Law · dan.heskett

2026 138 posts

October 2026 40 posts

Cybersecurity CEO Indicted for Allegedly Scamming Millions From Ransomware Victims propublica.org · “In one example, Pinhasi made a ransom payment of about $8,200 but charged the client about $150,000.”
Oct 28
French Court's Site-Blocking Orders Drive Quad9 Out Of France eff.org · “Quad9 says it is facing about 20 other lawsuits in France seeking similar blocking orders.”
Oct 27
Judge Allows Google, Yahoo and Microsoft Subpoenas to Identify Gay-Torrents Users torrentfreak.com · “FlavaWorks can also request the most recent IP address that was used to access each account, covering the period from January 2025 onward.”
Oct 27
Streamed, the Live Sports Engine Behind Many Pirate Sites, Shuts Down torrentfreak.com · “None of the sites Streamed services host live content themselves; all traffic flows through Streamed as the PaaS”
Oct 27
Anti-Circumvention Laws Raise the Cost of Knowledge eff.org · “Without tools that can look at the web at scale, many kinds of research are simply impossible today.”
Oct 27
Meta Pitches AI Sports Piracy Detector in Notorious Markets Rebuttal torrentfreak.com · “Based on the prediction results, we can proactively remove this content in real time, before it gains a significant audience, and without a rights holder ever having to intervene.”
Oct 26
Framing the News: Anti-Piracy Press Release Turned a 2016 Raid Into a 2026 Story torrentfreak.com · “After some digging, we can now confirm that this case isn’t recent at all.”
Oct 25
DNS Resolver Quad9 Will Leave France After Court Orders Piracy Blocking Penalty torrentfreak.com · “Quad9, however, hasn’t blocked a single domain, as it also confirmed in a statement submitted to the court.”
Oct 23
Two States Can Now Restrict Social Media Access. Here's What To Do Next eff.org · “But people in Georgia and Florida can no longer count on court injunctions to protect their access to the web.”
Oct 23
Adversarial interoperability is a team sport pluralistic.net · “But the real, meaty examples of enshittification can’t be addressed on an individual level – they require systemic fixes.”
Oct 22
Victory! Court Rules OPM Data Disclosure to DOGE Is Unlawful eff.org · “However, OPM should still clean up the cybersecurity mess it created.”
Oct 20
AI Firms Should Answer For What Their Models Say, On The Same Terms As Everyone Else techdirt.com · “A chatbot does not “intend” to do anything, even if it talks as though it does.”
Oct 20
'We Didn't Do This Perfectly': American Fork Police Chief's Understatement Now Anchors A Civil Rights Lawsuit By Reckless Ben's Helpers techdirt.com · “There seemed to be a pervasive belief among the AFPD that they could effectively scare the young people straight by detaining and threatening them, which is not how policing is supposed to work.”
Oct 20
Judge Orders Meta to Name Employees Who Approved Torrenting Anna's Archive and LibGen torrentfreak.com · “The interrogatory asks about all decisionmakers, so if a decision was made by a team, everyone involved has to be named.”
Oct 20
He Waited Nine Years in Prison for His Lawyer to File a Single Brief. In This State, There's No Rule Against It. propublica.org · “O’Neal is still fighting his case, now with a new court-appointed lawyer.”
Oct 20
Chinese Court Jails Aiyifan Operator, U.S. Judge Won't Transfer Pirate Site's Domains torrentfreak.com · “Aiyifan never appeared in court, and none of its operators were named as defendants.”
Oct 20
Sling TV Drops Innovative Streaming 'Day Passes' After Disney, Warner Bros Sued techdirt.com · “It’s an unfortunate end to a rare bit of actual industry creativity.”
Oct 19
Court Approves 'voices38' Subpoenas After Denuvo Drops Payment and Login Data Requests torrentfreak.com · “Denuvo argued that IP addresses may be its only reliable route to the defendant, since platforms collect little verified information at sign-up.”
Oct 19
We're Asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to End Warrantless ALPR Searches eff.org · “Law enforcement entities throughout Wisconsin collect, store, share, and aggregate this ALPR data.”
Oct 18
As Federal Court Rules ALPRs are Mass Surveillance, EFF Gets Disappointing Ruling eff.org · “Networked ALPRs are not individual streetlight cameras.”
Oct 18
RIAA Flags Anna's Archive and AI Voice Cloner to U.S. Government torrentfreak.com · “The annual review doesn’t make any legal findings.”
Oct 18
VPNs and Cloudflare Escape beIN's €10,000-a-Day Piracy Blocking Penalties torrentfreak.com · “the intermediaries must make a reasonable effort to block the sites, but they don’t have to guarantee the outcome”
Oct 17
Game Industry Asks U.S. to Flag Denuvo Cracker 'voices38' as Notorious Piracy Threat torrentfreak.com · “Each crack therefore unlocks an entire downstream market for an unauthorized copy of that title.”
Oct 13
How labor rights rescued Ultima from a monopolist pluralistic.net · “EA killed off Ultima in 2000, and it has languished since, despite an ardent fandom.”
Oct 13
Alabama's TikTok Settlement Comes With An Affiliate Program For Getting Other AGs To Go After TikTok techdirt.com · “The agreement sets up multiple “funds” that are wholly dependent on other state AGs coming to similar settlements.”
Oct 11
Colorado Woman Sues Flock After Cameras Used in False Package Theft Accusation gizmodo.com · “The scariest part is what happened to me can happen to anyone.”
Oct 10
Pirate Streaming Portal Series.ly Has Domain Suspended, Rebrand Surfaces torrentfreak.com · “Our position is that complaints about those video files should be directed at the services that host or distribute them,”
Oct 10
Ransomware recovery CEO charged over secret ransom payments bleepingcomputer.com · “MonsterCloud allegedly charged customers far more than the ransoms it paid.”
Oct 10
Denuvo Asks Court to Unmask Game Cracker 'voices38', Reveals Crypto Transactions torrentfreak.com · “For now, Denuvo does not know who it is suing.”
Oct 10
Pirate App MovieBox Passes 300 Million Downloads as Rightsholders Alert EU torrentfreak.com · “MovieBox has been closely linked to the Transsion / Transsnet ecosystem.”
Oct 9
Site-Blocking Will Not Defend IP, No Matter the Bill's Name eff.org · “It is about making an entire website inaccessible for everyone trying to visit it.”
Oct 9
Cloudflare Keeps 1.1.1.1 Out of Piracy Blocking, Escapes Penalties in France torrentfreak.com · “To date, Cloudflare has not blocked content through the 1.1.1.1 Public DNS Resolver.”
Oct 9
Warner/Chappell Sinks Lindsay Ellis' Two-Hour Cruise Video Over A Few Seconds Of Karaoke techdirt.com · “That is… not how any of this is supposed to work.”
Oct 5
Congress Has Another Site-Blocking Bill, And This One Targets VPNs eff.org · “The decision to label a website as a ‘foreign piracy site’ can happen without the accused site even showing up in court to defend itself.”
Oct 5
DNS Resolver Quad9 Rejects French Piracy Blocks, Weighs Exit as beIN Seeks Up to €580K a Day torrentfreak.com · “If the court grants beIN’s request, Quad9 will have to take action to avoid millions of euros in fines per week.”
Oct 5
Court Agrees with EFF: Utah's VPN Law Demands a Technical Impossibility eff.org · “Aylo is correct that the statute, as amended, now essentially imposes strict liability for entities like it when it comes to determining the location of its websites’ users.”
Oct 2
Alleged Kemo IPTV Operator Faces Criminal Prosecution in Dubai Following ACE Complaint torrentfreak.com · “These companies are all members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) and, when we asked, the anti-piracy coalition confirmed its involvement.”
Oct 2
Utah man sues Candace Owens, alleging false links to Charlie Kirk assassination kutv.com · “The documented presence in the crowd at the precise moment the stairwell photographs were taken rendered it physically impossible for Hild to be the individual depicted.”
Oct 2
Victory! California Appeals Court Refuses to Revive Surveillance Tech CEO's Meritless Lawsuit Against Journalist eff.org · “The First Amendment protects Poulson’s publications.”
Oct 1
LaLiga Wants Major VPNs on EU Piracy Watch List Over Affiliate Marketing torrentfreak.com · “This request is based not on the provision of VPN services as such, but on the commercial exploitation and active promotion of their ability to circumvent court-ordered blocking measures.”
Oct 1

September 2026 31 posts

IFPI Wants Open Source YouTube Downloader yt-dlp on EU Piracy Watch List torrentfreak.com · “Its open-source nature, extensive developer community and its widespread distribution results in the tool being difficult to contain and/or remove.”
Sep 29
Florida Invokes Extinction Fears in Legal Bid To Halt OpenAI Development yro.slashdot.org · “It is only by the grace of the Almighty that one of Defendants’ AI agents hasn’t compromised a water supply or shut down a power grid – yet.”
Sep 29
Apple owes Taction $5.7B after losing haptic feedback IP trial appleinsider.com · “Apple does not use Taction’s technology, and we will appeal.”
Sep 28
Unified U.S. Site Blocking Bill Targets ISPs and DNS Resolvers But Spares VPNs torrentfreak.com · “The bill’s definition of a service provider explicitly excludes ‘an entity that exclusively provides virtual private network services or similar service that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers.’”
Sep 28
Nintendo Wins $4.5 Million Judgment Against r/SwitchPirates Mod 'Archbox' torrentfreak.com · “Williams’ egregious infringement activities merit substantial punishment here.”
Sep 25
Pirate Site Must Face Chinese Streaming Giant Tencent in U.S. Court, Judge Rules torrentfreak.com · “Olevod’s websites include full-length copies of Tencent content, including the Tencent Exclusive Shows.”
Sep 24
U.S. Site Blocking Bill Adds VPNs to the List of Blocking Intermediaries torrentfreak.com · “The term ‘service provider’ includes providers of broadband internet access services, providers of domain name resolution services, and virtual private networks, but excludes root nameserver operators and top level domain registries.”
Sep 22
California AG Rob Bonta Caves, Paramount Merger To Proceed With Flimsy Conditions techdirt.com · “These minor concessions are largely unenforceable behavioral remedies that Bonta had previously denounced, and in some cases promise less than the two companies are already doing.”
Sep 22
D.C. Circuit Must Vacate a Drone Flight Restriction That Criminalized Recording Immigration Agents eff.org · “The FAA issued a flight restriction for drones that had effectively criminalized the recording of Department of Homeland Security officers, including immigration agents from ICE and CBP.”
Sep 22
Accused Impostor in Private Tracker Lawsuit Driven by Revenge, Defense Says torrentfreak.com · “Any sanctions award would be uncollectible unless the court first establishes who the plaintiff actually is.”
Sep 18
Court Upholds Belgian Pirate DNS Blocking Order, OpenDNS Exit Looms torrentfreak.com · “Imposing a blocking measure on the main alternative DNS resolution service providers helps strengthen the effectiveness of the blocking injunction imposed on ISPs.”
Sep 17
Victory! Appeals Court Rejects Expansive New Copyright Claim eff.org · “Removing copyright information from a copyrighted work is fundamentally different from creating a new work that didn’t have CMI in the first place.”
Sep 17
Data Broker Radaris Loses Domains in Privacy Fight krebsonsecurity.com · “They won by attrition. Plaintiffs’ attorneys tired of procedural games and gave up.”
Sep 16
Victory: Court, Using a New Test, Rules Embedding Links is Legal eff.org · “A website cannot transmit a work that it does not have.”
Sep 16
Denuvo Sues Game Cracker 'voices38' for Bypassing its Anti-Tamper DRM torrentfreak.com · “Defendant has bypassed DRM restrictions in copyrighted works, removing protections that allow copyright owners to restrict who may access their works, and allowing for pirated versions of those copyrighted works.”
Sep 16
Rep. Issa Files Competing U.S. Pirate Site Blocking Bill torrentfreak.com · “a third party whose site was wrongly blocked as the result of a rightsholder’s error could claim up to $250,000 in compensation.”
Sep 15
Negativland, Culture Jamming, and the Art of Making Something New blog.archive.org · “The thread that goes through all of our work is that we are always responding to and describing American culture.”
Sep 15
Rightsholders Can't Use OpenAI and Anthropic to Dismantle Meta's Seeding Defense torrentfreak.com · “If OpenAI torrented but configured its clients to suppress uploading, then the redistribution Meta calls an ‘inherent characteristic’ of the protocol was a setting Meta declined to change.”
Sep 15
Pirate IPTV Operators Face $32.7 Million Judgment and Self-Expanding Blocking Injunction torrentfreak.com · “Plaintiffs may, without further leave of Court, supplement the caption of this action to add as John Doe Defendants any person or entity discovered to be engaged in any of the conduct prohibited by this Order.”
Sep 10
Judge: Losing Your First Amendment Rights Is No Longer "Irreparable" If You Take Almost Three Months To Sue techdirt.com · “It has long been recognized that delay in seeking relief vitiates much of the force of allegations of irreparable harm.”
Sep 10
Private Torrent Tracker Lawsuit Takes Bizarre Turn: 'I'm a Different Matthew Schneider' torrentfreak.com · “The existence of another person with the same or similar name is not evidence of impersonation.”
Sep 9
Meta's $17 Billion Settlement is a Bad Deal for Teens and All Social Media Users eff.org · “Rather than pushing Meta away from the collection, analysis, and retention of user data, the Settlement requires Meta to do more of it for the next ten years.”
Sep 8
Grindr pays £26M to settle UK privacy class action theregister.com · “While Grindr disputes the allegations, it recognizes and acknowledges the distress and loss of trust expressed by some of its UK users regarding that pre-2020 period.”
Sep 8
Stray Kids Label Hits Music Distributor With DMCA Subpoena Over Bootleg Track torrentfreak.com · “If the infringing content is not taken down promptly, we will have no choice but to pursue legal action to protect our copyrighted material.”
Sep 8
OpenAI's ChatGPT Was Built on Concealed 'Mass Piracy', Authors Tell Court torrentfreak.com · “OpenAI did not even buy the books it used. Instead, it began by torrenting books from the notorious and illegal pirate library Library Genesis.”
Sep 7
Court Rules Against Citizen Journalists in DMCA Takedown Case. EFF Will Appeal eff.org · Section 512(f) does not require “a perfect or even reasonable fair use analysis.”
Sep 7
Some Parents Are Treating Suing Social Media As A Get Rich Quick Scheme techdirt.com · “My dad Said that I’m will get a settlement worth of 1million dollar…He said that If that doesn’t make me happy what does.”
Sep 7
Judge Rules DOD Unlawfully Retaliated Against Anthropic eff.org · The Department of Defense’s “supply chain risk” designation of Anthropic “constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment.”
Sep 6
Google defeats US bid to force ad tech sale engadget.com · “We’re very pleased the Court rejected the DOJ’s proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow.”
Sep 6
Take-Two Says GTA 6 Leak Probe Is "Rapidly Evolving," Wants New Discord Demands Under Seal torrentfreak.com · “Public disclosure of this information could compromise Take-Two’s ongoing investigation and even tip off the alleged infringers as to the nature and progress of Take-Two’s investigation.”
Sep 6
'A Cute Little LibGen Babysitter': Music Publishers Sue AI Founders Over Torrenting Spree torrentfreak.com · “Dr. Amodei admitted that Anthropic ‘ha[d] many places from which’ it could have legally purchased these copyrighted works for training, but instead torrented them because doing so was faster and free.”
Sep 2

August 2026 25 posts

Belgian Orders Demand Pirate Site Operators' Bank Details, Crypto Wallets and Server Logs torrentfreak.com · “The intermediaries are not allowed to disclose the information-seeking request to their customers or any third parties, including the press.”
Aug 29
Idaho Law Protects Faith Healers. It Wasn't Always That Way. propublica.org · “From at least the 1880s through the early 1970s, it was illegal for parents in Idaho to choose prayer over medical care when a child’s life was at stake”
Aug 29
Two Alleged 'TeamPCP' Hackers Arrested in Australia krebsonsecurity.com · “The hackers gain access to a network where an open source tool commonly used by coders is being developed”
Aug 29
All public nitter instances do not work github.com · “We have received cease and desist letters. Awaiting legal advice at the moment, but for now expect all nitter instances to remain down for the foreseeable future.”
Aug 25
FlavaWorks Targets 75 Members of Gay-Torrents Tracker With RICO Lawsuit torrentfreak.com · “On information and belief, the enterprise generated in excess of €7,000,000 since 2009 across more than 15,000 documented VIP payment events”
Aug 25
Intermediary Liability in Brazil: The Intricate Path Ahead eff.org · “The Supreme Court’s decision didn’t establish guidelines to protect users’ due process rights when facing content take down and removal demands.”
Aug 25
Anna's Archive Owes $340 Million, Lost Several Domains, but It's Still Online torrentfreak.com · “U.S. courts can’t reach domains registered beyond their jurisdiction.”
Aug 24
Nvidia manager among nine indicted over China chip sales taiwanplus.com · “Prosecutors in Taiwan have indicted nine people for smuggling high-end AI chips to China.”
Aug 24
Ninth Circuit Ruling Will Force Online Platforms That Host User Speech to Fight Lengthy and Costly Lawsuits Before They Are Dismissed Under Section 230 eff.org · “If platforms know they will have to defend themselves for years in court before they can benefit from Section 230 immunity, this creates a perverse incentive to censor user speech.”
Aug 24
Take-Two Expands GTA 6 Leak Hunt With DMCA Subpoenas to X and YouTube torrentfreak.com · “Take-Two also seeks ‘all identifying information associated with all user accounts that are/were members of the Discord community servers.’”
Aug 24
Nintendo Wipes Out 400+ Switch Emulator Repos in Single-Day GitHub Sweep torrentfreak.com · “In the seven notices, more than 400 repositories were targeted.”
Aug 21
Grand jury declines to indict Ohio man charged with destroying Flock camera san.com · “Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000.”
Aug 21
A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier retractionwatch.com · “A trial date has been set in a $1 billion defamation case against Elsevier that alleges the company published what plaintiffs say was a manipulated study about an air purifying technology over objections from peer reviewers.”
Aug 21
Aaron Swartz was prosecuted for scraping, while Meta does it without consequence blog.curiousquail.com · “Swartz’ use case was the dissemination and archival of knowledge; Meta’s use case is powering up their proprietary plagiarism code.”
Aug 20
A German Court Drew the Piracy Line at 81.5%, KinoGO Was Blocked with (at least) 82.4% torrentfreak.com · “The illegal content on the websites far outweighs the legal content. This is the case in any event when at least 81.5% of the website’s content is illegal.”
Aug 18
Ninth Circuit Rewrites Section 230 To Remove The Part That Actually Mattered techdirt.com · “The latest comes from the Ninth Circuit, which ruled earlier this week that Section 230 is not, in fact, an immunity from lawsuit, but merely a defense against liability.”
Aug 12
Japanese Police Arrest NYAA 'First Uploader,' But Not by Watching the Swarm torrentfreak.com · “The tool does not analyse activity within the BitTorrent swarm itself. Instead, it analyses how data moves through torrent sites, such as index sites and tracker sites.”
Aug 11
Paris Court Kicks Off New Football Season with Multi-Intermediary Piracy Blocking Orders torrentfreak.com · “The court stressed that, even though an intermediary may act passively and neutrally, it can still be an essential link in transferring infringing data.”
Aug 11
Dismiss Church's Trademark Lawsuit Against 'Mormon Stories' Podcast, EFF Urges Court eff.org · “Trademark is supposed to be about helping consumers identify the sources of the products they buy, not controlling criticism.”
Aug 11
EU Study: Block Live Sports Piracy in 30 Minutes, Across DNS Resolvers, VPNs and CDNs torrentfreak.com · “It would likewise be desirable for the personal scope of application to extend to the entire chain of intermediaries technically involved in the distribution of unauthorised content, including providers of content delivery networks, VPN services, dedicated servers and DNS resolution systems.”
Aug 11
Another Federal Judge Says Cell Tower Dumps Are Unconstitutional techdirt.com · “The Government is essentially asking the Court to allow it access to an entire haystack because it may contain a needle.”
Aug 7
Broadcaster Wins Broad U.S. Blocking Injunction Covering Pirate Sites That Don't Exist Yet torrentfreak.com · “Plaintiffs may supplement Schedule A by filing a verified declaration identifying additional infringing services, IP addresses, domains, applications, or platforms, which supplementation shall take effect immediately upon filing and service.”
Aug 7
Appeals Court Agrees with EFF that Building a Web Browser Doesn't Violate the CFAA eff.org · The court held that the Assistant “is a tool, not a person for statutory purposes.”
Aug 7
Canadian Man Pleads Guilty in Snowflake Extortions krebsonsecurity.com · “Moucka used the stolen data of a government officer and members of a then-former government officer’s immediate family in this re-extortion attempt.”
Aug 7
World Cup Piracy Crackdown Shows Limits of Domain Seizures, MPA Pushes Site Blocking torrentfreak.com · “A takedown is essential, and it can interrupt access for a moment. But it does not dismantle the business behind it.”
Aug 1

July 2026 25 posts

EFF Guide to Recording Law Enforcement eff.org · “Officers exercising their official duties, particularly in public, do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Jul 31
Better to beg forgiveness pluralistic.net · “There is a whole universe of uses that might technically violate copyright, might technically not fit into di minimis, first sale or fair use – but these are also uses that no one would ever find out.”
Jul 31
John Oliver Dares Buc-ee's To Sue Him Over Trademark Infringement techdirt.com · “Oliver accused the chain of ‘outright bullying,’ noting that most of the stores have changed their logos because they do not have the resources to fight the Texas giant”
Jul 31
The Worst Person You Know Just Filed A Good First Amendment Lawsuit Against A Very Badly Drafted Nudify App Ban techdirt.com · “HF 1606 punishes AI platforms that allow users to alter images of real people to depict an ‘intimate part.’ But the statute contains no knowledge, intent, or purpose requirement.”
Jul 31
Vietnam Uses HiAnime Arrests As Defense Against U.S. Trade Sanctions torrentfreak.com · “on 1 July 2026, the Ministry of Public Security initiated criminal proceedings […] against 07 suspects”
Jul 31
Netflix Sued For Losing 'Master Copy' of Unreleased Nicolas Cage Movie cbsnews.com · “Someone stole a good amount of drives from our office desks this past week”
Jul 31
Jailed Flock vandal wipes out three cameras, racks up thousands in damages theregister.com · “less than 1 percent of the cars scanned are connected to crime, yet they still have details added to a database, such as vehicle manufacturer, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and scratches.”
Jul 30
HBO's Blocking Order Takes Out Popular Pirate Streaming Domains Including Streamzy.to torrentfreak.com · “This is, therefore, not a case of incidental infringement, but one where the primary purpose of the websites appears to be to facilitate infringement of the plaintiffs’ copyright”
Jul 30
Farmers Are Getting Control Of Their Equipment Back eff.org · “If you can’t fix it, you don’t own it.”
Jul 29
Court Shuts Down Federal Officers Who Wanted To Run A Stingray Device For A Month Straight techdirt.com · “The Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement bars this sort of ‘rummaging’ through the proverbial home.”
Jul 29
France Approves Automated, Real-Time Blocking of Pirate Sports Streams torrentfreak.com · “The French Parliament has handed ARCOM, the country’s audiovisual and digital regulator, the power to block pirate sports streams in real time without checking each targeted piracy source manually.”
Jul 28
Protester Charged With Destroying Property After Giving CBP Agents His GrapheneOS 'Duress' Mode Passcode techdirt.com · “GrapheneOS provides users with the ability to set a duress PIN/Password that will irreversibly wipe the device once entered anywhere where the device credentials are requested.”
Jul 27
Judge Rejects Google's Attempt To DMCA Its Way Out Of Being Scraped techdirt.com · “Because the DMCA does not apply where the work controlled by a technological measure is not protected under the Copyright Act, Google’s claims under 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A) and 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2) are subject to dismissal as a matter of law.”
Jul 27
Copyright Scammers Weaponized Meta's Rights Manager with Backdating Exploit torrentfreak.com · “Meta acted on the claims without checking the rightsholder, metadata or edit history of the posts.”
Jul 27
New EU Court of Justice Ruling on Platform Liability Could Cause Collateral Damage to Freedom of Expression eff.org · “By equating algorithmic organisation with content control, the ruling risks excluding social networks and other platforms from the liability exemption and encouraging proactive monitoring of what users say online and removal of lawful speech.”
Jul 27
The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required eff.org · “a person’s privacy interests in the personal data on a phone or laptop are extraordinarily different than their limited privacy interests in the contents of their suitcase.”
Jul 26
X and Music Publishers Settle Three-Year Copyright Clash After SpaceX IPO torrentfreak.com · “The coordinated timing and matching language leave little doubt that these cases were resolved as part of a package deal.”
Jul 26
Google's anti-search-scraping lawsuit dismissed computerworld.com · “The US District Court for the Northern District of California found that there was no indication that any copyright had been breached.”
Jul 26
Meta Confirms 'Data Engineer' is Behind Key IP Address in Adult Film Piracy Lawsuit torrentfreak.com · “Meta flatly denies that any employee’s BitTorrent activity was connected to its AI research or data collection.”
Jul 26
Caleb Williams, George Gervin, An 'Iceman' Trademark And Insulated Boots...Oh My? techdirt.com · “These marks are identical in appearance, sound and meaning.”
Jul 26
Apple Sues OpenAI Over Alleged Trade Secret Theft techcrunch.com · “This is the tip of the iceberg. Apple lacks visibility into what’s happening behind closed doors at OpenAI, where such misconduct is normalized.”
Jul 13
FTC reaches settlement that brings right-to-repair to John Deere farm equipment engadget.com · “Those policies required equipment owners and independent repair providers to pay higher prices for any needed services.”
Jul 9
Zombie 'Who Owns Unix?' Lawsuit Comes Alive Again theregister.com · “The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault. But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.”
Jul 6
Google Told to Pay Klarna Nearly $2 Billion in Shopping Spat msn.com · “Google has been abusing its dominant position as a search engine by favoring its own comparison shopping service.”
Jul 6
Political Parties Can Now Spend Unlimited Money Supporting Candidates, After Supreme Court Overturns Decades of Precedent theconversation.com · “The court was not convinced that limiting coordinated party expenditures was necessary to curb conduit corruption.”
Jul 1

June 2026 2 posts

Supreme Court Lets States Count Mail Ballots That Arrive After Election Day votebeat.org · “The electorate’s choice is made when voting is complete, not when ballots are received,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote in the majority opinion.
Jun 30
Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron Sued in US over Memory Price Fixing en.sedaily.com · “The plaintiffs alleged that the three companies, which produce most of the world’s D-RAM, colluded on supply and pricing from 2022, driving prices up by about 700% over the past four years.”
Jun 29

April 2026 1 posts

The Onion to Take over InfoWars nytimes.com · “The Onion has been approved to acquire Infowars in bankruptcy proceedings.”
Apr 20

March 2026 5 posts

New Mexico Jury Orders Meta to Pay $375 Million Over Child Safety Failures cnbc.com · “The first time that a US state has successfully sued Meta over child safety issues.”
Mar 24
Florida judge rules red light camera tickets are unconstitutional cbs12.com · “The judge ruled that the camera vendor, not the local government, was effectively prosecuting drivers, in violation of due process.”
Mar 9
Tim Sweeney Signed Away His Right To Criticize Google Until 2032 theverge.com · “Sweeney agreed in a binding terms sheet to not only stop attacking Google’s app store policies, but to actively support the changes the company is rolling out.”
Mar 5
Judge orders government to begin refunding more than $130B in tariffs pymnts.com · “Every single cent of IEEPA duties that was imposed must be refunded.”
Mar 5
AI-Generated Art Can't Be Copyrighted After Supreme Court Declines To Review the Rule cnbc.com · “Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright.”
Mar 3

February 2026 5 posts

Trump's Global Tariffs Struck Down by US Supreme Court reuters.com · “The court invoked the ‘major questions’ doctrine, ruling that Congress had not clearly authorized the president to impose sweeping global tariffs under emergency trade powers.”
Feb 20
Mark Zuckerberg Testifies During Landmark Trial On Social Media Addiction nbcnews.com · “I’m focused on building a community that is sustainable… I’m not trying to maximize the amount of time people spend every month.”
Feb 18
I found a vulnerability. They found a lawyer. dixken.de · “The legal threats are the reputation damage. Not the vulnerability itself—vulnerabilities happen to everyone.”
Feb 16
South Korean ex-president Yoon Suk Yeol jailed for life for leading insurrection theguardian.com · “Yoon’s attempt to impose martial law lasted only hours before the National Assembly voted it down, but it triggered months of political turmoil.”
Feb 15
County Pays $600K to Wrongfully Jailed Pen Testers darkreading.com · “As soon as the sheriff shows up, everything changes.”
Feb 4

January 2026 4 posts

"IG is a Drug": Internal Messages May Doom Meta at Social Media Addiction Trial arstechnica.com · “Oh my gosh yall IG is a drug. We’re basically pushers.”
Jan 29
Apple Sued by App Developer Over its Continuity Camera petapixel.com · “Rather than competing with us, Apple deployed a series of obstacles to tilt the playing field, infringed our IP.”
Jan 28
Deutsche Telekom is violating Net Neutrality netzbremse.de · “Activating a VPN consistently resolves issues for affected users, suggesting routing/peering problems rather than general network congestion.”
Jan 25
Caroline Ellison Released from Prison cryptopolitan.com · “Her cooperation led to the recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars for the Debtor, benefiting creditors.”
Jan 24

2025 73 posts

October 2025 1 posts

She Was Waco's Baby Whisperer. Then an Infant Died in Her Care. texasmonthly.com · “Dosing kids with Benadryl was ‘a dirty little secret in the industry of child care.’”
Oct 28

September 2025 1 posts

Fifth Circuit Upholds Voting Rights Act in Louisiana electoral-vote.com · “The conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld application of the Voting Rights Act.”
Sep 16

August 2025 2 posts

Developer Unlocks Newly Enshittified Echelon Exercise Bikes But Can't Legally Release Software tech.slashdot.org · “I can legally talk about how I did this to a certain degree, and if someone else wants to do this, they can open source it if they want to.”
Aug 27
Wikipedia challenges UK Online Safety Act wikimediafoundation.org · “The Court has an opportunity in this case to set a global precedent for protecting public interest projects online.”
Aug 11

July 2025 5 posts

TikTok School Shooting Video Criminal Charges propublica.org · “You’re never going to suspend, expel or charge your way out of targeted mass violence. Did those charges make that school safer? No.”
Jul 28
CISPE Challenges Broadcom's VMware Buy in Court theregister.com · “Licensing costs have increased drastically, sometimes exceeding tenfold, with mandatory multi-year commitments required for accessing VMware software.”
Jul 24
Libraries Oppose Private Control of Law (Pro Codes Act) techdirt.com · “Access to the law cannot be conditioned on the consent of a private party.”
Jul 23
Anchorage Criminal Cases Mass Dismissals propublica.org · “There’s absolutely no justice right now in our system.”
Jul 10
US Court Nullifies FTC Requirement for Click-to-Cancel arstechnica.com · “An utter failure to comply with notice and comment cannot be considered harmless if there is any uncertainty at all as to the effect of that failure.”
Jul 8

June 2025 6 posts

Proton joins suit against Apple for predatory practices that harm developers and consumers proton.me · “Proton cannot even link to FAQ or customer support pages from its apps, as Apple believes it’s possible that users will then navigate from the support page to a pricing page and upgrade their accounts without paying Apple its fee.”
Jun 30
JavaScript™ Trademark Update deno.com · “We’re not amending the fraud claim. Doing so would delay the case by months, and our focus is on the claims that matter most: genericness and abandonment.”
Jun 28
A federal judge sides with Anthropic in lawsuit over training AI on books without authors' permission techcrunch.com · “That Anthropic later bought a copy of a book it earlier stole off the internet will not absolve it of liability for theft but it may affect the extent of statutory damages.”
Jun 24
Resurrecting a dead torrent tracker and finding 3 million peers kianbradley.com · “Does hosting tracker infrastructure, unadvertised, count as “inducement”? It’s a harder case to make.”
Jun 17
How AI Saved My Company From a 2-Year Litigation Nightmare tylertringas.com · “We spent a large portion of the initial proceedings allowing lawyers to follow the standard process, charging us $1,000/hour to check all the boxes and respond to every silly and pointless motion line by line.”
Jun 10
OpenAI Is Ordered to Save Every ChatGPT Chat — Even the Ones You Delete reclaimthenet.org · “Judge Wang denied OpenAI’s motion to lift the order on May 29, assuring the company during proceedings that user data would not be made publicly available.”
Jun 6

May 2025 11 posts

Getting a Cease and Desist from Waffle House jack.bio · “Honestly, I was more surprised that the silly logo I made (a very great representation, if I do say so myself) was what got me in trouble, and less so the scraping or reverse-engineering part.”
May 28
4 ex-VW managers guilty of fraud over diesel test scandal dw.com · “Volkswagen has faced countless lawsuits and estimated the total cost of the scandal at more than €30 billion ($34 billion).”
May 26
Cloudflare CEO: Football Piracy Blocks Will Claim Lives; "I Pray No One Dies" torrentfreak.com · “The strategy of blocking broadly through ISPs based on IPs is bonkers because so much content, including emergency services content, can be behind any IP.”
May 26
EU ruling: tracking-based advertising by Google, Microsoft, Amazon, X, across Europe has no legal basis iccl.ie · “The TCF is live on 80% of the Internet.”
May 15
DNS Piracy Blocking Orders: Google, Cloudflare, and OpenDNS Respond Differently torrentfreak.com · “Instead, Google appears to simply refuse the DNS query, which means that the domain lookup is not linked to any IP address.”
May 11
US vs. Google: Brief of Y Combinator, LLC as Amicus Curiae in Support of Plaintiffs storage.courtlistener.com · “Unfortunately, after gaining sufficient scale for itself, Google pulled the ladder up behind it.”
May 10
NSO Group must pay more than $167 million in damages to WhatsApp for spyware campaign techcrunch.com · “After years of every trick and delay tactic it only took the jury a day’s deliberation to see right through to the heart of the matter: NSO’s business is based on hacking American companies…so that dictators can hack dissidents.”
May 7
Pakistani Firm Shipped Fentanyl Analogs, Scams to US krebsonsecurity.com · “In October 2016, a Pakistan district judge acquitted 24 Axact officials at trial due to ’not enough evidence’ and then later admitted he had accepted a bribe (of $35,209) from Axact…”
May 7
Kindle's iOS app just made buying books easier than ever on iPhone and iPad 9to5mac.com · “Under the old App Store rules, buying Kindle books was a major pain on iPhone.”
May 6
A Judge Says Meta’s AI Copyright Case Is About ‘the Next Taylor Swift’ wired.com · “It seems kind of messed up,” he said. “The question, as the courts tell us over and over again, is not whether something is messed up but whether it’s copyright infringement.”
May 5
Apple referred for possible criminal contempt investigation bbc.com · “The documents reveal “that Apple knew exactly what it was doing and at every turn chose the most anticompetitive option”, she wrote.”
May 1

April 2025 13 posts

Indian court orders blocking of Proton Mail techcrunch.com · “On Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court directed the Indian government to block Proton Mail, a popular email service known for its enhanced security, following a legal complaint filed by New Delhi-based M Moser Design Associates.”
Apr 29
All four major web browsers are about to lose 80% of their funding danfabulich.medium.com · “Google pays Apple about $18 billion each year, and pays Mozilla about $450 million each year.”
Apr 28
DRM-Free OnlyFans Downloads See Widevine Project Nuked From GitHub torrentfreak.com · “GitHub requested Fenix to identify “every specific file” in the repo that it considers infringing; Fenix responded with a statement that the “entire repository is infringing” and should be removed.”
Apr 28
README.md (ARCHIVED notice), fail0verflow/hbc (The Homebrew Channel) github.com · “This goes far beyond ignorance about the copyright implications of reverse engineering Nintendo binaries, and goes straight into outright deliberate, malicious code theft and copyright infringement.”
Apr 27
Australian who ordered radioactive materials over the internet walks away from court chemistryworld.com · “A 24-year-old Australian man who ordered uranium and plutonium to his parents’ apartment has been allowed to walk away from court on a two-year good behaviour bond.”
Apr 26
OpenAI says it would buy Chrome if Google is forced to sell engadget.com · “Yes, we would, as would many other parties,” he said.
Apr 23
Judge Rules Blanket Search of Cell Tower Data Unconstitutional 404media.co · “The judge also ruled that the cops could, this one time, still use the evidence they obtained through this unconstitutional search.”
Apr 18
Judge rules Google illegally monopolized adtech, opening door to potential breakup techcrunch.com · “The judge did agree that Google violated the Sherman Act by monopolizing and unlawfully tying two parts of the adtech stack together, specifically DFP and AdX, and that Google is guilty of abuse of monopoly power in the publisher-side adtech.”
Apr 17
Snapchat Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale afterbabel.com · “Snapchat had disclosed that it had removed approximately 60 accounts per month, or just over 700 total.”
Apr 16
"Slow Pay, Low Pay or No Pay": Blue Cross Defrauded Breast Cancer Center, Must Pay $421M, Jury Finds propublica.org · “From 2015 through 2023, the Baton Rouge-based insurer paid, on average, less than 9% of the charges billed by the breast center for more than 7,800 individual medical procedures — even though it had authorized all of them.”
Apr 12
Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines techcrunch.com · “In reality, however, Nate relied heavily on hundreds of human contractors in a call center in the Philippines to manually complete those purchases, the DOJ’s Southern District of New York alleges.”
Apr 10
Government fails to keep Apple legal battle secret lawgazette.co.uk · “In a judgment handed down today, tribunal president Lord Justice Singh and Mr Justice Johnson said preventing disclosure even of the fact that a hearing was taking place would have represented ’the most fundamental interference with the principle of open justice’.”
Apr 8
Judge Stein Issues Opinion Rejecting Most of OpenAI's Motion to Dismiss Claims by Newspapers, Book Authors. Judge Now Will Preside Over All Copyright Cases v. OpenAI, Microsoft. chatgptiseatingtheworld.com · “Microsoft fared a tad better in getting the dismissal of all DMCA 1202(b)(1) claims against it, whereas OpenAI succeeded only in getting the New York Times’ 1202(b)(1) claim, but not the claims of the Center for Investigative Reporting or the Daily News.”
Apr 5

March 2025 16 posts

Javice found guilty of defrauding JPMorgan in $175M startup purchase techcrunch.com · “When JPMorgan bought Frank in 2021, the bank thought the startup had 4 million customers. The bank found out that the actual customer count was only 300,000 when it later sent test marketing emails to alleged Frank users and approximately 70% of those messages bounced back.”
Mar 28
Forgotten in jail without a lawyer: how a Texas town fails poor defendants ksat.com · “In 2023, when more than 240 misdemeanor defendants requested representation, the county judge appointed lawyers in only a handful of cases, records show. Nonetheless, the state has imposed no consequences.”
Mar 25
Digital Deception: Kubient CEO Sentenced for $1.3 Million Fraud Scheme securityonline.info · “Paul Roberts cooked the books. He lied to investors and auditors about his company’s revenue and about his company’s premier product: an AI-powered tool that, ironically, was supposed to detect fraud in the digital advertising industry.”
Mar 25
HP settles lawsuit over ink-blocking printer update, with no payout or admission of wrongdoing techspot.com · “However, HP doesn’t have to admit that it did anything wrong, and it won’t be handing over any money to those customers who were affected by the 2020 firmware update.”
Mar 24
Court Orders Google to Poison Public DNS to Prevent IPTV Piracy torrentfreak.com · “The Court’s decision wasn’t made available to support AGCOM’s statement, and at the time of writing, we are still trying to locate a copy.”
Mar 22
Meta settles UK 'right to object to ad-tracking' lawsuit by agreeing not to track plaintiff techcrunch.com · “A human rights campaigner, Tanya O’Carroll, has succeeded in forcing social media giant Meta not to use her data for targeted advertising.”
Mar 22
The FBI Seized This Woman's Life Savings—Without Telling Her Why reason.com · “Instead, the notice she received listed hundreds of possible federal crimes that would justify a seizure, though it didn’t provide Martin’s supposed connection to those offenses.”
Mar 21
New USPTO Memo Makes Fighting Patent Trolls Even Harder eff.org · “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) just made a move that will protect bad patents at the expense of everyone else.”
Mar 21
Rippling sues Deel, Deel denies 'all legal wrongdoing,' and Slack is the main witness techcrunch.com · “According to the lawsuit, Rippling set up a “honeypot” to prove out its suspicions.”
Mar 17
Google Being Forced To Sell Chrome is Not Good for the Web chriscoyier.net · “But still, a more direct line from problem to solution is forcing default search engine choice, not a forced sale of Chrome itself.”
Mar 15
Meta is trying to stop a former employee from promoting her book about Facebook engadget.com · “An arbitrator has sided with the social media company, saying that the book’s author should stop selling and publicizing the book, which went on sale earlier this week.”
Mar 13
AI-Generated Voice Evidence Poses Dangers in Court lawfaremedia.org · “People can no longer reliably distinguish between a real voice of someone and the person’s AI clone.”
Mar 11
Developer sabotaged ex-employer with kill switch activated when he was let go theregister.com · “When his position was eventually terminated on September 9, 2019, the kill switch was activated and thousands of employees around the world were locked out of the network, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, it is said.”
Mar 8
"Let's hire an ISIS suicide bomber to blow him up in the street!": Europe's most wanted man plotted my murder — and that of my colleague theins.press · “A jury at the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, has just found six of my compatriots — citizens of Bulgaria — guilty of conspiring with the Kremlin to kidnap and possibly murder me and my colleague and friend, Roman Dobrokhotov.”
Mar 7
Gardener wins case against Paddy Power over £1m prize bbc.co.uk · “When a trader puts all the risk on a consumer for its own recklessness, negligence, errors, inadequate digital services and inadequate testing, that appears onerous to me.”
Mar 5
Automattic vs WP Engine WordPress Battle Develops into a Nuclear War-Like Class Action Lawsuit gigazine.net · “Automattic intentionally disrupted WP Engine’s business by blocking access to WordPress.org’s critical services, thereby causing disruption, security risks, and economic harm.”
Mar 3

February 2025 9 posts

I Went To SQL Injection Court sockpuppet.org · “Schemas are now file layouts. We lose.”
Feb 25
DigiCert: Threat of legal action to stifle Bugzilla discourse bugzilla.mozilla.org · “In bug 1910322 comment 74 DigiCert wrote, ‘We have not used a legal team as a shield against accountability.’ Contrary to this statement, I received a letter from DigiCert’s lawyers, Wilson Sonsini, regarding posts made by Sectigo’s Chief Compliance Officer in bug 1910322.”
Feb 25
Meta Says it Made Sure Not to Seed Any Pirated Books torrentfreak.com · “Plaintiffs, thus, plead no facts to show that Meta seeded Plaintiffs’ books – a claim that Meta will address at summary judgment,” Meta notes.
Feb 21
Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More gamerant.com · “Nintendo has secured what appears to be an anti-Palworld patent in the United States.”
Feb 15
Olson v. County of Grant (opinion, No. 23-35365) govinfo.gov · “This appeal presents a scenario in which agencies from two different state jurisdictions shared a defendant’s sensitive phone data without consent, without a warrant, and without any pending charges, or even an investigation by the out-of-state agency requesting access to the data.”
Feb 14
3DBenchy Sets Sail Into The Public Domain hackaday.com · “According to NTI, the removal of these derived models was not requested by NTI, but by a third-party report, unbeknownst to NTI or the original creator of the model.”
Feb 14
Federal Judge Rules Legal Research Startup ROSS Infringed Westlaw's Copyrights, Rejecting Fair Use Defense lawnext.com · “Ross was using Thomson Reuters’s headnotes as AI data to create a legal research tool to compete with Westlaw,” Judge Bibas wrote.
Feb 11
Former UIHC administrator sentenced 12 years for 30-year-long identity theft scheme dailyiowan.com · “Since 1988, Keirans led a productive life, obtaining a high-paying job at UIHC, marrying, and raising a son, all while living under the stolen identity of William Woods, a sporadically transient man who Keirans had briefly worked with at a hot dog stand in New Mexico.”
Feb 3
Costa Rican Supermarket Wins Trademark Battle Against Nintendo ticotimes.net · “We refuted all of Nintendo’s arguments, demonstrating their errors and our rightful claim,” Jiménez explained.
Feb 2

January 2025 9 posts

Apple Files Emergency Motion in Google Search Antitrust Case adweek.com · “If Apple’s appeal is not resolved until during or after the remedies trial, Apple may well be forced to stand mute at trial, as a mere spectator, while the government pursues an extreme remedy that targets Apple by name and would prohibit any commercial arrangement between Apple and Google for a decade.”
Jan 31
The Government Says Money Isn't Property—So It Can Take Yours reason.com · “Money is not necessarily ‘property’ for constitutional purposes,” the government’s brief declared—putting the very idea of property in scare quotes.
Jan 31
Facial Recognition Backfires on Police in Ohio Murder Case gizmodo.com · “The only evidence pointing to Tolbert was a report from Clearview AI, which explicitly said in a disclaimer at the bottom that the results ‘are to be treated as investigative leads and should not be solely relied upon for making an arrest.’”
Jan 28
VICTORY! Federal Court (Finally) Rules Backdoor Searches of 702 Data Unconstitutional eff.org · “In 2021 alone, the FBI conducted 3.4 million warrantless searches of US person’s 702 data.”
Jan 22
Authors Seek Meta's Torrent Client Logs and Seeding Data in AI Piracy Probe torrentfreak.com · “By downloading through the bit torrent protocol, Meta knew it was facilitating further copyright infringement by acting as a distribution point for other users of pirated books…”
Jan 20
Nevada Judge to Nevada Cops: You Can't Use This Loophole To Get Around Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform reason.com · “The local department gets up to 80 percent of the forfeiture proceeds, and the rest goes into a Justice Department pool that is doled out to other participating departments around the country.”
Jan 15
Oracle refuses to yield JavaScript trademark, Deno Land says infoworld.com · “Deno Land also accused Oracle of committing fraud in its trademark renewal efforts in 2019 by submitting screen captures of the website of JavaScript runtime Node.js, even though Node.js was not affiliated with Oracle.”
Jan 10
U.S. appeals court strikes down FCC's net neutrality rules tvtechnology.com · “The rules require broadband operators to treat all internet traffic equally and banned them from giving preferential treatment to some sites by speeding up or slowing down consumer access.”
Jan 2
Welcome to the Public Domain in 2025 blog.archive.org · “On January 1, 2025, we celebrate published works from 1929 and published sound recordings from 1924 entering the public domain!”
Jan 1

2024 105 posts

December 2024 16 posts

Billionaire Daniel Ek Shuts Down Spotify Unwrapped Calculator digitalmusicnews.com · “removed at the request of Spotify’s legal team”
Dec 28
They have not been trained for this ccc.de · “Newag trains went into hibernation using a sophisticated game of hide-and-seek if they were parked for too long within the geocoordinates of competitors’ or customers’ workshops”
Dec 27
A fake Nintendo lawyer is scaring YouTubers, and it's not clear YouTube can stop him theverge.com · “YouTube says over six percent of takedown requests through its public webform are likely fake, and the company accepts requests via plain email too, meaning anyone can file them.”
Dec 27
Cashing in on GIF by charging royalties dfarq.homeip.net · “On December 24, 1994, Compuserve and Unisys tried to give themselves a Christmas gift and make the Internet pay for it.”
Dec 26
Intel shareholders look to yank back ex-CEO, CFO compensation cfodive.com · “As a result of the individual defendants’ breaches of fiduciary duty and other misconduct, Intel has sustained substantial damages and irreparable injury to its reputation”
Dec 24
Cloudflare Must Block 'Piracy Shield' Domains and IP Addresses Across its Service torrentfreak.com · “The Court of Milan’s decision prohibits Cloudflare from resolving domain names and routing internet traffic to IP addresses of all services present on the “Piracy Shield” system.”
Dec 24
'United Healthcare' Using DMCA Against Luigi Mangione Images Which Is Bizarre & Wildly Inappropriate abovethelaw.com · “The idea that UHC now owns every depiction of the guy accused of killing their employee is laughably frivolous.”
Dec 23
Pegasus spyware maker NSO Group is liable for attacks on 1,400 WhatsApp users theverge.com · “The spyware maker has argued that it isn’t liable because Pegasus was operated by clients investigating crimes and cases of national security but the judge rejected those arguments, which could establish a precedent for other companies in the same business.”
Dec 21
More than 140 Kenya Facebook moderators diagnosed with severe PTSD theguardian.com · “The moderators from Kenya and other African countries were tasked from 2019 to 2023 with checking posts emanating from Africa and in their own languages but were paid eight times less than their counterparts in the US, according to the claim documents.”
Dec 18
McKinsey & Company to pay $650 million for role in opioid crisis npr.org · “This resolution marks the first time a management consulting firm has been criminally responsible for advice it has given resulting in the commission of a crime by a client”
Dec 13
Court orders Automattic to restore WP Engine's access to WordPress.org techcrunch.com · “A California district court judge on Tuesday ruled that Automattic and its CEO Matt Mullenweg must restore WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org, a theme and plug-in repository owned by Mullenweg.”
Dec 11
Lawsuit: A chatbot hinted a kid should kill his parents over screen time limits npr.org · “This was ongoing manipulation and abuse, active isolation and encouragement designed to and that did incite anger and violence.”
Dec 10
The £25,000 Tom Evans Pre-Amp Repair And A Copyright Strike hackaday.com · “The biggest question is what exactly was copyrighted in the original video, which was tough because YouTube refused to pass on [Mark]’s questions or provide further details.”
Dec 8
Employee lawsuit accuses Apple of spying on its workers semafor.com · “For Apple employees, the Apple ecosystem is not a walled garden. It is a prison yard.”
Dec 6
McKinsey unit will pay $123 million to settle claims it bribed South African officials cnbc.com · “The bribery scheme helped McKinsey and McKinsey Africa net approximately $85 million in profits, the DOJ said.”
Dec 5
Proposed amendment to legal presumption about the reliability of computers postofficescandal.uk · “This amendment overturns the current legal assumption that evidence from computers is always reliable which has contributed to miscarriages of justice including the Horizon Scandal.”
Dec 2

November 2024 6 posts

Deno v. Oracle: Canceling the JavaScript Trademark deno.com · “Oracle neither controls nor has ever controlled the language’s specification or usage.”
Nov 25
Feds Charge Five Men in 'Scattered Spider' Roundup krebsonsecurity.com · “The group then used their access to Twilio to attack at least 163 of its customers.”
Nov 22
Teen Behind Hundreds of Swatting Attacks Pleads Guilty to Federal Charges wired.com · “Between approximately August 2022 to January 2024 Filion made more than 375 swatting calls, according to the plea agreement.”
Nov 18
Snowflake hackers identified and charged with stealing 50 billion AT&T records techcrunch.com · “AT&T is just one of several victims who had sensitive data stolen from their Snowflake instances.”
Nov 13
Ticketmaster's Attempt to Game Arbitration Services Fails-Heckman v. Live Nation blog.ericgoldman.org · “In an effort to curb mass arbitration, Ticketmaster sought to switch arbitration service providers to New Era ADR, including for past ticket purchases.”
Nov 4
How Albertsons Kills Rural Grocers with Land Use Restrictions thebignewsletter.com · “They even have a name, “no-comp[etition] or low-comp[etition] zones,” according to one executive on the stand.”
Nov 4

October 2024 8 posts

Sorry, Gas Companies - Parody Isn't Infringement (Even If It Creeps You Out) eff.org · “TotalEnergies also sent a demand to the website’s hosting service, Netlify, that got repaer.earth taken offline.”
Oct 31
CrowdStrike, Delta sue each other over flight disruptions techcentral.co.za · “CrowdStrike sued Delta Air Lines on Friday after a faulty software update prompted a global outage in July.”
Oct 30
Four REvil Ransomware members sentenced for hacking and money laundering securityaffairs.com · “Russian authorities sentenced four members of the REvil ransomware operation to several years in prison in Russia.”
Oct 28
Secret 3D Scans in the French Supreme Court cosmowenman.substack.com · “The court gave the ministry and museum two months to present their defense, a deadline they have, as of this writing, missed by over three months.”
Oct 18
Internal blog post reveals Automattic's plan to enforce the WordPress trademark using 'nice and not nice lawyers' techcrunch.com · ““We will be using a multi-pronged strategy that will involve some additional trademark registrations … legal cease-and-desist letters, and a formal paid licensing program for the partners,” Sieminski noted.”
Oct 16
H-1B visa: Company supplying tech workers to Silicon Valley discriminated against non-Indians: jury siliconvalley.com · “The lawsuit claimed Cognizant ousted many non-Indian workers by first taking them off projects and “benching” them without work, then keeping them benched until firing them in accordance with a company policy.”
Oct 9
Google must crack open Android for third-party stores, rules Epic judge theverge.com · “Google will have to distribute rival third-party app stores within Google Play, and it must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps, unless developers opt out individually.”
Oct 7
Patent troll Sable pays up, dedicates all its patents to the public! blog.cloudflare.com · “In the end, Sable agreed to pay Cloudflare $225,000, grant Cloudflare a royalty-free license to its entire patent portfolio, and to dedicate its patents to the public, ensuring that Sable can never again assert them against another company.”
Oct 3

September 2024 11 posts

U.S. Court Orders LibGen to Pay $30m to Publishers, Issues Broad Injunction torrentfreak.com · “While this is a win on paper, it’s unlikely that the publishers will get paid by the LibGen operators, who remain anonymous.”
Sep 26
Justice Department accuses Visa of debit network monopoly that affects price of 'nearly everything’ cnbc.com · “More than 60% of debit transactions in the U.S. run over Visa rails, helping it charge more than $7 billion annually in processing fees, according to the DOJ complaint.”
Sep 24
Google employees’ attempts to hide messages from investigators might backfire theverge.com · “LaSala responded, instructing the employee to “start a ping with history turned off.””
Sep 20
Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights against Pocketpair, Inc. nintendo.co.jp · “This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.”
Sep 19
Ticketmaster boss who repeatedly hacked rival firm sentenced bitdefender.com · “The illegal access was projected on a conference room’s screen in front of at least 14 Live Nation and Ticketmaster employees.”
Sep 18
How Google got away with charging publishers more than anyone else theverge.com · “holds today not because there is 20% of value in comparing 2 bids to one another, but because it comes with unique demand via AdWords that is not available any other way.”
Sep 17
23andMe to pay $30 million in genetics data breach settlement bleepingcomputer.com · “DNA testing giant 23andMe has agreed to pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit over a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million customers in 2023.”
Sep 16
Apple must pay 13 billion euros in back taxes, EU's top court rules cnbc.com · “Apple said in a filing on Tuesday that it will incur a one-time income tax charge of about $10 billion in its fourth fiscal quarter ending Sept. 28, 2024.”
Sep 10
A Post-Google World thebignewsletter.com · “One consequences was that Google charged high prices, keeping between 30-50% of every advertising dollar that went through its system.”
Sep 7
Hachette Book Group, Inc. v. Internet Archive storage.courtlistener.com · “We conclude, contrary to the district court, that IA’s use of the Works is not commercial in nature.”
Sep 4
Owners of 1-Time Passcode Theft Service Plead Guilty krebsonsecurity.com · “NCA investigators said more than 12,500 people were targeted by OTP Agency users during the 18 months the service was active.”
Sep 2

August 2024 17 posts

Brazilian court orders suspension of Elon Musk's X after it missed deadline theguardian.com · “The decision imposes a daily fine of R$50,000 (£6,800) on individuals and companies that attempt to continue using X via VPN.”
Aug 30
Judge Rules $400 Million Algorithmic System Illegally Denied Thousands of People's Medicaid Benefits gizmodo.com · “When an enrollee is entitled to state-administered Medicaid, it should not require luck, perseverance, and zealous lawyering for him or her to receive that healthcare coverage.”
Aug 29
Albuquerque's Police Chief Says Cops Have a 5th Amendment Right To Leave Their Body Cameras Off reason.com · “Even more troubling, Medina said he "purposefully did not record because he was invoking his 5th Amendment right not to self-incriminate."”
Aug 25
Telegram app founder Pavel Durov reportedly arrested at French airport theguardian.com · “Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV said, citing an unnamed source.”
Aug 24
17-Year-old Student Exposes Germany's 'Secret' Pirate Site Blocklist torrentfreak.com · “This ‘secrecy’ is not an oversight but a feature that’s codified in the agreement between rightsholders and Internet providers.”
Aug 23
DOJ sues Georgia Tech over allegedly failing to meet cyber requirements for DOD contracts cyberscoop.com · “According to the lawsuit, the lab didn’t install anti-malware software on devices, and that the university and affiliate company submitted a false cybersecurity assessment score to the Pentagon.”
Aug 23
Police cannot seize property indefinitely after an arrest, federal court rules reason.com · “When the government seizes property incident to a lawful arrest, the Fourth Amendment requires that any continued possession of the property must be reasonable”
Aug 18
Google took three months to remove scam app that stole over $5 million in crypto: lawsuit theblock.co · “But Vaca’s lawsuit alleges Google took three months to remove the app from the Play Store.”
Aug 18
X ordered to pay €550,000 to Irish employee fired for not replying to Elon Musk's yes-or-resign 'extremely hardcore' ultimatum fortune.com · “The commission rejected X’s argument that Rooney quit voluntarily and ruled that not clicking “yes” in response to the email did not constitute an act of resignation.”
Aug 17
Disney says man can't sue over wife's death because he agreed to Disney+ terms of service nbcnews.com · “Disney filed court documents in May saying the $50,000 lawsuit should be dismissed and resolved by individual arbitration because of terms Piccolo agreed to when he signed up for a free trial of the streaming service Disney+.”
Aug 15
Kim Dotcom's Extradition to the U.S. Given Green Light By New Zealand torrentfreak.com · “More than twelve years have passed since Megaupload became the prime target in a high-profile law enforcement operation, which led to the collapse of Kim Dotcom’s file-storage empire.”
Aug 15
Epic judge says he’ll ‘tear the barriers down’ on Google’s app store monopoly theverge.com · “We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen”
Aug 15
State of Texas v. General Motors LLC and OnStar LLC texasattorneygeneral.gov · “The Driving Data collected and sold by General Motors included data from over 14 million of its vehicles, and the data of more than 1.8 million Texans.”
Aug 14
Ex-Kansas police chief who raided local newspaper criminally charged theguardian.com · “A former Kansas police chief who led a raid last year on a weekly newspaper has been charged with felony obstruction of justice and is accused of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct.”
Aug 13
Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are "Categorically" Unconstitutional eff.org · “the quintessential problem with these warrants is that they never include a specific user to be identified”
Aug 12
1970 Clean Air Act Was Intended to Cover Carbon Dioxide, Study Finds e360.yale.edu · “A new study finds evidence that Congress intended for the 1970 Clean Air Act to cover carbon dioxide emissions.”
Aug 7
Google loses antitrust case over search cnbc.com · “The court found that Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which outlaws monopolies.”
Aug 5

July 2024 9 posts

Meta to pay Texas $1.4 billion for using facial recognition technology without users' permission texastribune.org · “The settlement, announced Tuesday, does not act as an admission of guilt and Meta maintains no wrongdoing.”
Jul 30
Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border reason.com · “The Fourth Amendment still applies at the border, despite the feds’ insistence that it doesn’t.”
Jul 26
Judge Dismisses Major SEC Charges Against SolarWinds and CISO securityweek.com · “These do not plausibly plead actionable deficiencies in the company’s reporting of the cybersecurity hack. They impermissibly rely on hindsight and speculation.”
Jul 22
Ryanair wins case against Booking.com in US court rte.ie · “A jury in the District Court of Delaware unanimously found that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse act and that it had induced a third party to access parts of Ryanair’s website without authorisation “with an intent to defraud,” the verdict said.”
Jul 22
CA4: No REP in one's Google location data fourthamendment.com · “There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in one’s Google location data. It’s willingly shared with Google.”
Jul 14
Judge dismisses DMCA copyright claim in GitHub Copilot suit theregister.com · “The judge disagreed, however, on the grounds that the code suggested by Copilot was not identical enough to the developers’ own copyright-protected work, and thus section 1202(b) did not apply.”
Jul 9
Boeing to plead guilty to criminal fraud charge stemming from 737 Max crashes cnbc.com · “Under the deal, Boeing would face a fine of up to $487.2 million, though the Justice Department recommended that the court credit Boeing with half that amount it paid under a previous agreement, resulting in a fine of $243.6 million.”
Jul 8
Anna's Archive Faces Millions in Damages and a Permanent Injunction torrentfreak.com · “OCLC has incurred damages of $5,333,064 as a direct result of Anna’s Archive’s cyberattacks, but that amount does not fully compensate OCLC for the harm from Anna’s Archive’s wrongful actions.”
Jul 8
Z-Library Admins "Escape House Arrest" After Judge Approves U.S. Extradition torrentfreak.com · “when the group conducted a regular visit in May, to verify that Napolsky and Ermakova were in compliance with the rules set by the state, there was no trace of them.”
Jul 8

June 2024 10 posts

Federal whistleblowers are entitled to damages for missed future pay, court rules govexec.com · “Employees can receive compensatory payments if their firings caused harm that prevented future earnings.”
Jun 26
US prosecutors recommend Justice Department criminally charge Boeing as deadline looms voanews.com · “Boeing derives significant revenue from contracts with the U.S. government, including the Defense Department, which could be jeopardized by a felony conviction, one of the sources said.”
Jun 24
How small claims court became Meta's customer service hotline engadget.com · “At the heart of these cases is the fact that Meta lacks the necessary volume of human customer service workers to assist those who lose their accounts.”
Jun 20
In First Case of its Kind, NLRB Judge Declares Non-Compete Clause Is an Unfair Labor Practice nlrbedge.com · “Despite all the discussion about the FTC banning non-competes, there still seems to be little recognition that non-competes for non-supervisory workers are effectively impossible to enforce at the moment due to the policies of the NLRB GC.”
Jun 16
Google, Cloudflare & Cisco Will Poison DNS to Stop Piracy Block Circumvention torrentfreak.com · “2% of 0.084% is 0.00168% of Internet users! In absolute terms, that would represent a small group of around 800 people across France!”
Jun 15
Arm says it wants all Snapdragon X Elite laptops destroyed xda-developers.com · “Arm’s argument is that the Nuvia license was canceled when it was taken over by Qualcomm.”
Jun 13
Banana giant Chiquita held liable by US court for funding paramilitaries bbc.com · “The regular payments continued even after the AUC was designated by the US as a foreign terrorist organisation in 2001.”
Jun 11
Google's $2.3 million check helped the company get a trial by judge instead of jury theverge.com · “The antitrust lawsuit by the Justice Department and eight states seeking to break up Google’s alleged adtech monopoly will be heard by a judge this fall, as the company preferred.”
Jun 10
Is One Company to Blame for Soaring Rental Prices in the U.S.? entrepreneur.com · “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually”
Jun 5
Microsoft hit with EU privacy complaints over schools’ use of 365 Education suite techcrunch.com · “Under the current system that Microsoft is imposing on schools, your school would have to audit Microsoft or give them instructions on how to process pupils’ data.”
Jun 5

May 2024 6 posts

She was accused of faking an incriminating video of teenage cheerleaders. She was arrested, outcast and condemned. The problem? Nothing was fake after all theguardian.com · “Someone had been crying deepfake.”
May 11
Tesla is being investigated for securities and wire fraud for self-driving claims theverge.com · “To our knowledge no government agency in any ongoing investigation has concluded that any wrongdoing occurred.”
May 8
Nintendo blitzes GitHub with over 8,000 emulator-related DMCA takedowns engadget.com · “Redacted entities representing Nintendo assert that the Yuzu source code contained in the repos "illegally circumvents Nintendo’s technological protection measures and runs illegal copies of Switch games."”
May 4
Does the American Diabetes Association work for patients or companies? A lawsuit dared to ask theguardian.com · “By settling, the ADA manages to avoid the discovery process, and the potentially embarrassing revelations that might have come with it.”
May 4
Google Paid Apple $20 Billion in 2022 to Be Default Safari Search Engine macrumors.com · “In November, lawsuit documents indicated that Google was paying 36 percent of the total revenue that it earns from searches conducted on Safari, and now it turns out that equates to $20 billion.”
May 2
They thought they were joining an accelerator: instead they lost their startups techcrunch.com · “The court has since ordered the company to auction off the warrants it held in more than 1,000 of the startups that went through the accelerator program.”
May 2

April 2024 4 posts

Japanese Police Arrest 36-Year-Old Man on Suspicion of Tampering With Pokémon Violet Save Data ign.com · “Police in Japan have arrested a 36-year-old man on suspicion of selling illegally modified Pokémon save data to customers online”
Apr 13
Vietnamese property tycoon sentenced to death in $27bn fraud case theguardian.com · “Although Lan did not directly hold executive power at SCB, she owned 91.5% of the bank’s shares through third parties and shell companies.”
Apr 11
ASUS refunds Zenfone buyer for failing to provide bootloader unlock tools as promised androidauthority.com · “In the settlement, Timothy received a full refund for the phone (£700) and the court filing fee (£70) for a total of £770 (~$973).”
Apr 6
Google agrees to destroy browsing data collected in Incognito mode theverge.com · “Though the plaintiffs valued the proposed settlement at $5 billion, which was the amount they originally sought in damages, Castañeda said that they are ‘receiving zero.’”
Apr 2

March 2024 3 posts

Sam Bankman-Fried sentenced to 25 years for FTX fraud theverge.com · “A thief who takes his loot to Las Vegas and successfully bets the stolen money is not entitled to a discount on the sentence by using his Las Vegas winnings to pay back all or part of which he stole when he finally gets caught.”
Mar 28
U.S. versus Apple: A first reaction sixcolors.com · “Things that are legal for regular companies to do become illegal when monopolies do them.”
Mar 21
Retiring the Mozilla Location Service github.com · “In 2019, Skyhook Holdings, Inc contacted Mozilla and alleged that MLS infringed a number of its patents.”
Mar 16

February 2024 4 posts

Google says Microsoft offered to sell Bing to Apple in 2018 cnbc.com · “The Justice Department said in its own newly unsealed filing that Microsoft has spent almost $100 billion on Bing over 20 years.”
Feb 26
Air Canada ordered to pay customer who was misled by airline's chatbot theguardian.com · “Air Canada argued that despite the error, the chatbot was a "separate legal entity" and thus was responsible for its actions.”
Feb 16
Cloudflare defeats patent troll Sable at trial blog.cloudflare.com · “Sable sued a number of other companies, including Cisco, Fortinet, Check Point, SonicWall, Juniper Networks, and others, each of which eventually resolved the lawsuit against them out of court.”
Feb 12
A Startup Allegedly ‘Hacked the World.’ Then Came the Censorship, and Now the Backlash wired.com · “These efforts have demanded that more than a dozen publications amend or fully remove references to the original Appin Technology’s alleged illegal hacking or, in some cases, mentions of that company’s cofounder, Rajat Khare.”
Feb 1

January 2024 11 posts

How to deal with receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Big Tech 12challenges.substack.com · “It doesn’t matter if you’re right. It matters if you have money, time, and willpower to go to court.”
Jan 30
Appeals Court: FBI's Safe-Deposit Box Seizures Violated Fourth Amendment reason.com · “The FBI violated the Fourth Amendment when its agents rifled through the contents of more than 700 safe-deposit boxes”
Jan 23
Will the new judicial ruling in the Vizio lawsuit strengthen the GPL? blog.tidelift.com · “Vizio’s law firm makes about as much in a day as SFC makes from donations in a year.”
Jan 21
Google Is Tracking You Even In Incognito Mode, New Disclaimer Is Up news.abplive.com · “Google has finally admitted that it tracks your search history, activities, the websites you visit and the services they use even in Incognito mode.”
Jan 21
German law is making security research a risky business infosec.exchange · “But the court ruling says: yes, there was a password, so there is a protection mechanism which was circumvented, and that’s hacking.”
Jan 18
U.S. Developers Can Now Offer Non-App Store Purchasing Option, But Apple Will Still Collect Commissions macrumors.com · “Developers are permitted to have a single plain link on one screen of an app.”
Jan 16
Here's Some Bitcoin: Oh, and You've Been Served! krebsonsecurity.com · “The hard truth is that most victims will never see their stolen funds again.”
Jan 12
Meta ignores the users' right to easily withdraw consent noyb.eu · “This is illegal, as the GDPR clearly states that withdrawing your consent must be ‘as easy as’ giving it.”
Jan 11
YouTube demonetizes public domain 'Steamboat Willie' video after copyright claim mashable.com · “Public domain works are considered public property.”
Jan 5
All DMCA Notices Filed Against TorrentFreak in 2023 Were Bogus torrentfreak.com · “100% bogus, right across the board, and a complete waste of resources for everyone involved.”
Jan 1
Disney's earliest Mickey and Minnie Mouse enter public domain as US copyright expires bbc.com · “In fact, anyone can use those versions without permission or cost.”
Jan 1

2023 106 posts

December 2023 9 posts

Court of Appeal ruling will prevent UK museums from charging reproduction fees: at last theartnewspaper.com · “Moreover, Lord Justice Arnold pointed out that the new copyright bar has been in place since 2009.”
Dec 30
The New York Times is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement theverge.com · “Defendants seek to free-ride on The Times’s massive investment in its journalism by using it to build substitutive products without permission or payment”
Dec 27
Federal court decides in favor of retired engineer told by state to not talk about math in public wect.com · “The NC Board of Examiners and Surveyors claimed that this was punishable by a misdemeanor unless he obtained a professional engineer’s license from the state.”
Dec 26
Apple halting Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 sales: Here's why 9to5mac.com · “In its initial filing with the ITC, Masimo accused Apple of 103 instances of patent infringement across five different patents.”
Dec 18
Cloud engineer gets 2 years for wiping ex-employer's code repos bleepingcomputer.com · “Following his dismissal, Brody allegedly refused to return his work laptop and instead used his still-valid account to access the bank’s computer network”
Dec 13
Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight theverge.com · “After just a few hours of deliberation, the jury unanimously answered yes to every question put before them”
Dec 12
If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing pluralistic.net · “when I was a bookseller, I didn’t get to break into your house and steal the books I’d sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table”
Dec 9
23andMe is updating its TOS to force binding arbitration with a limited opt-out window stackdiary.com · “Because these terms were put in place on November 30, 2023 – it has already been over a week, and most users might not understand why this is important or relevant.”
Dec 7
Quad9 Turns the Sony Case Around in Dresden quad9.net · “The DNS does not contain content - it is a system designed for delivery only of pointers, not for data transport.”
Dec 6

November 2023 8 posts

The Bond villain compliance strategy bitsaboutmoney.com · “The crime was the product.”
Nov 25
Screensharing mistake gets Nvidia sued over alleged stolen trade secrets theverge.com · “So brazen was Mr. Moniruzzaman’s theft, the file path on his screen still read "ValeoDocs."”
Nov 24
Morgan Stanley Fined $6.5 Million for Exposing Customer Information securityweek.com · “The moving company, the AG says, sold the computer equipment at internet auctions without Morgan Stanley’s knowledge.”
Nov 22
A secret Google deal let Spotify completely bypass Android's app store fees theverge.com · “If we don’t have Spotify working properly across Play services and core services, people will not buy Android phones.”
Nov 20
Google Sues Men Who Weaponized DMCA Notices to Crush Competition torrentfreak.com · “Two men who allegedly used 65 Google accounts to bombard Google with fraudulent DMCA takedown notices targeting up to 620,000 URLs, have been named in a Google lawsuit filed in California on Monday.”
Nov 14
Google offered Epic $147 million to launch Fortnite on the Play Store theverge.com · “It was meant to stem a potential “contagion” of popular apps bypassing Android’s official store”
Nov 9
Here’s a rare look at Google’s most lucrative search queries theverge.com · “Google has long encouraged brands to buy ad space for queries with their own name, lest they have their search results space stolen by a competitor.”
Nov 2
SEC sues SolarWinds for misleading investors before 2020 hack bleepingcomputer.com · “We allege that, for years, SolarWinds and Brown ignored repeated red flags about SolarWinds’ cyber risks, which were well known throughout the company and led one of Brown’s subordinates to conclude: ‘We’re so far from being a security minded company,’”
Nov 1

October 2023 12 posts

German court bans LinkedIn from ignoring "Do Not Track" signals stackdiary.com · “The court said this communication is misleading, as LinkedIn is legally required to respect the Do Not Track requests.”
Oct 31
Adelaide woman receives settlement after a lengthy battle against tech giant Google abc.net.au · “Dr Janice Duffy successfully argued in 2015 and 2023 that Google published defamatory extracts from American website RipOff Report on its search engine page, despite her notifying the company and asking for the posts to be removed.”
Oct 23
Shopify Files Lawsuit over Illegal DMCA Takedown Abuse torrentfreak.com · “The defendant stands accused of sending more than 70 fraudulent takedown notices from October 5 to October 13, targeting at least twenty perfume shops with bogus copyright claims. These false claims resulted in 52 strikes against various stores.”
Oct 23
Cops Are Suing a Teen for Invasion of Privacy After Allegedly False Arrest Goes Viral vice.com · “The officers performed a breathalyzer test, which showed Galanakis had a blood-alcohol content of 0.00. After that, the officers accused Galanakis of smoking cannabis based on the field sobriety test. Winters then arrested him.”
Oct 20
Iowa Man Files Lawsuit After Being Arrested Twice for Criticizing the Police at a Public Meeting reason.com · “The mayor and police chief had Noah arrested, jailed, strip-searched, and criminally prosecuted simply because they didn’t like what Noah had to say,”
Oct 17
Tech CEO Sentenced to 5 Years in IP Address Scheme krebsonsecurity.com · “Throughout that conversation, Golestan maintained his innocence, even as he explained that the creation of the phony companies was necessary to prevent entities like Spamhaus from interfering with his business going forward.”
Oct 17
Removal of Mazda Connected Services integration home-assistant.io · “We’re also sad that Mazda’s first recourse was not to reach out to us and the maintainer but to send a cease and desist letter instead.”
Oct 13
The fraud was in the code citationneeded.news · “Code snippets shown to the jury demonstrated how Nishad Singh wrote some code that would update the insurance fund amount by adding to it the daily trading volume, multiplied by a randomish number around 7,500, and dividing it by a billion, thus making it appear as though the website was referencing a real account balance that was fluctuating as the exchange added funds or withdrew from it to cover losses.”
Oct 11
Alameda had a $65B line of credit and 'unlimited withdrawals' techcrunch.com · “Because of these special privileges, Alameda had a $65 billion line of credit, Wang said.”
Oct 6
The FTC Sues to Break Up Amazon Over an Economy-Wide "Hidden Tax" thebignewsletter.com · “At this point, the price Amazon charges these third party sellers has grown to nearly 50% of its revenue.”
Oct 4
Texas man sent to death row over junk science denied US supreme court appeal theguardian.com · “At least 32 people have been exonerated for crimes based on shaken baby syndrome forensics.”
Oct 3
Satya Nadella tells a court that Bing is worse than Google, and Apple could fix it theverge.com · “Has Microsoft tried to become Apple’s default search engine, Severt asked? Yes, Nadella said. How’d it go? “Not well,” Nadella deadpanned.”
Oct 3

September 2023 7 posts

How to Hide a $2 Trillion Antitrust Trial thebignewsletter.com · “Last week, according to our calculations, over half of the trial, including testimony from key witnesses, happened in closed session, unavailable to the public.”
Sep 25
Willingham Sends Fables Into the Public Domain billwillingham.substack.com · “The one thing in our contract the DC lawyers can’t contest, or reinterpret to their own benefit, is that I am the sole owner of the intellectual property. I can sell it or give it away to whomever I want.”
Sep 15
A track inspector claimed he was fired for reporting 'too many defects.' His secret recordings may cost BNSF millions. kstp.com · “Why in the world would we ever call the FRA about anything? Unless I’m absolutely blatantly telling you to break the rules”
Sep 8
Microsoft announces new Copilot Copyright Commitment for customers blogs.microsoft.com · “We are charging our commercial customers for our Copilots, and if their use creates legal issues, we should make this our problem rather than our customers’ problem.”
Sep 7
TV Museum Will Die in 48 Hours Unless Sony Retracts YouTube Copyright Strikes torrentfreak.com · “At this point, I don’t even care if they were issued under authorization by Sony or not – I just need to reach a live human being to try to resolve this without copyright strikes.”
Sep 4
Google Preemptively Banned Hundreds of Millions of 'Pirate' URLs Last Year torrentfreak.com · “In 2022, more than 40% of the over 680 million URLs we received via our web form were not in our Search index and therefore, have never appeared in our Search results,”
Sep 3
Arm wrestles expert's domains away citing trademark issues theregister.com · “Arm’s takedown comes just a week after the Neoverse designer officially filed for an IPO on the US Nasdaq.”
Sep 1

August 2023 10 posts

When your classmates threaten you with felony charges miles.land · “They said that we had violated state and federal law. They threatened us with civil and criminal charges. 20 years in prison.”
Aug 28
Web Scraping for Me, But Not for Thee (Guest Blog Post) blog.ericgoldman.org · “Nonetheless, without any obvious hints of irony, OpenAI’s own terms of use prohibits scraping.”
Aug 25
Tornado Cash devs charged with laundering more than $1 billion theverge.com · “Storm suggested creating a version of Tornado with KYC / AML enabled, but Tornado’s unnamed venture capital investors were dismissive, saying, "I just don’t know if anyone will actually want this."”
Aug 24
IP Address Blocking Banned After Anti-Piracy Court Order Hit Cloudflare torrentfreak.com · “With regard to the blocking of access to the IP address 190.115.18.20, the Telekom Control Commission found a violation of Article 3 Paragraph 3 of Regulation (EU) 2015/2120, because the IP access block poses the risk of ‘overblocking’ any website content.”
Aug 19
Nintendo Is Trying To Patent Some Really Broad Tears Of The Kingdom Mechanics kotaku.com · “Link and the objects he rides on move together at the same speed, rather than Link being technically stationary on top of a moving object as is common in the physics of other games.”
Aug 16
Internet Archive Responds to Recording Industry Lawsuit Targeting Obsolete Media blog.archive.org · “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.”
Aug 14
Judge denies HP's plea to throw out all-in-one printer lockdown lawsuit theregister.com · “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”
Aug 13
Former VP Claims Salesforce Lied About Software Capabilities: 'It Was All a Lie.' businessinsider.com · “While it was able to execute some functions such as information collection in real time, other operations such as the processing and organizing of that data took hours to complete”
Aug 13
Youtube-dl Site Goes Offline as Hosting Provider Enforces Court-Ordered Ban torrentfreak.com · “While Uberspace didn’t host the open source software, it was held responsible for the website linking to the software hosted on developer platform GitHub.”
Aug 11
Supreme Court says Apple can keep its App Store payment rules for now theverge.com · “Kagan did not issue an explanation for the decision, but Epic’s petition was noted as denied on the Supreme Court’s website.”
Aug 10

July 2023 6 posts

Man Found Guilty of Child Porn, Because He Ran a Tor Exit Node (The Story of William Weber) lowendbox.com · “The law was changed a few weeks later to include private persons and sole traders as protected lsps, not just companies, but they had to convict me.”
Jul 23
The dirty little secret that could bring down Big Tech businessinsider.com · “The single most important fact in this paper is that Benchmark put $12 million into Uber and got $5.8 billion back.”
Jul 18
Co-founder of Stability AI, worth billions, says he was tricked into selling stake for $100 semafor.com · “Cyrus Hodes accused Mostaque, who is also named in a lawsuit filed in a U.S. federal court on Thursday, of convincing him that Stability AI was worthless and hiding the company’s work on what became the popular image generator, Stable Diffusion.”
Jul 14
newpipe.net removed from Google search results due to DMCA take down request newpipe.net · “This is because Google submitted to a DMCA takedown notice from a French record label, “Because Music”. The notice demands removing our homepage newpipe.net from their search listings along with a set of other domains completely unrelated to our project.”
Jul 11
Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI and Meta for copyright infringement theverge.com · “ThePile, the complaint points out, was described in an EleutherAI paper as being put together from “a copy of the contents of the Bibliotik private tracker.””
Jul 9
Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages carboncredits.com · “Multnomah County is seeking $50 million from the defendants for actual damages from the 2021 record-breaking heat wave.”
Jul 2

June 2023 12 posts

FedEx Accused of Largest Odometer Rollback Fraud in History With Used Vans thedrive.com · “FedEx, with the knowledge and assistance of Holman, replaced thousands of odometers on FedEx/Holman Vehicles”
Jun 27
Publishers Carpet-Bomb IPFS Gateway Operators With DMCA Notices torrentfreak.com · “None of them have ever been accessed, and of the ones that I checked, none even worked.”
Jun 25
According to Advocate General Medina European Harmonised Technical Standards must be freely available without charge because of their particular legal nature as acts that form part of EU law curia.europa.eu · “In that context, the Advocate General concludes that the rule of law requires access to HTS that is freely available without charge.”
Jun 23
Criminalization of encryption : the 8 december case laquadrature.net · “In total, there are more than 150 questions related to the issue of encryption and digital practices in the investigation file.”
Jun 22
FTC sues Amazon over 'deceptive' Prime sign-up and cancellation process cnbc.com · “Amazon used an internal term called "Iliad" to describe the process, referencing Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War, the agency said, citing a report by Insider.”
Jun 21
Did I receive fraudulent DMCA takedowns? incoherency.co.uk · “The strange part is that of those 7350 URLs, during the time for which I have nginx logs, none of them have ever been accessed, and of the ones that I checked, none even worked.”
Jun 21
Apple's union-busting practices violated employee rights at NYC store, judge rules engadget.com · “Managers were found to have taken away pro-union flyers in the break room and attempted to dissuade employees from joining unions, which prosecutors argued had led employees to end the organizing campaign.”
Jun 21
Apple Is Taking On Apples in a Truly Weird Trademark Battle wired.com · “Authorities in Japan, Turkey, Israel, and Armenia have acquiesced.”
Jun 19
Twitter is being evicted from its Boulder office over unpaid rent techcrunch.com · “Twitter owes three months’ rent to its Boulder landlord, and a judge has signed off on evicting the tech giant from its office there, court documents show.”
Jun 14
Our Right To Challenge Junk Patents Is Under Threat eff.org · “The USPTO would prohibit anyone from challenging the patents of “small entities” and “under-resourced inventors.””
Jun 5
Traffic cop sues city over 'get-out-of-jail-free' cards for NYPD friends and family theguardian.com · “Bianchi’s service as a traffic cop ended last summer when he wrote a ticket to a friend of the NYPD’s highest-ranking uniformed officer, Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the lawsuit states.”
Jun 4
High Prices Make Textbook 'Piracy' Acceptable to Most Students torrentfreak.com · “This is also reflected in the research, which found that only 18% would consider reducing their illegal textbook habits if they risked jail time.”
Jun 4

May 2023 9 posts

Federal Judge Makes History in Holding That Border Searches of Cell Phones Require a Warrant eff.org · “The number of warrantless device searches at the border and the significant invasion of privacy they represent is only increasing. In Fiscal Year 2022, CBP conducted an all-time high of 45,499 device searches.”
May 30
Music Company Asks Google to Delist 'YouTube Downloader' Wikipedia Article torrentfreak.com · “The highlighted URL in the above notice lists Wikipedia’s “Comparison of YouTube downloaders” page.”
May 28
Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused simonwillison.net · “That the citations and opinions in question were provided by ChatGPT which also provided its legal source and assured the reliability of its content.”
May 27
PyPI was subpoenaed blog.pypi.org · “In this case, however, PSF determined with the advice of counsel that our only course of action was to provide the requested data.”
May 24
Popular Pirate Bay Proxy Site Disappears From GitHub torrentfreak.com · “A few weeks after its comeback the site quietly disappeared. Those who try to access the domain today will get a 404 error.”
May 20
Attorney General James Secures $615,000 from Companies that Supplied Fake Comments to Influence FCC’s Repeal of Net Neutrality Rules ag.ny.gov · “However, nearly every lead generator that was hired to enroll consumers in the campaign instead simply fabricated consumers’ responses. As a result, more than 8.5 million fake comments that impersonated real people were submitted to the FCC, and more than half a million fake letters were sent to Congress.”
May 14
Baltimore sues Hyundai, Kia over massive spike in car thefts thebaltimorebanner.com · “Certain Kia or Hyundai models can be stolen using a screwdriver and a USB charging cord.”
May 12
Apple just lost its lawsuit trying to ban iOS virtual machines techradar.com · “Following a years-long battle with Corellium, Apple has been told by US courts that third-party virtual iOS devices are indeed allowed and that there’s nothing it can do to put an end to that.”
May 9
U.S. Hits Z-Library with New Domain Name Seizures torrentfreak.com · “Unfortunately, one of our primary login domains was seized today. Therefore, we recommend using the domain singlelogin.re to log in to your account, as well as to register.”
May 5

April 2023 5 posts

Apple's App Store can stay closed, but developers can link to outside payments, says appeals court theverge.com · “While today’s ruling states that the district court "erred as a matter of law on several issues," it says those errors "were harmless."”
Apr 25
Apple wins antitrust court battle with Epic Games, appeals court rules techcrunch.com · “But it said those errors were ultimately “harmless” and that Epic, regardless, had “failed to establish, as a factual matter, its proposed market definition and the existence of any substantially less restrictive alternative means for Apple to accomplish the procompetitive justifications supporting iOS’s walled- garden ecosystem.””
Apr 24
'Youtube-dl Hosting Ban Paves the Way to Privatized Censorship' torrentfreak.com · “The consequences of this will be that hosting providers receiving complaints will most likely kick out their customers without a court ruling, for things that might be perfectly legal.”
Apr 13
Z-Library Plans to Let Users Share Physical Books Through 'Z-Points' torrentfreak.com · “Interestingly, however, Z-Library believes that existing libraries are ideally suited to become Z-Points.”
Apr 9
Monster Energy Goes After Indie Dev For Using The Word 'Monster' thegamer.com · “It also forces us to agree to never use a green & white logo on a black background for any game we ever make. So they own the colors green & white too apparently”
Apr 4

March 2023 11 posts

In re Google Play Store Antitrust Litigation: Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law re Chat Preservation storage.courtlistener.com · “The Court concludes that Google intended to subvert the discovery process, and that Chat evidence was “lost with the intent to prevent its use in litigation” and “with the intent to deprive another party of the information’s use in the litigation.””
Mar 29
The Internet Archive has lost its first fight to scan and lend e-books like a library theverge.com · “Koetl also dismissed arguments that the Internet Archive might theoretically have helped publishers sell more copies of their books, saying there was no direct evidence, and that it was “irrelevant” that the Internet Archive had purchased its own copies of the books before making copies for its online audience.”
Mar 27
The RIAA v. Steve Jobs weblog.rogueamoeba.com · “Even 18 years on, I find this story rather terrifying.”
Mar 26
Cloudflare Disables Access to 'Pirated' Content on its IPFS Gateway torrentfreak.com · “For one, it shows that decentralized and censorship-free networks lose their key feature when they are accessed through centralized gateways.”
Mar 25
Police sue rapper Afroman for using footage of home raid in his music videos theguardian.com · “Following the raid, Adams county prosecutor’s office said officers found no probative criminal evidence, and Afroman faced no charges.”
Mar 24
Do Kwon Arrested in Montenegro: Interior Minister coindesk.com · “The suspect was detained at the Podgorica airport with falsified documents, Adzic added, saying he was still waiting for official confirmation of identity.”
Mar 23
John Deere's ongoing GPL violations: What's next sfconservancy.org · “Deere’s inability to provide complete corresponding source to us for all requested products more than 2 years after our first request is beyond unacceptable”
Mar 16
Why We’re Suing to Protect the Right of Incarcerated People to Receive Physical Mail eff.org · “Instead, family and friends were required to mail their letters to Smart Communications, a private for-profit company based in Florida that would scan and destroy those letters so that incarcerated people would be required to access them digitally through a limited number of shared tablets and kiosks in public spaces within the jails.”
Mar 15
R. c. Epstein citoyens.soquij.qc.ca · “Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian.”
Mar 10
The SCO lawsuit, 20 years later lwn.net · “Due to what must be one of the worst-written contracts in technology-industry history, it turned out that SCO didn’t even own the Unix copyrights it was suing over.”
Mar 3
Starbucks illegally fired US workers over union, judge rules bbc.co.uk · “It also repeatedly sent high-ranking staff to stores “in order to more closely supervise, monitor, or create the impression that employees’ union activities are under surveillance,” he said.”
Mar 2

February 2023 7 posts

Ford Applies to Patent Self-Repossessing Cars That Can Drive Themselves Away thedrive.com · “If it will cost the bank more to repo the vehicle as compared to what it could sell it for, then “the repossession system computer may cooperate with the vehicle computer to autonomously move the vehicle from the premises of the owner to a junkyard.””
Feb 27
Supreme Court rejects man’s bid to sue police over arrest for Facebook parody nbcnews.com · “The police department, claiming the posts had disrupted its operations, launched an investigation and ultimately searched Novak’s apartment, arrested him and jailed him for four days.”
Feb 22
U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Wikimedia Foundation’s Challenge to NSA Mass Surveillance diff.wikimedia.org · “Under this program, the NSA systematically searches the contents of internet traffic entering and leaving the United States, including Americans’ private emails, messages, and web communications.”
Feb 21
Germany Raises Red Flags About Palantir’s Big Data Dragnet wired.com · “The ruling said that the Hamburg law, and a similar law in Hesse, “allow police, with just one click, to create comprehensive profiles of persons, groups, and circles,” without differentiating between suspected criminals and people who are connected to them.”
Feb 19
Z-Library Returns on the Clearnet in Full Hydra-Mode torrentfreak.com · “After logging into your account, you will be redirected to your personal domain. Please keep your personal domain private!”
Feb 13
Voice.AI: GPL Violations with a Side of DRM undeleted.ronsor.com · “A couple of days later, on February 4, I suddenly found myself banned from the Voice.ai Discord server.”
Feb 6
Finland’s Most-Wanted Hacker Nabbed in France krebsonsecurity.com · “Kivimäki was ultimately convicted of orchestrating more than 50,000 cybercrimes.”
Feb 5

January 2023 10 posts

BBC Modi Documentary Removal blog.archive.org · “Internet Archive can confirm that it has removed links in response to DMCA takedown requests from the BBC.”
Jan 28
Domain Registry Takes Sci-Hub's .SE Domain Name Offline torrentfreak.com · “Sci-Hub.se’s domain status was changed to “ServerHold.” Set by the domain registry, this status effectively makes the domain unusable.”
Jan 28
OGL 1.0a & Creative Commons dndbeyond.com · “We are leaving OGL 1.0a in place, as is. Untouched.”
Jan 27
An AI robot lawyer was set to argue in court. Real lawyers shut it down. npr.org · “In particular, Browder said one state bar official noted that the unauthorized practice of law is a misdemeanor in some states punishable up to six months in county jail.”
Jan 26
The FBI Won’t Say Whether It Hacked Dark Web ISIS Site vice.com · ““In discovery, the Government has declined to provide any information related to its TOR operation,” Samuel E. Landes, the defense attorney working on the case, wrote in a filing published Tuesday.”
Jan 17
JPMorgan shutters website it paid $175 million for, accuses founder of inventing millions of accounts cnbc.com · “Instead of gaining a business with 4.25 million students, JPMorgan had one with "fewer than 300,000 customers," JPMorgan said in the suit.”
Jan 13
An open letter on the Open Gaming License, to Wizards of the Coast opendnd.games · “This new license intends to completely revoke the old OGL, a perpetual license designed by WotC themselves to be irrevocable.”
Jan 9
GitHub is Sued, and We May Learn Something About Creative Commons Licensing scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org · “Your honor, we needed so many works that it was simply not practical to ask permission of the creators.”
Jan 6
MacBook owners have two months to claim up to $395 over butterfly keyboard woes theverge.com · “Payments aren’t expected to go out until a final approval hearing scheduled for March 16th, CNET notes, and actual payouts could be less depending on the number of class members in each category.”
Jan 4
Epstein's sex trafficking was aided by JPMorgan, a U.S. Virgin Islands lawsuit says npr.org · “The complaint says the territory’s Department of Justice investigation "revealed that JP Morgan knowingly, negligently, and unlawfully provided and pulled the levers through which recruiters and victims were paid and was indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise."”
Jan 1

2022 57 posts

December 2022 7 posts

Unintended consequences of blocking IP addresses blog.cloudflare.com · “In an attempt to block 14 websites that copyright holders argued were violating copyright, the court-ordered IP block rendered thousands of websites inaccessible to ordinary Internet users in Austria over a two-day period.”
Dec 29
Police, prosecutors used junk science to decide 911 callers were liars propublica.org · “So far, researchers who have tried to corroborate Harpster’s claims have failed.”
Dec 28
How Did Sam Bankman-Fried Get Bail? serioustrouble.show · “Federal bail does not necessarily work the way you think it should.”
Dec 24
January 1, 2023 is Public Domain Day: Works from 1927 are open to all web.law.duke.edu · “But before this could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.”
Dec 20
Six charged in mass takedown of DDoS-for-hire sites krebsonsecurity.com · “The complaint against Miller alleges Royalstresser launched nearly 200,000 DDoS attacks between November 2021 and February 2022.”
Dec 14
Everything SBF is doing is in singular pursuit of not going to jail newsletter.mollywhite.net · “But in reality, he is laundering his reputation.”
Dec 8
Federal court requires Amazon to stop firing employees for protected activities nlrb.gov · “If Amazon violates the cease-and-desist order, it could be held in contempt by the court.”
Dec 5

November 2022 6 posts

FTX used corporate funds to purchase employee homes, new filing shows cnbc.com · “"The Debtors do not have an accounting department," Ray wrote, stating he expected it would be "some time" before reliable financial statements could be prepared.”
Nov 17
Mom handcuffed, jailed for 8-year-old son walking half a mile reason.com · “She was charged with endangering a child, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum of two years in prison.”
Nov 16
Delaware judge discovers hidden entity recruiting people to be patent trolls ipde.com · “Spoiler alert: MAVEXAR seems to be driving the litigation in all three sets of cases.”
Nov 7
I fought the PayPal and I won jessesingal.substack.com · “Arbitration is nothing more than privatized dispute resolution.”
Nov 4
Snap Store administrators removed signal-desktop from Ubuntu Snap forum.snapcraft.io · “This is due to a DMCA takedown request coming from people representing Signal.”
Nov 3
We've filed a lawsuit against GitHub Copilot githubcopilotlitigation.com · “As far as we know, this is the first class-action case in the US challenging the training and output of AI systems.”
Nov 3

October 2022 7 posts

Yet another scientific body has debunked bitemark analysis. The courts still won't care. radleybalko.substack.com · “The NIST report is now the fourth major scientific body to find no scientific validity to support these central tenets of bitemark analysis.”
Oct 20
GitHub Copilot investigation githubcopilotinvestigation.com · “We’re investigating a potential lawsuit against GitHub Copilot for violating its legal duties to open-source authors and end users.”
Oct 17
Google Engineers Joked About How Incognito Mode Isn't Very Incognito futurism.com · “We are limited in how strongly we can market Incognito because it’s not truly private, thus requiring really fuzzy, hedging language that is almost more damaging.”
Oct 15
Nick Clegg, Other Meta Executives 'Inadvertently' Identified in OnlyFans Bribery Suit gizmodo.com · “In court, however, its lawyers are less focused on proving the allegations false than arguing that, even if true, Meta itself would be shielded from liability.”
Oct 13
California Man Fined $1,000 for Drawing Lines on Maps vice.com · “Local officials encouraging people to create their own site drawings contradicts the board’s claim that anyone who depicts a site map needs a license.”
Oct 12
Dutch employee fired by U.S. firm for shutting off webcam awarded €75,000 in court nltimes.nl · “The demand to keep the camera activated was an unreasonable intrusion on the plaintiff’s privacy rights, the court ruled.”
Oct 9
SimulaVR Has Been Subpoenaed by Meta Platforms, Inc simulavr.com · “I seriously doubt we have much to add to this case.”
Oct 6

September 2022 7 posts

Citing New Evidence, Surviving Family Members Sue Feds, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin Over 1996 TWA Crash lawstreetmedia.com · “The plaintiffs are represented by Bailey & Glasser LLP.”
Sep 25
Hertz Is Still Having Rental Car Customers Wrongfully Arrested, Lawsuit Claims thedrive.com · “Hertz reported that it files at least 3,365 theft reports against customers each year.”
Sep 24
Google removed our website from search because it uses youtube-dl kapwing.com · “We are willing to do whatever it takes to comply with the law - we just wish we knew what it was.”
Sep 19
California sues Amazon for preventing third-party sellers offering cheaper prices elsewhere engadget.com · “If they defy Amazon, they risk losing buy buttons, prominent listings or even basic access to Amazon’s marketplace.”
Sep 16
An F-16 pilot died when his ejection seat failed. Was it counterfeit? airforcetimes.com · “Plaintiffs hope to learn through the legal discovery process whether the components were proven fake.”
Sep 14
Meet the woman stockpiling cash to sue San Francisco over housing deadlock sfstandard.com · “It’s to try to deter the city from messing around,” she said.
Sep 10
AG Ferguson: Judge rules Facebook parent Meta intentionally violated campaign finance laws atg.wa.gov · “The judge concluded that Meta repeatedly and intentionally violated the law and must pay penalties.”
Sep 6

August 2022 6 posts

Patent Trolls Inbound: Our First Lawsuit blog.comma.ai · “I’m willing to lose $1M before I give him $10k.”
Aug 24
Class action against Oracle's worldwide surveillance machine iccl.ie · “Oracle claims to have amassed detailed dossiers on 5 billion people, and generates $42.4 billion in annual revenue.”
Aug 23
Arrest of suspected developer of Tornado Cash fiod.nl · “On Wednesday 10 August, the FIOD arrested a 29-year-old man in Amsterdam.”
Aug 12
Man overcharged 20 rupees for India train ticket wins 22-year legal battle theguardian.com · “Equally surprising was that Indian Railways, the country’s largest employer, chose to continue fighting the case.”
Aug 12
He Was Arrested for Promoting Jury Nullification. A Federal Court Says That Was Illegal. reason.com · “But Picard was not referencing a specific trial when he was arrested.”
Aug 9
NSA, NIST, and post-quantum cryptography: Announcing my second lawsuit against the U.S. government blog.cr.yp.to · “NIST has produced zero records in response to this FOIA request.”
Aug 5

July 2022 5 posts

Australian activist can't use encrypted apps, must let police access phone abc.net.au · “He is not allowed to use any encrypted messaging apps, like Signal or WhatsApp.”
Jul 31
FBI is hiding details about a raid on Americans' safe deposit boxes reason.com · “Those details matter, and not just to the victims of the FBI’s raid.”
Jul 28
Archive.org Seeks Summary Judgment in Lawsuit Filed by Publishing Companies blog.archive.org · “The publishers are not seeking protection from harm to their existing rights.”
Jul 20
Glassdoor not so anonymous webworm.co · “Glassdoor is legally required to release the contact details of the posters directly to Zuru, via Zuru’s attorneys.”
Jul 19
Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement sec.gov · “Twitter has provided only a pdf copy of Goldman Sachs’ final Board presentation.”
Jul 8

June 2022 3 posts

Digital Trails: How Bungie Identified a Mass Sender of Fake DMCA Notices torrentfreak.com · “It also reveals how Bungie tracked down and identified the architect of the DMCA fraud scheme as one of its own customers.”
Jun 24
IBM ordered to hand over ex-CEO emails plotting cuts in older workers theregister.com · “The emails contained within Exhibit 10 evidence an interest at the then CEO-level to change the profile of IBM employees so that it reflected a younger workforce.”
Jun 14
Nintendo's Big Piracy Case Is A Very Sad Story kotaku.com · “That equates to about $3,800 a month, all of which was disposal income that would not have been available to him but for his involvement in the conspiracy.”
Jun 8

May 2022 1 posts

Pirate Site Blocking is Making its Way Into Free Trade Agreements torrentfreak.com · “The new free trade agreement between Australia and the UK includes a site blocking paragraph.”
May 14

April 2022 5 posts

Internet Archive joins opposition to the “SMART Copyright Act” blog.archive.org · “If the SMART Copyright Act were to pass, the Copyright Office would select a “technical measure” every three years that online service providers would be required to implement.”
Apr 30
Gnome patent troll stripped of patent rights blog.opensource.org · “That prompted over 4,000 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) community members to rally in defense of the GNOME Foundation, raising over $150,000 to defend against the bogus claim.”
Apr 28
Web scraping is legal, US appeals court reaffirms techcrunch.com · “Good news for archivists, academics, researchers and journalists: Scraping publicly accessible data is legal, according to a U.S. appeals court ruling.”
Apr 18
The games Nintendo didn't want you to play: Tengen nicole.express · “Unable to reverse engineer the chip, Tengen convinced the United States Copyright Office to hand over the source code of the lockout chip, claiming it was necessary for a lawsuit.”
Apr 17
DuckDuckGo Removes Pirate Sites and YouTube-DL from Its Search Results torrentfreak.com · “Privacy-centered search engine DuckDuckGo has completely removed the search results for many popular pirates sites including The Pirate Bay, 1337x, and Fmovies.”
Apr 15

March 2022 6 posts

FTC Sues Intuit for Its Deceptive TurboTax "free" Filing Campaign ftc.gov · “In spite of this advertising, many consumers who took the time to gather their documents, entrust their personal information to Intuit, and begin the filing process found that they could not file their taxes for free.”
Mar 29
Microsoft is tied to hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bribes, whistleblower alleges theverge.com · “In 2016, Yasser Elabd noticed a $40,000 payment to a client in Africa that didn’t smell right.”
Mar 25
Mercedes Drive Pilot Beats Tesla Autopilot By Taking Legal Responsibility roadandtrack.com · “Once you engage Drive Pilot, you are no longer legally liable for the car’s operation until it disengages.”
Mar 22
Court affirms it's false advertising to claim software is Open Source when it's not opensource.org · “The parties didn’t dispute that the use of the Commons Clause makes a license non-free.”
Mar 17
The Campaign to Shut Down Crucial Documentary Tool youtube-dl Continues, And So Does the Fight to Save It eff.org · “Uberspace doesn’t even host youtube-dl – it simply hosts the youtube-dl homepage, which links to GitHub.”
Mar 7
Nintendo Is Removing Switch Emulation Videos On Steam Deck exputer.com · “YouTube user The Phawx posted a video showcasing how well the Steam Deck can emulate the Nintendo Switch, and it was soon taken down on copyright grounds.”
Mar 3

February 2022 1 posts

The United States of Amazon: The Day Amazon Sent the FBI to Take My Family’s Bank Accounts medium.com · “According to court filings, the government has collaborated with Amazon attorneys to seize millions in assets from at least 53 companies, investors, law firms, and individuals.”
Feb 18

January 2022 3 posts

AG Ferguson investigation shuts down Amazon price-fixing program nationwide atg.wa.gov · “The “Sold by Amazon” program allowed the online retailer to agree on price with third-party sellers, rather than compete with them.”
Jan 26
Google and Facebook's top execs allegedly approved dividing ad market among themselves theregister.com · “Specifically, Google made AMP unable to execute JavaScript in the header, which frustrated publishers’ use of header bidding.”
Jan 15
PayPal faces lawsuit for freezing customer accounts and funds engadget.com · “Lena Evans, one of the plaintiffs who’d been a PayPal user for 22 years, said the website seized $26,984 from her account six months after it got frozen without ever telling her why.”
Jan 14

2021 73 posts

December 2021 5 posts

Italian Courts Find Open Source Software Terms Enforceable ifthisbetreason.com · “The issue was that the software was redistributed without including acknowledgment of the original work, including information about changes the defendants had made to the software, and with no mention of the software’s copyright holders.”
Dec 27
Julian Assange can be extradited to the US, court rules bbc.com · “In line with previous cases, the Lord Chief Justice and Lord Justice Holroyde ruled that when the US administration gives a promise to the UK of fair and humane treatment of a detainee, its word should not be doubted.”
Dec 10
"Free PACER" Bill Advances Through Senate Judiciary Unanimously fixthecourt.com · “There’s no reason the American public should pay for public documents.”
Dec 9
U.S. Indicts Two Men for Running a $20 Million YouTube Content ID Scam torrentfreak.com · “Starting sometime in 2017 through to at least April 30, 2021, Fernandez and Teran began monetizing music on YouTube for a vast library of more than 50,000 songs, none of which they owned the rights to.”
Dec 3
Google Removes Pirate Bay Domains from Search Results Citing Dutch Court Order torrentfreak.com · “As far as we know, this is the first time that Google has complied with a pirate site blocking order without being named.”
Dec 2

November 2021 3 posts

Indian academics throw weight behind Sci-Hub and LibGen in landmark case trtworld.com · “Since 2019, global publishing giants Elsevier, Wiley and American Chemical Society have tried to block access to Sci-Hub and LibGen in India.”
Nov 28
Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware apple.com · “To prevent further abuse and harm to its users, Apple is also seeking a permanent injunction to ban NSO Group from using any Apple software, services, or devices.”
Nov 23
Blind People Won the Right to Break Ebook DRM. In 3 Years, They'll Have to Do It Again wired.com · ““To go every three years is burdensome,” says Mark Richert, executive director at the Association for Education and Rehabilitation of the Blind and Visually Impaired.”
Nov 8

October 2021 7 posts

A Patent Troll Backs Off sparkfun.com · “Altair Logix was formed June 12, 2018, or three months after the patent expired on February 27th, 2018.”
Oct 26
Proton wins appeal in Swiss court over surveillance laws swissinfo.ch · “A Swiss court has upheld the appeal of Geneva-based Proton, a provider of secure and anonymous email services, limiting its obligation to monitor traffic and retain data for surveillance purposes.”
Oct 24
Google 'colluded' with Facebook to bypass Apple privacy theregister.com · “Several years ago, to deal with the competitive threat of header bidding – a way for multiple ad exchanges to get a fair shot at winning an automated auction for ad space – Google allegedly hatched a plan called "Jedi" to ensure that its ad exchange always won.”
Oct 23
Police Can't Demand You Reveal Your Phone Passcode and Then Tell a Jury You Refused eff.org · “The State cannot compel a suspect to recall and share information that exists only in his mind.”
Oct 22
YouTube: Filmmakers Presumed Guilty Until (Maybe) Proven Innocent larryjordan.com · “Note that Anthony has to appeal the take-down notice NOT to an unbiased third-party, but to the person making the original claim.”
Oct 18
Canon sued for disabling scanner when printers run out of ink bleepingcomputer.com · “As ink is not necessary to perform scans or faxes, the argument is that the printer features should continue to work even if there is no ink in the device.”
Oct 16
'Google' is most searched word on Bing, Google says bbc.com · “Google’s market share in general search is consistent with consumer surveys showing that 95% of users prefer Google to rival search engines.”
Oct 1

September 2021 7 posts

AI cannot be the inventor of a patent, appeals court rules bbc.com · “Mr Thaler filed two patent applications in 2018, one for a type of food container and one for a flashing light.”
Sep 24
Apple Will Not Reinstate Epic’s Fortnite Developer Account, but Epic’s Other Developer Accounts Remain Active daringfireball.net · “That doesn’t sound like the words of a man poised to comply with the App Store rules around in-app purchases.”
Sep 23
FBI says fortune seized in Beverly Hills raid was criminals’ loot. Owners say: Where’s the proof? latimes.com · “But six months after the raid, the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles have produced no evidence of criminal wrongdoing by the vast majority of box holders whose belongings the government is trying to keep.”
Sep 20
Uber must employ its drivers, Dutch court rules nltimes.nl · “For example, a driver may only refuse a few trips before being logged out by the system.”
Sep 13
Apple must allow other forms of in-app purchase, rules judge in Epic v. Apple theverge.com · “In short, iOS apps must be allowed to direct users to payment options beyond those offered by Apple.”
Sep 10
Sky Subscribers' Piracy Habits Directly Help Premier League Block Illegal Streams torrentfreak.com · “UK ISP Sky Broadband is monitoring the IP addresses of servers suspected of streaming pirated content to subscribers and supplying that data to an anti-piracy company working with the Premier League.”
Sep 2
The Sacklers, Who Made Billions From OxyContin, Win Immunity From Opioid Lawsuits npr.org · “In return, they have agreed to pay roughly $4.3 billion, while also forfeiting ownership of Purdue Pharma.”
Sep 1

August 2021 4 posts

Googlespeak™ - How Google Limits Thought About Antitrust zyppy.com · “For example, under no circumstances are Googlers to talk about “Market Share.””
Aug 24
Google’s ‘Project Hug’ paid out huge sums to keep game devs in the Play Store, Epic filing claims theverge.com · “Google quietly paid game developers hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to keep their games on the Play Store, a newly unredacted complaint from Epic Games in its antitrust suit against Google alleges.”
Aug 19
FTC Alleges Facebook Resorted to Illegal Buy-or-Bury Scheme to Crush Competition After String of Failed Attempts to Innovate ftc.gov · “And to further moat its monopoly, Facebook lured app developers to the platform, surveilled them for signs of success, and then buried them when they became competitive threats.”
Aug 19
Apple says researchers can vet its child safety features. But it’s suing a startup that does just that. technologyreview.com · “Apple is suing a company that makes software to let security researchers do exactly that.”
Aug 18

July 2021 9 posts

Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, founder of electric carmaker Nikola, on three counts of fraud cnbc.com · “A federal grand jury charged Nikola founder Trevor Milton with three counts of criminal fraud for lying about “nearly all aspects of the business” to bolster stock sales of the electric vehicle start-up, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday.”
Jul 29
Police Are Telling ShotSpotter to Alter Evidence From Gunshot-Detecting AI vice.com · “The company’s algorithms initially classified the sound as a firework.”
Jul 26
Suit Claims Sexual Harassment, Discrimination At Game Studio Activision Blizzard npr.org · “A lawsuit filed by the state of California on Wednesday alleges sexual harassment, gender discrimination and violations of the state’s equal pay law at the video game giant Activision Blizzard.”
Jul 22
Our lawsuit against ChessBase stockfishchess.org · “ChessBase repeatedly violated central obligations of the GPL, which ensures that the user of the software is informed of their rights.”
Jul 20
Apple sued in nightmare case involving teen wrongly accused of shoplifting, driver's permit used by impostor, and unreliable facial-rec tech theregister.com · “Apple and SIS have a qualified law enforcement privilege that allows them to err in store security-related accusations and not be sued for it.”
Jul 19
Sega sued for 'rigged' Key Master arcade machine polygon.com · “A new lawsuit alleges that Key Master is intentionally rigged against players.”
Jul 14
Do patents kill innovation? The US patent office is asking eenewseurope.com · “The study particularly wants to find examples of where a patent has been denied in the US but accepted in other jurisdictions, which will be a key area for European electronics companies.”
Jul 9
GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright juliareda.eu · “What is astonishing about the current debate is that the calls for the broadest possible interpretation of copyright are now coming from within the Free Software community.”
Jul 5
Abandoning GitHub thelig.ht · “I consider this a severe attack on the rights of copyright holders so therefore I cannot continue to rely on GitHub’s services.”
Jul 3

June 2021 13 posts

SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll sparkfun.com · “Patent trolls are Americans that are destroying American manufacturing and small business.”
Jun 30
Dear Google: Public Domain Compositions Exist blog.dbmiller.org · “Recently, I uploaded a production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury to YouTube, and it instantly got hit by four copyright claims.”
Jun 28
Judge dismisses FTC and state antitrust complaints against Facebook cnbc.com · “In the filing, the court states that the FTC did not prove Facebook maintains a monopoly.”
Jun 28
Quad9 and Sony Music: German Injunction Status quad9.net · “Quad9 has no relationship with any of the parties to the alleged infringement.”
Jun 24
John McAfee: Anti-virus creator found dead in prison cell bbc.com · “McAfee VirusScan helped to spark a multi-billion dollar industry in the computer world, and was eventually sold to technology giant Intel for more than $7.6bn (£4.7bn).”
Jun 23
Ask HN: I was hit with a patent troll lawsuit, how do I deal with it? news.ycombinator.com · “The patent in question involves downloading a remote database to a mobile device used as a lookup table when scanning a QR code.”
Jun 21
North Carolina Board Tells Retired Engineer He Can’t Talk About Engineering ij.org · “In North Carolina, practicing without a license can result in criminal misdemeanor charges.”
Jun 19
15 Universities Have Formed A Company That Looks A Lot Like A Patent Troll eff.org · “Patents in this context are legal tools that allow someone to monopolize publicly-funded research and capture its promise for a private end.”
Jun 15
Apple admits why its own Files app was ranked first when users searched for competitor Dropbox theverge.com · ““Dropbox wasn’t even visible on the first page [of search results],” Sweeney wrote.”
Jun 11
Ohio sues Google, seeks to declare the internet company a public utility dispatch.com · “The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages.”
Jun 8
How Replit used legal threats to kill my open-source project intuitiveexplanations.com · “Luckily we’re bigger now, and crucially have a lot of money to pay for top lawyers now if we’re forced to go that route.”
Jun 7
If Not Overturned, a Bad Copyright Decision Will Lead Many Americans to Lose Internet Access eff.org · “If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages.”
Jun 5
Aaron Swartz, vindicated pluralistic.net · “This isn’t law as we know it, it’s Felony Contempt of Business Model, and the most alarming thing was that this interpretation of the CFAA wasn’t completely ridiculous, given how badly drafted that law is.”
Jun 4

May 2021 3 posts

Amazon Prime Is an Economy-Distorting Lie mattstoller.substack.com · “Free shipping is the God of online retail, so powerful that France actually banned the practice to protect its retail outlets.”
May 30
'Apple is eating our lunch': Google employees admit in lawsuit that the company made it nearly impossible for users to keep their location private businessinsider.com · “Google continued collecting location data even when users turned off various location-sharing settings, made popular privacy settings harder to find, and even pressured LG and other phone makers into hiding settings precisely because users liked them, according to the documents.”
May 29
I Have a Lot to Say About Signal’s Cellebrite Hack cyberlaw.stanford.edu · “I think the impact on existing cases will be negligible, but that Signal has made an important point that may help push the mobile device forensics industry towards greater accountability for their often sloppy product security.”
May 16

April 2021 7 posts

Grand jury subpoena for Signal user data, Central District of California signal.org · “Because everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers.”
Apr 28
Apple Is Sued for Telling You That You're "Buying" Movies nofilmschool.com · “You actually have rented them at a higher fee, for a longer time.”
Apr 23
Convicted Post Office workers have names cleared bbc.co.uk · “Judges have quashed the convictions of 39 former postmasters after the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of justice.”
Apr 23
EFF Sues Proctorio on Behalf of Student It Falsely Accused of Copyright Infringement to Get Critical Tweets Taken Down eff.org · “Proctorio has responded to public criticism by attacking people who speak out.”
Apr 22
Google misled consumers about the collection and use of location data accc.gov.au · “The Court ruled that when consumers created a new Google Account during the initial set-up process of their Android device, Google misrepresented that the ‘Location History’ setting was the only Google Account setting that affected whether Google collected, kept or used personally identifiable data about their location.”
Apr 16
Google’s lawyer accidentally made a sensitive document public mattstoller.substack.com · “In a response to the complaint of a group of state attorney generals, Google’s lawyers - Paul Yetter at Yetter Coleman - filed a response, but accidentally forgot to redact critical information.”
Apr 11
Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. supremecourt.gov · “Google’s limited copying of the API is a transformative use.”
Apr 5

March 2021 2 posts

SF poop-testing startup, once compared to Theranos, charged in $60M fraud scheme sfgate.com · “The federal indictment states that uBiome sought upwards of $300 million in reimbursement claims from private and public health insurers between 2015 and 2019.”
Mar 21
ICANN Refuses to Accredit Pirate Bay Founder Peter Sunde Due to His 'Background' torrentfreak.com · “Sunde didn’t tick this box, as he was convicted for criminal copyright infringement.”
Mar 3

February 2021 7 posts

Judge in Google case disturbed that 'incognito' users are tracked bnnbloomberg.ca · “Broome’s attempt to downplay the privacy concerns by pointing out that the federal court system’s own website uses Google services ended up backfiring.”
Feb 26
Attorney General James Ends Virtual Currency Trading Platform Bitfinex's Illegal Activities in New York ag.ny.gov · “Tether’s claims that its virtual currency was fully backed by U.S. dollars at all times was a lie.”
Feb 23
Unsealed court document claims Facebook 'knew for years' that a metric was inflated and ignored an employee warning to avoid a revenue hit news.yahoo.com · “The lawsuit claims Facebook discovered removing duplicate or fake accounts from the total number would cause a 10% drop in potential reach numbers.”
Feb 19
Uber drivers are workers not self-employed, Supreme Court rules bbc.co.uk · “The decision could mean thousands of Uber drivers are entitled to minimum wage and holiday pay.”
Feb 19
Is This Beverly Hills Cop Playing Sublime's 'Santeria' to Avoid Being Live-Streamed? vice.com · “Any video that contains music, even if it’s playing in the background, is potentially subject to removal by Instagram.”
Feb 9
Accused murderer wins right to check source code of DNA testing kit used by police theregister.com · “The co-founder of the company, Mark Perlin, is said to have argued against source code analysis by claiming that the program, consisting of 170,000 lines of MATLAB code, is so dense it would take eight and a half years to review at a rate of ten lines an hour.”
Feb 7
Why Google's approach to replacing the cookie is drawing antitrust scrutiny digiday.com · “Google’s decision to kill off third-party cookies has already elicited multiple antitrust lawsuits and a U.S. congressional probe.”
Feb 3

January 2021 6 posts

WE are Preparing a Class Action LAWSUIT against Robinhood! old.reddit.com · “I’m friends with a lawyer who says we have a good case for a class action lawsuit.”
Jan 28
GitHub has received a DMCA from MPA about torrent tracker nyaa.si github.com · “Specifically, at the URL, the Repository hosts and offers for download the Project, which, when downloaded, provides the downloader everything necessary to launch and host a “clone” infringing website identical to Nyaa.si (and, thus, engage in massive infringement of copyrighted motion pictures and television shows).”
Jan 19
Visa and Plaid Abandon Merger After Antitrust Division's Suit to Block justice.gov · “According to the complaint, the transaction would have enabled Visa to eliminate this competitive threat to its online debit business before Plaid had a chance to succeed, thereby enhancing or maintaining its monopoly.”
Jan 12
Tell HN: Aaron Swartz died today, 8 years ago news.ycombinator.com · “Thank you for everything, Aaron.”
Jan 11
Sealed U.S. Court Records Exposed in SolarWinds Breach krebsonsecurity.com · “Under the AO’s new procedures, highly sensitive court documents filed with federal courts will be accepted for filing in paper form or via a secure electronic device, such as a thumb drive, and stored in a secure stand-alone computer system.”
Jan 7
Julian Assange: UK judge blocks extradition of Wikileaks founder to US bbc.com · “District Judge Vanessa Baraitser ruled that while US prosecutors had met the tests for Mr Assange to be extradited for trial, the US was incapable of preventing him from attempting to take his own life.”
Jan 4