Epic Games, the maker of the popular "Fortnite" video game, has urged a U.S. judge to compel Google to open up its Play Store to more competition following a jury verdict that found the tech giant had abused its power over Android app distribution.

In a court filing on Thursday [PDF], Epic proposed requiring Google to allow the distribution of competing third-party app stores on its platform for six years and limiting its ability to restrict preloading of competing app stores on devices. The move follows a December antitrust trial in which a jury found Google guilty of impeding developers' ability to distribute apps outside the Play Store and maintaining an overly tight grip on in-app transaction payments.

HP "sought to take advantage of customers' sunk costs," printer owners claimed this week in a class action lawsuit against the hardware giant. The Register: Lawyers representing the aggrieved were responding in an Illinois court to an earlier HP motion to dismiss a January lawsuit. Among other things, the plaintiffs' filing stated that the printer buyers "never entered into any contractual agreement to buy only HP-branded ink prior to receiving the firmware updates." They allege HP broke several anti-competitive statutes, which they claim: "bar tying schemes, and certain uses of software to accomplish that without permission, that would monopolize an aftermarket for replacement ink cartridges, when these results are achieved in a way that 'take[s] advantage of customers' sunk costs.'"

In the case, which began in January, the plaintiffs are arguing that HP issued a firmware update between late 2022 and early 2023 that they allege disabled their printers if they installed a replacement cartridge that was not HP-branded. They are asking for damages that include the cost of now-useless third-party cartridges and an injunction to disable the part of the firmware updates that prevent the use of third-party ink.

A federal jury in Illinois on Wednesday said Amazon Web Services owes tech company Kove $525 million for violating three patents relating to its data-storage technology. From the report: The jury determined (PDF) that AWS infringed three Kove patents covering technology that Kove said had become "essential" to the ability of Amazon's cloud-computing arm to "store and retrieve massive amounts of data." An Amazon spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and intends to appeal. Kove's lead attorney Courtland Reichman called the verdict "a testament to the power of innovation and the importance of protecting IP (intellectual property) rights for start-up companies against tech giants." Kove also sued Google last year for infringing the same three patents in a separate Illinois lawsuit that is still ongoing.

President Joe Biden said he is "considering" a request from Australia to drop the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. The BBC reports: The country's parliament recently passed a measure -- backed by PM Anthony Albanese -- calling for the return of Mr Assange to his native Australia. The US wants to extradite the 52-year-old from the UK on criminal charges over the leaking of military records. Mr Assange denies the charges, saying the leaks were an act of journalism. The president was asked about Australia's request on Wednesday and said: "We're considering it."

Mr Assange, 52, is fighting extradition in the UK courts. The extradition was put on hold in March after London's High Court said the United States must provide assurances he would not face the death penalty. The High Court is due to evaluate any responses from the US authorities at the end of May. The measure passed the Australian parliament in February. Mr Albanese told MPs: "People will have a range of views about Mr Assange's conduct... But regardless of where people stand, this thing cannot just go on and on and on indefinitely."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cox Communications doesn't believe that ISPs should be held liable for the activities of their pirating subscribers. After a disappointing verdict from a Virginia jury and an unsatisfactory outcome at the Court of Appeals, the internet provider now intends to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court. If the present verdict stands, innocent people risk losing their Internet access, the ISP notes. [...] That's notable, as it would be the first time that a "repeat infringer" case ends up at the highest court United States. Cox asked the court of appeals to also stay its mandate pending its Supreme Court application, as this could steer the legal battle in yet another direction.

According to Cox, the Supreme Court has substantial reasons to take on the case. For one, there are currently conflicting court of appeals rulings on the "material contribution" aspect of copyright infringement. The Supreme Court could give more clarity on when a service, with a myriad of lawful uses, can be held liable for infringers. In addition, Cox also cites the recent 'Twitter vs. Taamneh' Supreme Court ruling, which held that social media platforms aren't liable for terrorists who use their network. While that's not a copyright case, it's relevant for the secondary liability question, the ISP argues. "Though Twitter was not a copyright case, it confronted a directly analogous theory of secondary liability: that social-media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, could be liable for continuing to provide services to those they knew were using them for illegal purposes," Cox writes.

Finally, Cox notes that the Supreme Court should hear the case because it deals with an issue that's 'exceptionally important' to ISPs as well as the public. If the present verdict stands, Internet providers may be much more likely to terminate Internet access, even if the subscriber is innocent. "This Court's material-contribution standard provides powerful incentives for ISPs of all stripes to swiftly terminate internet services that have been used to infringe -- no matter the universe of lawful uses to which those services are put, or the consequences to innocent, non-infringing people who also use those services. "That is why a chorus of amici urged this Court not to adopt this standard at the panel and en banc stages, and will likely urge the Supreme Court to grant review as well," Cox adds, referring to the support it received from third-parties previously. "Cox hasn't filed a writ of certiorari yet and still has time, as it's due June 17, 2024," notes TorrentFreak. "The intention to go to the Supreme Court would be another reason to halt the new damages trial, according to Cox, but the court of appeals rejected the request."

"This means that the new damages trial can start, even if the case is still pending at the Supreme Court. However, it's clear that this legal battle is far from over yet."

A jailed trader accused of stealing $110 million on the Mango Markets exchange faces a criminal trial this week that will test the reach of a US crackdown on cryptocurrencies. From a report: Prosecutors charged Avraham Eisenberg with manipulating Mango Markets futures contracts on Oct. 11, 2022, to boost the price of swaps by 1,300% in 20 minutes. He then "borrowed" from the exchange against the inflated value of those contracts, a move the government claims was a theft. Jury selection begins Monday in New York federal court, where groundbreaking crypto cases have played out. FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced there last month to 25 years in prison for orchestrating a multibillion-dollar scheme, while Terraform Labs Pte. and co-founder Do Kwon were found liable Friday for fraud in civil trial over the firm's 2022 collapse, which wiped out $40 billion in investor assets.

Eisenberg, a self-described "applied game theorist," claims his actions weren't theft at all. Rather, he says, he legally exploited a weakness in the decentralized finance application. The trial will apparently be the first time a US criminal jury will weigh what type of "DeFi" transactions are legal. In the crypto world, where digital blockchains govern who owns what, the virtual ecosystem is built around the notion that "code is law." It means that if something isn't explicitly forbidden by terms of a crypto platform, then government can't intercede. But prosecutors say those rules can't protect traders against possible criminal charges for market manipulation or fraud.

TechCrunch reports this week that Meta "is denying that it gave Netflix access to users' private messages..." The claim references a court filing that emerged as part of the discovery process in a class-action lawsuit over data privacy practices between a group of consumers and Facebook's parent, Meta. The document alleges that Netflix and Facebook had a "special relationship" and that Facebook even cut spending on original programming for its Facebook Watch video service so as not to compete with Netflix, a large Facebook advertiser. It also says that Netflix had access to Meta's "Inbox API" that offered the streamer "programmatic access to Facebook's user's private message inboxes...."

Meta's communications director, Andy Stone, reposted the original X post on Tuesday with a statement disputing that Netflix had been given access to users' private messages. "Shockingly untrue," Stone wrote on X. "Meta didn't share people's private messages with Netflix. The agreement allowed people to message their friends on Facebook about what they were watching on Netflix, directly from the Netflix app. Such agreements are commonplace in the industry...."

Beyond Stone's X post, Meta has not provided further comment. However, The New York Times had previously reported in 2018 that Netflix and Spotify could read users' private messages, according to documents it had obtained. Meta denied those claims at the time via a blog post titled "Facts About Facebook's Messaging Partnerships," where it explained that Netflix and Spotify had access to APIs that allowed consumers to message friends about what they were listening to on Spotify or watching on Netflix directly from those companies' respective apps. This required the companies to have "write access" to compose messages to friends, "read access" to allow users to read messages back from friends, and "delete access," which meant if you deleted a message from the third-party app, it would also delete the message from Facebook.

"No third party was reading your private messages, or writing messages to your friends without your permission. Many news stories imply we were shipping over private messages to partners, which is not correct," the blog post stated. In any event, Messenger didn't implement default end-to-end encryption until December 2023, a practice that would have made these sorts of claims a non-starter, as it wouldn't have left room for doubt.

Terraform Labs and its founder Do Kwon have been found liable on civil fraud charges on Friday by a jury in Manhattan. The jury agreed with the SEC that the two misled investors before their stablecoin's 2022 collapse shocked crypto markets around the world. Reuters reports: The SEC accused the company and Kwon of misleading investors in 2021 about the stability of TerraUSD, a stablecoin designed to maintain a value of $1. The regulator also accused them of falsely claiming Terraform's blockchain was used in a popular Korean mobile payment app. SEC attorney Laura Meehan said during closing arguments that the platform's success story was "built on lies." "If you swing big and you miss, and you don't tell people that you came up short, that is fraud," Meehan said.

Louis Pellegrino, an attorney for Terraform, told the jury on Friday the SEC's case relied on statements taken out of context and that Terraform and Kwon had been truthful about their products and how they worked, even when they failed. "Terraform is still out there, trying to rebuild and make purchasers whole," he said. The regulator is seeking civil financial penalties and orders barring Kwon and Terraform from the securities industry. Kwon, who was arrested in Montenegro in March 2023, did not attend the trial, which began March 25. Both the U.S. and South Korea, where Kwon is a citizen, have sought his extradition on criminal charges.

An anonymous reader writes: Could you imagine discovering that your identity had been used to take out fraudulent loans and when you tried to resolve the issue by providing your state ID and Social Security card you were instead arrested, charged with multiple felonies, jailed for over a year, incarcerated in a mental hospital and given psychotropic drugs, eventually to be released with a criminal record and a judge's order that you could no longer use your real name? As dystopian as this might sound, it actually happened. And it was only after the victim learned his oppressor worked for The University of Iowa Hospital and contacted their security department was the investigation taken seriously leading to the perpetrator's arrest. The Gazette reports: Matthew David Keirans, 58, was convicted of one count of false statement to a National Credit Union Administration insured institution -- punishable by up to 30 years in federal prison -- and one count of aggravated identity theft -- punishable by up to two years in federal prison. Keirans worked as a systems architect in the hospital's IT department from June 28, 2013 to July 20, 2023, when he was terminated for misconduct related to the identity theft investigation. Keirans worked at the hospital under the name William Donald Woods, an alias he had been using since about 1988, when he worked with the real William Woods at a hot dog cart in Albuquerque, N.M. [...] By 2013, Keirans had moved to eastern Wisconsin. He started his IT job with UI Hospitals and worked remotely. He earned more than $700,000 in his 10 years working for the hospital. In 2023, his salary was $140,501, according to the hospital.

In 2019, the real William Woods was homeless, living in Los Angeles. He went to a branch of the national bank and explained that he recently discovered someone was using his credit and had accumulated a lot of debt. Woods didn't want to pay the debt and asked to know the account numbers for any accounts he had open at the bank so he could close them. Woods gave the bank employee his real Social Security card and an authentic California Identification card, which matched the information the bank had on file. Because there was a large amount of money in the accounts, the bank employee asked Woods a series of security questions that he was unable to answer. The bank employee called Keirans, whose the phone number was connected to the accounts. He answered the security questions correctly and said no one in California should have access to the accounts. The employee called the Los Angeles Police Department, and officers spoke with Woods and Keirans. Keirans faxed the Los Angeles officers a copy of Woods' Social Security card and birth certificate, as well as a Wisconsin driver's license Keirans had acquired under Woods' name. The driver's license had the name William David Woods -- David is Keirans' real middle name -- rather than William Donald Woods. When questioned, Keiran told an LAPD officer he sometimes used David as a middle name, but his real name was William Donald Woods. The real Woods was arrested and charged with identity theft and false impersonation, under a misspelling of Keirans' name: Matthew Kierans.

Because Woods continued to insist, throughout the judicial process, that he was William Woods and not Matthew Kierans, a judge ruled in February 2020 that he was not mentally competent to stand trial and he was sent to a mental hospital in California, where he received psychotropic medication and other mental health treatment. In March 2021, Woods pleaded no contest to the identity theft charges -- meaning he accepted the conviction but did not admit guilt. He was sentenced to two years imprisonment with credit for the two years he already served in the county jail and the hospital and was released. He was also ordered to pay $400 in fines and to stop using the name William Woods. He did not stop. Woods continued to attempt to regain his identity by filing customer disputes with financial organizations in an attempt to clear his credit report. He also reached out to multiple law enforcement agencies, including the Hartland Police Department in Wisconsin, where Keirans lived. Woods eventually discovered where Keirans was working, and in January 2023 he reached out to the University of Iowa Hospitals' security department, who referred his complaint to the University of Iowa Police Department.

University of Iowa Police Detective Ian Mallory opened an investigation into the case. Mallory found the biological father listed on Woods' birth certificate -- which both Woods and Keirans had sent him an official copy of -- and tested the father's DNA against Woods' DNA. The test proved Woods was the man's son. On July 17, 2023, Mallory interviewed Keirans. He asked Keirans what his father's name was, and Keirans accidentally gave the name of his own adoptive father. Mallory then confronted Keirans with the DNA evidence, and Keirans responded by saying, "my life is over" and "everything is gone." He then confessed to the prolonged identity theft, according to court documents. The full story can be ready via The Gazette.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The George Carlin estate has settled its lawsuit with Dudesy, the podcast that purportedly used a "comedy AI" to produce an hour-long stand-up special in the style and voice of the late comedian. Dudesy's "George Carlin: Dead and Loving It" special, which was first uploaded in early January, gained hundreds of thousands of views and plenty of media attention for its presentation as a creation of an AI that had "listened to all of George Carlin's material... to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today." But even before the Carlin estate lawsuit was filed, there were numerous signs that the special was not actually written by an AI, as Ars laid out in detail in a feature report.

Shortly after the Carlin estate filed its lawsuit against Dudesy in late January, a representative for Dudesy host Will Sasso told The New York Times that the special had actually been "completely written by [Dudesy co-host] Chad Kultgen." Regardless of the special's actual authorship, though, the lawsuit also took Dudesy to task for "capitaliz[ing] on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin in creating, promoting, and distributing the Dudesy Special and using generated images of Carlin, Carlin's voice, and images designed to evoke Carlin's presence on a stage." The resulting "association" between the real Carlin and this ersatz version put Dudesy in potential legal jeopardy, even if the contentious and unsettled copyright issues regarding AI training and authorship weren't in play.

Court documents note that shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Dudesy had already "taken reasonable steps" to remove the special and any mention of Carlin from all of Dudesy's online accounts. The settlement restrains the Dudesy podcast (and those associated with it) from re-uploading the special anywhere and from "using George Carlin's image, voice, or likeness" in any content posted anywhere on the Internet. Archived copies of the special are still available on the Internet if you know where to look. While the settlement notes that those reposts are also in "violat[ion] of this order," Dudesy will not be held liable for any reuploads made by unrelated third parties.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump. The text of the pending net neutrality order wasn't released today. The FCC press release said it will prohibit broadband providers "from blocking, slowing down, or creating pay-to-play Internet fast lanes" and "bring back a national standard for broadband reliability, security, and consumer protection."

[...] Numerous consumer advocacy groups praised the FCC for its plan today. Lobby groups representing Internet providers expressed their displeasure. While there hasn't been a national standard since then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal in 2017, Internet service providers still have to follow net neutrality rules because California and other states impose their own similar regulations. The broadband industry's attempts to overturn the state net neutrality laws were rejected in court.

Although ISPs seem to have been able to comply with the state laws, they argue that the federal standard will hurt their businesses and consumers. "Reimposing heavy-handed regulation will not just hobble network investment and innovation, it will also seriously jeopardize our nation's collective efforts to build and sustain reliable broadband in rural and unserved communities," cable lobbyist Michael Powell said today. Powell, the CEO of cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, was the FCC chairman under President George W. Bush. Powell said the FCC must "reverse course to avoid years of litigation and uncertainty" in a reference to the inevitable lawsuits that industry groups will file against the agency.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight of broadband internet that was rescinded under former President Donald Trump, the agency's chair said. The FCC told advocates on Tuesday of the plan to vote on the final rule at its April 25 meeting. The commission voted 3-2 in October on the proposal to reinstate open internet rules adopted in 2015 and re-establish the commission's authority over broadband internet.

Net neutrality refers to the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel confirmed the planned commission vote in an interview with Reuters. "The pandemic made clear that broadband is an essential service, that every one of us -- no matter who we are or where we live -- needs it to have a fair shot at success in the digital age," she said. "An essential service requires oversight and in this case we are just putting back in place the rules that have already been court-approved that ensures that broadband access is fast, open and fair."

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has a new way to combat the impersonation scams that it says cost people $1.1 billion last year alone. Effective today, the agency's rule "prohibits the impersonation of government, businesses, and their officials or agents in interstate commerce." The rule also lets the FTC directly file federal court complaints to force scammers to return money stolen by business or government impersonation. From a report: Impersonation scams are wide-ranging -- creators are on the lookout for fake podcast invites that turn into letting scammers take over their Facebook pages via a hidden "datasets" URL, while Verge reporters have been impersonated by criminals trying to steal cryptocurrency via fake Calendly meeting links.

Linus Media Group was victimized by a thief who pretended to be a potential sponsor and managed to take over three of the company's YouTube channels. Some scams can also be very intricate, as in The Cut financial columnist Charlotte Cowles' story of how she lost a shoebox holding $50,000 to an elaborate scam involving a fake Amazon business account, the FTC, and the CIA. (See also: gift card scams.) The agency is also taking public comment until April 30th on changes to the rule that would allow it to also target impersonation of individuals, such as through the use of video deepfakes or AI voice cloning. That would let it take action against, say, scams involving impersonations of Elon Musk on X or celebrities in YouTube ads. Others have used AI for more sinister fraud, such as voice clones of loved ones claiming to be kidnapped.

A Chinese scientist who was imprisoned for his role in creating the world's first genetically edited babies says he has returned to his laboratory to work on the treatment of Alzheimer's and other genetic diseases. From a report: In an interview with a Japanese newspaper, He Jiankui said he had resumed research on human embryo genome editing, despite the controversy over the ethics of artificially rewriting genes, which some critics predicted would lead to demand for "designer babies."

"We will use discarded human embryos and comply with both domestic and international rules," He told the Mainichi Shimbun, adding that he had no plans to produce more genome-edited babies. Previously, He had used a tool known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite DNA in embryos. In 2019 a court in China sentenced He to three years in prison for violating medical regulations after he claimed the previous year that he had created genetically modified twin sisters, Lulu and Nana, before birth. His experiments sent shockwaves through the medical and scientific world. He was widely condemned for having gone ahead with the risky, ethically contentious and medically unjustified procedure with inadequate consent from the families involved.

The court found that He had forged documents from an ethics review panel that were used to recruit couples for his research. He said he had used a gene-editing procedure known as Crispr-Cas9 to rewrite the DNA in the sisters' embryos -- modifications he claimed would make the children immune to HIV. He has continued to defend his work, despite widespread criticism, saying he was "proud" of having created Lulu and Nana. A third girl was born in 2019 as a result of similar experiments.

Google plans to destroy a trove of data that reflects millions of users' web-browsing histories, part of a settlement of a lawsuit that alleged the company tracked millions of users without their knowledge. WSJ: The class action, filed in 2020, accused Google of misleading users about how Chrome tracked the activity of anyone who used the private "Incognito" browsing option. The lawsuit alleged that Google's marketing and privacy disclosures didn't properly inform users of the kinds of data being collected, including details about which websites they viewed. The settlement details, filed Monday in San Francisco federal court, set out the actions the company will take to change its practices around private browsing. According to the court filing, Google has agreed to destroy billions of data points that the lawsuit alleges it improperly collected, to update disclosures about what it collects in private browsing and give users the option to disable third-party cookies in that setting.

The agreement doesn't include damages for individual users. But the settlement will allow individuals to file claims. Already the plaintiff attorneys have filed 50 in California state court. Attorney David Boies, who represents the consumers in the lawsuit, said the settlement requires Google to delete and remediate "in unprecedented scope and scale" the data it improperly collected. "This settlement is an historic step in requiring honesty and accountability from dominant technology companies," Boies said.