3 Count: Running Away Balloon

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1: Artist Sues AI Meme Generator for Selling Deeply Personal Comic as Ad Template

First off today, Ashley Belanger at Ars Technica reports that Philippines artist Elmer Saflor has filed a copyright lawsuit against Memes Apps, alleging that the company took a meme format he created and then sold it to advertisers through their paid AI service.

Running Away Balloon is a popular meme format that shows a person trying to grab a desired object only to be held back by something else.According to the lawsuit, Memes Apps has used the format on their memes.ai platform without permission and and sold it to various advertisers.

The lawsuit has been filed in a California federal court. Memes Apps has not responded to the lawsuit, which seeks both an injunction and unspecified damages for the alleged copyright infringement.

2: Meta Confirms ‘Data Engineer’ is Behind Key IP Address in Adult Film Piracy Lawsuit

Next up today, Ernesto Van der Sar at TorrentFreak reports that Meta is arguing that an employee’s BitTorrent activity was unrelated to the company’s AI research or data collection and that it should not be held liable for the infringement.

Strike 3 holdings filed the lawsuit. The company, often referred to as a “copyright troll” has a lengthy history of filing lawsuits against individuals and companies suspected of downloading their adult content via BitTorrent. However, in this case, the company accused Meta of downloading its content for the purpose of training its AI models.

Now, both Meta and Strike 3 have identified the engineer suspected of downloading the content. However, Meta alleges that the download was not authorized by the company and was done by the employee’s adult son. Strike 3, on the other hand, alleges that the download was part of the company’s AI research, and was authorized by Meta. Strike 3 alleges the infringement of some 2,973 titles, raising the potential statutory damages to $446 million.

3: Microsoft Is Using the TPM Chip Required for Windows 11 to Crack Down on KMS Activation Piracy

Finally today, Hassam Nasir at TweakTown reports that Microsoft is using the required Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip to reduce piracy on enterprise versions of Windows 11.

The TPM chip was a controversial requirement for Windows 11. Introduced in 2009 as a security tool, Microsoft mandated its use to harden Windows 11 against various threats. However, this meant many older systems could not run Windows 11, even if they met the other system requirements.

Now Microsoft is putting the chip to a new use, requiring TPM validation to install Windows 11 on enterprise PCs. Previously, there were ways to spoof the activation infrastructure to trick a copy of Windows into thinking it was licensed. However, the TPM requirement makes that tactic impossible. However, pirates say that they have already found a way around the TPM requirement.

The 3 Count Logo was created by Justin Goff and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.