3 Count: Navy Piracy
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1: US Navy Fined for Acts of Software Piracy
First off today, Nicholas Slayton at Task & Purpose reports that the United States Navy has been ordered to pay $154,400 in damages to a software firm after a court found the Navy had violated the copyright in one of their applications.
The lawsuit was filed by German-based Bitmanagement Software GmbH, who claimed that they began working with the Navy to test their BT Contact Geo software. Though the Navy had purchased some 38 copies, it ended up installing it on more than 550,000 machines.
Bitmanagement had originally sought some $600 million in damages, but the court decided that the damages needed to be decided based on actual usage through a hypothetical negotiation process. In the end, the court settled on $200 value with a discount for bulk purchasing. With 635 unique users and a $35,000 licensing fee, that amount came to the final total of $154,400.
2: Man Arrested Following “Large Scale” Pirate IPTV Investigation
Next up today, Andy Maxwell at Torrentfreak writes that UK police have announced the arest ofr a 43-year-old man that they claim was part of a “large scale” pirate TV organization.
The individual’s involvement with the organization nor the specific organization have been named due to an ongoing investigation. The alleged offenses include violations of the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act as well as conspiracy to defraud and money laundering.
The arrest was made following a collaboration between several groups of authorities and Sky TV. It is unclear what punishment the individual faces if they are convicted.
3: A Brave New World of Software Piracy:’ Lawsuit Takes Aim at Scrapping Methods Underpinning Modern Artificial Intelligence
Finally today, Mack Degeurin at Gizmodo reports that we have new details about the lawsuit filed against Microsoft over their new Github Copilot tool, which uses AI to generate blocks of code.
The lawsuit was filed by programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick, he accuses Microsoft of ignoring the copyright licenses on various open-source applications when training the Copilot AI. However, rather than claiming copyright infringement, he is instead accusing Microsoft of violating its own terms of service by scraping the content.
It is just the latest in a long line of legal challenges against various AI systems, with concerns about how they are trained impacting artists, programmers and other kinds of creators alike.
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