George R.R. Martin (Wikipedia)
The following are the top seven stories about civil suits from the year 2023.
Twitter Suing Israeli Startup Bright Data
In July, X Corp., until recently better known as Twitter, sued the Israeli startup Bright Data. Elon Musk’s big toy Twitter claims that Bright Data has been “scraping” information – in other words stealing – from X Corp which the Israeli firm allegedly then uses for its own purposes.
According to a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, X Corp/Twitter charges, “Bright Data scrapes and sells millions of records from X Corp.’s X platform, in blatant violation of X Corp.’s terms of service. Bright Data also induces and facilitates other X users to violate their own agreements with X Corp. by selling automated data-scraping tools and services that specifically target a wide range of X Corp. data.”
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OpenAI Hit With Copyright Infringement Suits
Sam Altman’s OpenAI is in the hot seat as the company is being sued by none other than Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen and more. The suit, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York and brought by the Authors Guild, alleges that the AI driven editing and rewriting tech provided by OpenAI is guilty of “systematic theft on a mass scale” since it helps people reuse their copyrighted materials without permission.
JPMorgan Chase Agree To Pay US Virgin Islands $75 Million In Jeffrey Epstein Suit
In September, JPMorgan Chase settled yet another lawsuit brought in which the firm was accused of enabling the late rapist and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein in his activities through “money laundering” in that its services were used by Epstein to spend money connected to his molestation of underage girls. JP Morgan has reached an agreement with the US Virgin Islands government in its suit, agreeing to pay a $75 million settlement.
The U.S. Virgin Islands brought the suit in which it alleged that JPMorgan had more than $1 billion worth of “human trafficking” transactions with Epstein over a 16 year period leading up to his death by suicide in 2019.
Meta/Facebook Accused Of Causing Mental Health Crisis In Kids By 33 US States
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, collects personal information of children under the age of 13 and also caused a mental health crisis among youth by making its Instagram social media platform addictive. This is according to a whopping civil suit brought by 33 US states, led by Colorado and California, in October.
Filed in an Oakland California federal court, the suit alleges Meta’s services caused depression, anxiety, and insomnia in young children.
New Mexico Sues Meta/Facebook For Exposing Minors To Predators
Facebook/Meta was also sued in December. The second time was over the content that underage users of its services like Instagram are exposed to. The State of New Mexico charged that the world’s largest social media platform is exposing minors to pornography and sexual predators. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is also named in the suit that alleges the social media company failed to adequately protect children from sexual abuse, online solicitation, and human trafficking.
“Our investigation into Meta’s social media platforms demonstrates that they are not safe spaces for children but rather prime locations for predators to trade child pornography and solicit minors for sex,” said New Mexico Attorney General Torrez. “As a career prosecutor who specialized in internet crimes against children, I am committed to using every available tool to put an end to these horrific practices and I will hold companies — and their executives — accountable whenever they put profits ahead of children’s safety.”
Louis Farrakhan Actually Sues ADL For $4.8 BillionFor Being Called An Anti-Semite
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is looking to have a $4.8 billion defamation lawsuit brought against it and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) by none other than Louis Farrakhan dismissed. The Nation of Islam leader actually claims he was slandered by being called an anti-Semite by the organizations.
The idea that a man like Louis Farrakhan can claim that calling him an anti-Semite is slander is patently absurd. This is the man who once called Judaism a “gutter religion.”
He also once called Adolph Hitler a “great man.”
Google Made $700 Million Anti-Trust Settlement
In September Google agreed to settle one of several suits brought against the company [any for what plaintiffs allege are monopolistic practices. The world’s biggest search engine/operating system producer/email provider/owner of YouTube/… the list goes on, agreed to pay out $700 million in a suit brought by multiple states in America over the firm’s requirement that third party app developers can only sell their services through Google’s app store.
$630 million of the settlement will be used to compensate U.S. consumers for what the states say they were forced to unfairly pay. The rest of the money will be used by states to cover their legal costs.
