Meta to Let European Users Opt Out of Some Highly Personalized Ads

Meta Platforms Inc. is planning to let European users of Facebook and Instagram opt out of certain highly personalized ads as part of plans to limit the impact of a European Union privacy order, according to people familiar with the planning. Under the plan, Meta will allow EU users to choose a version of its services that would only target them with ads based on broad categories, such as their age range and general location — without using, as it does now, data such as what videos they watch or content they click on inside Meta’s apps, the people said.

Appeals Court Reverses VirnetX's $502 Million Patent Victory Against Apple

Apple Inc. convinced a U.S. appeals court to throw out a $502 million verdict for patent licensing company VirnetX Inc. in a long-running fight over internet privacy technology. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Feder.al Circuit said the verdict could not stand after the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board canceled the virtual private network (VPN) patents VirnetX accused Apple of infringing.

Tech Leaders Urge Artificial Intelligence Labs to Pause Development

More than 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, have urged artificial intelligence labs to pause development of the most advanced systems, warning in an open letter that A.I. tools present “profound risks to society and humanity.” A.I. developers are “locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one — not even their creators — can understand, predict or reliably control,” according to the letter, which the nonprofit Future of Life Institute.

Court Sanctions Google in Case of Unlawful Browser Tracking in 'Incognito' Mode

A U.S. court has sanctioned Google LLC for a second time in recent days, after a judge in a decision said the Alphabet Inc. unit took too long to comply with a ruling last year in a data-privacy class action. The order from U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan van Keulen in San Jose, California, stems from a class action claiming Google unlawfully tracked its users while they were using the company's Chrome browsers in private, or "incognito," mode.

FTC Plans Case Against Amazon Over Child Privacy Violations for Alexa

The Federal Trade Commission is planning to move forward soon with a case against Amazon over alleged privacy violations stemming from the use of children’s data with the company’s Alexa voice assistant, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The antitrust and consumer protection agency has been investigating Amazon on a number of fronts for several years, including for possible violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which could potentially allow the agency to collect large civil monetary penalties.

Italy Temporarily Bans ChatGPT, Citing Illegal Collection of Personal Data

The artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT was temporarily banned in Italy, the first known instance of the chatbot being blocked by a government order. Italy’s data protection authority said OpenAI, the California company that makes ChatGPT, unlawfully collected personal data from users and did not have an age-verification system in place to prevent minors from being exposed to illicit material.

Biden Signs Executive Order Limiting Commercial Use of Hacking Tools

President Biden restricted the use of commercial hacking tools throughout the federal government as officials said they believed high-powered spyware had compromised devices belonging to at least 50 U.S. personnel working overseas. Mr. Biden signed an executive order that imposes rules limiting the acquisition and deployment of hacking tools from vendors whose products have been linked to human-rights abuses or are deemed to pose counterintelligence or national security risks to the U.S.

GitHub Removes Parts of Twitter's Source Code After Copyright Demand

Parts of Twitter’s source code, the underlying computer code on which the social network runs, were leaked online, according to a legal filing, a rare and major exposure of intellectual property as the company struggles to reduce technical issues and reverse its business fortunes under Elon Musk. Twitter moved to have the leaked code taken down by sending a copyright infringement notice to GitHub, an online collaboration platform for software developers where the code was posted, according to the filing.

Judge Rules for Book Publishers in Copyright Case Against Internet Archive

A federal judge has ruled in favor of a group of book publishers who sued the nonprofit Internet Archive for scanning and lending digital copies of copyrighted books in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. The four publishing houses — Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons and Penguin Random House — accused the Internet Archive of "mass copyright infringement" for loaning out digital copies of books without the publishers' permission.

  • Read the article: NPR

Republican, Democratic Lawmakers Grill TikTok's CEO Over Ties to China

Lawmakers lambasted TikTok’s chief executive about the platform’s ties to China in a roughly five-hour hearing, punctuating how the viral video app has become a central battleground as the United States and China tussle for political, technological and economic primacy. Shou Chew, the chief executive of TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, was barraged with questions about the app’s relationship to its parent company and China’s potential influence over the platform. Republican and Democratic lawmakers repeatedly asked Mr. Chew if TikTok was spying on Americans on behalf of the Chinese government, cut him off midsentence and angrily demanded “yes” or “no” answers from him.

Utah Governor Signs Bills Restricting How Minors Can Use Social Media Apps

Utah is the first state in the nation to begin restricting how minors can use social media apps. Gov. Spencer Cox signed a pair of bills that will regulate when and how minors in Utah can use of social media and aims to stop those companies from designing addicting features. Those new laws will likely lead to a protracted legal fight with the tech industry over privacy and First Amendment issues.

Hackers Post Videos About Crypto Scams on Linus Tech Tips YouTube Channel

Popular YouTube channel Linus Tech Tips has been hacked, with the channel’s 15.3 million subscribers seeing videos for crypto scams instead of tech hardware reviews. It’s the latest breach in a series of high-profile YouTube accounts being hacked, with scammers regularly gaining access to prominent accounts to rename them and livestream crypto scam videos.

Publishers Seek Compensation for Use of Their Works by AI Tools

Publishing executives have begun examining the extent to which their content has been used to “train” AI tools such as ChatGPT, how they should be compensated and what their legal options are, according to people familiar with meetings organized by the News Media Alliance, a publishing trade group. “We have valuable content that’s being used constantly to generate revenue for others off the backs of investments that we make, that requires real human work, and that has to be compensated,” said Danielle Coffey, executive vice president and general counsel of the News Media Alliance.

Google Set to Gain EU Antitrust Approval for Photomath Acquisition

Alphabet's Google is set to gain unconditional EU antitrust clearance for its acquisition of Croatian maths app Photomath, people familiar with the matter said. Merger deals involving U.S. tech giants and start-ups have in recent months attracted intense regulatory scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic amid worries that some deals may be killer acquisitions where the goal is to shut down nascent rivals.

TikTok Creators, Three Democratic Lawmakers Oppose TikTok Ban

TikTok creators and three U.S. Democratic Party lawmakers said they opposed any potential ban on the Chinese-owned short video sharing app that is used by more than 150 million Americans. Representatives Jamaal Bowman, Mark Pocan and Robert Garcia and TikTok creators called at a press conference in Washington for broad-based privacy legislation that would address all large social media companies.

Fake Images Created by Artificial Intelligence Show Trump Being Arrested

Fabricated images of former President Trump being arrested are circulating social media as the country prepares for his possible indictment. The images, created using artificial intelligence software (AI), show what appears to be the a large group of New York City Police Department officers arresting the former president as he resists be detained.

Web-Tracking Code from ByteDance Found on State Government Sites

More than two dozen state governments have placed web-tracking code made by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. on official websites, according to a new report from a cybersecurity company, illustrating the difficulties U.S. regulators face in curtailing data-collection efforts by the popular Chinese-owned app. A review of the websites of more than 3,500 companies, organizations and government entities by the Toronto-based company Feroot Security found that so-called tracking pixels from the TikTok parent company were present in 30 U.S. state-government websites across 27 states, including some where the app has been banned from state networks and devices.

OpenAI Temporarily Disables ChatGPT After Some Users' Titles Exposed

OpenAI temporarily shut down its popular ChatGPT service after receiving reports of a bug that allowed some users to see the titles of other users’ chat histories. An OpenAI spokesperson told Bloomberg that the titles were visible in the user-history sidebar that typically appears on the left side of the ChatGPT webpage. The chatbot was temporarily disabled after the company heard these reports, the spokesperson said. The substance of the other users’ conversations was not visible.

Internet Archive Defends Free Book Library in Publishers' Court Case

The Internet Archive (IA) defended its practice of digitizing books and lending those e-books for free to users of its Open Library. In 2020, four of the wealthiest book publishers sued IA, alleging this kind of digital lending was actually “willful digital piracy” causing them “massive harm.” But IA’s lawyer, Joseph Gratz, argued that the Open Library’s digitization of physical books is fair use, and publishers have yet to show they’ve been harmed by IA’s digital lending.

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The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.