La biographie d'Elon Musk par Walter Isaacson révèle le lieu de conception du cerveau derrière Tesla et SpaceX, qui a failli s'appeler « Nice Musk », en hommage à la ville où ses parents étaient partis en voyage de noce (et où ils ont failli se séparer). [Lire la suite]

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Thrawn is supposed to be the most wicked character in Star Wars – so why does he look like a silly tech billionaire? But he’s not the first fictional bad guy inspired by reality

You’re probably not watching Ahsoka. As far as I can tell, the only people who still watch Ahsoka are me and about 15 guys who hate my guts, one of whom is my brother.

But that doesn’t matter because, after six of eight episodes, the show has finally fulfilled its promise. The entire point of Ahsoka has been to introduce us to Grand Admiral Thrawn, the biggest, baddest baddie that Star Wars has invented since Darth Vader. Until now, a feature of every Ahsoka episode has been that all the characters have all spent a lot of their time telling one another – and therefore us – exactly how dangerous and scary Thrawn is. This, combined with his delayed entry, did a great job at ramping up our expectations no end. There are rumours that an entire Thrawn movie is being planned. That’s how terrifying this guy is.

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Earlier this year, Universal Music, Sony Music, EMI and others filed a complaint at a Nashville federal court, accusing Elon Musk’s X Corp of “breeding” mass copyright infringement.

The company behind X allegedly fails to properly respond to takedown notices and lacks a proper termination policy for repeat infringers.

As a result, X is reportedly rife with music piracy. This activity generates many millions of views which are monetized by the social media platform, while rightsholders receive no compensation for the use of their works.

Motion to Dismiss

X doesn’t agree with these characterizations at all. A few weeks ago, the social media platform filed a motion to dismiss , refuting all piracy allegations.

The complaint argues that X is liable for direct infringement, and is contributorily and vicariously liable for the copyright-infringing activities of its users. However, X’s attorneys contested all three claims.

With more than a quarter billion dollars in potential piracy damages on the line, the music companies are not backing down. They responded to X’s motion to dismiss by pointing out that all counterarguments fail. As such, the case should continue as is.

“The motion to dismiss filed by Defendant X Corp. should fail in its entirety,” the music companies write, before going into further detail.

Different Interpretations

Both parties highlight existing jurisprudence from different angles. X, for example, insists that a direct copyright infringement claim requires non-automated and intentional acts by a defendant, while its alleged wrongdoing mostly relates to passive and automated algorithms.

The music companies see things differently. Citing the Aereo case, among others, they note that automation doesn’t shield online platforms from infringing public performance rights.

“Aereo and the cases cited below foreclose X’s argument that the automated aspects of its system or the end user’s role in selecting which content to upload or access insulate it from direct liability here.

“[A]utomation is not a talisman that precludes direct liability, as X asserts,” the music companies add, concluding that X violated their public performance rights.

Even if volitional conduct is required to support a direct copyright infringement claim, the music companies believe that their complaint is sufficient. For example, X intentionally created a feature that supports music streaming and encouraged users to upload content directly to the platform.

In addition, X’s alleged failure to properly take down infringing content and the subsequent uploads of repeat infringers can also be seen as direct infringements of public performance rights.

Contributory and Vicarious Infringement

The parties also differ in their interpretations of contributory and vicarious copyright infringement. Musk’s lawyers argue that the plaintiffs failed to show that X took active and intentional steps to encourage infringement, something the music companies contest.

In their opposition brief, the publishers point out that intent isn’t a requirement under U.S. copyright law; material contribution to copyright infringement should be sufficient to state a claim.

Responding to the vicarious copyright infringement allegations, X disputes the notion that it financially profits from copyright infringing activities on is platform and that it has the ability to do anything about it.

Again, the music companies see things differently and argue that their claims are sufficient to survive a motion to dismiss.

‘Profiting from Piracy’

For vicarious liability to exist, a rightsholder must show that financial benefits are triggered by the infringing activity. That is the case here, the music companies argue, due to the presence of advertising.

The complaint showed how advertisements were shown next to copyright infringing content. This suggests that more infringements should directly lead to more advertising revenue.

“The causal relationship between the infringement of Plaintiffs’ works and X’s profits could not be more direct. When X runs ads in connection with infringing video content, money flows into its pockets,” the music companies write.

In addition, these infringements could draw more users to the platform or create more engagement. Both have the potential to increase advertising revenues.

“The ability to view and post infringing content draws users to X’s platform, the increased engagement brings X more advertising revenue, and X’s service would be less attractive if it properly policed infringement on its platform.”

All in all, it’s clear that both parties have an entirely different view on the copyright infringement claims. It is now up to the District Court in Nashville, Tennessee, to decide whether the case can move forward.

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A copy of the music companies’ opposition to X’s motion to dismiss is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Tucker Carlson, Greta Thunberg, Covid sceptics, military historians, the royal family … What would my time immersed in the Twitter/X owner’s feed reveal about the richest man in the world?

What’s it like to be Elon Musk? On almost every level it is impossible to imagine – he’s just too much. Musk is the hands-on head of three mega-companies, one (Tesla) wildly successful, one (SpaceX) madly aspirational, one (Twitter/X) a shambles. He has plenty of other businesses on the side, including The Boring Company (which makes hi-tech tunnels), Neuralink (which makes brain-computer interfaces), and his current pet favourite xAI (mission: “To understand the true nature of the universe”). He is the on-again, off-again richest human being on the planet, his personal net worth sometimes fluctuating by more than $10bn a day as the highly volatile Tesla share price lurches up and down. He is the father of 11 children – one of whom died as an infant, and from one of whom he is currently estranged – with three different women, which to his own mind at least seems to make him some kind of family man. He has 155 million followers on Twitter/X (we’ll call it Twitter from now on for simplicity’s sake), which is more than anyone else. Only a very few people – Barack Obama (132 million), Justin Bieber (111 million) – can have any idea of what that is like.

However, unlike Obama, who follows 550,000 accounts on Twitter, Musk follows only 415. That anyone can copy (or at least they could, before the platform recently changed its code so you can now only see a small handful of users’ followers rather than the full list). So that’s what I did, spending this past summer following the exact same accounts Musk follows and no one else, to see what the world looks like from inside his personal Twitter bubble. I wanted to be a fly on the wall in the room with the people who are shaping the thoughts of one of the most influential, and unpredictable, individuals on the planet. I should add that I’ve never followed anyone else on Twitter before – I’ve never even had a Twitter account – so it was all new to me. What can I say? It’s pretty mind-blowing.

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Marina Hyde appeals for us all to do the right thing by the victims of Russell Brand’s misogyny (1m23s); and writer and professor David Runciman reveals what happened when he followed all the same Twitter accounts as Elon Musk to try to get inside his head (11m9s).

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Through his businesses, Rupert Murdoch pushed a world view with the pursuit of money at its heart

There are not many chairmanships of companies that would so fascinate writers, and television producers, that they would make four series about them. Rupert Murdoch’s long tenure at Fox and News Corp was one. For viewers of Succession, this week’s announcement that Mr Murdoch is handing control to his eldest son, Lachlan, is a real-life coda to a dynastic struggle in which they are already immersed – in fictionalised form. Lachlan’s reputation, as the most rightwing of the three siblings seen as plausible successors, is deeply dismaying, given the power he will now wield and the context in which he will wield it – above all in the United States, where Donald Trump aims to run for president next year.

The elder Murdoch’s internet ventures were not on the whole successful, and in our digital age his status has been partly eclipsed. Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, the Chinese owners of TikTok, and the boards of Google and Apple, have joined him at the top table of global media influencers. But through news and entertainment businesses including the Fox News Channel, the Wall Street Journal, the Australian, Times and Sun newspapers, and book publishing and film businesses, the 92-year-old billionaire has exerted a huge influence on politics and culture in the US, UK and Australia over many decades.

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The carmaker is now US labor’s most important target. If Musk doesn’t like that, he’s welcome to settle it with an auto worker by cage match

The massive United Auto Workers strike against the big three automakers is, first and foremost, an awesome demonstration of labor power – the act of a powerful, longstanding industrial union, with newly radical leadership, determined to wage one big fight to reset a playing field that has been slowly tilting in the wrong direction for years. It is also, like a disturbing number of things in America today, a case in which the grotesque specter of Elon Musk looms like a silent villain over the entire proceedings.

Here is what I mean. The big three – Ford, GM and Stellantis – have long had workforces that are unionized with the UAW. The robust contracts that the union has been negotiating with the thriving industry since the middle of the 20th century played a large part in the creation of the unprecedented shared prosperity of the post-second world war middle class.

Hamilton Nolan is a writer on labor and politics, based in New York City.

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Climate coalition cites Twitter’s lack of clear policies to stop incorrect information and confusion from Musk takeover

A report ranking climate change misinformation gave Twitter (recently rebranded as X) only a single point out of a 21-point scorecard when assessing policies aimed at reducing inaccurate information – the worst out of five major tech platforms.

The Climate of Misinformation report by Climate Action Against Disinformation looked at Meta, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok and Twitter for their content moderation policies and efforts to mitigate inaccurate information such as climate denialism. The group, which is made up of dozens of international climate and anti-disinformation organizations including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth, released the report to draw attention towards climate misinformation on major platforms and makes the claim that big tech has become a “complicit actor” in accelerating the spread of climate denial.

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