Adrian Kwiatkowski, a hacker from Ipswich in England who stole two unreleased songs by Ed Sheeran, has been sentenced to 18 months in prison, according to the BBC. Kwiatkowski sold Sheeran’s tracks, along with 12 other songs by American rapper Lil Uzi …
Google fined $161.9 million in India over ‘anti-competitive’ Android policies
Google is facing another fine for allegedly misusing its control of Android to suppress competition. CNETreports India’s Competition Commission has fined Google the equivalent of $161.9 million for supposedly giving its Android apps an edge using restr…
Amazon faces $1 billion lawsuit over claims it ‘tricks’ UK customers into paying more
Amazon could soon go to court over its use of the Buy Box that highlights shopping deals. The Guardianreports that lawyers are filing a class action lawsuit with the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal over claims the Buy Box “tricks” shoppers into paying…
Texas AG sues Google over its facial data collection practices
The office of Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Google over the company’s alleged years-long practices to capture and use of biometric data from, “millions of Texans without properly obtai…
Nikola founder Trevor Milton convicted on three charges of fraud
Trevor Milton, the founder and former executive chairman of Nikola, has been found guilty on three counts of fraud for misleading the electric vehicle company’s investors about its business and technology.
In total, he was found guilty on one count of securities fraud and two counts of wire fraud. He was acquitted on one charge of securities fraud. His sentencing has been scheduled for January 27th. He faces up to 20 years in prison.
Milton was indicted by a federal grand jury on the charges last year, with prosecutors citing numerous alleged lies, including many made on Twitter, in podcast interviews and other media appearances. Prosecutors alleged he had lied about “nearly all aspects of the business” in an effort to boost the stock of the EV maker.
The SEC began investigating the company in 2020, after Hindenburg Research publicly accused Nikola of staging an “elaborate ruse” to mislead the public about the status of its electric semi, Nikola One. While the company had published a video purporting to show the truck “cruising on a road at a high rate of speed,” Hindenburg said the truck had actually been “towed to the top of a hill on a remote stretch of road and simply filmed it rolling down the hill.” The company ultimately paid $125 million to settle civil charges with the SEC in 2021.
During the trial, Milton’s defense lawyer argued that the video was merely “special effects” and that “it’s certainly not a crime to use special effects.” But prosecutors raised several other false claims by Milton, who was extremely active on Twitter. According to The Times, prosecutors said Milton also lied about having “binding contracts with trucking companies” that in reality were cancelable reservations for vehicles. Prosecutors also cited Milton’s claims about making “green hydrogen” when the company had not yet produced any.
Apple slapped with a $19 million fine in Brazil for not selling iPhones with a charger
Apple keeps on losing court battles in Brazil over its decision to stop shipping iPhones with a charger. The São Paulo state court has ruled against the tech giant and slapped it with a 100 million real ($19 million) fine in a lawsuit filed by the Brazilian Consumers’ Association, a group of borrowers, consumers and taxpayers. In addition, the court has ordered Apple to supply all customers in Brazil who purchased the iPhone 12 or 13 over the past couple of years with a charger, as well as to start including them with all new purchases. Apple, as you’d expect, told the news organization that it will appeal the decision.
According to Barron’s, the judge in charge of the case called the non-inclusion of chargers in phone purchases an “abusive practice” that “requires consumers to purchase a second product in order for the first to work.” Apple has been at odds with Brazilian authorities over the issue for a while now. In 2021, São Paulo consumer protection agency Procon-SP fined Apple around $2 million for removing the power adapter from the iPhone 12, telling the company that it was in violation of Brazil’s Consumer Defense Code.
This September, the country’s Ministry of Justice issued an order that bans Apple from selling iPhones that don’t come with a charger. It also fined the company another $2.38 million and ordered the cancelation of iPhone 12’s registration with Brazil’s national telecoms agency. The tech giant is also appealing that decision.
Apple stopped bundling its iPhones with power adapters back in 2020 with the release of iPhone 12. The company cited environmental concerns for removing chargers with every purchase of the device and claimed that the decision will save 861,000 tons of copper, zinc and tin. The Brazilian Ministry of Justice remained unmoved by that reasoning, telling Apple that it could help the environment in other ways, such as giving its devices USB-C support. In Europe, Apple has a couple of years to do just that after the European Parliament voted to make USB-C the common charging standard in the EU. Mobile devices like the iPhone sold in the region will have to come with USB-C charging posts by the end of 2024.
Alex Jones ordered to pay $965 million after misinformation campaign targeting Sandy Hook families
After nearly a decade of peddling baseless conspiracy theories and outright lies about the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, a Connecticut jury has awarded nearly a billion dollars in damages to families of the victims and an FBI agent whose lives were further upended by Jones’ claims the shooting was a hoax. Jones, who was deplatformed from most major social media and podcast platforms years ago, said on his show he would appeal the ruling.
Jurors in the weeks-long trial were tasked with deciding how much the Inforwars host should pay in damages to 15 plaintiffs after previously being found guilty of defamation. According to CNN, prosecutors had sought at least $500 million in damages to represent “the more than 550 million online impressions Jones’ Sandy Hook lie allegedly received online.” Jurors ultimately awarded $965 million, an amount that doesn’t include punitive damages.
Though Jone and several accounts and pages associated with him have been banned from Facebook, YouTube and other platforms for years, his reach on social media prior to those bans was raised in court. At one point during the trial, prosecutors displayed Jones’ Facebook engagement in 2016, indicating he had more than 4.1 billion impressions on the platform at the time.
This is Infowars’ Facebook engagement from 2016, shown in court. It’s, uh, staggering. pic.twitter.com/B0HkkcebyU
— Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) September 14, 2022
Jones and InfoWars were kicked off Facebook and Instagram for good in 2019, following earlier bans from Spotify and Apple’s podcast platforms. Though his deplatforming made him less relevant on mainstream social media, Infowars actually made more money after the ban, according to evidence raised in the trial. A forensic economist testified Jones’ net worth could be as high as $270 million.
Just how much money Jones’ victims will actually receive is another matter. In addition to an expected appeal, Jones has also been accused of using shell companies and other techniques to shield his wealth from lawsuits.
Lawsuit accuses Meta executives of taking bribes from OnlyFans
A lawsuit accusing Meta of conspiring with OnlyFans is now known to include some serious allegations against top executives. Thanks to an accidentally unredacted court document, Gizmodo has learned that adult entertainers accused Meta global affairs President Nick Clegg, VP Nicola Mendelsohn and European safety director Cristian Perrella of taking bribes to give OnlyFans an unfair advantage over rivals. To support the allegations, the plaintiffs shared anonymously supplied wire transfers that were supposedly sent to execs through an OnlyFans subsidiary. The authenticity of the transfers hasn’t been verified.
The adult stars maintain that OnlyFans sought to hinder competitors by placing content on a terrorist database, leading to a major drop in traffic. A lawsuit from FanCentro, an alternative to OnlyFans, made similar claims.
In a statement, a spokesperson told Engadget the bribery accusations were “baseless.” You can read the full response below. The Facebook and Instagram owner already filed a motion to dismiss the suit over a lack of plausibility, and argued that it can’t be held liable even if the plaintiffs succeed. Content decisions like these are protected by both First Amendment free speech rights and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, Meta said in its motion.
OnlyFans noted in a follow-up filing that it “inadvertently” left the Meta leaders’ names unredacted. It asked the court to delete the relevant document. This comes more than a little late, of course. While the lawsuit certainly isn’t guaranteed to survive close scrutiny, it’s now clear just how serious the allegations really are.
“As we make clear in our motion to dismiss, we deny these allegations as they lack facts, merit, or anything that would make them plausible. The allegations are baseless.”
Epic Games and Match Group want to bring additional antitrust allegations against Google
Epic Games and Match Group are attempting to expand their lawsuits against Google to include additional allegations against the search giant. In a motion filed on Friday with a federal court in the Northern District of California, the two companies acc…
Apple wins appeal to slash its $1.2 billion French antitrust fine by two-thirds
In 2020, Apple was hit with a record €1.1 billion fine ($1.2 billion at the time) in France over antitrust practices with two wholesalers. Now, the Paris court of appeals has reduced the penalty by two thirds to just €371.6 million ($364.6 million today), Reuters has reported. The court ruled that the original fine was “disproportionate,” and reduced it to an amount “sufficient to guarantee that the penalties are repressive and dissuasive.”
According to the original complaint, Apple and its distribution partners Ingram Micro and Tech Data agreed not to compete with one another, “thereby sterilizing the wholesale market for Apple products.” This forced other premium distributors to keep prices high to match those of integrated distributors. Apple immediately announced plans to appeal the decision, calling it “disheartening” and saying it discarded 30 years of legal precedent in France.
Apple still isn’t satisfied, telling Bloomberg it plans to file another appeal at France’s top court to eliminate the fine altogether. France’s antitrust agency (l’Autorité de la concurrence) is also considering an appeal. “We would like to reaffirm our desire to guarantee the dissuasive nature of our penalties, especially when it concerns market players of the caliber of [big tech companies],” said l’Autorité communications director Virginie Guin.
The reduction is part of an ongoing battle between France and the EU and Silicon Valley tech firms. Last year, Google was fined €500 million over its news dominance in France, and recently lost an appeal in a €4.34 billion EU antitrust case over its Android system dominance, though the fine was reduced to €4.12 billion ($4.04 billion).