Courts

A lawyer is suing Microsoft for $1.75 million after being locked out of his email account. David M Schlachter says a bug meant he couldn't verify his identity, making the account useless. According to Schlachter, the problem was with his paid Office ... 365 account. After using it for six years, he was locked out in May by a two-step verification check. The check would send a verification code to his phone, either via a text message or an automated voice call. However, when Schlachter tried to choose one of these options and initiate the check, he'd simply see a message reading "Sorry, we're ... (view more)

A former Facebook employee says the company deliberately drained the batteries of users as an experiment. George Hayward made the claims in a lawsuit that he has now withdrawn. Hayward says he was fired for refusing to work on the experiments. He ... originally sued the company, but has now withdrawn the case because of a rule that says he must go to arbitration. The lawsuit said the possibility of completely draining a battery and making phones inoperable put users at risk. This was especially the case "in circumstances where they need to communicate with others, including but not limited to ... (view more)

The makers of an artificial intelligence tool for "creating" art are being sued by a photo licensing company. The case could set a precedent for how copyright law works with modern technology. The case involves Stability AI, the company behind a ... "deep learning, text-to-image model." It's designed mainly to create images based on a text description provided by the user. As well as being a neat trick in itself, the idea of the model is to develop computer learning. That means that rather than humans providing a set of rules to follow, the computer model figures out rules itself. Imagery is a ... (view more)

The Department of Justice has found $3.36 billion of stolen money in a popcorn tin. But more than $2 billion of it no longer exists. It's not a case of corrupt law enforcement, but rather a spectacular example of the bizarre world of cryptocurrency. ... It raises head scratching questions about what money really is in 2022. The money was seized in a raid of the home of James Zhong. He's now admitted to stealing it in a hacking attack on the controversial online marketplace Silk Road. That's a site where goods and services, many of them illegal, were bought and sold using cryptocurrency. Bogus ... (view more)

A court says an employee who refused to keep a webcam switched on was wrongly fired. He was awarded around $72,000 USD in compensation. The man, whose name was not revealed in the case, worked remotely in the Netherlands for a Florida-based IT ... company called Chetu. After working in the role for almost three years, he was told to take part in a "Corrective Action Program - Virtual Classroom." This involved keeping a webcam switched on throughout his nine-hour working day. (Source: bbc.co.uk ) The employee refused to do so, arguing that he was already sharing his screen with ... (view more)

The Supreme Court will rule on a key challenge to the way tech companies are responsible for user content. The outcome could affect the long-running "publisher vs platform" debate. The case centers on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, ... which broadly says Internet companies aren't legally responsible for content they post, including cases of defamation. The validity and interpretation of that rule has been challenged many times since it was created in 1996, partly because technology has evolved. Critics of the rule say it was written when the main issue was whether web ... (view more)

The Supreme Court has blocked a Texas law that would have stopped social media companies from banning users based on political views. A 5-4 majority of judges said the law violated the First Amendment. In this case, the right to free speech in ... question is not that of individual users, but that of the social media companies. They had argued that they have the right to decide what content does and doesn't appear on their platforms. The verdict doesn't throw the law out. Instead, it means it cannot take effect until ongoing lawsuits about its measures have been resolved. Because it was an ... (view more)

An American man who helped North Korea evade US sanctions through cryptocurrencies has received a jail sentence of more than five years. Virgil Griffith had visited Pyongyang to tell officials how to use digital currencies. He pleaded guilty to ... breaching the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The act allows the US president to limit the ways US citizens carry out commerce abroad by declaring an international emergency. One such limitation, introduced in 2008 and renewed annually, blocks US citizens from exporting technology, goods or services to the US. Griffith violated that ... (view more)

An Estonian man will spend more than five years in a US jail for ransomware scams. Maksim Berezan took more than $50 million from victims. Many scammers get away with online crimes because they operate in countries with a lax attitude to crimes ... committed against people outside their national borders. That was not the case with Berezan, who was arrested in Latvia and extradited to the US. Justice Department officials thanked authorities in both Latvia and Estonia for their cooperation. Although Berezan pleaded guilty in April last year, he's only just been sentenced for "conspiracy to commit ... (view more)

Google is facing a lawsuit for alleged "deceptive and unfair conduct" in its restaurant listings. The lawsuit claims it tricked users into using third-party delivery services from which it received a cut. Google has rejected the claims and said it ... offers restaurants the chance to get orders direct, with no fee for the search giant. The case centers on a special button reading "Order Online" that appears besides search results for restaurants. It takes users to a custom page which includes details of the restaurant, its address and its menu. The lawsuit says this is an "unauthorized online ... (view more)