Judge Requires Jury Trial in Westlaw's AI Suit Against Thomson Reuters

A jury must decide the outcome of a lawsuit by information services company Thomson Reuters accusing Ross Intelligence of unlawfully copying content from its legal-research platform Westlaw to train a competing artificial intelligence-based platform, a Delaware federal judge said. The decision by U.S. Circuit Judge Stephanos Bibas sets the stage for what could be one of the first trials related to the unauthorized use of data to train AI systems. Tech companies including Meta Platforms, Stability AI and Microsoft-backed OpenAI are also facing lawsuits from authors, visual artists and other copyright owners over the use of their work to train the companies' generative AI software.

FTC, 17 States File Antitrust Lawsuit Against Amazon Over Prices, Fees

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states accused Amazon of illegally protecting a monopoly over swaths of online retail by squeezing merchants and favoring its own services, in the government’s most significant challenge to the power of the e-commerce giant and one that could alter the way Americans shop online for everything from toilet paper to electronics. In a highly anticipated lawsuit, the FTC and state attorneys general from New York and other states said that Amazon had stopped merchants on its platform from offering lower prices elsewhere and forced them to ship products with its logistics service if they wanted to be offered as part of its Prime subscription bundle.

Egyptian Opposition Politician Targeted by Predator Spyware on iPhone

A prominent Egyptian opposition politician who plans to challenge President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi in elections expected early next year was targeted with a previously unknown “zero-day” attack in an effort to infect his phone with Predator spyware, according to new research by Google and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab. The discovery of the valuable zero-day exploit, designed to install Predator on iPhones running even the most up-to-date operating system, prompted Apple to push a security update to users.

Popular Novelists Join Authors Guild's Lawsuit Against OpenAI's ChatGPT

Some of the world’s best-known novelists banded together to sue ChatGPT maker OpenAI for using their work to train its artificial intelligence tools, adding their efforts to the growing group of artists, musicians and writers trying to stop tech companies from benefiting from their work without paying for it. Blockbuster writers such as George R.R. Martin, Jodi Picoult, Jonathan Franzen and George Saunders have signed on to the lawsuit, which is being led by the Authors Guild, a group that lobbies on behalf of writers.

MGM Resorts 'Back to Normal' as It Recovers from Cyberattack After 10 Days

MGM Resorts brought to an end a 10-day computer shutdown prompted by efforts to shield from a cyberattack data including hotel reservations and credit card processing, the casino giant said Wednesday, as analysts and academics measured the effects of the event. Details about the extent of the MGM breach were not immediately disclosed, including the kind of information that may have been compromised and how much it cost the company.

DOJ Removes Public Access to Google Documents in Antitrust Trial

The U.S. Department of Justice has removed public access to emails, charts and internal presentations from Alphabet Inc.’s Google that had come out as evidence in its landmark antitrust lawsuit against the tech titan. Google had challenged the government’s posting of the documents online, and the court was sympathetic to its concerns. The result: a trial much more difficult for the public to follow than the similarly monumental and widely watched antitrust case against Microsoft Corp. in the 1990s.

Judge Blocks California's Online Child Protection Law, Citing First Amendment

A federal judge temporarily blocked an online child protection law in California and said it probably violates the Constitution. Under the law, known as the California Age-Appropriate Design Code, digital platforms would have to vet their products before public release to see whether those offerings could harm kids and teens.

Britain Passes Online Safety Bill with Age Verifications, Hate Speech Rules

Britain passed a sweeping law to regulate online content, introducing age-verification requirements for pornography sites and other rules to reduce hate speech, harassment and other illicit material. The Online Safety Bill, which also applies to terrorist propaganda, online fraud and child safety, is one of the most far-reaching attempts by a Western democracy to regulate online speech.

British Interior Minister Urges Meta to Work on Safety Issues in Encryption

British interior minister Suella Braverman said she wanted to work constructively with Facebook-owner Meta over the issue of end-to-end encryption on Instagram and Facebook Messenger and the danger it could pose to children. The government has urged Meta not to roll out encryption on those two platforms without safety measures to protect children from sexual abuse.

Microsoft Accidentally Discloses Sensitive Xbox Files Online in FTC Case

A huge collection of purported Xbox files related to the Federal Trade Commission’s case against Microsoft have been published online, spilling some of the company's plans for the gaming console into public view. Douglas Farrar, director of the FTC's office of public affairs, told NBC News that "Microsoft was responsible for the error in uploading these documents to the court."

TikTok Fined $370 Million for Violating Child Privacy Laws in Europe

TikTok has been fined 345 million euros ($370 million) for breaching privacy laws regarding the processing of children's personal data in the European Union, its lead regulator in the bloc said. The Chinese-owned short-video platform, which has grown rapidly among teenagers around the world in recent years, breached a number of EU privacy laws between July 31, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020, Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner (DPC) said in a statement.

X Complies with German Requests to Provide User Info in Hate-Speech Cases

In Germany, X under Elon Musk’s ownership is complying with requests to turn over more information about its users to prosecutors in online hate-crime investigations. The country has strict hate-speech laws forbidding certain defamation of politicians and promotion of white supremacy, and the company under Musk has turned over reams of user data to prosecutors to help identify those who break the law, according to three prosecutor offices who spoke with The Washington Post. As a result, hundreds of new cases are being pursued, they said.

At Antitrust Trial, Justice Department Says Google Sought Defaults on Mobile

The Justice Department used its first full day of questioning in its antitrust trial against Google to establish that the Internet giant had long sought agreements to be the default search engine on mobile devices, which the government argues were used to illegally maintain the company’s hold over online search. Google responded by highlighting evidence suggesting that companies that signed those agreements — including smartphone makers, browser developers and wireless carriers — did so partly because its search product was better.

White House Watching China's Limits on iPhones 'With Concern'

The White House said it believes China’s moves to institute and expand a government ban on iPhones is an attempt to retaliate against the U.S. as it weighed in for the first time on the backlash against Apple Inc. “We’re watching this with concern, clearly. It seems to be of a piece — of the kinds of aggressive and inappropriate retaliation to U.S. companies that we’ve seen from the PRC in the past. That’s what this appears to be,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

On Capitol Hill, Tech Leaders Agree on Need for AI Rules, Disagree on Details

Some of the most powerful tech leaders in the world — including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg — traveled to Capitol Hill for a meeting on artificial intelligence, where they expressed unanimous agreement that the government needs to intervene to avert the potential pitfalls of the evolving technology. But as the six-hour session wore on, there was little apparent consensus about what a congressional framework should look like to govern AI, as companies forge ahead amid a tense industry arms race.

U.S. Trademark Office Approves Law Firm's Application to Register "#LAW"

Plaintiffs' law firm Morgan & Morgan has agreed to end a lawsuit against the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after making progress in its bid to register the trademark "#LAW," the two sides said in Florida federal court filing. The filing said the PTO would approve Morgan & Morgan's application after receiving new supporting evidence from the firm.

Musk Violated Government Restrictions on Twitter's Data Security, DOJ Says

Elon Musk repeatedly made decisions after his takeover of Twitter that likely ran afoul of a 2022 government order imposing sweeping restrictions on the company’s data security and privacy practices, according to a court filing, part of an ongoing legal battle that could lead to fines and new stipulations for the social network’s business practices. In the legal filing, the Justice Department published previously confidential evidence from the Federal Trade Commission’s probe into the social network, including detailed excerpts of depositions with former executives about ways Musk’s directives and efforts to cut costs ran afoul of the company’s security and privacy practices.

Writers Seek Class-Action Status for Lawsuit Against Meta Over AI

Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon and Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang are among a group of writers that filed a class action lawsuit against Meta in San Francisco federal court for having “copied and ingested” their works to train its LLaMA AI platform. Plaintiffs also including authors Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise and Ayelet Waldman are seeking class action status for the suit, which says their copyrighted books appear in the dataset that Meta has admitted to using to train LLaMA.

Prominent Russian Journalist's iPhone Infected with Pegasus Spyware

The iPhone of a prominent Russian journalist whose news outlet has effectively been outlawed by President Vladimir Putin was infected with Pegasus spyware this year, researchers say, in the first known case of the powerful eavesdropping tool being used against a significant Russian target. The spyware appears to have been installed while the phone’s owner, Galina Timchenko, owner of the news outlet Meduza, was in Germany for a meeting with other Russian journalists in February — raising questions about who hacked her phone while in a Western democracy.

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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.