Music

Record Companies Sue Internet Archive For Preserving Old 78 Rpm Recordings (reuters.com) 73

Long-time Slashdot reader bshell shared this announcement from the Internet Archive: Some of the world's largest record labels, including Sony and Universal Music Group, filed a lawsuit against the Internet Archive and others for the Great 78 Project, a community effort for the preservation, research and discovery of 78 rpm records that are 70 to 120 years old.

The project has been in operation since 2006 to bring free public access to a largely forgotten but culturally important medium. Through the efforts of dedicated librarians, archivists and sound engineers, we have preserved hundreds of thousands of recordings that are stored on shellac resin, an obsolete and brittle medium. The resulting preserved recordings retain the scratch and pop sounds that are present in the analog artifacts; noise that modern remastering techniques remove.

"The labels' lawsuit said the project includes thousands of their copyright-protected recordings," reports Reuters, including Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and Chuck Berry's "Roll Over Beethoven."

"The lawsuit said the recordings are all available on authorized streaming services and 'face no danger of being lost, forgotten, or destroyed.'" The labels' lawsuit filed in a federal court in Manhattan said the Archive's "Great 78 Project" functions as an "illegal record store" for songs by musicians including Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis and Billie Holiday. They named 2,749 sound-recording copyrights that the Archive allegedly infringed. The labels said their damages in the case could be as high as $412 million.
AI

'New York Times' Considers Legal Action Against OpenAI As Copyright Tensions Swirl 57

Lawyers for the New York Times are deciding whether to sue OpenAI to protect the intellectual property rights associated with its reporting. NPR reports: For weeks, the Times and the maker of ChatGPT have been locked in tense negotiations over reaching a licensing deal in which OpenAI would pay the Times for incorporating its stories in the tech company's AI tools, but the discussions have become so contentious that the paper is now considering legal action. A lawsuit from the Times against OpenAI would set up what could be the most high-profile legal tussle yet over copyright protection in the age of generative AI. A top concern for the Times is that ChatGPT is, in a sense, becoming a direct competitor with the paper by creating text that answers questions based on the original reporting and writing of the paper's staff. If, when someone searches online, they are served a paragraph-long answer from an AI tool that refashions reporting from the Times, the need to visit the publisher's website is greatly diminished, said one person involved in the talks.

So-called large language models like ChatGPT have scraped vast parts of the internet to assemble data that inform how the chatbot responds to various inquiries. The data-mining is conducted without permission. Whether hoovering up this massive repository is legal remains an open question. If OpenAI is found to have violated any copyrights in this process, federal law allows for the infringing articles to be destroyed at the end of the case. In other words, if a federal judge finds that OpenAI illegally copied the Times' articles to train its AI model, the court could order the company to destroy ChatGPT's dataset, forcing the company to recreate it using only work that it is authorized to use. Federal copyright law also carries stiff financial penalties, with violators facing fines up to $150,000 for each infringement "committed willfully."
Yesterday, Adweek reported that the New York Times updated its Terms of Service to prohibit its content from being used in the development of "any software program, including, but not limited to, training a machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI) system."
Data Storage

Western Digital Sued Over Claims of Data-Trashing SanDisk, My Passport SSDs (theregister.com) 38

Western Digital was sued on Tuesday on behalf of a California resident who claims the solid state drive he bought from the manufacturer was defective and that the storage slinger shipped kit that didn't live up to its marketing promises. The Register reports: The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed. The complaint [PDF], filed in federal court in San Jose, California, where the storage giant is based, alleges the Western Digital SanDisk 2TB Extreme Pro SSD purchased by plaintiff Nathan Krum in May for $180 failed because of an undisclosed flaw, which also affects SanDisk Extreme Pro, Extreme Portable, Extreme Pro Portable, and WD My Passport SSD models since January 2023, it's claimed.

The complaint asserts Western Digital customers "have widely reported drive failures and data loss." Krum, in his filing, believes Western Digital is aware of the problem and not doing enough about it. "The SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD hard drives, which are also sold under the WD My Passport brand, have a firmware issue that causes them to disconnect or become unreadable by computers," he claimed, adding that his drive was among those that stopped working as expected.

It is alleged the drives can break down in various ways, including randomly disconnecting from their host, which could result in information not being saved correctly or file-system corruption. In any case, people find they can no longer access their stored documents, making the SSDs worthless and useless, it is claimed. [...] Chris Cantrell, an attorney at Doyle Lowther LLP who is representing the plaintiffs, told The Register it's not yet clear how many SanDisk SSDs experienced data loss though there are more than a few people who share his client's experience. "While Western Digital appears to have attempted to fix the issue with a firmware update, it does not appear to have fixed the issue," Cantrell added. "This is what prompted us to file this lawsuit on behalf of affected SanDisk SSD purchasers. We anticipate adding additional named plaintiffs from other states over the next few weeks." The complaint alleges breach of contract, violation of consumer protection law, and misleading advertising, among other claims, and seeks damages, legal costs, and other relief.

The Courts

Buyers of Bored Ape NFTs Sue After Digital Apes Turn Out To Be Bad Investment (arstechnica.com) 175

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Sotheby's auction house has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by investors who regret buying Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs that sold for highly inflated prices during the NFT craze in 2021. A Sotheby's auction duped investors by giving the Bored Ape NFTs "an air of legitimacy... to generate investors' interest and hype around the Bored Ape brand," the class-action lawsuit claims. The boost to Bored Ape NFT prices provided by the auction "was rooted in deception," said the lawsuit filed in US District Court for the Central District of California. It wasn't revealed at the time of the auction that the buyer was the now-disgraced FTX, the lawsuit said.

"Sotheby's representations that the undisclosed buyer was a 'traditional' collector had misleadingly created the impression that the market for BAYC NFTs had crossed over to a mainstream audience," the lawsuit claimed. Lawsuit plaintiffs say that harmed investors bought the NFTs "with a reasonable expectation of profit from owning them." Sotheby's sold a lot of 101 Bored Ape NFTs for $24.4 million at its "Ape In!" auction in September 2021, well above the pre-auction estimates of $12 million to $18 million. That's an average price of over $241,000, but Bored Ape NFTs now sell for a floor price of about $50,000 worth of ether cryptocrurrency, according to CoinGecko data accessed today. [...]

The amended lawsuit alleges that "[Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs] colluded with fine arts broker, Defendant Sotheby's, to run a deceptive auction." After the sale, a Sotheby's representative described the winning bidder during a Twitter Spaces event as a "traditional" collector, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit said it turned out the auction buyer was now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, whose founder Sam Bankman-Fried is in jail awaiting trial on criminal charges. Ethereum blockchain transaction data shows that after the auction, "Sotheby's transferred the lot of BAYC NFTs to wallet address 0xf8e0C93Fd48B4C34A4194d3AF436b13032E641F3,77 which, upon information and belief, is owned/controlled by FTX," the complaint said. Speculation that FTX was the buyer had been percolating since at least January 2023. The lawsuit alleges that Yuga Labs and Sotheby's violated the California Unfair Competition Law, the California Corporate Securities Law, the US Securities Exchange Act, and the California Corporations Code. The plaintiffs also claim that Sotheby's Metaverse, an NFT trading platform opened after the auction, "operated (or attempted to operate) as an unregistered broker of securities."

Piracy

Court Orders SportsBay To Pay Almost Half a Billion Dollars For Violating DMCA (torrentfreak.com) 38

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In the summer of 2021, DISH Network and Sling filed a copyright lawsuit against four unlicensed sports streaming sites, among them the popular SportsBay.org. After the plaintiffs named two alleged operators of the sites, this week a court in Texas held the pair liable for almost 2.5 million violations of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and almost half a billion dollars in damages. [...] The complaint alleged that the unknown defendants circumvented (and provided technologies and services that circumvented) security measures employed by Sling and thereby provided "DISH's television programming" to users of their websites. The plaintiffs requested a permanent injunction, control of the defendants' domains, and damages of up to $2,500 for each violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.

According to DISH's first amended complaint filed in January 2022, information obtained from the third-party service providers enabled the company to identify two men responsible for operating the SportsBay sites. Juan Barcan, an individual residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, used his PayPal account to make payments to Namecheap and GitHub. Juan Nahuel Pereyra, also of Buenos Aires, used his PayPal account to make payments to Namecheap. On January 20, 2022, DISH sent a request to the Argentine Central Authority to serve Barcan and Pereyra under the Hague Convention. On October 31, 2022, the Central Authority informed DISH that Pereyra was served in Buenos Aires on September 14, 2022. Barcan was not served so after obtaining permission from the court, DISH served Barcan via a Gmail address used to make payments to Namecheap for the Sportsbay.org, Live-nba.stream, and Freefeds.com domain names. When the defendants failed to appear, DISH sought default judgment. [...]

In his order (PDF) handed down yesterday, District Judge Charles Eskridge entered a default judgment against Juan Barcan and Juan Nahuel Pereyra for violations of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The defendants and anyone acting in concert with them are permanently enjoined from circumventing any technological protection measure that controls access to Sling or DISH programming, including through the use of websites or any similar internet streaming service. Then comes the award for damages. "Plaintiffs are awarded $493,850,000 in statutory damages against Defendants, jointly and severally, for Defendants' 2,469,250 violations of section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA," the order reads.

HP

Judge Denies HP's Plea To Throw Out All-in-One Printer Lockdown Lawsuit (theregister.com) 31

HP all-in-one printer owners, upset that their devices wouldn't scan or fax when low on ink, were handed a partial win in a northern California court late last week after a judge denied HP's motion to dismiss their suit. From a report: The plaintiffs argued in their amended class action complaint that HP withheld vital information by including software in its all-in-one printer/scanner/fax machines that disabled non-printing functions when out of ink and not telling buyers that was the case. "It is well-documented that ink is not required in order to scan or to fax a document, and it is certainly possible to manufacture an All-in-One printer that scans or faxes when the device is out of ink," the plaintiffs argued in their complaint.

The amended complaint was filed in February this year after US federal Judge Beth Labson Freeman dismissed the suit on the grounds that it hadn't properly stated a claim. Armed with their amended complaint, lawyers for San Franciscan Gary Freund and Minneapolis resident Wayne McMath have succeeded at not only making relevant claims, but also surviving an attempt by HP to have the entire case dismissed for a second time. In the amended complaint, Freund and McMath's lawyers argue that HP's move to disable devices that were low on ink was intentional, citing HP's own comments from a support forum post in which an HP support agent told a user complaining of similar issues that their "HP printer is designed in such a way that with the empty cartridge or without the cartridge [the] printer will not function."

Google

Google Required To Remove Ads That Violate Trademarks, Indian Court Rules (techcrunch.com) 15

The Delhi High Court has ruled that Google's Ads program falls under the purview of the country's Trademarks Act and the company must remove ads that infringe upon trademarks in a major decision that may redefine online advertising's legal landscape. From a report: The decision), delivered by a division bench of Justice Vibhu Bakhru and Justice Amit Mahajan last week, observed that Google was an "active participant" in the use of the trademarks of proprietors. Google's practice of suggesting competitors' trademarks as keywords to advertisers yielded significant profits for the search giant via keyword sales. This case was spurred by a complaint from logistics firm DRS, which pointed out that searches for its trademark "Agarwal Packers and Movers" returned competitor websites. DRS alleged that Google's ad mechanism exploited its trademark to divert users to rival sites. Upholding the initial order, the division bench directed Google to act on DRS's grievances and remove offending ads.
Iphone

Apple Will Soon Send Payments In $500 Million 'Batterygate' iPhone Throttling Lawsuit (macrumors.com) 23

The judge overseeing Apple's "batterygate" iPhone throttling lawsuit has cleared the way for payments to be sent out. MacRumors reports: Apple in 2020 agreed to pay $500 million to settle the "batterygate" lawsuit, which accused the company of secretly throttling older iPhone models. The class action lawsuit was open to U.S. customers who had an iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, 7, or 7 Plus running iOS 10.2.1 or iOS 11.2 prior to December 21, 2017. [...] Apple ultimately apologized for its lack of communication and dropped the price of battery replacements to $29 through the end of 2018. iPhone owners eligible for a payout would have needed to submit a claim back in 2020, and submissions were open through October 6, 2020. Those who submitted a claim back then will be eligible for a payment, which will be around $65 per claimant.
The Almighty Buck

SBF Used $100 Million In Stolen FTX Funds For Political Donations (reuters.com) 107

Sam Bankman-Fried used money he stole from customers of his FTX cryptocurrency exchange to make more than $100 million in political campaign contributions before the 2022 U.S. midterm elections, federal prosecutors said on Monday. Reuters reports: An amended indictment accused the 31-year-old former billionaire of directing two FTX executives to evade contribution limits by donating to Democrats and Republicans, and to conceal where the money came from. "He leveraged this influence, in turn, to lobby Congress and regulatory agencies to support legislation and regulation he believed would make it easier for FTX to continue to accept customer deposits and grow," the indictment said.

Bankman-Fried faces seven counts of conspiracy and fraud over FTX's collapse, though the indictment no longer includes conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws as a separate count. [...] Bankman-Fried's indictment does not name the two people prosecutors say he used for "straw donors" to donate money at his direction. But other court papers and Federal Elections Commission data show they are Nishad Singh and Ryan Salame. Singh, FTX's former engineering chief, pleaded guilty to fraud and campaign finance violations in February. He donated $9.7 million to Democratic candidates and causes, and said in court he knew the money came from FTX customers.

Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX's Bahamian unit, gave more than $24 million to Republican candidates and causes in the 2022 election cycle, according to Federal Election Commision data. He has not been charged with a crime. In a separate court filing on Monday, prosecutors said Salame's lawyer had told them he would invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination if called to testify. Prosecutors said Salame told a family member in a November 2021 message that Bankman-Fried wanted to use political donations to "weed-out" anti-crypto Democratic and Republican lawmakers, and would likely "route money through me to weed out that republican [sic] side."
On Friday, a U.S. judge revoked Sam Bankman-Fried's bail due to probable cause that he tampered with witnesses at least twice. He is being sent to jail.
The Courts

Judge Rules in Favor of Montana Youths in Landmark Climate Decision (washingtonpost.com) 120

In the first ruling of its kind nationwide, a Montana state court decided Monday in favor of young people who alleged the state violated their right to a "clean and healthful environment" by promoting the use of fossil fuels. From a report: The court determined that a provision in the Montana Environmental Policy Act has harmed the state's environment and the young plaintiffs, by preventing Montana from considering the climate impacts of energy projects. The provision is accordingly unconstitutional, the court said. The win, experts say, could energize the environmental movement and reshape climate litigation across the country, ushering in a wave of cases aimed at advancing action on climate change. "People around the world are watching this case," said Michael Gerrard, the founder of Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.

The ruling represents a rare victory for climate activists who have tried to use the courts to push back against government policies and industrial activities they say are harming the planet. In this case, it involved 16 young Montanans, ranging in age from 5 to 22, who brought the nation's first constitutional and first youth-led climate lawsuit to go to trial. Though the cumulative number of climate cases around the world has more than doubled in the last five years, youth-led lawsuits in the United States have faced an uphill battle. Already, at least 14 of these cases have been dismissed, according to a July report from the United Nations Environment Program and the Sabin Center. The report said about three-quarters of the approximately 2,200 ongoing or concluded cases were filed before courts in the United States. Experts said the Montana youth had an advantage in the state's constitution, which guarantees a right to a "clean and healthful environment." Coal is critical to the state's economy, and Montana is home to the largest recoverable coal reserves in the country. The plaintiff's attorneys say the state has never denied a permit for a fossil fuel project.

The Courts

Dell Australia Fined By Regulators Over 'Misleading' Device Discount Tactics (itpro.com) 6

Dell has been fined more than $6.5 million by Australian regulators after it was found to have misled consumers on discounted hardware prices. From a report: The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) imposed a $10 million AUS fine on the tech giant for "making false and misleading representations" about discounted prices for add-on computer monitors. Dell Australia admitted that it has misled customers over prices available on monitors in 'bundle' packages alongside desktop, laptop, or notebook devices. Add-on monitors were "often advertised with a higher 'strikethrough' price," an investigation by the regulator found. These strikethrough prices were framed as a way for consumers to make significant savings on monitors if purchased alongside other computing products.

However, these discounted prices were often overstated, with the regulator ruling that the monitors were not sold for discounted prices in many instances. Dell also conceded it misled customers about the discounted price of add-on monitors with statements such as "Total Savings," "Includes x% off," "Discounted Price," and "Get the best price for popular accessories when purchased with this product." The ACCC said in a statement, "In many cases, consumers paid more than if they had purchased the monitor as a standalone product."

Iphone

Judge Finally Clears Way for Apple's $500 Million iPhone Throttling Settlement (siliconvalley.com) 65

"Owners of some older iPhone models are expected to receive about $65 each," reports SiliconValley.com, "after a judge cleared the way for payments in a class-action lawsuit accusing Apple of secretly throttling phone performance." The Cupertino cell phone giant agreed in 2020 to pay up to $500 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging it had perpetrated "one of the largest consumer frauds in history" by surreptitiously slowing the performance of certain iPhone models to address problems with batteries and processors...

According to the lawsuit, filed in 2018, reports of unexplained iPhone shutdowns began to surface in 2015 and increased in the fall of 2016. Consumers complained their phones were shutting off even though the batteries showed a charge of more than 30%, the lawsuit claimed. The lawsuit claimed the shutdowns resulted from a mismatch between phones' hardware, including batteries and processing chips, and the ever-increasing demands of constantly updating operating systems. Apple tried to fix the problem with a software update, but the update merely throttled device performance to cut the number of shutdowns, the lawsuit claimed... In a 2019 court filing in the case, Apple argued that lithium-ion batteries become less effective with time, repeated charging, extreme temperatures and general use. Updating software, Apple asserted in the filing, entails trade-offs. "Providing more features also introduces complexity and can reduce speed, and increasing features or speed may adversely impact hardware lifespan," the company said.

Consumer grief over the shutdowns and alleged throttling also led to a 2020 lawsuit against Apple by the State of California and Alameda and Los Angeles counties. Apple, admitting to no wrongdoing, settled the case for $113 million.

About 3 million claims were received, the article notes, and two iPhone owners who'd objected to the settlement lost their appeal this week, "removing the final obstacle to the deal..."

"The phones at issue in the case were iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 6s, 6s Plus, and SE devices running operating systems iOS 10.2.1 or later before Dec. 21, 2017, and iPhone 7 and 7 Plus phones running iOS 11.2 or later before that date."
Transportation

Teens Hacked Boston Subway Cards For Infinite Free Rides, and This Time Nobody Got Sued (wired.com) 38

Long-time Slashdot reader UnCivil Liberty writes: Following in the footsteps of three MIT students who were previously gagged from presenting their findings at Defcon 2008 are two Massachusetts teens (who presented at this year's Defcon without interference).

The four teens extended other research done by the 2008 hacker team to fully reverse engineer the "CharlieCard," the RFID touchless smart card used by Boston's public transit system. The hackers can now add any amount of money to one of these cards or invisibly designate it a discounted student card, a senior card, or even an MBTA employee card that gives them unlimited free rides. "You name it, we can make it," says Campbell.

Crime

'Bulletproof' Web Site Hosting Ransomware Finally Seized, Founder Indicted (cnbc.com) 16

An anonymous reader shared this report from CNBC: The mastermind behind a ransomware hosting service that allegedly helped criminals collect more than 5,000 bitcoin in ransom from hundreds of victims was indicted in federal court this week, prosecutors announced Thursday. Artur Grabowski's LolekHosted service operated for about a decade and advertised itself as a haven for "everything but child porn," according to Florida prosecutors. Clients allegedly used the hosting service to deploy ransomware viruses that infected around 400 networks around the world... [That's 400 just for the Netwalker ransomware, which the announcement calls "one of the ransomware variants facilitated by LolekHosted."]

Grabowski was charged with computer fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. Grabowski himself is also the subject of a $21.5 million seizure order... Grabowski, a Polish national, faces a maximum sentence of 45 years, if he is ever detained and convicted.

Grabowski also "remains a fugitive," according to an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice. It notes that the 36-year-old's site — registered in 2014 — also "facilitated" brute-force attacks, and phishing.

"Grabowski allegedly facilitated the criminal activities of LolekHosted clients by allowing clients to register accounts using false information, not maintaining Internet Protocol (IP) address logs of client servers, frequently changing the IP addresses of client servers, ignoring abuse complaints made by third parties against clients, and notifying clients of legal inquiries received from law enforcement."
Books

Publishers, Internet Archive Agree To Streamline Digital Book-Lending Case (reuters.com) 6

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The Internet Archive and a group of leading book publishers told a Manhattan federal court on Friday that they have resolved aspects of their legal battle over the Archive's digital lending of their scanned books. If accepted, the consent judgment would settle questions over potential money damages in the case and the scope of a ban on the Archive's lending and would clear the way for the Archive to appeal U.S. District Judge John Koeltl's decision that it infringed the publishers' copyrights.

The proposed order would require the Archive to pay Lagardere SCA's Hachette Book Group, News Corp's HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons and Bertelsmann SE & Co's Penguin Random House an undisclosed amount of money if it loses its appeal. The order would also permanently block the Archive from lending out copies of the publishers' books without permission, pending the result of the appeal. They asked Koeltl to resolve a dispute over whether the order will apply only to the publishers' books that are already available for electronic licensing or books commercially available in any format.

The Internet Archive said in a blog post that the fight was "far from over," and founder Brewster Kahle said in a statement that "we must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision." Maria Pallante, the CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement that the plaintiffs were "extremely pleased" with the proposed injunction, which will "extend not only to the Plaintiffs' 127 works in suit but also to thousands of other literary works in their catalogs."

Printer

Canon Is Getting Away With Printers That Won't Scan Sans Ink (theverge.com) 72

Last year, Queens resident David Leacraft filed a lawsuit against Canon claiming that his Canon Pixma All-in-One printer won't scan documents unless it has ink. According to The Verge's Sean Hollister, it has quietly ended in a private settlement rather than becoming a big class-action. From the report: I just checked, and a judge already dismissed David Leacraft's lawsuit in November, without (PDF) Canon ever being forced to show what happens when you try to scan without a full ink cartridge. (Numerous Canon customer support reps wrote that it simply doesn't work.) Here's the good news: HP, an even larger and more shameless manufacturer of printers, is still possibly facing down a class-action suit for the same practice.

As Reuters reports, a judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit by Gary Freund and Wayne McMath that alleges many HP printers won't scan or fax documents when their ink cartridges report that they've run low. Among other things, HP tried to suggest that Freund couldn't rely on the word of one of HP's own customer support reps as evidence that HP knew about the limitation. But a judge decided it was at least enough to be worth exploring in court. "Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that HP had a duty to disclose and had knowledge of the alleged defect," wrote Judge Beth Labson Freeman, in the order denying almost all of HP's current attempts to dismiss the suit.

Interestingly, neither Canon nor HP spent any time trying to argue their printers do scan when they're low on ink in the lawsuit responses I've read. Perhaps they can't deny it? Epson, meanwhile, has an entire FAQ dedicated to reassuring customers that it hasn't pulled that trick since 2008. (Don't worry, Epson has other forms of printer enshittification.) HP does seem to be covering its rear in one way. The company's original description on Amazon for the Envy 6455e claimed that you could scan things "whenever". But when I went back now to check the same product page, it now reads differently: HP no longer claims this printer can scan "whenever" you want it to. Now, we wait to see whether the case can clear the bars needed to potentially become a big class-action trial, or whether it similarly settles like Canon, or any number of other outcomes.

The Courts

Pornhub Sues Texas Over Age Verification Law (vice.com) 123

Pornhub, along with several other members and activists in the adult industry are suing Texas to block the state's impending law that would require age verification to view adult content. Motherboard reports: The complaint was filed on August 4 in US District Court for the Western District of Texas, and the law will take effect on September 1 unless the court agrees to block it. Governor Greg Abbott passed HB 1181 into law in June. The plaintiffs, including Pornhub, adult industry advocacy group Free Speech Coalition, and several other site operators and industry members, claim that the law violates both the Constitution of the United States and the federal Communications Decency Act.

In the complaint, the plaintiffs write that the act employs "the least effective and yet also the most restrictive means of accomplishing Texas' stated purpose of allegedly protecting minors," and that minors can easily use VPNs or Tor; on-device content filtering would be a better method of restricting access to porn for children, they write. "But such far more effective and far less restrictive means don't really matter to Texas, whose true aim is not to protect minors but to squelch constitutionally protected free speech that the State disfavors."

Under the law, porn sites would be required to display a "Texas Health and Human Services Warning" on their websites in 14-point font or larger font, in addition to age verification. "Texas could easily spread its ideological, anti-pornography message through public service announcements and the like without foisting its viewpoint upon others through mandated statements that are a mix of falsehoods, discredited pseudo-science, and baseless accusations," the complaint says.

United States

Illinois Just Made It Possible To Sue People For Doxxing Attacks (arstechnica.com) 9

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last Friday, Illinois became one of the few states to pass an anti-doxxing law, making it possible for victims to sue attackers who "intentionally" publish their personally identifiable information with intent to harm or harass them. (Doxxing is sometimes spelled "doxing.") The Civil Liability for Doxing Act, which takes effect on January 1, 2024, passed after a unanimous vote. It allows victims to recover damages and to request "a temporary restraining order, emergency order of protection, or preliminary or permanent injunction to restrain and prevent the disclosure or continued disclosure of a person's personally identifiable information or sensitive personal information."

It's the first law of its kind in the Midwest, the Daily Herald reported, and is part of a push by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to pass similar laws at the state and federal levels. ADL's Midwest regional director, David Goldenberg, told the Daily Herald that ADL has seen doxxing become "over the past few years" an effective way of "weaponizing" the Internet. ADL has helped similar laws pass in Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. [...] The law does not involve criminal charges but imposes civil liability on individuals who dox any Illinois residents. Actions can also be brought against individuals when "any element" of a doxxing offense occurs in the state. [...]

Goldenberg told Ars that the Illinois law was written to emphasize not how information was found and gathered by people seeking to dox others, but on what they did with the information and how much harm they caused. The law might need less updating as the Internet evolves if it doesn't focus on the methods used to mine personally identifiable information. "The reality is that those who are using the Internet to spread hate, to spread misinformation, to do bad are pretty nimble and technology changes on a near daily basis," Goldenberg told Ars. "The law was crafted in a way that ensures that if technology changes, and people use new technologies to share someone's personally identifiable information with the intent to do harm and that harm actually happens, this law remains relevant."

Crime

FTX's Bankman-Fried Headed For Jail After Judge Revokes Bail (reuters.com) 59

A U.S. judge revoked Sam Bankman-Fried's bail due to probable cause that he tampered with witnesses at least twice. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected a defense request to delay SBF's detention pending appeal of the bail revocation. Reuters reports: The decision could complicate Bankman-Fried's efforts to prepare for trial, where the 31-year-old former billionaire faces charges of having stolen billions of dollars in FTX customer funds to plug losses at his Alameda Research hedge fund. Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty. He was led out of the courtroom by members of the U.S. Marshals Service in handcuffs after removing his shoelaces, jacket and tie and emptying his pockets.

His parents, both law professors at Stanford University, were present in the courtroom's audience. His mother, Barbara Fried, nodded to him in tears as he left. His father, Joseph Bankman, placed his hand over his heart as he watched his son be led away. Bankman-Fried has been largely confined to his parents' Palo Alto, California, home on $250 million bond since his December 2022 arrest.

Privacy

Detroit Police Changing Facial-Recognition Policy After Pregnant Woman Says She Was Wrongly Charged (nbcnews.com) 32

The Detroit police chief said he's setting new policies on the use of facial-recognition technology after a woman who was eight months pregnant said she was wrongly charged with robbery and carjacking in a case that was ultimately dismissed by prosecutors. From a report: The technology, which was used on images taken from gas station video, produced leads in the case but was followed by "very poor" police work, Chief James White said. "We want to ensure that nothing like this happens again," White said Wednesday. His comments came two days after the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan announced a lawsuit on behalf of Porcha Woodruff, a 32-year-old Black woman, who was arrested in February while trying to get children ready for school. There have been two similar lawsuits against Detroit.

Woodruff was identified as a suspect in a January robbery and carjacking through facial-recognition technology. She denied any role. The Wayne County prosecutor's office said charges later were dropped because the victim did not appear in court. White said his officers will not be allowed "to use facial-recognition-derived images in a photographic lineup. Period." He said two captains must review arrest warrants when facial technology is used in a case, among other changes. The new policies will be presented to the Detroit Police Board of Commissioners.

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