surveillance program was unlawful. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the New York Civil Liberties Union sued to end the secret phone spying program, which had been approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, just days after Snowden disclosed its existence. "Once it was pushed out into open court, and the court was able to hear from two sides and not just one, the court held that the program was illegal," Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology project, told The Register. The Freedom Act also required the federal government to declassify and release "significant" opinions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and authorized the appointment of independent amici -- friends of the court intended to provide an outside perspective. The FISC was established in 1978 under the FISA -- the legislative instrument that allows warrantless snooping. And prior to the Freedom Act, this top-secret court only heard the government's perspective on things, like why the FBI and NSA should be allowed to scoop up private communications.

"To its credit, the government has engaged in reforms, and there's more transparency now that, on the one hand, has helped build back some trust that was lost, but also has made it easier to shine a light on surveillance misconduct that has happened since then," Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told The Register. Wyden also pointed to the sunsetting of the "deeply flawed surveillance law," Section 215 of the Patriot Act, as another win for privacy and civil liberties. That law expired in March 2020 after Congress did not reauthorize it. "For years, the government relied on Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act to conduct a dragnet surveillance program that collected billions of phone records (Call Detail Records or CDR) documenting who a person called and for how long they called them -- more than enough information for analysts to infer very personal details about a person, including who they have relationships with, and the private nature of those relationships," Electronic Frontier Foundation's Matthew Guariglia, Cindy Cohn and Andrew Crocker said. James Clapper, the former US Director of National Intelligence, "stated publicly that the Snowden disclosures accelerated by seven years the adoption of commercial encryption," Wizner said. "At the individual level, and at the corporate level, we are more secure."

"And at the corporate level, what the Snowden revelations taught big tech was that even as the government was knocking on the front door, with legal orders to turn over customer data, it was breaking in the backdoor," Wizner added. "Government was hacking those companies, finding the few points in their global networks where data passed unencrypted, and siphoning it off." "If you ask the government -- if you caught them in a room, and they were talking off the record -- they would say the biggest impact for us from the Snowden disclosures is that it made big tech companies less cooperative," he continued. "I regard that as a feature, not a bug."

The real issue that the Snowden leaks revealed is that America's "ordinary system of checks and balances doesn't work very well for secret national security programs," Wizner said. "Ten years have gone by," since the first Snowden disclosures, "and we don't know what other kinds of rights-violating activities have been taking place in secret, and I don't trust our traditional oversight systems, courts and the Congress, to ferret those out," Wizner said. "When you're dealing with secret programs in a democracy, it almost always requires insiders who are willing to risk their livelihoods and their freedom to bring the information to the public."