Law | The Verge

Here’s how Amazon’s price fixing allegedly drove up prices everywhere

2026-04-22T02:34:49-04:00

On Monday, California Attorney General Rob Bonta revealed the evidence of alleged price-fixing by Amazon. The state filed a request to the Supreme Court in February for a preliminary injunction to stop Amazon's behavior while the lawsuit it originally filed in 2022 proceeds, and is now making that 16-page document available, "largely unredacted." It lays out how Amazon allegedly schemed to raise other retailers' prices ahead of Prime Day, or worked with its vendors to make sure items available at a discount elsewhere were suddenly out of stock and unavailable for the lower price.

In response to a request for comment from The Verge, Amazon …

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Judge rules Trump administration violated the First Amendment in fight against ICE-tracking

2026-04-20T05:16:49-04:00

In some Minneapolis neighborhoods, nearly every house has an anti-ICE sign. | Photo by Jack Califano / The Verge

Jorge L. Alonso, a federal district court judge for the Northern District of Illinois, said that the Trump Administration violated the First Amendment when it pressured Facebook and Apple to remove ICE-tracking groups and apps. Judge Alonso granted the plaintiffs, Kassandra Rosado, who runs the ICE Sightings - Chicagoland Facebook group, and Kreisau Group, the developers of Eyes Up, a preliminary injunction.

Judge Alonso cited a unanimous Supreme Court decision from a 2024 case that pitted the NRA against the former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services, Maria Vullo. In that case, the court ruled that "[g]overnment …

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Spotify just won $322 million from music pirates it can’t find

2026-04-16T07:45:19-04:00

Spotify and the three major labels have won a $322 million default judgement against Anna's Archive, the open-source library and pirate activist group that planned to publicly release millions of music files scraped from Spotify's platform.

The judgment comes after the unknown operator of Anna's Archive failed to respond to a lawsuit filed by Spotify, Universal Music Group (UMG), Warner Music Group (WMG) and Sony Music, which was made publicly available in January. The lawsuit was launched in response to Anna's Archive announcing in December that it had ripped 86 million songs from Spotify and intended to create a "preservation archive" fo …

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NZXT to pay $3.45 million settlement over Flex PC rentals

2026-04-14T05:51:05-04:00

The Flex PC rental service didn’t make it clear to customers that it wasn’t a “rent-to-own” program. | Image: NZXT

NZXT and its business partner Fragile have agreed to pay $3.45 million to settle a class action lawsuit that accused the companies of attempting to "scam" consumers through their Flex PC rental service. The preliminary settlement was filed in a California District Court on April 7th to close a civil RICO case against the Flex program over allegations that it defrauded 19,322 customers through deceptive marketing practices and aggressive debt collection.

The settlement was shared on YouTube by Gamers Nexus, with host Steve Burke noting that NZXT and Fragile are still offering PC rental programs under the new agreement. This follows Gamers Ne …

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John Deere will pay farmers $99 million over right-to-repair lawsuit

2026-04-09T17:21:22-04:00

John Deere has agreed to pay farmers $99 million to resolve a class action lawsuit that accused the agricultural giant of preventing farmers and mechanics from accessing the materials needed to repair equipment, as reported earlier by Reuters. As part of the proposed settlement, John Deere says it will make repair resources available for a period of 10 years, "on a license or subscription basis."

The company has also agreed to start allowing equipment owners and repair shops to reprogram or perform diagnostics on equipment while in offline mode by the end of 2026. These terms will allow equipment owners to "avoid going to authorized Deere D …

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A folk musician became a target for AI fakes and a copyright troll

2026-04-04T13:57:12-04:00

Murphy Campbell is at the center of a brewing storm around AI and a broken copyright system. | Image: Murphy Campbell

In January, folk artist Murphy Campbell discovered several songs on her Spotify profile that did not belong there. They were songs that she had recorded, but she'd never uploaded them to Spotify, and something was off about the vocals.

She quickly surmised that someone had pulled performances of the songs she posted to YouTube, created AI covers, and uploaded them to streaming platforms under her name. I ran one of the songs, "Four Marys", through two different AI detectors, and it seemed to support her suspicions with both saying it was probably AI-generated.

Campbell was shocked, "I was kind of under the impression that we had a little b …

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Trump fires US attorney general Pam Bondi

2026-04-03T05:59:59-04:00

Pam Bondi, US attorney general, during a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on March 24, 2026. | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Taking a break from calling Bruce Springsteen a boring loser on Thursday, Donald Trump followed that up with another Truth Social post saying "loyal friend" Pam Bondi will transition to a yet-to-be-announced job in the private sector.

CNN, The New York Times, and Fox News all reported that Bondi, a figure in the TikTok takeover, pressuring tech companies to block ICE-tracking apps, and the Epstein files release, has been fired. Her departure closely follows the ousting of former Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem last month, as deputy attorney general Todd Blanche will now serve as acting AG.

Donald Trump:

Pam Bondi is a Great Ame …

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Elon Musk is about to be a very busy boy!

2026-04-02T14:53:38-04:00

To be honest, I thought Elon Musk would confidentially file for SpaceX's IPO on the 20th of this month, rather than the 1st. But maybe that just means he's moved on to other numbers, and we should all mark our calendars for June 7th as an IPO date just in case.

Based on the April 1st filing, and the general length of an SEC review before the S-1 document becomes public, the earliest I am expecting a SpaceX IPO is June. (At least, assuming there is still anyone left at the SEC who wants to do their job instead of just glance at the first page of the filing, say, "Seems fine!" and then go out for a smoke break.) Of course, this process could …

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The Artemis Moon base project is legally dubious

2026-04-05T12:03:09-04:00

NASA's Artemis II Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft rest on Launch Pad 39B at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on March 31, 2026, ahead of the crewed lunar mission. | Image: AFP via Getty Images

With NASA planning to launch four astronauts on Wednesday on its Artemis II mission, the race to return to the Moon is back on. The current mission will see astronauts aboard the Orion capsule travel around the Moon before returning to Earth in 10 days' time. They'll be testing out the hardware and systems that could soon see Americans standing on the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years in the Artemis IV mission scheduled for 2028. NASA isn't ready to land people on the Moon just yet, but that's the aim for the next five years: to not only get people onto the Moon but establish a lengthy human presence on its surface.

That's NASA' …

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Meta’s legal defeat could be a victory for children, or a loss for everyone

2026-04-03T11:59:14-04:00

Is social media not just bad, but illegally bad? Should tech companies pay for making it that way? According to two US juries - and no shortage of outside commentary - the answer to both questions is "yes."

Earlier this week, two juries - one in New Mexico, one in Los Angeles - held Meta liable for a total of hundreds of millions of dollars for harming minors. YouTube was also found liable in Los Angeles, and both companies are appealing their losses. In one sense, the decisions were surprising. Meta and Google operate platforms for transmitting speech and are typically protected in a variety of ways by Section 230 and the First Amendment; …

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