These days, some of tech’s most important decisions are being made inside courtrooms. Google and Facebook are fending off antitrust accusations, while patent suits determine how much control of their own products they can have. The slow fight over Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threatens platforms like Twitter and YouTube with untold liability suits for the content they host. Gig economy companies like Uber and Airbnb are fighting for their very existence as their workers push for the protections of full-time employees. In each case, judges and juries are setting the rules about exactly how far tech companies can push the envelope and exactly how much protection everyday people have. This is where we keep track of those legal fights and the broader principles behind them. When you move fast and break things, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise when you end up in court.
Ryan Salame, a top lieutenant at FTX, got over seven years in prison. He’s the second FTX official sentenced, after SBF himself, and did not cooperate with the government — unlike several other members of the inner circle.
It’s been five years since “threadnought,” a giant Twitter thread in which lawyers battled trolls who were trying to silence critics of an anime voice actor accused of sexual misconduct.
Now, with a law firm drafted from the thread’s funniest people, lawyer Akiva Cohen represents many former Twitter employees who are suing Elon Musk over how he fired them after buying the company.
Sure, OpenAI may be facing legal troubles for its ChatGPT voice. But it kind of looks like the company has already lost in the court of public opinion...
“It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland, in a statement announcing the DOJ antitrust lawsuit.
The feds have filed an antitrust lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation, the parent company of event ticketing giant Ticketmaster, and we’re about to hear more details from the government’s side in this press conference.
Update, May 27th: Replaced live stream link with archive copy from YouTube.
The announcement could come as soon as Thursday. Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, calls itself “the largest producer of live music concerts in the world.” It’s one of many agents of consolidation that drastically reshaped music.
[The Washington Post]
Perhaps of note: their Binance accounts and their Deltec accounts; Deltec was allegedly key in giving FTX secret money to buy Tether. Criminal complaint here.
And though the charges are for laundering at least $73 million, the wallet in question received $341 million between April 2021 and the date of the indictment. Hm!
On today’s episode of Decoder, Verge editors Alex Heath and Sarah Jeong join me to discuss the lawsuit TikTok filed last week against the US government in response to the divest-or-ban bill.
One reason I wanted to have both Alex and Sarah on here is that there’s a lot of back and forth between the facts and the law; some of TikTok’s arguments are contradicted by the simple facts of what the company has already promised to do around the world, and some of the legal claims are complex and sit in tension with a long history of attempts to regulate speech and the internet.
TikTok averted a ban once before under the Trump administration. But this time around, the bill is on far more solid footing, and TikTok is arguing that divesting its US business is not possible “commercially, technologically, or legally.” So we walked through each of those arguments one by one.
The EU’s DMA rules have resulted in the launch of two third-party app stores for iPhone owners: AltStore PAL last month and Setapp Mobile today.
With the release of iOS 17.5, companies like Spotify and Epic now have the option of distributing apps directly from their own websites as well, assuming Apple’s rules aren’t too onerous.
A subscription-based alternative offering nag-free software.
After placing iPadOS under its Digital Markets Act (DMA) rules last month, the European Commission has now designated Booking as a Gatekeeper, finding its online intermediation service Booking.com “meets the relevant thresholds” to be a core platform service.
That’s two additional services (and one new Gatekeeper) now on the list since the first 22 were named in September.
Epic argues that the 27 percent fee Apple charges third-party developers violates a 2021 court order to allow outside payment links. The judge, according to Bloomberg, seems skeptical of Apple, too:
“You’re telling me a thousand people were involved and not one of them said maybe we should consider the cost” to the developers? the judge said. “Not a single person raised that issue of the thousand that were involved?”
Binance posted a blog in which Chief Executive Officer Richard Teng claimed Binance was approached about a “secret” payment “to make these issues go away.” Nigerian officials reject these claims in the strongest terms.
The auditor of Truth Social is a “sham audit mill,” according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. It has been charged with “massive fraud” for its “deliberate and systemic” failures. Apparently the firm can’t even spell its own name right.
[The Washington Post]
It’s exactly what you’d expect after the Fortnite maker said it was entitled to everything and a bag of chips due to its antitrust victory in federal court. Google wants Judge James Donato to think different:
“Epic’s demands would harm the privacy, security, and overall experience of consumers, developers, and device manufacturers. Not only does their proposal go far beyond the scope of the recent U.S. trial verdict – which we will be challenging – it’s also unnecessary due to the settlement we reached last year with State Attorneys General from every state and multiple territories.”
We’ll find out exactly how Android and the Google Play Store will change in a hearing that begins on May 23rd.
[DocumentCloud]
That’s according to Apple’s Eddy Cue in court documents filed ahead of closing arguments in the DoJ’s antitrust case against Google. It’s the first time the number has been confirmed, and marks an increase from the $18 billion reportedly paid in 2021. The filing also shows that Google’s 2020 payments were 17.5 percent of the Apple’s operating income.
