Does anyone read the Terms of Service for anything they buy or sign up for? And I don’t mean “glance at it to acknowledge its existence;” I mean sit down with a cup of coffee (maybe a carafe, depending on how long the document is) and go over everything the manufacturer or company wants you to know about. We don’t…
Over 150 experts in AI, robotics, commerce, law, and ethics from 14 countries have signed an open letter denouncing the European Parliament’s proposal to grant personhood status to intelligent machines. The EU says the measure will make it easier to figure out who’s liable when robots screw up or go rogue, but critics…
If you’re looking to buy one of Elon Musk’s high-tech flamethrowers for, you know, roasting nuts and stuff, you might be wondering about the legality of owning such a dangerous weapon—er, tool—in the good ol’ U.S. of A. I’ll give you a hint: flame on.
On Thursday, Massachusetts prosecutors announced that they will move to dismiss more than 6,000 convictions tied to lab results from a chemist caught stealing and using drugs from the University of Massachusetts Amherst crime lab. In 2014, Sonja Farak pleaded guilty to stealing drugs and tampering with evidence after…
A libel claim on the part of Shiva Ayyadurai, the self-identified “inventor of email,” was tossed out by a Massachusetts judge today, concluding a baseless suit filed against Techdirt back in January. According to the site, the judge also “rejected Ayyadurai’s request to file an amended complaint.”
Matt Hosseinzadeh (a.k.a. Matt Hoss) is easy to mock. The parkour-loving comedian runs a YouTube channel full of misogynistic videos, including “a comedy series about a confident and funny man who picks up women, beds them, and gets into all sorts of crazy trouble.” But when two other YouTubers made a video mocking…
Six people from Santa Clara, California have been arrested and charged with selling arcade cabinets full of “counterfeit games”, which they are alleged to have been profiting off to live like rock stars.
Yesterday, a New York state appeals court rejected an appeal filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) seeking legal rights for a pair of captive chimpanzees. It’s a major setback for the group, but the battle to secure human-like legal protections for highly intelligent and self-aware animals is far from over.
Films and TV shows like Blade Runner, Humans, and Westworld, where highly advanced robots have no rights, trouble our conscience. They show us that our behaviors are not just harmful to robots—they also demean and diminish us as a species. We like to think we’re better than the characters on the screen, and that when…
Two extremely similar cases involving locked iPhones in two neighboring Florida counties ended up with two conflicting judgments this week. Both suspects claimed that they couldn’t remember their passcodes which prevented police from obtaining evidence. In one case, the judge slapped the suspect with contempt and…
On Tuesday, a scary case reached a surprisingly positive outcome in the Supreme Court of the United States. Impression Products, Inc. v. Lexmark International, Inc. was seven-year-long standoff between a small business and an international corporation that stood to upend the world of consumer rights, especially for…
A Russian man might be spending years in prison after his trial wrapped up last week, after being arrested in 2016 for making a video about Pokémon Go while inside a church, a violation of the country’s laws against “inciting religious hatred”.
While the tension between state and federal laws has created a difficult situation for cannabis users, there’s another factor that is complicating the changing attitude towards weed: hospitals. Though it isn’t legally mandated, many hospitals won’t allow people who use weed to be placed on organ transplant waiting…
Courts in New Zealand and India have granted legal personhood status to three rivers. The strange status is meant to protect the waters from pollution, but the measure could lead to unintended consequences, while undermining efforts to grant personhood status to living beings who actually deserve it.
“They used to bark at me when I walked into the courtroom,” lawyer Steven Wise said in the Sundance documentary Unlocking the Cage, which debuted on HBO last month. His use of the word “bark” is literal.
In a gritty vintage video games store in Manhattan’s East Village, a man who would only be identified by GorillaStomp, his PlayStation username, firmly explained why he should fix your video game console. Long before it was his livelihood, it was his fascination, and one he’d never asked for permission to do. Now, as…
Microsoft just scored a point for its customers’ privacy. Today, US District Judge ruled that the government can’t avoid a lawsuit alleging that its surveillance operations violate citizens’ constitutional rights. The judge in question is the same one that Donald Trump recently referred to as a “so-called judge.”
During a lab test at Northumbria University last March, sports science students were supposed to receive around 300 milligrams of caffeine. Due to a misplaced decimal point, prosecutors say two of them were given 30,000 milligrams—equal to 300 cups of coffee or almost twice the generally recognized lethal…
According to a lawsuit by the online American College of Education (ACE), a former employee effectively held the company’s email system hostage after he was fired last spring, locking the for-profit college out and asking for $200,000 before he would help it get back in.
Welcome back to Giz Asks, a series where we ask experts hard questions about science, technology, and humanity’s future. Today, we’re trying to find the latest consensus on law and ethics of self-driving cars hitting pedestrians.
