Law

But the folks behind the mid-2000s anti-piracy campaign that once compared pirating software to stealing a car might have, reports Torrent Freak. A social media investigation suggests the campaign used a knockoff of a commercial font. Its creator, Just Van Rossum, told the outlet:

If you’re an aspiring lawyer in California, it probably did: the State Bar recently admitted that some of the multiple-choice questions in their recent bar exam were written with AI assistance. A “speechless” Mary Basick, assistant dean at UC Irvine Law School, told the L.A. Times that several students had complained that the questions seemed AI-generated. “I defended the bar,” she said. “‘No way! They wouldn’t do that!’”

404 Media reports US police departments are utilizing Overwatch — an AI tool that “deploys lifelike virtual agents” to “infiltrate and engage criminal networks” — to collect incriminating evidence against anyone from suspected drug and human traffickers, to “radicalized” political activists and “college protesters.”

We’re getting started with day three of Meta’s antitrust trial with some controversy. A Snap attorney complains to Judge Boasberg that Meta released slides with inadvertently flawed redactions. He also accuses Meta’s lead attorney of openly referencing Snap’s competitive assessments that should have been private.

Albert Sangier’s Nate service claimed it enabled customers to “skip the checkout” using artificial intelligence, but reporting by The Information in 2022 revealed that “between 60 percent and 100 percent” of transactions were actually handled manually — primarily by workers in the Philippines. And this isn’t the only company to be caught doing it.

In February, the Trump administration started turning Associated Press reporters away from media events at the White House after the outlet refused to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Now, District Judge Trevor McFadden has ordered the White House to end the practice, spotted Politico’s Kyle Cheney.

In July, Carlos Watson was convicted on fraud charges for misleading investors with falsified financial records, inflated audience numbers, and made-up business deals. The New York Times reported in 2021 that his co-founder, Samir Rao, had impersonated a YouTube exec on a call with bankers about a potential $40 million investment.

Less than three months after the BitMEX crypto exchange was hit with a $100 million fine for money laundering – and hours after he pardoned ex-Nikola CEO Trevor Milton for defrauding investors in his EV company – Trump issued pardons to Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Dalo and Samuel Reed, CNBC reported Friday. The three men had previously pled guilty to several felony charges related to money laundering and failure to police the exchange.

Rep. Ritchie Torres and the House Democrats, who are reportedly drafting a bill entitled “The HOUTHI PC SMALL GROUP Act” that would criminalize the use of unsecured messaging apps to send classified information. (Per Axios, it’s an acronym for “Homeland Operations and Unilateral Tactics Halting Incursions: Preventing Coordinated Subversion, Military Aggression and Lawless Levies Granting Rogue Operatives Unchecked Power.”)

Elon Musk has publicly railed against Delaware’s corporate law as its judges ruled against his wishes, moving the incorporation of Tesla and other companies out of state. Now, CNBC says a January WSJ report that Meta was considering moving its incorporation spurred immediate action from the governor on a new bill, SB 21, that might make its laws friendlier to folks like Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.

After a heated hearing in a California district court this morning, Judge William Alsup ruled that the Trump administration must offer to reinstate thousands of federal workers who were fired as part of the DOGE cuts. There were a lot of things that irked the judge, though most predictably, he did not like that an Office of Personnel Management official ghosted the court after being ordered to testify. (“I’m getting mad,” the judge said.)

Former Gizmodo EIC Dan Ackerman’s lawsuit alleging that Apple, the Tetris company, screenwriter Noah Pink and others ripped off his 2016 book, The Tetris Effect: The Game That Hypnotized the World, for their 2023 Apple TV Plus movie has been dismissed. Reuters reports Ackerman’s lawyer said he will appeal the decision.