Policy – Page 4

Trump plan to fund Musk’s Starlink over fiber called “betrayal” of rural US

BEAD program, elon musk, Policy, starlink, trump administration / Kris Guyer / March 18, 2025

“Some states are on the 1-yard line”

Republicans criticized the Biden administration for not yet distributing grant money, but the NTIA said in November that it had approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory. Feinman said the change in direction will delay grant distribution.

“Some states are on the 1-yard line. A bunch are on the 5-yard line. More will be getting there every week,” he wrote. “These more-sweeping changes will only cause delays. The administration could fix the problems with the program via waiver and avoid slowdowns.”

The program is on pause, even if the new government leaders don’t admit it, according to Feinman. “The administration wants to make changes, but doesn’t want to be seen slowing things down. They can’t have both. States will have to be advised that they should either slow down or stop doing subgrantee selection,” he wrote.

Delaware, Louisiana, and Nevada had their final proposals approved by the NTIA in January, a few days before Trump’s inauguration. “Shovels could already be in the ground in three states, and they could be in the ground in half the country by the summer without the proposed changes to project selection,” Feinman wrote.

The three states with approved final proposals are now “in limbo,” he wrote. “This makes no sense—these states are ready to go, and they got the job done on time, on budget, and have plans that achieve universal coverage,” his email said. “If the administration cares about getting shovels in the ground, states with approved Final Proposals should move forward, ASAP.”

Other states that were nearing the final stage are also in limbo, Feinman wrote. “No decision has been made about how much of the existing progress the 30 states who are already performing subgrantee selection should be allowed to keep,” he wrote. “The administration simply cannot say whether the time, taxpayer funds, and private capital that were spent on those processes will be wasted and how much states will have to re-do.”

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UK online safety law Musk hates kicks in today, and so far, Trump can’t stop it

content moderation, Donald Trump, elon musk, online safety act, Policy, tariffs, Twitter, united kingdom, X / Tim Belzer / March 18, 2025

Enforcement of a first-of-its-kind United Kingdom law that Elon Musk wants Donald Trump to gut kicked in today, with potentially huge penalties possibly imminent for any Big Tech companies deemed non-compliant.

UK’s Online Safety Act (OSA) forces tech companies to detect and remove dangerous online content, threatening fines of up to 10 percent of global turnover. In extreme cases, widely used platforms like Musk’s X could be shut down or executives even jailed if UK online safety regulator Ofcom determines there has been a particularly egregious violation.

Critics call it a censorship bill, listing over 130 “priority” offenses across 17 categories detailing what content platforms must remove. The list includes illegal content connected to terrorism, child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, illegal drugs, animal welfare, and other crimes. But it also broadly restricts content in legally gray areas, like posts considered “extreme pornography,” harassment, or controlling behavior.

Matthew Lesh, a public policy fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, told The Telegraph that “the idea that Elon Musk, or any social media executive, could be jailed for failing to remove enough content should send chills down the spine of anyone who cares about free speech.”

Musk has publicly signaled that he expects Trump to intervene, saying, “Thank goodness Donald Trump will be president just in time,” regarding the OSA’s enforcement starting in March, The Telegraph reported last month. The X owner has been battling UK regulators since last summer after resisting requests from the UK government to remove misinformation during riots considered the “worst unrest in England for more than a decade,” The Financial Times reported.

According to Musk, X was refusing to censor UK users. Attacking the OSA, Musk falsely claimed Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government was “releasing convicted pedophiles in order to imprison people for social media posts,” FT reported. Such a post, if seen as spreading misinformation potentially inciting violence, could be banned under the OSA, the FT suggested.

Trump’s UK deal may disappoint Musk

Musk hopes that Trump will strike a deal with the UK government to potentially water down the OSA.

UK online safety law Musk hates kicks in today, and so far, Trump can’t stop it Read More »

Google joins OpenAI in pushing feds to codify AI training as fair use

AI, AI regulation, Google, Policy, US government / Kris Guyer / March 16, 2025

Google’s position on AI regulation: Trust us, bro

If there was any doubt about Google’s commitment to move fast and break things, its new policy position should put that to rest. “For too long, AI policymaking has paid disproportionate attention to the risks,” the document says.

Google urges the US to invest in AI not only with money but with business-friendly legislation. The company joins the growing chorus of AI firms calling for federal legislation that clarifies how they can operate. It points to the difficulty of complying with a “patchwork” of state-level laws that impose restrictions on AI development and use. If you want to know what keeps Google’s policy wonks up at night, look no further than the vetoed SB-1047 bill in California, which would have enforced AI safety measures.

AI ethics or AI Law concept. Developing AI codes of ethics. Compliance, regulation, standard , business policy and responsibility for guarding against unintended bias in machine learning algorithms. — Credit: Parradee Kietsirikul

According to Google, a national AI framework that supports innovation is necessary to push the boundaries of what artificial intelligence can do. Taking a page from the gun lobby, Google opposes attempts to hold the creators of AI liable for the way those models are used. Generative AI systems are non-deterministic, making it impossible to fully predict their output. Google wants clearly defined responsibilities for AI developers, deployers, and end users—it would, however, clearly prefer most of those responsibilities fall on others. “In many instances, the original developer of an AI model has little to no visibility or control over how it is being used by a deployer and may not interact with end users,” the company says.

There are efforts underway in some countries that would implement stringent regulations that force companies like Google to make their tools more transparent. For example, the EU’s AI Act would require AI firms to publish an overview of training data and possible risks associated with their products. Google believes this would force the disclosure of trade secrets that would allow foreign adversaries to more easily duplicate its work, mirroring concerns that OpenAI expressed in its policy proposal.

Google wants the government to push back on these efforts at the diplomatic level. The company would like to be able to release AI products around the world, and the best way to ensure it has that option is to promote light-touch regulation that “reflects US values and approaches.” That is, Google’s values and approaches.

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Scoop: Origami measuring spoon incites fury after 9 years of Kickstarter delay hell

Crowdfunding, Features, fraud, Kickstarter, Policy, shopify, tiktok / Paul Patrick / March 16, 2025

The curious case of the missing Kickstarter spoons.

An attention-grabbing Kickstarter campaign attempting to reinvent the measuring spoon has turned into a mad, mad, mad, mad world for backers after years of broken promises and thousands of missing spoons.

The mind-boggling design for the measuring spoon first wowed the Internet in 2016 after a video promoting the Kickstarter campaign went viral and spawned widespread media coverage fawning over the unique design.

Known as Polygons, the three-in-one origami measuring spoons have a flat design that can be easily folded into common teaspoon and tablespoon measurements. “Regular spoons are so 3000 BC,” a tagline on the project’s website joked.

For gadget geeks, it’s a neat example of thinking outside of the box, and fans found it appealing to potentially replace a drawer full of spoons with a more futuristic-looking compact tool. Most backers signed up for a single set, paying $8–$12 each, while hundreds wanted up to 25 sets, a handful ordered 50, and just one backer signed up for 100. Delivery was initially promised by 2017, supposedly shipping to anywhere in the world.

But it’s been about nine years since more than 30,000 backers flocked to the Kickstarter campaign—raising more than $1 million and eclipsing Polygons’ $10,000 goal. And not only have more than a third of the backers not received their spoons, but now, after years of updates claiming that the spoons had been shipped, some backers began to wonder if the entire campaign might be a fraud. They could see that Polygons are currently being sold on social media and suspected that the maker might be abusing backers’ funds to chase profits, seemingly without ever seriously intending to fulfill their orders.

One Kickstarter backer, Caskey Hunsader, told Ars that he started doubting if the spoon’s designer—an inventor from India, Rahul Agarwal—was even a real person.

Ars reached out to verify Agarwal’s design background. We confirmed that, yes, Agarwal is a real designer, and, yes, he believes there is a method to the madness when it comes to his Kickstarter campaign, which he said was never intended to be a scam or fraud and is currently shipping spoons to backers. He forecasted that 2025 is likely the year that backers’ wait will finally end.

But as thousands of complaints on the Kickstarter attest, backers have heard that one before. It’s been two years since the last official update was posted, which only promised updates that never came and did not confirm that shipments were back on track. The prior update in 2022 promised that “the time has finally arrived when we begin bulk shipping to everyone!”

Hunsader told Ars that people seem mostly upset because of “bullshit,” which is widely referenced in the comments. And that anger is compounded “by the fact that they are producing, and they are selling this product, so they are operating their business using funds that all these people who were their first backers gave them, and we’re the ones who are not getting the product. I think that’s where the anger comes from.”

“It’s been years now, and [I’ve] watched as you promise good people their products and never deliver,” one commenter wrote. “Wherever you try… to sell [your] products, we will be there reminding them of the empty orders you left here.”

“Where is my item? I am beyond angry,” another fumed.

Those who did receive their spoons often comment on the substantial delays, but reviews are largely positive.

“Holy crap, folks,” a somewhat satisfied backer wrote. “Hell has frozen over. I finally got them (no BS).”

One backer was surprised to get twice as many spoons as expected, referencing an explanation blaming Chinese New Year for one delay and writing, “I can honestly say after 8 years… and an enormous amount of emails, I finally received my pledge. Except… I only ordered 3… and I received 6. I’d be inclined to ship some back to Polygons… bare with me… I’ll return them soon… I appreciate your patience… mebbe after Chinese New Years 2033…”

Agarwal agreed to meet with Ars, show us the spoon, and explain why backers still haven’t gotten their deliveries when the spoon appears widely available to purchase online.

Failing prototypes and unusable cheap knockoffs

As a designer, Agarwal is clearly a perfectionist. He was just a student when he had the idea for Polygons in 2014, winning design awards and garnering interest that encouraged him to find a way to manufacture the spoons. He felt eager to see people using them.

Agarwal told Ars that before he launched the Kickstarter, he had prototypes made in China that were about 85 percent of the quality that he and his collaborators at InventIndia required. Anticipating that the quality would be fully there soon, Agarwal launched the Kickstarter, along with marketing efforts that Agarwal said had to be squashed due to unexpectedly high interest in the spoons.

This is when things started spiraling, as Agarwal had to switch manufacturers five times, with each partner crashing into new walls trying to execute the novel product.

Once the Kickstarter hit a million dollars, though, Agarwal committed to following through on launching the product. Eventually, cheap knockoff versions began appearing online on major retail sites like Walmart and Amazon toward the end of 2024. Because Agarwal has patents and trademarks for his design, he can get the knockoffs taken down, but they proved an important point that Agarwal had learned the hard way: that his design, while appearing simplistic, was incredibly hard to pull off.

Ars handled both a legitimate Polygons spoon and a cheap knockoff. The knockoff was a flimsy, unusable slab of rubber dotted with magnets; the companies aping Agarwal’s idea are seemingly unable to replicate the manufacturing process that Agarwal has spent years perfecting to finally be able to widely ship Polygons today.

On the other hand, Agarwal’s spoon is sturdy, uses food-grade materials, and worked just as well measuring wet and dry ingredients during an Ars test. A silicon hinge connects 19 separate plastic pieces and ensures that magnets neatly snap along indented lines indicating if the measurement is a quarter, half, or whole teaspoon or tablespoon. It took Agarwal two and a half years to finalize the design while working with InventIndia, a leading product development firm in India. Prototyping required making special molds that took a month each to iterate rather than using a 3D-printing shortcut whereby multiple prototypes could be made in a day, which Agarwal said he’d initially anticipated could be possible.

Around the time that the prototyping process concluded, Agarwal noted, COVID hit, and supply chains were disrupted, causing production setbacks. Once production could resume, costs became a factor, as estimates used to set Kickstarter backer awards were based on the early failed Chinese prototype, and the costs of producing a functioning spoon were much higher. Over time, shipping costs also rose.

As Kickstarter funds dwindled, there was no going back, so Agarwal devised a plan to sell the spoons for double the price ($25–$30 a set) by marketing them on social media, explaining this in a note to backers posted on the Polygons site. Those sales would fund ongoing manufacturing, allowing profits to be recycled so that Kickstarter backers could gradually receive shipments dependent on social media sales volumes. Orders from anyone who paid extra for expedited shipping are prioritized.

It’s a math problem at this point, with more funding needed to scale. But Agarwal told Ars that sales on Shopify and TikTok Shop have increased each quarter, most recently selling 30,000 units on TikTok, which allowed Polygons to take out a bigger line of credit to fund more manufacturing. He also brought in a more experienced partner to focus on the business side while he optimizes production.

Agarwal told Ars that he understands trust has been broken with many Kickstarter backers, considering that totally fair. While about 38 percent of backers’ orders still need filling, he predicts that all backers could get their orders within the next six to eight months as Polygons becomes better resourced, but that still depends on social media sales.

Agarwal met Ars after attending a housewares show in Chicago, where he shopped the spoons with retailers who may also help scale the product in the coming years. He anticipates that as the business scales, the cost of the spoons will come back down. And he may even be able to move onto executing other product designs that have been on the backburner as he attempts to work his way out of the Kickstarter corner he backed himself into while obsessing over his first design.

Kickstarter problem goes beyond Polygons

Hunsader told Ars there’s a big difference “in a lie versus bad management,” suggesting that as a business owner who has managed Kickstarter campaigns, he thinks more transparency likely could’ve spared Polygons a lot of angry comments.

“I am not sitting here with a dart board with [Agarwal’s] face on it, being like, when am I going to get my damn spoons?” Hunsader joked. But the campaign’s Kickstarter messaging left many backers feeling like Polygons took backers’ money and ran, Hunsader said.

Unlike people who saw the spoons going viral on social media, Hunsader discovered Polygons just by scrolling on Kickstarter. As a fan of geeky gadgets, he used to regularly support campaigns, but his experience supporting Polygons and monitoring other cases of problematic Kickstarters have made him more hesitant to use the platform without more safeguards for backers.

“It’s not specifically a Polygons problem,” Hunsader told Ars. “The whole Kickstarter thing needs maybe just more protections in place.”

Kickstarter did not respond to Ars’ request to comment. But Kickstarter’s “accountability” policy makes clear that creators “put their reputation at risk” launching campaigns and are ultimately responsible for following through on backer promises. Kickstarter doesn’t issue refunds or guarantee projects, only providing limited support when backers report “suspicious activity.”

Redditors have flagged “shitty” Kickstarter campaigns since 2012, three years after the site’s founding, and the National Association of Attorneys General—which represents US state attorneys general—suggested in 2019 that disgruntled crowdfunding backers were increasingly turning to consumer protection laws to fight alleged fraud.

In 2015, an independent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania estimated that 9 percent of Kickstarter projects didn’t fulfill their rewards. More recently, it appeared that figure had doubled, as Fortune reported last year that an internal Kickstarter estimate put “the amount of revenue that comes from fraudulent projects as high as 18 percent.” A spokesperson disputed that estimate and told Fortune that the platform employs “extensive” measures to detect fraud.

Agarwal told Ars that he thinks it’s uncommon for a campaign to continue fulfilling backer rewards after eight years of setbacks. It would be easier to just shut down and walk away, and Kickstarter likely would not have penalized him for it. While the Kickstarter campaign allowed him to reach his dream of seeing people using his novel measuring spoon in the real world, it’s been bittersweet that the campaign has dragged out so long and kept the spoons out of the hands of his earliest supporters, he told Ars.

Hunsader told Ars that he hopes the Polygons story serves as a “cautionary tale” for both backers and creators who bite off more than they can chew when launching a Kickstarter campaign. He knows that designers like Agarwal can take a reputational hit.

“I don’t want to make somebody who has big dreams not want to dream, but you also, when you’re dealing with things like manufacturing technology, have to be realistic about what is and is not accomplishable,” Hunsader said.

Polygons collaborators at InventIndia told Ars that Agarwal is “dedicated and hard-working,” describing him as “someone deeply committed to delivering a product that meets the highest standards” and whose intentions have “always” been to “ship a perfect product.”

Agarwal’s team connected with Hunsader to schedule his Kickstarter reward shipment on Friday. Hunsader told Ars he doesn’t really care if it takes another nine years. It’s just a spoon, and “there are bigger fish to fry.”

“Listen, I can buy that narrative that he was somebody who got totally overwhelmed but handled it in the worst possible way ever,” Hunsader said.

He plans to continue patiently waiting for his spoons.

This story was updated on March 14 to update information on the Polygons Kickstarter campaign.

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.

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The same day Trump bought a Tesla, automaker moved to disrupt trade war

Donald Trump, Electric vehicles, elon musk, EVs, Policy, tariffs, Tesla / Rejus Almole / March 15, 2025

Tesla hopes to slow down Trump’s tit-for-tat tariffs amid financial woes.

Donald Trump and White House Senior Advisor, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk deliver remarks next to a Tesla Model S on the South Lawn of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Andrew Harnik / Staff | Getty Images News

Elon Musk’s Tesla is waving a red flag, warning that Donald Trump’s trade war risks dooming US electric vehicle makers, triggering job losses, and hurting the economy.

In an unsigned letter to the US Trade Representative (USTR), Tesla cautioned that Trump’s tariffs could increase costs of manufacturing EVs in the US and forecast that any retaliatory tariffs from other nations could spike costs of exports.

“Tesla supports a robust and thorough process” to “address unfair trade practices,” but only those “which, in the process, do not inadvertently harm US companies,” the letter said.

The carmaker recommended that the USTR—in its ongoing review of unfair trade practices and investigation into harms of non-reciprocal trade agreements—”consider the downstream impacts of certain proposed actions taken to address unfair trade practices.”

According to Tesla, the current process to address unfair trade threatens to harm its more than 70,000 employees, and more broadly could trigger job losses and revenue dips in the US auto industry. It could also disrupt supply chains, as Tesla claims that even its best efforts prove it would be “impossible” to source all parts from the US currently.

“Even with aggressive localization of the supply chain, certain parts and components are difficult or impossible to source within the United States,” the letter said, asking the USTR to “evaluate domestic supply chain limitations.”

If left unchanged, the process could make the US less competitive in global auto markets, Tesla warned, recommending that the “USTR should investigate ways to avoid these pitfalls in future actions.”

Moving forward, Tesla recommends that the USTR “take into account” how the trade war could hurt US exporters, as “US exporters are inherently exposed to disproportionate impacts when other countries respond to US trade actions.”

In the letter, Tesla appears to suggest that Trump’s tariffs were rushed, suggesting that “US companies will benefit from a phased approach that enables them to prepare accordingly and ensure appropriate supply chain and compliance measures are taken.”

Tesla was not alone in submitting comments to the USTR. So far, hundreds of companies have chimed in, many hoping to push back on Trump’s aggressive tariffs regime.

Among them was a trade group representing major foreign automakers like BMW, Honda, and Toyota—Autos Drive America—which agreed with Tesla that the USTR should slow Trump down and require considerations about long-term impacts of sudden actions to address unfair trade. They similarly warned that imposing “broad-based tariffs will disrupt production at US assembly plants,” Reuters reported.

“Automakers cannot shift their supply chains overnight, and cost increases will inevitably lead to some combination of higher consumer prices, fewer models offered to consumers and shut-down US production lines, leading to potential job losses across the supply chain,” the group said.

Disrupting Trump trade war may be tough

Last week, Trump’s 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico took effect, likely frustrating Tesla, which relies on a small parts manufacturer in Canada, Laval Tool, to source parts for the already costly molds for its Cybertrucks. Those tariffs threatened to spike costs beyond the current rate of nearly $500,000 per mold at a time when the Cybertruck hasn’t been selling well, InsideEVs reported. And for Tesla, Trump’s China tariffs may hit even harder, as China is Tesla’s second biggest market.

On the day that those tariffs kicked in, the head of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation—which represents all the major US automakers, except Tesla—John Bozzella warned that “all automakers will be impacted by these tariffs on Canada and Mexico,” Reuters reported. He joined others predicting price hikes on cars coming soon, perhaps as high as 25 percent.

Tesla’s letter to the USTR is notably unsigned, despite CEO Musk’s close allyship with Trump as a senior advisor in his administration—suggesting Musk may be hesitant to directly criticize Trump’s trade war or his opposition to EVs.

Many have questioned how long Musk’s friendship with Trump can possibly last, given their strong personalities and seeming unwillingness to bend to critics. At the beginning of this administration, Musk seemed unafraid to question Trump despite teaming up with him. Perhaps most notably, Trump’s team was supposedly “furious” after Musk trashed Trump’s $500 billion “Stargate” project with OpenAI, Politico reported, which Trump had hyped as “tremendous” and “monumental.”

“It’s clear he has abused the proximity to the president,” a Trump ally granted anonymity told Politico. “The problem is the president doesn’t have any leverage over him and Elon gives zero fucks.”

Officially, Trump downplayed Musk’s public criticism of his major announcement, seeming to understand that Musk views OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—whom Musk is suing for making a “fool” out of him—as an enemy.

“He hates one of the people in the deal,” Trump told a reporter who asked if Musk’s comments had bothered him, confirming, “it doesn’t.”

Despite a long history of harsh comments about EVs, Trump has recently hyped Tesla cars, which Tesla noted in its letter to the USTR, further its mission “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.” The BBC noted Tesla’s letter was sent the same day that Trump hosted a White House event where the president vowed to purchase a Tesla in defiance of Tesla boycotts and protests that some believe are driving a steep Tesla stock fall and even degrading the price of used Teslas. In a Truth Social post, Trump claimed that he was buying a Tesla to support “one of the World’s great automakers” and “Elon’s ‘baby,'” alleging that protests and boycotts were somehow illegal.

The Hill suggested that their friendship isn’t likely to end soon, even though Trump has supposedly complained in private about taunts suggesting that Musk is really the president or somehow pulling the strings, The Independent reported.

Musk may be settling into a good dynamic with Trump after spending ample time at the president’s side, reportedly even joining meetings and sensitive calls. Or perhaps Musk is giving Trump space to call the shots, after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s aggressive cuts at federal agencies sparked backlash that finally pushed Trump to rein in Musk’s power a little.

Musk’s proximity to Trump was predicted to be a boon to his businesses, but Tesla has been stuck in a slump that seemingly some Trump allies think Trump might fear makes him look weak, The New Republic reported. But Trump has made tariffs the core of his trade policy, hoping aggressive taxes will force more industry into the US, and it’s hard to see how Musk could easily influence him to shift gears.

In Tesla’s letter, the automaker told the USTR that it was “essential to support US manufacturing jobs” by ensuring that cost-prohibitive tariffs or other import restrictions don’t disrupt critical auto industry supply chains. For Tesla, the stakes couldn’t be higher, as the company reminded the USTR that “Tesla was ranked as the world leader in the transition to vehicle electrification,” manufacturing “the best-selling car in the world (EV or otherwise).”

“Tesla’s US facilities support over 70,000 employees and are responsible for billions of dollars of US investment and economic activity each year,” Tesla’s letter said.

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.

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Meta plans to test and tinker with X’s community notes algorithm

community notes, facebook, Instagram, Meta, misinformation, Policy, threads, Twitter, X / Rejus Almole / March 14, 2025

Meta also confirmed that it won’t be reducing visibility of misleading posts with community notes. That’s a change from the prior system, Meta noted, which had penalties associated with fact-checking.

According to Meta, X’s algorithm cannot be gamed, supposedly safeguarding “against organized campaigns” striving to manipulate notes and “influence what notes get published or what they say.” Meta claims it will rely on external research on community notes to avoid that pitfall, but as recently as last October, outside researchers had suggested that X’s Community Notes were easily sabotaged by toxic X users.

“We don’t expect this process to be perfect, but we’ll continue to improve as we learn,” Meta said.

Meta confirmed that the company plans to tweak X’s algorithm over time to develop its own version of community notes, which “may explore different or adjusted algorithms to support how Community Notes are ranked and rated.”

In a post, X’s Support account said that X was “excited” that Meta was using its “well-established, academically studied program as a foundation” for its community notes.

Meta plans to test and tinker with X’s community notes algorithm Read More »

OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use

agi, ai action plan, copyright infringement, copyright law, Donald Trump, generative ai, national security, openai, Policy / Paul Patrick / March 14, 2025

OpenAI is hoping that Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan, due out this July, will settle copyright debates by declaring AI training fair use—paving the way for AI companies’ unfettered access to training data that OpenAI claims is critical to defeat China in the AI race.

Currently, courts are mulling whether AI training is fair use, as rights holders say that AI models trained on creative works threaten to replace them in markets and water down humanity’s creative output overall.

OpenAI is just one AI company fighting with rights holders in several dozen lawsuits, arguing that AI transforms copyrighted works it trains on and alleging that AI outputs aren’t substitutes for original works.

So far, one landmark ruling favored rights holders, with a judge declaring AI training is not fair use, as AI outputs clearly threatened to replace Thomson-Reuters’ legal research firm Westlaw in the market, Wired reported. But OpenAI now appears to be looking to Trump to avoid a similar outcome in its lawsuits, including a major suit brought by The New York Times.

“OpenAI’s models are trained to not replicate works for consumption by the public. Instead, they learn from the works and extract patterns, linguistic structures, and contextual insights,” OpenAI claimed. “This means our AI model training aligns with the core objectives of copyright and the fair use doctrine, using existing works to create something wholly new and different without eroding the commercial value of those existing works.”

Providing “freedom-focused” recommendations on Trump’s plan during a public comment period ending Saturday, OpenAI suggested Thursday that the US should end these court fights by shifting its copyright strategy to promote the AI industry’s “freedom to learn.” Otherwise, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will likely continue accessing copyrighted data that US companies cannot access, supposedly giving China a leg up “while gaining little in the way of protections for the original IP creators,” OpenAI argued.

OpenAI declares AI race “over” if training on copyrighted works isn’t fair use Read More »

EPA accused of faking criminal investigation to claw back climate funds

attorney general, Citibank, climate change, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, fbi, greenhouse gas reduction fund, Policy / Paul Patrick / March 13, 2025

Citibank has until March 15 to provide more information on orders to freeze funding. More details on that front were shared today, however, in a court filing in a lawsuit raised by Climate United—one of eight NCIF awardees whose funding was suddenly frozen.

In a motion opposing a request for a temporary restraining order forcing Citibank to unfreeze the funds, Citibank argued that it plays only an administrative role in managing accounts.

According to Citibank, it cannot be liable for freezing the funds because it’s legally required to follow instructions from the EPA and the Department of Treasury, and those agencies ordered Citibank “to pause all further disbursements from GGRF accounts, including those held by Climate United, until further notice.”

Citibank told the US district court that orders came to freeze the funding after “the government informed Citibank that the GGRF program was subject to an ongoing criminal investigation.”

Supposedly, the FBI received “credible information” that Climate United’s Citibank account was “involved in possible criminal violations,” allegedly including conspiracy to defraud the United States and wire fraud, Citibank’s filing said. In a footnote, Citibank said that it also “learned” that the EPA was “deeply” concerned about “matters of financial mismanagement, conflicts of interest, and oversight failures.”

So, freezing the funds was viewed as necessary, the filing alleged, to prevent “misuse of funds.” And Citibank claimed it had no authority to dispute “lawful” orders.

“Citibank is not vested with discretion to second-guess the government’s concerns regarding the ‘misconduct, waste, conflicts of interest, and potential fraud’ that the government has stated is occurring,” Citibank’s filing said.

Climate United, which describes itself as “a public-private investment fund that removes financial barriers to clean technologies,” said in a press release that freezing the funds had already harmed “hard-working Americans who are struggling to pay for groceries and keep the lights on.”

“Small businesses and developers are unable to draw committed funds for project expenses, critical programs are delayed or paused, and Climate United’s reputation as a lender is impacted,” Climate United said, rounding up stories from stakeholders already struggling through the freeze and urging, “this isn’t about politics; it’s about economics.”

EPA accused of faking criminal investigation to claw back climate funds Read More »

FTC can’t afford to fight Amazon’s allegedly deceptive sign-ups after DOGE cuts

Amazon, Amazon Prime, Consumer protection, dark patterns, department of government efficiency, doge, Donald Trump, elon musk, federal trade commission, ftc, Policy / Rejus Almole / March 13, 2025

The Federal Trade Commission is moving to push back a trial set to determine if Amazon tricked customers into signing up for Prime subscriptions.

At a Zoom status hearing on Wednesday, the FTC officially asked US District Judge John Chun to delay the trial. According to the FTC’s attorney, Jonathan Cohen, the agency needs two months to prepare beyond the September 22 start date, blaming recent “staffing and budgetary shortfalls” stemming from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), CNBC reported.

“We have lost employees in the agency, in our division, and on our case team,” Cohen said, explaining that “there is an extremely severe resource shortfall in terms of money and personnel,” Bloomberg reported. Cuts are apparently so bad, Cohen told Chun that the FTC is stuck with a $1 cap on any government credit card charges and “may not be able to purchase the transcript from Wednesday’s hearing,” Bloomberg reported.

Further threatening to scramble the agency’s trial preparation, the FTC anticipates that downsizing may require a move to another office “unexpectedly,” Cohen told Chun.

Amazon does not agree that a delay is necessary. The e-commerce giant’s attorney, John Hueston, told Chun that “there has been no showing on this call that the government does not have the resources to proceed to trial with the trial date as presently set.”

FTC can’t afford to fight Amazon’s allegedly deceptive sign-ups after DOGE cuts Read More »

X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says

ad boycott, content moderation, elon musk, hate speech, linda yaccarino, media matters, online advertising, Policy, Social Media, Twitter, X, x ad boycott / Tim Belzer / March 12, 2025

“X conceded that depending on what content a user follows and how long they’ve had their account, they might see advertisements placed next to extremist content,” MMFA alleged.

As MMFA sees it, Musk is trying to blame the organization for ad losses spurred by his own decisions after taking over the platform—like cutting content moderation teams, de-amplifying hateful content instead of removing it, and bringing back banned users. Through the lawsuits, Musk allegedly wants to make MMFA pay “hundreds of millions of dollars in lost advertising revenue” simply because its report didn’t outline “what accounts Media Matters followed or how frequently it refreshed its screen,” MMFA argued, previously likening this to suing MMFA for scrolling on X.

MMFA has already spent millions to defend against X’s multiple lawsuits, their filing said, while consistently contesting X’s chosen venues. If X loses the fight in California, the platform would potentially owe damages from improperly filing litigation outside the venue agreed upon in its TOS.

“This proliferation of claims over a single course of conduct, in multiple jurisdictions, is abusive,” MMFA’s complaint said, noting that the organization has a hearing in Singapore next month and another in Dublin in May. And it “does more than simply drive up costs: It means that Media Matters cannot focus its time and resources to mounting the best possible defense in one forum and must instead fight back piecemeal,” which allegedly prejudices MMFA’s “ability to most effectively defend itself.”

“Media Matters should not have to defend against attempts by X to hale Media Matters into court in foreign jurisdictions when the parties already agreed on the appropriate forum for any dispute related to X’s services,” MMFA’s complaint said. “That is—this Court.”

X still recovering from ad boycott

Although X CEO Linda Yaccarino started 2025 by signaling the X ad boycott was over, Ars found that external data did not support that conclusion. More recently, Business Insider cited independent data sources last month who similarly concluded that while X’s advertiser pool seemed to be increasing, its ad revenue was still “far” from where Twitter was prior to Musk’s takeover.

X’s globe-trotting defense of ads on Nazi posts violates TOS, Media Matters says Read More »

What the EPA’s “endangerment finding” is and why it’s being challenged

climate change, Earth science, EPA, greenhouse gasses, Policy, Science, trump administration / Kris Guyer / March 11, 2025

Getting rid of the justification for greenhouse gas regulations won’t be easy.

Credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images

A document that was first issued in 2009 would seem an unlikely candidate for making news in 2025. Yet the past few weeks have seen a steady stream of articles about an analysis first issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the early years of Obama’s first term: the endangerment finding on greenhouse gasses.

The basics of the document are almost mundane: greenhouse gases are warming the climate, and this will have negative consequences for US citizens. But it took a Supreme Court decision to get written in the first place, and it has played a role in every attempt by the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions across multiple administrations. And, while the first Trump administration left it in place, the press reports we’re seeing suggest that an attempt will be made to eliminate it in the near future.

The only problem: The science in which the endangerment finding is based on is so solid that any ensuing court case will likely leave its opponents worse off in the long run, which is likely why the earlier Trump administration didn’t challenge it.

Get comfortable, because the story dates all the way back to the first Bush administration.

A bit of history

One of the goals of the US’s Clean Air Act, first passed in 1963, is to “address the public health and welfare risks posed by certain widespread air pollutants.” By the end of the last century, it was becoming increasingly clear that greenhouse gases fit that definition. While they weren’t necessarily directly harmful to the people inhaling them—our lungs are constantly being filled with carbon dioxide, after all—the downstream effects of the warming they caused could certainly impact human health and welfare. But, with the federal government taking no actions during George W. Bush’s time in office, a group of states and cities sued to force the EPA’s hand.

That suit eventually reached the Supreme Court in the form of Massachusetts v. EPA, which led to a ruling in 2007 determining that the Clean Air Act required the EPA perform an analysis of the dangers posed by greenhouse gasses. That analysis was done by late 2007, but the Bush administration simply ignored it for the remaining year it had in office. (It was eventually released after Bush left office.)

That left the Obama-era EPA to reach essentially the same conclusions that the Bush administration had: greenhouse gasses are warming the planet. And that will have various impacts—sea level rise, dangerous heat, damage to agriculture and forestry, and more.

That conclusion compelled the EPA to formulate regulations to limit the emission of greenhouse gasses from power plants. Obama’s EPA did just that, but came late enough to still be tied up in courts by the time his term ended. They were also formulated before the plunge in the cost of renewable power sources, which have since led to a drop in carbon emissions that have far outpaced what the EPA’s rules intended to accomplish.

The first Trump administration formulated alternative rules that also ended up in court for being an insufficient response to the conclusions of the endangerment finding. Which ultimately led the Biden administration to start formulating a new set of rules. And at that point, the Supreme Court decided to step in and rule on the Obama rules, even though everyone knew they would never go into effect.

The court indicated that the EPA needed to regulate each power plant individually, rather than regulating the wider grid, which sent the Biden administration back to the drawing board. Its attempts at crafting regulations were also in court when Trump returned to office.

There were a couple of notable aspects to that last case, West Virginia v. EPA, which hinged on the fact that Congress had never explicitly indicated that it wanted to see greenhouse gasses regulated. Congress responded by ensuring that the Inflation Reduction Act’s energy-focused components specifically mentioned that these were intended to limit carbon emissions, eliminating one potential roadblock. The other thing is that, in this and other court cases, the Supreme Court could have simply overturned Massachusetts v. EPA, the case that put greenhouse gasses within the regulatory framework of the Clean Air Act. Yet a court that has shown a great enthusiasm for overturning precedent didn’t do so.

Nothing dangerous?

So, in the 15 years since the EPA initially released its endangerment findings, they’ve resulted in no regulations whatsoever. But, as long as they existed, the EPA is required to at least attempt to regulate them. So, getting rid of the endangerment findings would seem like the obvious thing for an administration led by a president who repeatedly calls climate change a hoax. And there were figures within the first Trump administration who argued in favor of that.

So why didn’t it happen?

That was never clear, but I’d suggest at least some members of the first Trump administration were realistic about the likely results. The effort to contest the endangerment finding was pushed by people who largely reject the vast body of scientific evidence that indicates that greenhouse gases are warming the climate. And, if anything, the evidence had gotten more decisive in the years between the initial endangerment finding and Trump’s inauguration. I expect that their effort was blocked by people who knew that it would fail in the courts, and likely leave behind precedents that made future regulatory efforts easier.

This interpretation is supported by the fact that the Trump-era EPA received a number of formal petitions to revisit the endangerment finding. Having read a few (something you should not do), they are uniformly awful. References to supposed peer-reviewed “papers” turn out to be little more than PDFs hosted on a WordPress site. Other arguments are based on information contained in the proceedings of a conference organized by an anti-science think tank. The Trump administration rejected them all with minimal comment the day before Biden’s inauguration.

Biden’s EPA went back and made detailed criticisms of each of them if you want to see just how laughable the arguments against mainstream science were at the time. And, since then, we’ve experienced a few years of temperatures that are so high they’ve surprised many climate scientists.

Unrealistic

But the new head of the EPA is apparently anything but a realist, and multiple reports have indicated he’s asking to be given the opportunity to go ahead and redo the endangerment finding. A more recent report suggests two possibilities. One is to recruit scientists from the fringes to produce a misleading report and roll the dice on getting a sympathetic judge who will overlook the obvious flaws. The other would be to argue that any climate change that happens will have net benefits to the US.

That latter approach would run into the problem that we’ve gotten increasingly sophisticated at doing analyses that attribute the impact of climate change on the individual weather disasters that do harm the welfare of citizens of the US. While it might have been possible to make a case for uncertainty here a decade ago, that window has been largely closed by the scientific community.

Even if all of these efforts fail, it will be entirely possible for the EPA to construct greenhouse gas regulations that accomplish nothing and get tied up in court for the remainder of Trump’s term. But a court case could show just how laughably bad the positions staked out by climate contrarians are (and, by extension, the position of the president himself). There’s a small chance that the resulting court cases will result in a legal record that will make it that much harder to accept the sorts of minimalist regulations that Trump proposed in his first term.

Which is probably why this approach was rejected the first time around.

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

What the EPA’s “endangerment finding” is and why it’s being challenged Read More »

Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination

IT workers, kill switch, malicious code, Policy, software developer / Tim Belzer / March 11, 2025

A 55-year-old software developer faces up to 10 years in prison for deploying malicious code that sabotaged his former employer’s network, allegedly costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses.

The US Department of Justice announced Friday that Davis Lu was convicted by a jury after “causing intentional damage to protected computers” reportedly owned by the Ohio- and Dublin-based power management company Eaton Corp.

Lu had worked at Eaton Corp. for about 11 years when he apparently became disgruntled by a corporate “realignment” in 2018 that “reduced his responsibilities,” the DOJ said.

His efforts to sabotage their network began that year, and by the next year, he had planted different forms of malicious code, creating “infinite loops” that deleted coworker profile files, preventing legitimate logins and causing system crashes, the DOJ explained. Aiming to slow down or ruin Eaton Corp.’s productivity, Lu named these codes using the Japanese word for destruction, “Hakai,” and the Chinese word for lethargy, “HunShui,” the DOJ said.

But perhaps nothing was as destructive as the “kill switch” Lu designed to shut down everything if he was ever terminated.

This kill switch, the DOJ said, appeared to have been created by Lu because it was named “IsDLEnabledinAD,” which is an apparent abbreviation of “Is Davis Lu enabled in Active Directory.” It also “automatically activated” on the day of Lu’s termination in 2019, the DOJ said, disrupting Eaton Corp. users globally.

Developer convicted for “kill switch” code activated upon his termination Read More »