These days, some of tech’s most important decisions are being made inside courtrooms. Google and Facebook are fending off antitrust accusations, while patent suits determine how much control of their own products they can have. The slow fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threatens platforms like Twitter and YouTube with untold liability suits for the content they host. Gig economy companies like Uber and Airbnb are fighting for their very existence as their workers push for the protections of full-time employees. In each case, judges and juries are setting the rules about exactly how far tech companies can push the envelope and exactly how much protection everyday people have. This is where we keep track of those legal fights and the broader principles behind them. When you move fast and break things, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when you end up in court.
That’s according to Forbes, which reports that the man had used a GoPro to record children at Disney World for the purpose:
... Justin Culmo, who was arrested in mid-2023, admitted to creating thousands of illegal images of children taken at the amusement park and at least one middle school, using a version of AI model Stable Diffusion ...
A demure and mindful trademark investigation
See how I wrote this legal explainer? Very demure, very mindful.
The rise and fall of OpenSea
Insider accounts of the company reveal a chaotic work environment, ever-shifting priorities, and troubles with the SEC
Durov was released from police custody and transferred to court ahead of a possible indictment, reports The Associated Press.
French authorities arrested Durov Saturday in a preliminary investigation of the relationship between Telegram’s moderation practices and the distribution of CSAM and other criminal content by another unnamed person on the platform.
Telegram’s CEO has taken a hands-off approach for years — now his luck might have run out
Telegram doesn’t have the moderation of most social networks or the privacy of a true encrypted messaging app. That could leave its operator in hot water.
While Durov hasn’t been charged, a statement from the French government says his recent arrest is tied to an investigation into a “person unnamed” on charges of being complicit in distributing CSAM, drugs, and hacking tools, along with refusing to cooperate with law enforcement and other crimes.
Telegram has said its CEO and founder has “nothing to hide.”
Ryan Salame is due to begin his seven-year prison sentence next month, but now he claims prosecutors reneged on an agreement to drop a campaign finance investigation into his partner, Michelle Bond, in exchange for his guilty plea.
Charges filed today in the SDNY accuse the two of faking a $400k consulting payment from FTX to fund her unsuccessful run for Congress in 2022.
Colorado tech law professor Blake Reid has a good Bluesky thread (note: requires login) on the complicated gamesmanship behind AI content deals and copyright law. His conclusion:
At the end of the day, copyright just doesn’t give a lot of people positively and negatively impacted by copyright a seat at the table. And these deals are a powerful reminder of that.
The Washington Post reports Jesse Kipf pleaded guilty to computer fraud and identity theft charges for using a doctor’s login to falsify a death certificate and attempting to sell access to death registry systems.
US attorney Carlton S. Shier IV called it “a cynical and destructive effort, based in part on the inexcusable goal of avoiding his child support obligations.”
Michael Lewis has a new essay to accompany the paperback version of Going Infinite, a book about Sam Bankman-Fried that appeared just before his trial. Sure, SBF did crimes because he was an arrogant gambler, but Lewis still loves his gamer son.
[Washington Post]
The internet service provider filed a petition with the highest court in its case with Sony Music and other labels, framing it as a fight for internet access. A jury sided with the labels in 2019, finding Cox liable for piracy infringement for failing to remove bad actors from its services, but an appeals court denied the $1 billion damages award.
[Newsroom | About Us | Cox Communications]
Fort Worth, Texas Judge Reed O’Connor, who is presiding over Elon Musk-owned X’s antitrust lawsuit against advertisers and one against Media Matters, has invested as much as $50,000 in Tesla stock, NPR reports.
O’Connor is known for conservative-friendly rulings, such as one calling Obamacare unconstitutional (later overturned because he didn’t have jurisdiction).
Medialab, started by Whisper co-founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, has left a trail of lawsuits following its acquisitions. Apparently it loaded up on cheap debt — and the Genius lawsuit alleges that it’s slow-rolling its acquisition payments to service that debt.
Responding to the RIAA’s copyright lawsuit, AI songmaker sites defended their models as being like kids learning rock and roll or tools enabling creativity. Country artist Tift Merritt had a different take after being shown a song AI music generator Udio spat out when prompted to mimic her style:
... the “imitation” Udio created “doesn’t make the cut for any album of mine.”
“This is a great demonstration of the extent to which this technology is not transformative at all ... It’s stealing.”
I had similar thoughts back in March.
CNN has a rare inside look at the Supreme Court deliberations that led to the (bad!) Texas and Florida social media regulations being put on hold and sent back to the lower courts to figure out how they would affect other kinds of websites and services. It almost went the other way, until Samuel Alito went too far in his first draft and Amy Coney Barrett flipped, eventually joining the 6-3 majority opinion.
[Alito] questioned whether any of the platforms’ content-moderation could be considered “expressive” activity under the First Amendment.
Barrett, a crucial vote as the case played out, believed some choices regarding content indeed reflected editorial judgments protected by the First Amendment. She became persuaded by Kagan, but she also wanted to draw lines between the varying types of algorithms platforms use.
The ruling is already having an impact on other moderation cases.
Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) updated their discussion draft that seeks to prevent debacles like that between Scarlett Johansson and OpenAI. It’s gained the support of SAG-AFTRA and the Recording Industry Association, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which counts tech companies among its donors, previously raised concerns that the draft bill was overly broad.
