Policy – Page 19

DOJ wraps up ad tech trial: Google is “three times” a monopolist

advertising exchange, Antitrust law, Google, google ad manager, google ad tech, google adx, online advertising, Policy / Tim Belzer / November 25, 2024

One of the fastest monopoly trials on record wound down Monday, as US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema heard closing arguments on Google’s alleged monopoly in a case over the company’s ad tech.

Department of Justice lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum kicked things off by telling Brinkema that Google “rigged” ad auctions, allegedly controlling “multiple parts” of services used to place ads all over the Internet, unfairly advantaging itself in three markets, The New York Times reported.

“Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist,” Teitelbaum said, while reinforcing that “these are the markets that make the free and open Internet possible.”

Teitelbaum likened Google to a “predator,” preying on publishers that allegedly had no viable other options for ad revenue but to stick with Google’s products. An executive for News Corp. testified that the news organization felt it was being held “hostage” because it risked losing $9 million in 2017 if it walked away from Google’s advertising platform.

Brinkema, who wasted no time and frequently urged lawyers to avoid repeating themselves or dragging out litigation with unnecessary testimony throughout the trial, reportedly pushed back.

In one instance she asked, “What would happen if a company had produced the best product,” but Teitelbaum rejected the idea that Google’s ad tech platform had competed on the merits.

“The problem is Google hasn’t done that,” Teitelbaum said, alleging that instead better emerging products “died out,” unable to compete on the merits.

According to Vidushi Dyall, the director of legal analysis for the Chamber of Progress (a trade group representing Google), this lack of advertiser testimony or evidence of better products could be key flaws in the DOJ’s argument. When Brinkema asked what better products Google had stamped out, the DOJ came up blank, Dyall posted in a thread on X (formerly Twitter).

Further, Dyall wrote, Brinkema “noted that the DOJ’s case was notably absent of direct testimony from advertisers.” The judge apparently criticized the DOJ for focusing too much on how publishers were harmed while providing “no direct evidence about advertisers and how satisfied/dissatisfied they are with the system,” Dyall wrote.

DOJ wraps up ad tech trial: Google is “three times” a monopolist Read More »

OpenAI blamed NYT for tech problem erasing evidence of copyright abuse

It’s not “lost,” just “inadvertently removed”

OpenAI denies deleting evidence, asks why NYT didn’t back up data.

OpenAI keeps deleting data that could allegedly prove the AI company violated copyright laws by training ChatGPT on authors’ works. Apparently largely unintentional, the sloppy practice is seemingly dragging out early court battles that could determine whether AI training is fair use.

Most recently, The New York Times accused OpenAI of unintentionally erasing programs and search results that the newspaper believed could be used as evidence of copyright abuse.

The NYT apparently spent more than 150 hours extracting training data, while following a model inspection protocol that OpenAI set up precisely to avoid conducting potentially damning searches of its own database. This process began in October, but by mid-November, the NYT discovered that some of the data gathered had been erased due to what OpenAI called a “glitch.”

Looking to update the court about potential delays in discovery, the NYT asked OpenAI to collaborate on a joint filing admitting the deletion occurred. But OpenAI declined, instead filing a separate response calling the newspaper’s accusation that evidence was deleted “exaggerated” and blaming the NYT for the technical problem that triggered the data deleting.

OpenAI denied deleting “any evidence,” instead admitting only that file-system information was “inadvertently removed” after the NYT requested a change that resulted in “self-inflicted wounds.” According to OpenAI, the tech problem emerged because NYT was hoping to speed up its searches and requested a change to the model inspection set-up that OpenAI warned “would yield no speed improvements and might even hinder performance.”

The AI company accused the NYT of negligence during discovery, “repeatedly running flawed code” while conducting searches of URLs and phrases from various newspaper articles and failing to back up their data. Allegedly the change that NYT requested “resulted in removing the folder structure and some file names on one hard drive,” which “was supposed to be used as a temporary cache for storing OpenAI data, but evidently was also used by Plaintiffs to save some of their search results (apparently without any backups).”

Once OpenAI figured out what happened, data was restored, OpenAI said. But the NYT alleged that the only data that OpenAI could recover did “not include the original folder structure and original file names” and therefore “is unreliable and cannot be used to determine where the News Plaintiffs’ copied articles were used to build Defendants’ models.”

In response, OpenAI suggested that the NYT could simply take a few days and re-run the searches, insisting, “contrary to Plaintiffs’ insinuations, there is no reason to think that the contents of any files were lost.” But the NYT does not seem happy about having to retread any part of model inspection, continually frustrated by OpenAI’s expectation that plaintiffs must come up with search terms when OpenAI understands its models best.

OpenAI claimed that it has consulted on search terms and been “forced to pour enormous resources” into supporting the NYT’s model inspection efforts while continuing to avoid saying how much it’s costing. Previously, the NYT accused OpenAI of seeking to profit off these searches, attempting to charge retail prices instead of being transparent about actual costs.

Now, OpenAI appears to be more willing to conduct searches on behalf of NYT that it previously sought to avoid. In its filing, OpenAI asked the court to order news plaintiffs to “collaborate with OpenAI to develop a plan for reasonable, targeted searches to be executed either by Plaintiffs or OpenAI.”

How that might proceed will be discussed at a hearing on December 3. OpenAI said it was committed to preventing future technical issues and was “committed to resolving these issues efficiently and equitably.”

It’s not the first time OpenAI deleted data

This isn’t the only time that OpenAI has been called out for deleting data in a copyright case.

In May, book authors, including Sarah Silverman and Paul Tremblay, told a US district court in California that OpenAI admitted to deleting the controversial AI training data sets at issue in that litigation. Additionally, OpenAI admitted that “witnesses knowledgeable about the creation of these datasets have apparently left the company,” authors’ court filing said. Unlike the NYT, book authors seem to suggest that OpenAI’s deleting appeared potentially suspicious.

“OpenAI’s delay campaign continues,” the authors’ filing said, alleging that “evidence of what was contained in these datasets, how they were used, the circumstances of their deletion and the reasons for” the deletion “are all highly relevant.”

The judge in that case, Robert Illman, wrote that OpenAI’s dispute with authors has so far required too much judicial intervention, noting that both sides “are not exactly proceeding through the discovery process with the degree of collegiality and cooperation that might be optimal.” Wired noted similarly the NYT case is “not exactly a lovefest.”

As these cases proceed, plaintiffs in both cases are struggling to decide on search terms that will surface the evidence they seek. While the NYT case is bogged down by OpenAI seemingly refusing to conduct any searches yet on behalf of publishers, the book author case is differently being dragged out by authors failing to provide search terms. Only four of the 15 authors suing have sent search terms, as their deadline for discovery approaches on January 27, 2025.

NYT judge rejects key part of fair use defense

OpenAI’s defense primarily hinges on courts agreeing that copying authors’ works to train AI is a transformative fair use that benefits the public, but the judge in the NYT case, Ona Wang, rejected a key part of that fair use defense late last week.

To win their fair use argument, OpenAI was trying to modify a fair use factor regarding “the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work” by invoking a common argument that the factor should be modified to include the “public benefits the copying will likely produce.”

Part of this defense tactic sought to prove that the NYT’s journalism benefits from generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, with OpenAI hoping to topple NYT’s claim that ChatGPT posed an existential threat to its business. To that end, OpenAI sought documents showing that the NYT uses AI tools, creates its own AI tools, and generally supports the use of AI in journalism outside the court battle.

On Friday, however, Wang denied OpenAI’s motion to compel this kind of evidence. Wang deemed it irrelevant to the case despite OpenAI’s claims that if AI tools “benefit” the NYT’s journalism, that “benefit” would be relevant to OpenAI’s fair use defense.

“But the Supreme Court specifically states that a discussion of ‘public benefits’ must relate to the benefits from the copying,” Wang wrote in a footnote, not “whether the copyright holder has admitted that other uses of its copyrights may or may not constitute fair use, or whether the copyright holder has entered into business relationships with other entities in the defendant’s industry.”

This likely stunts OpenAI’s fair use defense by cutting off an area of discovery that OpenAI previously fought hard to pursue. It essentially leaves OpenAI to argue that its copying of NYT content specifically serves a public good, not the act of AI training generally.

In February, Ars forecasted that the NYT might have the upper hand in this case because the NYT already showed that sometimes ChatGPT would reproduce word-for-word snippets of articles. That will likely make it harder to convince the court that training ChatGPT by copying NYT articles is a transformative fair use, as Google Books famously did when copying books to create a searchable database.

For OpenAI, the strategy seems to be to erect as strong a fair use case as possible to defend its most popular release. And if the court sides with OpenAI on that question, it won’t really matter how much evidence the NYT surfaces during model inspection. But if the use is not seen as transformative and then the NYT can prove the copying harms its business—without benefiting the public—OpenAI could risk losing this important case when the verdict comes in 2025. And that could have implications for book authors’ suit as well as other litigation, expected to drag into 2026.

Ashley is a senior policy reporter for Ars Technica, dedicated to tracking social impacts of emerging policies and new technologies. She is a Chicago-based journalist with 20 years of experience.

OpenAI blamed NYT for tech problem erasing evidence of copyright abuse Read More »

Supreme Court to review 5th Circuit ruling that upends Universal Service Fund

Policy, Universal Service Fund / Tim Belzer / November 25, 2024

The US Supreme Court will hear appeals of a 5th Circuit ruling that called Universal Service fees on phone bills an illegal tax.

The US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled in July that the Federal Communications Commission’s Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional and that the fees on phone bills are a “misbegotten tax.” The FCC and several non-government groups challenged the ruling, and the Supreme Court agreed to take up the case on Friday.

The Universal Service Fund is an $8 billion-a-year system that subsidizes the expansion of telecom networks with grants to Internet service providers and makes access more affordable through programs such as Lifeline discounts. The FCC program has faced several court challenges filed by Consumers’ Research, a nonprofit that fights “woke corporations,” and a mobile virtual network operator called Cause Based Commerce.

The conservative 5th Circuit’s ruling conflicted with decisions by the 5th and 11th Circuit appeals courts, which both rejected claims that the Universal Service Fund is unconstitutional. In a 9–7 ruling, the 5th Circuit objected to the FCC’s decision to let the Universal Service Fund be administered by a private organization called the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC). The 5th Circuit said the FCC “subdelegated the taxing power to a private corporation,” and that “the combination of Congress’s sweeping delegation to FCC and FCC’s unauthorized subdelegation to USAC violates the Legislative Vesting Clause in Article I, § 1.”

FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said on Friday, “I am pleased that the Supreme Court will review the 5th Circuit’s misguided decision. For decades, there has been broad, bipartisan support for the Universal Service Fund and the FCC programs that help communications reach the most rural and least-connected households in the United States, as well as hospitals, schools, and libraries nationwide. I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will overturn the decision that put this vital system at risk.”

FCC challenge

The FCC and Department of Justice submitted a petition for Supreme Court review, saying the court should decide “whether the combination of Congress’s conferral of authority on the Commission and the Commission’s delegation of administrative responsibilities to the Administrator violates the nondelegation doctrine.”

The US petition said the USAC “performs administrative tasks on the FCC’s behalf” but “exercises no independent regulatory power.” The FCC calculates a contribution factor that determines what phone companies will have to pay, and the USAC “calculates each carrier’s contribution by applying the factor to that carrier’s ‘contribution base’ (generally, the carrier’s interstate and international telecommunications revenues),” the petition said.

Supreme Court to review 5th Circuit ruling that upends Universal Service Fund Read More »

$300 billion pledge at COP29 climate summit a “paltry sum”

climate change, COP29, Policy, Science, syndication / Paul Patrick / November 25, 2024

The world’s most important climate talks were pulled back from the brink of collapse after poorer countries reluctantly accepted a finance package of “at least” $300 billion a year from wealthy nations after bitter negotiations.

Fears about stretched budgets around the world and the election of Donald Trump as US president, who has described climate change as a “hoax,” drove the developing countries into acceptance of the slightly improved package after Sunday 2: 30 am local time in Baku.

The UN COP29 climate summit almost collapsed twice throughout Saturday evening and into the early hours of Sunday morning, as vulnerable nations walked out of negotiations and India objected stridently.

As the gavel came down, India’s lead negotiator, Neelesh Shah, leapt to his feet to ask to take the floor, and when he was ignored made a furious timeout gesture above his head and led his team on to the stage in protest.

Speaking from the floor, Indian delegation member Chandni Raina said the country was “extremely disappointed” by the abrupt passage of the agreement, adding: “This was stage-managed.”

“It is a paltry sum,” she said. “I am sorry to say that we cannot accept it. We seek a much higher ambition from developed countries.” The agreement was “nothing more than an optical illusion,” she added.

The broadside was followed by objections from Bolivia, Chile, and Nigeria, who were told by COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev that their statements were noted. Smaller nations, such as Malawi, Fiji, and the Maldives, joined in the grievance.

Simon Stiell, head of the UN climate change arm, said the new goal was an “insurance policy for humanity, amid worsening climate impacts hitting every country” but added that it was “no time for victory laps.”

European Union climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra tried to assure disappointed smaller nations, saying he was “confident we will reach the $1.3 trillion” economists say developing countries need to shift to green energy and cope with climate change.

$300 billion pledge at COP29 climate summit a “paltry sum” Read More »

Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on Internet “monopoly” you’ve never heard of

anti monopoly, elizabeth warren, monopolies, Policy, syndication / Rejus Almole / November 23, 2024

US Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Congressman Jerry Nadler of New York have called on government bodies to investigate what they allege is the “predatory pricing” of .com web addresses, the Internet’s prime real estate.

In a letter delivered today to the Department of Justice and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, a branch of the Department of Commerce that advises the president, the two Democrats accuse VeriSign, the company that administers the .com top-level domain, of abusing its market dominance to overcharge customers.

In 2018, under the Donald Trump administration, the NTIA modified the terms on how much VeriSign could charge for .com domains. The company has since hiked prices by 30 percent, the letter claims, though its service remains identical and could allegedly be provided far more cheaply by others.

“VeriSign is exploiting its monopoly power to charge millions of users excessive prices for registering a .com top-level domain,” the letter claims. “VeriSign hasn’t changed or improved its services; it has simply raised prices because it holds a government-ensured monopoly.”

“We intend to respond to senator Warren and representative Nadler’s letter, which repeats inaccuracies and misleading statements that have been aggressively promoted by a small, self-interested group of domain-name investors for years,” said Verisign spokesperson David McGuire in a statement to WIRED. “We look forward to correcting the record and working with policymakers toward real solutions that benefit internet users.”

In an August blog post entitled “Setting the Record Straight,” the company claimed that discourse around its management of .com had been “distorted by factual inaccuracies, a misunderstanding of core technical concepts, and misinterpretations regarding pricing, competition, and market dynamics in the domain name industry.”

In the same blog post, the company argues that it is not operating a monopoly because there are 1,200 generic top-level domains operated by other entities, including .org, .shop, .ai, and .uk.

Though far from a household name, VeriSign takes in about $1.5 billion in revenue each year for servicing its particular section of the Internet’s inscrutable plumbing.

In their letter, Warren and Nadler allege that VeriSign has exploited its exclusive right to charge for highly sought-after .com addresses to juice its revenues and drive up its share price—all at the expense of customers for whom there is no viable alternative.

Elizabeth Warren calls for crackdown on Internet “monopoly” you’ve never heard of Read More »

Ted Cruz wants to overhaul $42B broadband program, nix low-cost requirement

access, and Deployment program, Broadband Equity, Policy, ted cruz / Paul Patrick / November 22, 2024

Emboldened by Donald Trump’s election win, Republicans are seeking big changes to a $42.45 billion broadband deployment program. Their plan could delay distribution of government funding and remove or relax a requirement that ISPs accepting subsidies must offer low-cost Internet plans.

US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) today issued a press release titled, “Sen. Cruz Warns Biden-Harris NTIA: Big Changes Ahead for Multi-Billion-Dollar Broadband Boondoggle.” Cruz, who will soon be chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, is angry about how the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has implemented the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program that was created by Congress in November 2021.

The NTIA announced this week that it has approved the funding plans submitted by all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and five US territories, which are slated to receive federal money and dole it out to broadband providers for network expansions. Texas was the last state to gain approval in what the NTIA called “a major milestone on the road to connecting everyone in America to affordable, reliable high-speed Internet service.”

Republicans including Cruz and incoming Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr have criticized the NTIA for not distributing the money faster. But Cruz’s promise of a revamp creates uncertainty about the distribution of funds. Cruz sent a letter yesterday to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson in which he asked the agency to halt the program rollout until Trump takes over. Cruz also accused the NTIA of “technology bias” because the agency decided that fiber networks should be prioritized over other types of technology.

Cruz: Stop what you’re doing

“It is incumbent on you to bear these upcoming changes in mind during this transition term,” Cruz wrote. “I therefore urge the NTIA to pause unlawful, extraneous BEAD activities and avoid locking states into in [sic] any final actions until you provide a detailed, transparent response to my original inquiry and take immediate, measurable steps to address these issues.”

Ted Cruz wants to overhaul $42B broadband program, nix low-cost requirement Read More »

DirecTV announces termination of deal to buy Dish satellite business

direct, DISH, Policy / Rejus Almole / November 22, 2024

DirecTV CEO Bill Morrow indicated his company wasn’t willing to change the deal to satisfy Dish bondholders. “We have terminated the transaction because the proposed Exchange Terms were necessary to protect DirecTV’s balance sheet and our operational flexibility,” Morrow said.

AT&T still selling DirecTV stake

AT&T owns 70 percent of DirecTV but plans to sell its stake to private equity firm TPG, which owns the other 30 percent. DirecTV said this separate deal is still moving forward.

“The termination of the Dish acquisition does not affect TPG’s acquisition of the remaining 70 percent stake in DirecTV from AT&T, which is expected to close in the second half of 2025,” DirecTV said.

EchoStar was hoping to get rid of the declining satellite TV business and focus on its cellular ambitions. When the deal was announced on September 30, EchoStar said it would be able “to focus more clearly on enhancing and further deploying its nationwide 5G Open RAN wireless network.”

DirecTV and Dish tried to merge over two decades ago. The deal was scrapped after the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit, saying the merger “would eliminate competition between the nation’s two most significant direct broadcast satellite services.”

AT&T bought DirecTV for $48.5 billion in 2015 but lost nearly 10 million subscribers in the ensuing years before completing a spinoff in 2021. The subscriber losses continued after the spinoff; DirecTV lost 1.8 million subscribers in 2023, bringing it down to an estimated 11.3 million.

EchoStar recently reported having 5.89 million Dish TV subscribers and 2.14 million Sling TV subscribers after the latest customer losses in the satellite division and customer gains for the Sling streaming service.

DirecTV announces termination of deal to buy Dish satellite business Read More »

School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules

AI, artificial inteligence, Policy / Tim Belzer / November 21, 2024

Student “indiscriminately copied and pasted text,” including AI hallucinations.

Credit: Getty Images | Andriy Onufriyenko

A federal court yesterday ruled against parents who sued a Massachusetts school district for punishing their son who used an artificial intelligence tool to complete an assignment.

Dale and Jennifer Harris sued Hingham High School officials and the School Committee and sought a preliminary injunction requiring the school to change their son’s grade and expunge the incident from his disciplinary record before he needs to submit college applications. The parents argued that there was no rule against using AI in the student handbook, but school officials said the student violated multiple policies.

The Harris’ motion for an injunction was rejected in an order issued yesterday from US District Court for the District of Massachusetts. US Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson found that school officials “have the better of the argument on both the facts and the law.”

“On the facts, there is nothing in the preliminary factual record to suggest that HHS officials were hasty in concluding that RNH [the Harris’ son, referred to by his initials] had cheated,” Levenson wrote. “Nor were the consequences Defendants imposed so heavy-handed as to exceed Defendants’ considerable discretion in such matters.”

“On the evidence currently before the Court, I detect no wrongdoing by Defendants,” Levenson also wrote.

Students copied and pasted AI “hallucinations”

The incident occurred in December 2023 when RNH was a junior. The school determined that RNH and another student “had cheated on an AP US History project by attempting to pass off, as their own work, material that they had taken from a generative artificial intelligence (‘AI’) application,” Levenson wrote. “Although students were permitted to use AI to brainstorm topics and identify sources, in this instance the students had indiscriminately copied and pasted text from the AI application, including citations to nonexistent books (i.e., AI hallucinations).”

They received failing grades on two parts of the multi-part project but “were permitted to start from scratch, each working separately, to complete and submit the final project,” the order said. RNH’s discipline included a Saturday detention. He was also barred from selection for the National Honor Society, but he was ultimately allowed into the group after his parents filed the lawsuit.

School officials “point out that RNH was repeatedly taught the fundamentals of academic integrity, including how to use and cite AI,” Levenson wrote. The magistrate judge agreed that “school officials could reasonably conclude that RNH’s use of AI was in violation of the school’s academic integrity rules and that any student in RNH’s position would have understood as much.”

Levenson’s order described how the students used AI to generate a script for a documentary film:

The evidence reflects that the pair did not simply use AI to help formulate research topics or identify sources to review. Instead, it seems they indiscriminately copied and pasted text that had been generated by Grammarly.com (“Grammarly”), a publicly available AI tool, into their draft script. Evidently, the pair did not even review the “sources” that Grammarly provided before lifting them. The very first footnote in the submission consists of a citation to a nonexistent book: “Lee, Robert. Hoop Dreams: A Century of Basketball. Los Angeles: Courtside Publications, 2018.” The third footnote also appears wholly factitious: “Doe, Jane. Muslim Pioneers: The Spiritual Journey of American Icons. Chicago: Windy City Publishers, 2017.” Significantly, even though the script contained citations to various sources—some of which were real—there was no citation to Grammarly, and no acknowledgement that AI of any kind had been used.

Tool flagged paper as AI-generated

When the students submitted their script via Turnitin.com, the website flagged portions of it as being AI-generated. The AP US History teacher conducted further examination, finding that large portions of the script had been copied and pasted. She also found other damning details.

History teacher Susan Petrie “testified that the revision history showed that RNH had only spent approximately 52 minutes in the document, whereas other students spent between seven and nine hours. Ms. Petrie also ran the submission through ‘Draft Back’ and ‘Chat Zero,’ two additional AI detection tools, which also indicated that AI had been used to generate the document,” the order said.

School officials argued that the “case did not implicate subtle questions of acceptable practices in deploying a new technology, but rather was a straightforward case of academic dishonesty,” Levenson wrote. The magistrate judge’s order said “it is doubtful that the Court has any role in second-guessing” the school’s determination, and that RNH’s plaintiffs did not show any misconduct by school authorities.

As we previously reported, school officials told the court that the student handbook’s section on cheating and plagiarism bans “unauthorized use of technology during an assignment” and “unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own work.”

School officials also told the court that in fall 2023, students were given a copy of a “written policy on Academic Dishonesty and AI expectations” that said students “shall not use AI tools during in-class examinations, processed writing assignments, homework or classwork unless explicitly permitted and instructed.”

The parents’ case hangs largely on the student handbook’s lack of a specific statement about AI, even though that same handbook bans unauthorized use of technology. “They told us our son cheated on a paper, which is not what happened,” Jennifer Harris told WCVB last month. “They basically punished him for a rule that doesn’t exist.”

Parents’ other claims rejected

The Harrises also claim that school officials engaged in a “pervasive pattern of threats, intimidation, coercion, bullying, harassment, and intimation of reprisals.” But Levenson concluded that the “plaintiffs provide little in the way of factual allegations along these lines.”

While the case isn’t over, the rejection of the preliminary injunction shows that Levenson believes the defendants are likely to win. “The manner in which RNH used Grammarly—wholesale copying and pasting of language directly into the draft script that he submitted—powerfully supports Defendants’ conclusion that RNH knew that he was using AI in an impermissible fashion,” Levenson wrote.

While “the emergence of generative AI may present some nuanced challenges for educators, the issue here is not particularly nuanced, as there is no discernible pedagogical purpose in prompting Grammarly (or any other AI tool) to generate a script, regurgitating the output without citation, and claiming it as one’s own work,” the order said.

Levenson wasn’t impressed by the parents’ claim that RNH’s constitutional right to due process was violated. The defendants “took multiple steps to confirm that RNH had in fact used AI in completing the Assignment” before imposing a punishment, he wrote. The discipline imposed “did not deprive RNH of his right to a public education,” and thus “any substantive due process claim premised on RNH’s entitlement to a public education must fail.”

Levenson concluded with a quote from a 1988 Supreme Court ruling that said the education of youth “is primarily the responsibility of parents, teachers, and state and local school officials, and not of federal judges.” According to Levenson, “This case well illustrates the good sense in that division of labor. The public interest here weighs in favor of Defendants.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

School did nothing wrong when it punished student for using AI, court rules Read More »

Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly

android, Antitrust law, duckduckgo, Google, google ai overviews, google chrome, google search, google search monopoly, Policy, us department of justice / Tim Belzer / November 21, 2024

Hepner expects that the DOJ plan may be measured enough that the court may only “be interested in a nip-tuck, not a wholesale revision of what plaintiffs have put forward.”

Kamyl Bazbaz, SVP of public affairs for Google’s more privacy-focused rival DuckDuckGo, released a statement agreeing with Hepner.

“The government has put forward a proposal that would free the search market from Google’s illegal grip and unleash a new era of innovation, investment, and competition,” Bazbaz said. “There’s nothing radical about this proposal: It’s firmly based on the court’s extensive finding of fact and proposes solutions in line with previous antitrust actions.”

Bazbaz accused Google of “cynically” invoking privacy among chief concerns with a forced Chrome sale. That “is rich coming from the Internet’s biggest tracker,” Bazbaz said.

Will Apple finally compete with Google in search?

The remedies the DOJ has proposed could potentially be game-changing, Bazbaz told Ars, not just for existing rivals but also new rivals and startups the court found were previously unable to enter the market while it was under Google’s control.

If the DOJ gets its way, Google could be stuck complying with these proposed remedies for 10 years. But if the company can prove after five years that competition has substantially increased and it controls less than 50 percent of the market, the remedies could be terminated early, the DOJ’s proposed final judgment order said.

That’s likely cold comfort for Google as it prepares to fight the DOJ’s plan to break up its search empire and potentially face major new competitors. The biggest risk to Google’s dominance in AI search could even be its former partner, whom the court found was being paid handsomely to help prop up Google’s search monopoly: Apple.

On X (formerly Twitter), Hepner said that cutting off Google’s $20 billion payments to Apple for default placements in Safari alone could “have a huge effect and may finally kick Apple to enter the market itself.”

Welcome to Google’s nightmare: US reveals plan to destroy search monopoly Read More »

FCC chairwoman announces departure, paving way for Republican majority

jessica rosenworcel, Policy / Rejus Almole / November 21, 2024

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel announced today that she will leave the agency on January 20, 2025, the day of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.

“Serving at the Federal Communications Commission has been the honor of a lifetime, especially my tenure as chair and as the first woman in history to be confirmed to lead this agency,” Rosenworcel said in today’s announcement. Rosenworcel said that being chair during the pandemic “made clear how important the work of the FCC is and how essential it is for us to build a digital future that works for everyone.”

Rosenworcel touted the agency’s work in “setting up the largest broadband affordability program in history—which led to us connecting more than 23 million households to high-speed Internet, connecting more than 17 million students caught in the homework gap to hotspots and other devices as learning moved online.” That discount program ended this year after Congress let funding run out, despite Rosenworcel’s repeated pleas for more money.

Rosenworcel, a Democrat, is following tradition, as the FCC chair typically resigns when the opposing party wins the White House. The move will leave the FCC with two Democrats and two Republicans, paving the way for the GOP to add one member and gain a 3–2 majority.

FCC had 2-2 deadlock for most of Biden’s term

Rosenworcel became an FCC commissioner in 2012 and was promoted to chair by President Biden in 2021. She was forced to operate without a Democratic majority for most of her time as chair due to a series of political developments.

FCC chairwoman announces departure, paving way for Republican majority Read More »

Comcast to ditch cable TV networks in partial spinoff of NBCUniversal assets

Comcast, comcast spinoff, Policy / Paul Patrick / November 20, 2024

Comcast today announced plans to spin off NBCUniversal cable TV networks such as USA, CNBC, and MSNBC into a new publicly traded company. Comcast is trying to complete the spinoff in one year, effectively unwinding part of the NBCUniversal acquisition it completed in 2011.

The entities in the planned spinoff generated about $7 billion of revenue in the 12 months that ended September 30, 2024, Comcast said. But cable TV channels have become less lucrative in an industry that’s shifting to the streaming model, and the spinoff would let Comcast remove those assets from its earnings reports. Comcast’s total revenue in the 12-month period was about $123 billion.

Comcast President Mike Cavanagh said in the Q3 earnings call on October 31 that Comcast is “experiencing the effects of the transition in our video businesses and have been studying the best path forward for these assets.”

The spinoff company will be “comprised of a strong portfolio of NBCUniversal’s cable television networks, including USA Network, CNBC, MSNBC, Oxygen, E!, SYFY and Golf Channel along with complementary digital assets including Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow and Sports Engine,” Comcast said today.

Comcast is keeping the rest of NBCUniversal, including the Peacock streaming service and networks that provide key content for Peacock. Comcast said it will retain NBCUniversal’s “leading broadcast and streaming media properties, including NBC entertainment, sports, news and Bravo—which all power Peacock—along with Telemundo, the theme parks business and film and television studios.”

SpinCo

The new company doesn’t have a permanent name yet and is referred to as “SpinCo” in the Comcast press release. Comcast said SpinCo’s CEO will be Mark Lazarus, who is currently chairman of NBCUniversal Media Group. Anand Kini, the current CFO of NBCUniversal and EVP of Corporate Strategy at Comcast, will be CFO and COO at SpinCo.

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A year after ditching waitlist, Starlink says it is “sold out” in parts of US

Biz & IT, Policy, starlink / Paul Patrick / November 19, 2024

The Starlink waitlist is back in certain parts of the US, including several large cities on the West Coast and in Texas. The Starlink availability map says the service is sold out in and around Seattle; Spokane, Washington; Portland, Oregon; San Diego; Sacramento, California; and Austin, Texas. Neighboring cities and towns are included in the sold-out zones.

There are additional sold-out areas in small parts of Colorado, Montana, and North Carolina. As PCMag noted yesterday, the change comes about a year after Starlink added capacity and removed its waitlist throughout the US.

Elsewhere in North America, there are some sold-out areas in Canada and Mexico. Across the Atlantic, Starlink is sold out in London and neighboring cities. Starlink is not yet available in most of Africa, and some of the areas where it is available are sold out.

Starlink is generally seen as most useful in rural areas with less access to wired broadband, but it seems to be attracting interest in more heavily populated areas, too. While detailed region-by-region subscriber numbers aren’t available publicly, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said last week that Starlink has nearly 5 million users worldwide.

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