Amazon accounts for "roughly half of all online sales," while "more than half of all the stuff sold by Amazon comes from third parties," reports a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

But is Amazon legally and financially responsible for the safety of those products? Amazon says no. A trio of state Court of Appeal justices in Los Angeles this week said otherwise.

"We are persuaded that Amazon's own business practices make it a direct link in the vertical chain of distribution under California's strict liability doctrine," the justices ruled, rejecting Amazon's claim that its site is merely a platform connecting buyers and sellers... "Amazon is the retailer. They're the one selling the product," said Christopher Dolan, a San Francisco lawyer who spearheaded the case against the e-commerce behemoth. "Because of this ruling," he told me, "you can be sure Amazon is rewriting all its rules for third-party sellers, and it's doing it today..."
The case began in 2015 when a California woman named Loomis gave her son a hoverboard for Christmas in 2015 — and less than a week later its lithium-ion batteries exploded while charging: In pursuing his case on Loomis' behalf, Dolan found that the Chinese manufacturer and its U.S. distributor had gone out of business, "leaving only Amazon to be held accountable for the injuries to Ms. Loomis and the damages to her home." Amazon prevailed in the original case. An L.A. judge agreed with the Seattle company that it was merely an "online advertiser" and not responsible for the third-party products it sells. The lawsuit was dismissed in March 2019.

This week's appellate court decision overturns that ruling, holding Amazon accountable for the products it allows third parties to sell on its website.

The appellate justices cited Amazon's "substantial ability to influence the manufacturing or distribution process through its ability to require safety certification, indemnification and insurance before it agrees to list any product...." Product liability experts told me this week's decision makes clear that online merchants are just that — merchants — and can't hide behind their connecting-the-world technology to shield them from responsibility for distributing unsafe goods.

Business Insider reports: Former Netflix vice president of IT Michael Kail was convicted by a federal jury on Friday of 28 counts of fraud and money laundering, the U.S. Department of Justice announced in a press release.

Kail, who was indicted in 2018, used his position to create a "pay-to-play" scheme where he approved contracts with outside tech companies looking to do business with Netflix in exchange for taking bribes and kickbacks, according to evidence presented to the jury, the release said. Kail accepted bribes or kickbacks from nine different companies totaling more than $500,000 as well as stock options, according to the Department of Justice's press release...

Netflix sued Kail after he left the company in 2014 to take a role as Yahoo's CIO, accusing him of fraud and breaching his fiduciary duties.
One FBI agent says that Kail "stole the opportunity to work with an industry pioneer from honest, hardworking, Silicon Valley companies," according to the details in the Department of Justice statement: To facilitate kickback payments, the evidence at trial showed that Kail created and controlled a limited liability corporation called Unix Mercenary, LLC. Established on February 7, 2012, Unix Mercenary had no employees and no business location. Kail was the sole signatory to its bank accounts...

Kail faces a maximum sentence of twenty years in prison and a fine of $250,000, or twice his gross gain or twice the gross loss to Netflix, whichever is greater, for each count of a wire or mail fraud conviction, and ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for each count of a money laundering conviction.

Florida is on track to be the first state in America to punish social media companies that ban politicians, reports NBC News, "under a bill approved Thursday by the state's Republican-led Legislature." Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican and close Trump ally who called for the bill's passage, is expected to sign the legislation into law, but the proposal appears destined to be challenged in court after a tech industry trade group called it a violation of the First Amendment speech rights of corporations...

Suspensions of up to 14 days would still be allowed, and a service could remove individual posts that violate its terms of service. The state's elections commission would be empowered to fine a social media company $250,000 a day for statewide candidates and $25,000 a day for other candidates if a company's actions are found to violate the law, which also requires the companies to provide information about takedowns and apply rules consistently...

Florida Republican lawmakers have cited tech companies' wide influence over speech as a reason for the increased regulation. "What this bill is about is sending a loud message to Silicon Valley that they are not the absolute arbiters of truth," state Rep. John Snyder, a Republican from the Port St. Lucie area, said Wednesday... The Florida bill may offer Republicans in other states a road map for introducing laws that could eventually force social media companies and U.S. courts to confront questions about free speech on social media, including the questions raised by Thomas.

State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith, an Orlando area Democrat, said if Republicans want to stay on private services, they should follow the rules. "There's already a solution to deplatforming candidates on social media: Stop trafficking in conspiracy theories...."
NetChoice, a trade group for internet companies, argued the bill punishes platforms for removing harmful content, and that it would make it harder to block spam. But they also argued that the freedom of speech clause in the U.S. Constitution "makes clear that government may not regulate the speech of private individuals or businesses.

"This includes government action that compels speech by forcing a private social media platform to carry content that is against its policies or preferences."

Slashdot reader zantafio points out the bill specifies just five major tech companies — Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon.

And that the bill was also amended to specifically exempt Disney, Universal and any theme park owner that operates a search engine or information service.

Indie developer (and Humble Indie Bundle originator) Wolfire Games has filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Steam creator Valve, saying that the company is wielding Steam's monopoly power over the PC gaming market to extract "an extraordinarily high cut from nearly every sale that passes through its storeâ"30%." Ars Technica reports: The lawsuit, filed in a Washington state federal court, centers on what it considers an illegal tying of the Steam gaming platform (which provides game library management, social networking, achievement tracking, Steam Workshop mods, etc.) and the Steam game store (which processes online payments and delivers a copy of the game). After years of growth, the vast majority of PC gamers are locked into the Steam platform thanks to "immense network effects" and the high switching costs to move to a new PC platform, the suit argues. That makes the platform "a must-have for game publishers," who need access to the players on Steam to succeed. But games that use the Steam platform also have to be sold on the Steam Store, where Valve takes its 30 percent cut of all sales. By leveraging its monopoly platform power into a "gatekeeper role" for the store, Valve "wield[s] extreme power over publishers of PC Desktop Games" that leads to a "small but significant and non-transitory increase in price" for developers compared to a truly competitive market, the suit argues.

The suit includes a laundry list of competitors that have tried to create their own platforms to take on Steam's monopoly, including CD Projekt Red, EA, Microsoft, Amazon, and Epic (not to mention "pure distributors" with platform-free stores like GameStop, Green Man Gaming, Impulse, and Direct2Drive). But the lawsuit argues that Steam's lock-in effects mean none of these stores have been able to make much of a dent in Valve's monopoly position, despite plenty of well-funded attempts. Even the Epic Games Store, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars securing exclusives and free game giveaways, has a market share of only "a little above 2 percent," according to one cited analysis (in an interview last June, Epic's Tim Sweeney estimated a more robust 15 percent market share for EGS).

"The failure of these companies to meaningfully compete against the Steam Gaming Platform shows it is virtually impossible as an economic matter to compete against the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit argues. "The Steam Gaming Platform has well-cemented dominance in the PC Desktop Gaming Platform Market, and given its unique and strong network effects, that is unlikely to change." The only meaningful way to avoid [Valve's] anticompetitive measures, the suit argues, is "to avoid using the Steam Gaming Platform at all." But Valve's monopoly position means that "there are no economically viable alternatives to the Steam Gaming Platform" for most PC games. While the suit acknowledges a few counterexamples (Riot's League of Legends is cited by name), such titles "typically require a long history of recognition and success before they can attempt to thrive without the Steam Gaming Platform," the suit says.

schwit1 shares a report from Threatpost: Quick-response (QR) codes used by a COVID-19 contact-tracing program were hijacked by a man who simply slapped up scam QR codes on top to redirect users to an anti-vaccination website, according to local police. He now faces two counts of "obstructing operations carried out relative to COVID-19 under the Emergency Management Act," the South Australia Police said in a statement announcing the arrest. His arrest may just be a drop in the bucket: Reports of other anti-vax campaigners doing the same thing abound. Law enforcement added an additional warning to would-be QR code scammers: "Any person found to be tampering or obstructing with business QR codes will likely face arrest and court penalty of up to $10,000." The police said no personal data was breached, but the incident highlights that truly all an attacker needs is a printer and a pack of Avery labels to do real damage.

In this case, the QR codes were being used by the South Australian government's official CovidSafe app to access a device's camera, scan the code and collect real-time location data to be used for contact tracing in case of a COVID-19 outbreak, ABC News Australia reported. That's a lot of personal data linked to a single QR code just waiting to be stolen. "In this instance, people who scanned the illegitimate QR code were redirected to a website distributing misinformation from the anti-vaxxer community," Bill Harrod, vice president of public sector at Ivanti, told Threatpost. "While this is concerning, the outcome could have been far more perilous."

Plans for 3D-printed, self-assembled "ghost guns" can be posted online without U.S. State Department approval, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday. From a report: A divided panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reinstated a Trump administration order that permitted removal of the guns from the State Department's Munitions List. Listed weapons need State Department approval for export. In 2015, federal courts applied the requirement to weapons posted online and intended for production on 3D printers, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. However, three years later the State Department under then-President Donald Trump settled a lawsuit by a 3D gun company and ordered their removal.

California, 21 other states and the District of Columbia sued and a federal judge in Seattle issued an injunction last year, saying that posting the designs without restrictions could put unregistered weapons into the hands of terrorists. In overturning the injunction, the appellate panel found 2-1 that a 1989 federal law prohibits courts from overruling the State Department's decision to add or remove a weapon from the Munitions List, the Chronicle reported.

Epic Games is holding back Fortnite from being available on Microsoft's Xbox Cloud Gaming (xCloud) service, according to a new deposition made public as part of the Epic case against Apple. From a report: The Fortnite developer views Microsoft's xCloud service as competition to its PC offerings, and the company is deliberately not offering Fortnite on xCloud as a result. Joe Kreiner, Epic's vice president of business development, was questioned over why Fortnite isn't available on xCloud, and confirmed it was a deliberate choice. "We viewed Microsoft's efforts with xCloud to be competitive with our PC offerings," says Kreiner in the deposition. The court document makes it appear like Kreiner may go on to explain why, but the next part of the questioning has been redacted.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: For a decade, Bitcoin Fog has offered to obscure the source and destination of its customers' cryptocurrency, making it one of the most venerable institutions in the dark web economy. Now the IRS says it has finally identified the Russian-Swedish administrator behind that long-running anonymizing system and charged him with laundering hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bitcoins, much of which was sent to or from dark web drug markets. What gave him away? The trail of his own decade-old digital transactions.

US authorities on Tuesday arrested Roman Sterlingov in Los Angeles, according to court records, and charged him with laundering more than 1.2 million bitcoins -- worth $336 million at the times of the payments -- over the 10 years that he allegedly ran Bitcoin Fog. According to the IRS criminal investigations division, Sterlingov, a citizen of Russia and Sweden, allowed users to blend their transactions with those of others to prevent anyone examining the Bitcoin blockchain from tracing any individual's payments. He took commissions on those transactions of 2 to 2.5 percent. In total, the IRS calculates, Sterlingov allegedly took home roughly $8 million worth of bitcoin through the service, based on exchange rates at the times of each transaction. That's before factoring in Bitcoin's massive appreciation over the past decade. Ironically, it appears that the 2011 transactions Sterlingov allegedly used to set up Bitcoin Fog's server hosting are what put the IRS on his trail. Of the $336 million the complaint accuses Bitcoin Fog of laundering, at least $78 million passed through the service to various narcotics-selling dark web markets like the Silk Road, Agora, and AlphaBay over the years that followed. The IRS also appears to have used undercover agents in 2019 to transact with Bitcoin Fog, in one case sending messages to Bitcoin Fog's administrator that explicitly stated that they hoped to launder proceeds from selling ecstasy. Bitcoin Fog completed that user's transactions without a response.

Most remarkable, however, is the IRS's account of tracking down Sterlingov using the very same sort of blockchain analysis that his own service was meant to defeat. The complaint outlines how Sterlingov allegedly paid for the server hosting of Bitcoin Fog at one point in 2011 using the now-defunct digital currency Liberty Reserve. It goes on to show the blockchain evidence that identifies Sterlingov's purchase of that Liberty Reserve currency with bitcoins: He first exchanged euros for the bitcoins on the early cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox, then moved those bitcoins through several subsequent addresses, and finally traded them on another currency exchange for the Liberty Reserve funds he'd use to set up Bitcoin Fog's domain. Based on tracing those financial transactions, the IRS says, it then identified Mt. Gox accounts that used Sterlingov's home address and phone number, and even a Google account that included a Russian-language document on its Google Drive offering instructions for how to obscure Bitcoin payments. That document described exactly the steps Sterlingov allegedly took to buy the Liberty Reserve funds he'd used.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: A Maryland defense attorney has decided to challenge the conviction of one of his clients after it was recently discovered that the phone cracking product used in the case, produced by digital forensics firm Cellebrite, has severe cybersecurity flaws that could make it vulnerable to hacking. Ramon Rozas, who has practiced law for 25 years, told Gizmodo that he was compelled to pursue a new trial after reading a widely shared blog post written by the CEO of the encryption chat app Signal, Moxie Marlinspike. It was just about a week ago that Marlinspike brutally dunked on Cellebrite -- writing, in a searing takedown, that the company's products lacked basic "industry-standard exploit mitigation defenses," and that security holes in its software could easily be exploited to manipulate data during cell phone extraction.

Given the fact that Cellebrite's extraction software is used by law enforcement agencies the world over, questions have naturally emerged about the integrity of investigations that used the tech to secure convictions. For Rozas, the concerns center around the fact that "Cellebrite evidence was heavily relied upon" to convict his client, who was charged in relation to an armed robbery. The prosecution's argument essentially turned on that data, which was extracted from the suspect's phone using the company's tools. In a motion recently filed, Rozas argued that because "severe defects" have since been uncovered about the technology, a "new trial should be ordered so that the defense can examine the report produced by the Cellebrite device in light of this new evidence, and examine the Cellebrite device itself." "I think it's going to take a while to figure out what the exact legal ramifications of this are," says Megan Graham, a Clinical Supervising Attorney at the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic with Berkeley Law School. "I don't know how likely it is that cases would be thrown out," she said, adding that a person who has already been convicted would likely have to "show that someone else identified this vulnerability and exploited it at the time" -- not an especially easy task.

"Going forward, I think it's just hard to tell," Graham said. "We now know that this vulnerability exists, and it creates concerns about the security of Cellebrite devices and the integrity of evidence." But there's a lot that we don't know, she emphasized. Among Graham's concerns, she said that "we don't know if the vulnerability is being exploited," and that makes it difficult to discern when it could become an issue in past cases. "I think there will be cases where defense attorneys are able to get judges engaged [on this issue]. They will present the security concerns, worries about manipulated evidence, and it might be persuasive. I think there will be a wide array of responses when it comes to how this plays out in cases," she said.

ADT, a home security company in the United States with over 6 million customers, is suing Amazon's Ring, alleging that the DIY home security company is copying ADT's logo and profiting from customer trust associated with it. From a report: ADT has asked a federal judge in Florida to order Ring to stop using its blue, octagonal signs and to pay unspecified compensation to the security company. In the complaint, ADT said it asked Ring to stop copying its blue octagon logo in 2016, after which the Amazon-owned company removed the blue color from its sign, but kept the octagon shape. In late March, upon releasing a new outdoor siren, Ring added the blue back to its advertising materials. ADT also said in the complaint that it owns 12 trademarks for the shape, color and look of its blue, octagonal sign.

For a second year, the nation's surveillance court has pointed with concern to "widespread violations" by the F.B.I. of rules intended to protect Americans' privacy when analysts search emails gathered without a warrant -- but still signed off on another year of the program, a newly declassified ruling shows. From a report: In a 67-page ruling issued in November and made public on Monday, James E. Boasberg, the presiding judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, recounted several episodes uncovered by an F.B.I. audit where the bureau's analysts improperly searched for Americans' information in emails that the National Security Agency collected without warrants. Rather than a new problem, however, those instances appeared largely to be additional examples of an issue that was already brought to light in a December 2019 ruling by Judge Boasberg. The government made it public in September. The F.B.I. has already sought to address the problem by rolling out new system safeguards and additional training, although the coronavirus pandemic has hindered the bureau's ability to assess how well they are working. Still, Judge Boasberg said he was willing to issue a legally required certification for the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program to operate for another year.

Over the past decade, the United States population grew at the slowest rate since the 1930s, the Census Bureau reported on Monday, a remarkable slackening that was driven by a leveling off of immigration and a declining birthrate. The New York Times reports: The bureau also reported changes to the nation's political map: The long-running trend of the South and the West gaining population -- and congressional representation -- at the expense of the Northeast and the Midwest, continued, with Texas gaining two seats and Florida, one. California, long a leader in population growth, lost a seat for the first time in history. [...] The numbers are the product of the most controversial census process in decades. The Trump administration tried to add a citizenship question to the Census form, but the Supreme Court eventually blocked that plan. [...] The Bureau also faced a daunting task of conducting the Census during a pandemic. Then, last summer, the Trump administration pushed it to stop the count sooner than planned.

Booming economies in states like Texas, Nevada, Arizona and North Carolina, have drawn Americans away from struggling small communities in high-cost, cold weather states. In New York, 48 of 62 counties are estimated to be losing population. In Illinois, 93 of 101 counties are believed to be shrinking. In 1970, the West and South comprised just under half the U.S. population -- today it's nearly 63 percent. The new decennial census counted 331,449,281 Americans as of April 1, 2020. The total was up by just 7.4 percent over the previous decade. Combined with the decline in inflows of immigrants, and shifting age demographics -- there are now more Americans 80 and older than 2 or younger -- the United States may be entering an era of substantially lower population growth, demographers said, putting it with the countries of Europe and East Asia that face serious long-term challenges with rapidly aging populations. "This is a big deal," said Ronald Lee, a demographer who founded the Center on the Economics and Demography of Aging at the University of California at Berkeley. "If it stays lower like this, it means the end of American exceptionalism in this regard." It used to be clear where the country was headed demographically, Professor Lee said -- faster growth than many other rich nations. But that has changed. "Right now it is very murky," he said.

CNBC writes: A copyright lawsuit brought by Craig Wright — the man who has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym used by the creator of bitcoin — could finally put to bed the years-long mystery over who actually invented the multibillion-dollar cryptocurrency. That's because the success of the lawsuit would likely depend on Wright proving that he did, in fact, author the white paper that originally laid out the technology behind bitcoin. And the case could force the U.K. court to weigh in on whether or not Wright is the actual inventor of bitcoin, according to Reuters.

And in fact, Wright says he has evidence that can prove he is the author of the white paper.

London's High Court ruled on Thursday that Wright, the Australian computer scientist who first said in 2016 that he created bitcoin eight years earlier, could serve his copyright lawsuit against the anonymous operator and publisher of the website bitcoin.org, according to Reuters. Wright's lawsuit accuses bitcoin.org of copyright infringement for displaying a copy of the infamous bitcoin white paper, which he claims he wrote in 2008 outlining what bitcoin is and how it works. He's asking the court to force bitcoin.org to remove the white paper from the website.

Bitcoin.org has refused to remove the white paper from the website, and posted a statement in January saying Wright's "claims are without merit."

The Associated Press reports: In a ruling that reversed one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, 39 people who ran local post offices had their convictions for theft, fraud and false accounting overturned Friday because of what an appeals court said was clear evidence of "bugs, errors or defects" in an IT system.

The decision follows a years-long, complex legal battle that could see Britain's Post Office face a huge compensation bill for its failures following the installation, from 1999, of what turned out to be the defective Horizon computerized accounting system in local branches. Dozens of staff were convicted after the Fujitsu-supplied system pointed to an array of financial misdemeanors that bewildered the postal workers. Six others had their convictions quashed previously, while another 700 or so workers also are believed to have been prosecuted between 2000 and 2014... Jobs, homes and marriages were lost as a result of wrongful convictions, and some did not live long enough to see their names cleared by Britain's Court of Appeals.

Confirmation that the convictions were quashed was met with cheers and tears. A few bottles of bubbly were also popped.
Martin S. (Slashdot reader #98,249) writes, "As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting..." The BBC reports some desperate sub-postmasters even "attempted to plug the gap with their own money, even remortgaging their homes, in an (often fruitless) attempt to correct an error."

The judge in the case complains that for years the Post Office had "consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable" and "effectively steamrolled over any subpostmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy," according to an article in The Scotsman: Nick Read, Post Office chief executive said: "I am in no doubt about the human cost of the Post Office's past failures and the deep pain that has been caused to people affected. Many of those postmasters involved have been fighting for justice for a considerable length of time and sadly there are some who are not here to see the outcome today and whose families have taken forward appeals in their memory. I am very moved by their courage."

There were 73 convictions in Scotland caused by the failure. Although a total of 47 postmasters in England and Wales have had their cases referred to the Appeal Court, there has never been similar action in Scotland.

However, now the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission has written to the people it believes may also have been the victims of possible miscarriages of justice in Scotland relating to the Horizon computer system.

Britain's Court of Appeals has cleared a group of 42 sub-postmasters and postmistresses for theft, fraud and false accounting. They were convicted, with some imprisoned, after the Post Office installed faulty software in the branches where these office operators worked. The BBC reports: Following the convictions - including theft, fraud and false accounting -- some former postmasters went to prison, were shunned by their communities and struggled to secure work. Some lost their homes, and even failed to get insurance owing to their convictions. Some have since died. They always said the fault was in the computer system, which had been used to manage post office finances since 1999.

The Horizon system, developed by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was first rolled out in 1999 to some post offices to be used for a variety of tasks including accounting and stocktaking. But from an early stage it appeared to have significant bugs which could cause the system to misreport, sometimes involving substantial sums of money. Horizon-based evidence was used by the Post Office to successfully prosecute 736 people. But campaigners fought a long and series of legal battles for compensation in the civil courts, which have been followed by referrals by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. A Post Office spokesman said: "We sincerely apologize to the postmasters affected by our historical failures. Throughout this appeals process we have supported the quashing of the overwhelming majority of these convictions and the judgment will be an important milestone in addressing the past."

Long-time Slashdot reader Martin S. reacts: As a software geek, the part I find most troubling is that blind faith that those in authority placed in the software without proper accounting. Accounting systems and Software are deterministic, well they should be. IF the system/software worked correctly, this missing money must have shown up somewhere. Software defects are always traceable. It might be expensive and time consuming but persistence will win in the end. Somebody somewhere is responsible for this and defacto framing of these people is criminal in principle, if not in law.

If possession is nine-tenths of the law, what happens when possession gets slippery? From a report: That's a question for a federal courtroom in Sacramento, California, where Apple is facing a putative class action over the way consumers can "buy" or "rent" movies, TV shows and other content in the iTunes Store. David Andino, the lead plaintiff in this case, argues the distinction is deceptive. He alleges Apple reserves the right to terminate access to what consumers have "purchased," and in fact, has done so on numerous occasions. This week, U.S. District Court Judge John Mendez made clear he isn't ready to buy into Apple's view of consumer expectations in the digital marketplace. "Apple contends that '[n]o reasonable consumer would believe' that purchased content would remain on the iTunes platform indefinitely," writes Mendez. "But in common usage, the term 'buy' means to acquire possession over something. It seems plausible, at least at the motion to dismiss stage, that reasonable consumers would expect their access couldn't be revoked." Apple tried other ways to slip away from claims of false advertising and unfair competition. For example, it tried the time-tested approach of challenging Andino's "injury" to knock his potential standing as a plaintiff.

According to a complaint filed on Tuesday, Apple user Matthew Price spent nearly $25,000 on content attached to his Apple ID, which was terminated by the company for unknown reasons. The lawsuit targets a clause in Apple's media services terms and conditions, which states a user with a terminated Apple ID cannot access media content that they've purchased. AppleInsider reports: "Apple's unlawful and unconscionable clause as a prohibited de facto liquidated damages provision which is triggered when Apple suspects its customers have breached its Terms and Conditions," the lawsuit reads. Additionally, the complaint claims that users with Apple devices will find their products "substantially diminished in value" if their Apple IDs are terminated, since they won't be able to access Apple services or purchased content.

According to the complaint, the $25,000 worth of media included apps, in-app purchases, programs and platform extensions, and related services. The plaintiff also alleges that Apple prevents users from accessing unused funds attached to an Apple account. Price, for example, had about $7 in iTunes credit. The lawsuit doesn't specify why Price's account was terminated. However, it does claim that Apple shut down the Apple ID "without notice, explanation, policy or process." It goes on to claim that Apple's conduct -- specifically, the clause and resulting terminations -- are "unfair, unlawful, fraudulent, and illegal," and alleges that Apple is in violation of several consumer regulations in California. The lawsuit is seeking class action status, with a Nationwide Class consisting of people in the U.S. who have had their Apple IDs terminated.

A university student is suing exam proctoring software maker Proctorio to "quash a campaign of harassment" against critics of the company, including an accusation that the company misused copyright laws to remove his tweets that were critical of the software. From a report: The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed the lawsuit this week on behalf of Miami University student Erik Johnson, who also does security research on the side, accused Proctorio of having "exploited the DMCA to undermine Johnson's commentary." Twitter hid three of Johnson's tweets after Proctorio filed a copyright takedown notice under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA, alleging that three of Johnson's tweets violated the company's copyright. Schools and universities have increasingly leaned on proctoring software during the pandemic to invigilate student exams, albeit virtually. Further reading: Proctorio Is Using Racist Algorithms To Detect Faces; Cheating-Detection Software Provokes 'School-Surveillance Revolt'; and Students Are Easily Cheating 'State-of-the-Art' Test Proctoring Tech.

India reported a global record of more than 314,000 new infections Thursday as a grim coronavirus surge hits the world's second-most populous country, sending more and more sick people into a fragile health care system critically short of hospital beds and oxygen. From a report: The 314,835 infections added in the past 24 hours raise India's total past 15.9 million cases since the pandemic began. It's the second-highest total in the world next to the United States. India has nearly 1.4 billion people. A large number of hospitals are reporting acute shortages of beds and medicine and are running on dangerously low levels of oxygen. The New Delhi High Court on Wednesday ordered the government to divert oxygen from industrial use to hospitals to save people's lives.

"You can't have people die because there is no oxygen. Beg, borrow or steal, it is a national emergency," the judges said responding to a petition by a New Delhi hospital seeking its intervention. The government is rushing oxygen tankers to replenish supplies to hospitals. India's Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Thursday that "demand and supply is being monitored round the clock." He said in a tweet that to address the exponential spike in demand, the government has increased the quota of oxygen for the worst-hit seven states. The surge has brought pain, fear and agony to many lives in New Delhi and other cities. In scenes familiar across the country, ambulances are seen rushing from one hospital to another, trying to find an empty bed. Grieving relatives are lining up outside crematoriums where the arrival of dead bodies has jumped several times.

The U.S. Supreme Court slashed the Federal Trade Commission's power to seek monetary awards in court, throwing out a legal tool the consumer-protection agency has used to collect billions of dollars over the past decade. From a report: The justices on Thursday unanimously said the FTC can't seek consumer redress when it invokes a provision that lets the agency go straight to federal court to try to stop an alleged fraud. The ruling is a triumph for business trade groups, which urged the court to curb the agency's powers. The FTC in 2012 dramatically ramped up its use of the decades-old provision to recoup money. The agency reported winning so-called restitution and disgorgement of almost $12 billion in 2016 alone, including $10 billion in a settlement with Volkswagen AG stemming from its diesel-emissions scandal. Writing for the court, Justice Stephen Breyer said the FTC retains other avenues to get restitution for consumers, though those tools involve a more complicated process. "If the commission believes that authority too cumbersome or otherwise inadequate, it is, of course, free to ask Congress to grant it further remedial authority," Breyer wrote.