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US Justice Department advises court to dismiss TikTok’s appeal

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The Department of Justice has requested an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit challenging a law that mandates China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. assets by January 19 or risk a ban.

TikTok, along with its parent company ByteDance and a group of TikTok creators, have filed lawsuits to oppose the legislation that could potentially ban the app used by 170 million Americans.

According to a senior Justice Department official, the government will provide classified documents to the court which will outline additional security concerns regarding ByteDance’s ownership of TikTok, along with statements from the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Justice Department’s national security division.


The department is expected to argue that Chinese-owned TikTok poses a significant national security risk to the United States due to its access to vast amounts of personal data on American citizens, enabling China to manipulate information used by Americans through the app covertly.

President Joe Biden signed the law on April 24, giving TikTok and ByteDance until January 19 to separate or face a ban. The White House’s stance is to end Chinese ownership for national security reasons without banning TikTok.

The department clarified that the law is aimed at addressing national security concerns rather than speech issues and intends to address China’s potential misuse of TikTok to access sensitive personal information of Americans. It denies all arguments put forth by TikTok, including claims that the law violates the free speech rights under the First Amendment of Americans using the video app.

The government plans to accuse TikTok of insufficiently safeguarding the data of its U.S. users.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is set to hear oral arguments on September 16, placing TikTok’s fate in the midst of the final week of the 2024 presidential election.

Despite previously signing an executive order threatening to ban the app, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stated in an interview in June that he would not support a ban. Additionally, US Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running for president, recently joined TikTok.

The law would prevent app stores like Apple and Google from offering TikTok and prohibit internet hosting services from supporting it unless it is divested by ByteDance.

The bill received strong support from the US Congress amid concerns expressed by lawmakers that China might exploit the app to gain access to Americans’ data for spying purposes.

Reuters

Source: www.theguardian.com

Microsoft files motion to dismiss the copyright lawsuit brought by New York Times | Technology

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Microsoft has issued a response to a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by The New York Times, alleging that its content was used to train generative artificial intelligence. Microsoft called the claims a false narrative of “apocalyptic futurology” and criticized the lawsuit as short-sighted, comparing it to Hollywood’s resistance to VCRs.

In a motion to dismiss filed as part of the lawsuit, Microsoft responded to the allegations, stating that The New York Times’ content was given “particular weight” and that Microsoft has made significant investments in the Times. Microsoft ridiculed the claims made by the newspaper and denied the accusations of government involvement in the matter.

The lawsuit, which could have far-reaching implications for artificial intelligence and news content production, accuses Microsoft, as the largest investor in OpenAI, of using copyrighted content from The New York Times to develop AI products that threaten the newspaper’s ability to provide its services.

Microsoft argued that the lawsuit is reminiscent of Hollywood’s opposition to VCRs in the past and emphasized that the content used to train the language models does not replace the market for the original work but rather educates the models.

OpenAI, a co-defendant in the lawsuit, has requested the dismissal of certain claims against the company, asserting that their products, such as ChatGPT, are not intended to replace subscriptions to The New York Times and are not used for that purpose in the real world.

Following Microsoft’s legal response, The New York Times pushed back against the comparison to 1980s home-taping technology, stating that Microsoft collaborated with OpenAI to copy copyrighted works without permission.

The dispute between the parties is part of a larger legal battle over copyright issues related to AI technology and concerns about the creation of misleading information. Recent incidents, such as Google’s use of AI to generate historically inaccurate images, have raised concerns about the need to address these issues.

OpenAI has faced criticism for its training methods and refusal to disclose training data, including the use of copyrighted works. The company argues that limiting training data to public domain content would hinder the development of AI systems that meet current needs.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman expressed surprise at the Times lawsuit, stating that the AI models do not rely on specific publisher data for training and that the Times’ content represented only a small portion of the overall text corpus used.

Source: www.theguardian.com