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Late last year, California passed a law against the possession or distribution of child sex abuse material (CSAM) that has been generated by AI. The law went into effect on January 1, and Sacramento police announced yesterday that they have already arrested their first suspect—a 49-year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning cartoonist named Darrin Bell.

The new law, which you can read here, declares that AI-generated CSAM is harmful, even without an actual victim. In part, says the law, this is because all kinds of CSAM can be used to groom children into thinking sexual activity with adults is normal. But the law singles out AI-generated CSAM for special criticism due to the way that generative AI systems work.

"The creation of CSAM using AI is inherently harmful to children because the machine-learning models utilized by AI have been trained on datasets containing thousands of depictions of known CSAM victims," it says, "revictimizing these real children by using their likeness to generate AI CSAM images into perpetuity."

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Late last year, California passed a law against the possession or distribution of child sex abuse material (CSAM) that has been generated by AI. The law went into effect on January 1, and Sacramento police announced yesterday that they have already arrested their first suspect—a 49-year-old Pulitzer-prize-winning cartoonist named Darrin Bell.

The new law, which you can read here, declares that AI-generated CSAM is harmful, even without an actual victim. In part, says the law, this is because all kinds of CSAM can be used to groom children into thinking sexual activity with adults is normal. But the law singles out AI-generated CSAM for special criticism due to the way that generative AI systems work.

"The creation of CSAM using AI is inherently harmful to children because the machine-learning models utilized by AI have been trained on datasets containing thousands of depictions of known CSAM victims," it says, "revictimizing these real children by using their likeness to generate AI CSAM images into perpetuity."

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Redditor tomsek68 is working on a project that would breathe new life into an old handheld computer by replacing a broken motherboard with an old, sluggish processor with a newer board sporting a modern processor and updated features. This could be a DIY thing that only results in a few boards for a few units, […]

The post Lilbits: Designing a new mainboard for an old handheld PC, Android 16 tablets could bring multitasking improvements, and Zotac’s fanless Twin Lake mini PC appeared first on Liliputing.

After steadfastly protecting the privacy rights of subscribers, usually against aggressive rightsholders determined to unmask them, ISPs today are more likely to view disclosure from a different perspective.

At a time when internet subscriptions paid most of the bills, protecting customers accused of illicit file-sharing led to prolonged litigation. Cases were fought up to the highest courts in the United States. In Europe, further still.

When rights organization Promusicae sued Telefonica in 2005, demanding the identities of customers accused of using KaZaA to pirate music, Telefonica fought tooth and nail all the way to Europe’s highest court.

Telefonica argued that under Spanish law, ISPs were under no obligation to hand over customer details to rightsholders intent on civil litigation. On January 29, 2008, the Court of Justice of the European Union agreed, handing Telefonica – and its customers – a landmark win.

Laws Change, Priorities Change

Over time, legal amendments and the drive for profit rendered Telefonica’s win irrelevant. ISPs were already selling internet access alongside mobile phone contracts, live TV subscription packages, VOD services, music, and other valuable content, the vast majority of it regularly pirated online.

As a result, the past several years have seen the traditional bright lines between exclusive rightsholders and ISPs licensed distributors become increasingly blurred.

Common Interests Are the Main Focus Now

In 2024, controversial legal action by LaLiga, Spain’s top-tier football league, led to Telefonica disclosing the identities of alleged pirate subscribers, based solely on LaLiga’s allegations.

If Telefonica resisted at all during closed-door discussions on disclosure, only evidence of cooperation has seen the light of day. If that proves unpopular with a subset of customers, not much can be done. Since rival ISPs are also cooperating with LaLiga, jumping ship in protest would be completely pointless.

Disclosures are now said to take place on a rolling basis, with LaLiga supplying IP addresses and Telefonica naming names. LaLiga’s subsequent letters, sent to freshly deanonymized subscribers, contain offers to settle for a few hundred euros. Financial penalties like these are meant to act as a deterrent and a forceful reminder that LaLiga matches should be purchased from licensed distributors.

Those distributors include Movistar Plus+, a subscription digital TV platform owned by Telefónica, that currently accounts for almost half of the Spanish market. Telefonica paid 1.2 billion euros for the rights to broadcast LaLiga matches.

TV channels owned by Sony, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Comcast are also distributed through Movistar Plus+. Anti-piracy agreements between LaLiga and Movistar Plus+, and with the channel owners via the MPA, sees URLs/domains delivered to Telefonica and other ISPs, on a weekly and monthly basis, to enable effective blocking of pirate sites.

You Scratch My Back, I’ll Scratch Yours

Of course, similar agreements between rightsholders ISPs are common elsewhere, although nothing quite as unusual as the arrangement detailed in a DMCA takedown notice sent to GitHub earlier this week.

While the sender’s identity isn’t 100% clear due to numerous redactions, GitHub’s report indicates Telefonica. In basic terms, the notice requests removal of an .M3U playlist which allegedly provides access to content to which Movistar owns the rights. GitHub responded as expected by disabling the repository which rendered the file inaccessible.

In other respects the DMCA notice is both unusual and somewhat confusing. In response to the question, “Are you the copyright holder or authorized to act on the copyright owner’s behalf?” the sender said “Yes, I am the copyright holder.”

In a notice sent by Telefonica, that’s nothing unusual, much less something to quantify in an explanatory wall of text that, if anything, seems to contradict the copyright holder declaration made earlier.

The unlikely conclusion is that in order to protect content distributed by Movistar, to which Telefonica directly or indirectly owns the rights, the telecoms giant has entered into an anti-piracy agreement with LaLiga, Spain’s top football league. The agreement authorizes LaLiga to act on Telefonica’s behalf as follows:

While the terms ‘monitoring’ and ‘removal’ are self-explanatory, ‘enforcement’ could apply to any number of measures, some of which are only available to exclusive rightsholders.

Nevertheless, this is an intriguing situation that could play out in unpredictable ways. Quite simply, since the ideals behind the 2008 victory are dead and buried, increasingly vulnerable pirates may like to keep that in mind.

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

Photography enthusiasts pay a lot for their very powerful cameras. How much more should they pay to put them to much, much easier work as a webcam? However many hundreds of dollars you paid, Canon thinks you should pay $5 per month—or, heck, just $50 per year—to do that.

Roman Zipp detailed his journey from incredulousness to grim resignation in a blog post. He bought his Canon PowerShot G5 X Mark II for something like $900 last year. The compact model gave him the right match of focal length and sensor size for concert pics. What it did not give him was the ability to change anything at all about his webcam feed using Canon's software. (The "$6,299 camera" referenced in Zipp's blog post title is his indication that all models of Canon's cameras face this conundrum, regardless of price point.)

Ah, but that's because Zipp did not pay. If you head to Canon's site, provide a name and email, and manage to grab the EOS Webcam utility when Canon's servers are not failing, you can connect one camera, with one default scene, at 720p, 30 frames per second and adjust everything on the camera itself if you need to. Should you pay $5 per month, or $50 per year, you can unlock EOS Webcam Utility Pro (PDF link), which provides full 60 fps video and most of the features you'd expect out of a webcam that cost hundreds fewer dollars.

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Visionary filmmaker David Lynch—whose work spanned midnight movie staples like Eraserhead (1977), neo-noir psychological thrillers like Mulholland Drive (2001), and beyond—has died at 78. According to Deadline Hollywood, the director had to evacuate his home due to the LA wildfires. He had been diagnosed with severe emphysema a few years ago and rarely left his house due to COVID-19 fears. Following the evacuation, his health deteriorated, and he passed away at his daughter's house.

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch,” the director's family said in a statement. “We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

Reactions from Hollywood were swift and heartfelt. Kyle MacLachlan, who became a star when Lynch cast him as Paul Atreides in 1984's Dune, Blue Velvet (1986), and the TV series Twin Peaks, described the director as "the most authentically alive person I'd ever met":

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General Motors and its subsidiary OnStar agreed to a settlement that prohibits them from sharing driver location and behavior data with third parties, the Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday. The proposed settlement comes less than a year after GM responded to public backlash by announcing that it stopped sharing driving data from its connected cars with companies such as LexisNexis.

The FTC said it "is taking action against General Motors (GM) and OnStar over allegations they collected, used, and sold drivers' precise geolocation data and driving behavior information from millions of vehicles—data that can be used to set insurance rates—without adequately notifying consumers and obtaining their affirmative consent." GM did not admit to or deny the allegations.

GM and OnStar "will be banned for five years from disclosing consumers' sensitive geolocation and driver behavior data to consumer reporting agencies," the FTC said. Under the settlement, "consumer reporting agency" means a firm that collects or evaluates "consumer credit information or other information on consumers for the purpose of furnishing consumer reports to other parties and which uses any means or facility of interstate commerce for the purpose of preparing or furnishing consumer reports."

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Die Polizei hat in der Nähe von Manchester einen im Ausland zugelassenen Tesla Cybertruck beschlagnahmt. Der Grund sind Sicherheitsbedenken. (Tesla Cybertruck, Elektroauto)

Post-pandemic, my creed became "Bicycles deliver the freedom that auto ads promise." That belief is why I’ve almost exclusively used a bike to move myself around Portland, Oregon since (yes, I have become a Portlandia stereotype).

However, that lifestyle is a lot more challenging without some pedal assistance. For a few summers, I showed up sweaty to appointments after pedaling on a $200 single-speed. So in 2024, I purchased the FX+ 2, based primarily on my managing editor’s review. It’s since been a workhorse for my daily transportation needs for the past year; I've put more than 1,000 miles on it in eight months.

So given my experience with that bike, I was the natural choice to review Trek’s upgraded version, the FX+ 7S.

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Volkswagen und Rivian vertiefen ihre strategische Allianz. Auch im Bereich Elektronik ist eine verstärkte Zusammenarbeit geplant. (Rivian, Elektroauto)