Sydney Morning Herald: Google and Facebook face fines and algorithm transparency under new code. “Google and Facebook will have three months to agree to revenue-sharing deals with Australian media companies before independent arbitrators intervene under a new landmark code designed to tackle the market power amassed by the US tech giants. Draft laws unveiled by the Morrison government and competition watchdog on Friday will impose a raft of conditions on the digital platforms, forcing them to compensate news media businesses for using their content and be more transparent about their data and algorithms.”
legal
The Verge: Alleged Twitter teen hacker’s hearing got zoombombed big time
The Verge: Alleged Twitter teen hacker’s hearing got zoombombed big time. “Judge Christopher Nash spent more time rapidly force-ejecting trolls than he did delivering his decision — which, by the way, was to keep Clark’s bail at $725,000, over six times the $117,000 in bitcoin he’s said to have gotten from the Twitter scam. While the judge did have to approve each attendee that joined, there was no way for him to tell from their usernames that they weren’t journalists or well-meaning members of the public, and he explained that Florida is supposed to allow them to attend.”
Jurist: Libraries Are Not a Crime
Jurist: Libraries Are Not a Crime. “There is nothing wrong with being a landlord, and there is nothing wrong with collecting rent. But there is nothing particularly special or morally compelling about it, either. If copyright owners want to complain about the [National Emergency Library], let them do it as landlords, and let us see their arguments as landlord arguments. After all, unlike real landlords, they aren’t even objecting to the loss of actual income on a property they are maintaining. Literary landlords object to the possibility they might not collect every possible rent on a literary property they created or purchased long ago. Maybe we should feel sorry for them? I will confess, my sympathy is limited.”
USA Today: Did you use Google+? You may be owed some money from class-action privacy settlement
USA Today: Did you use Google+? You may be owed some money from class-action privacy settlement. “If you used Google+, the now-defunct social network started by Google to take on Facebook, you may be eligible for a small piece of a court-mandated $7.5 million privacy settlement. However, before you get excited, know that all it’s worth to you is anywhere from $5 to $12. You’ll have to file for your piece, and in return, get a free, cheap lunch, or maybe a cup of coffee.”
Knight First Amendment Institute: Knight Institute Sues President for Continuing to Block Twitter Critics
Knight First Amendment Institute: Knight Institute Sues President for Continuing to Block Twitter Critics. “The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University today filed a lawsuit against President Trump and his staff for continuing to block critics from the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account. The legal action was filed on behalf of five individuals who remain blocked two years after a federal court held—in an earlier case brought by the Knight Institute—that the president’s Twitter account is a public forum and the president violated the First Amendment by blocking people on the basis of viewpoint.”
Reuters: Levandowski gets 18 months in prison for stealing Google files
Reuters: Levandowski gets 18 months in prison for stealing Google files. “A U.S. judge on Tuesday sentenced former Google engineer Anthony Levandowski to 18 months in prison for stealing a trade secret from Google related to self-driving cars months before becoming the head of Uber Technologies Inc’s (UBER.N) rival unit.”
Bloomberg Law: Zoom Courts Will Stick Around as Virus Forces Seismic Change
Bloomberg Law: Zoom Courts Will Stick Around as Virus Forces Seismic Change. “Virtual court proceedings will probably outlive the Covid-19 pandemic, as even skeptical judges and lawyers say that they’ve made depositions, oral arguments, and jury selection much more efficient. Courts forced to accelerate years of innovation into weeks may never go back to how they did business before the pandemic, according to interviews with more than 30 state and federal judges, lawyers and court staff in 16 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. The embrace of technology is a revolution for many courts that have historically resisted it.”
New York Times: Turkey Passes Law Extending Sweeping Powers Over Social Media
New York Times: Turkey Passes Law Extending Sweeping Powers Over Social Media. “Turkish lawmakers passed legislation on Wednesday that would give the government sweeping new powers to regulate social media content, raising concerns that one of the few remaining spaces for free public debate in the country could fall under greater government control.”
Mashable: TikTok sued by rival video app Triller over patent dispute
Mashable: TikTok sued by rival video app Triller over patent dispute. “Triller, a shortform viral video app similar to TikTok, is now suing its more popular competitor. The company alleges that TikTok has stolen one of the app’s proprietary features. The lawsuit claims that TikTok infringed on Triller’s patent for ‘systems and methods for creating music videos synchronized with an audio track.’ More specifically the patented feature allows users to stitch together multiple videos with a single audio track attacked. Triller was granted the patent back in 2017.”
CPO Magazine: Illinois Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Facial Recognition Databases Violate Biometric Privacy Law, Could Cost Tech Giants $5,000 Per Incident
CPO Magazine: Illinois Class Action Lawsuit Alleges Facial Recognition Databases Violate Biometric Privacy Law, Could Cost Tech Giants $5,000 Per Incident. “The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) made national news recently when it drove Clearview AI out of the state, due to a pending lawsuit over the company’s scraping of social media pictures and videos for its facial recognition database. It may now be a problem for some of tech’s biggest names as well. A new biometric privacy lawsuit has emerged that names Amazon, Google parent company Alphabet and Microsoft as violators of the state law as well.”
The Verge: US files expanded charges against former Twitter employees accused of espionage
The Verge: US files expanded charges against former Twitter employees accused of espionage. This is NOT the recent big hack; it’s from before. “The US has filed new and expanded charges against two former Twitter employees and a third individual for allegedly spying on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia. The three men have now been charged with acting as agents of a foreign government, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud. One individual, former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo, was also charged with three counts of money laundering and falsification of records to obstruct the investigation.”
Mashable: Facebook sued by news media outlet over ‘Russia state-controlled’ label
Mashable: Facebook sued by news media outlet over ‘Russia state-controlled’ label. “Maffick LLC has filed a lawsuit against Facebook over the foreign-controlled label that the social media giant puts on all of its pages and posts. Maffick runs popular Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts for online news media outlets such as In the NOW, Waste-Ed, and Soapbox. You’ve probably come across Maffick’s Facebook page for ‘In the NOW.’ With nearly 5 million followers on the social media platform, In the NOW’s video content is regularly shared on Facebook.”
The Hill: Georgia governor withdraws request for emergency hearing to block Atlanta mask order
The Hill: Georgia governor withdraws request for emergency hearing to block Atlanta mask order. “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) withdrew a request for an emergency hearing in a lawsuit that aims to block his state’s largest city from ordering people to wear masks in public or imposing other pandemic-related restrictions. Kemp spokesperson Cody Hall told The Hill Tuesday morning that the governor was heartened by Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’s (D) recent decision to impose economic restrictions on restaurants on a voluntary basis.”
Techdirt: Patent Troll Gets Court To Order Startup It Sued To ‘Edit’ Blog Post; Troll Now Asks Startup To Get Us To Change Our Techdirt Post
Techdirt: Patent Troll Gets Court To Order Startup It Sued To ‘Edit’ Blog Post; Troll Now Asks Startup To Get Us To Change Our Techdirt Post. “So, first off, I don’t see how this is possibly allowed under the 1st Amendment. Directly ordering a company to edit a blog post to remove a request to share the blog post on social media seems like a fairly blatant infringement of the 1st Amendment. A company should certainly have the right to notify its community that it is in the middle of a costly legal battle (one that it believes is frivolous), and part of getting people to understand how serious it is is asking for that information to be shared.”
Motherboard: Internet Archives Fires Back in Lawsuit Over Covid-19 Emergency Library
Motherboard: Internet Archives Fires Back in Lawsuit Over Covid-19 Emergency Library. “In a brief filed in a New York district court on Tuesday night, the Internet Archive fired back in response to a lawsuit brought against it by five of the world’s largest publishers. The lawsuit seeks to shut down an online National Emergency Library started by the Internet Archive during the Covid-19 pandemic and levy millions of dollars in fines against the organization.”
