Supreme Court recusals stop music case in its tracks, strike warning note; NPR, October 21, 2026

 Carrie Johnson, NPR; Supreme Court recusals stop music case in its tracks, strike warning note

"No quorum, because four of the nine justices recused themselves. The court did not explain why Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson stepped away from the case.

But the watchdog group Fix the Court has an idea: All four of those justices have book deals with Penguin Random House, part of a German conglomerate that's a party in the music copyright case.

"When you have a financial stake in a party or your finances could somehow be impacted by the outcome of a case, under federal law and the Supreme Court code of conduct, the justices are supposed to recuse," said Gabe Roth, who leads Fix the Court...

Three years ago, the Supreme Court published a code of conduct. But the long and short of it is, the justices largely police themselves.

Blackman, the law professor, said Congress should pass legislation to address the book royalties issue...

Tim Kappel is a lawyer for the songwriter in the case the court declined to hear. In a written statement, Kappel said the recusal speaks to the broad impact of copyright law and the expansive definition of what it means to be an artist."

Publisher cuts ties with Quebec author accused of AI use in award-winning novel; CBC, October 21, 2026

 Annabelle Olivier , CBC; Publisher cuts ties with Quebec author accused of AI use in award-winning novel

Thélyson Orélien had denied AI use, admitted to past plagiarism

"Montreal publishing house Éditions du Boréal announced Wednesday it is ending its professional relationship with Thélyson Orélien — a Haitian-born, Quebec-based author. 

In a news release, the publisher said new information, confirmed over the course of recent days, indicates that artificial intelligence was used in the writing process of Orélien's novel, C’était ça ou mourir, published earlier this year."

What Hundreds of Focus Groups With Trump Voters Revealed; The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times, October 23, 2026

Ezra Klein

Produced by Annie Galvin and Jack McCordick

, The Ezra Klein Show, The New York Times; What Hundreds of Focus Groups With Trump Voters Revealed

[Ezra Klein] "What changes in politics — or what have you watched change in politics — as it has become more, in your language here, vibe oriented?

[Sarah Longwell] "I think it’s the big difference between news seekers and news receivers.

We used to live in a world where you spent time with the news, and it was a specific time. You sat down at the breakfast table, and you read a newspaper. You watched the evening news. You made time for the news.

I just think that the news receiver means: I didn’t sit down to find something out. Information just washed over me, and there was no mechanism to verify it. I didn’t really sit and spend time with it and ask: Is this true? Does it even matter to me? It just hit me for a second.

It just flashes over them. So they wake up with an opinion without any idea of how it was formed."

Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping; Fast Company, October 23, 2026

SARAH FIELDING, Fast Company; Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping

"Earlier this month, Meta Platforms announced controversial new commercial terms of use for business accounts that critics said would give the social media giant broad authority to crawl and scrape web content associated with those accounts.

The new commercial terms—met by strong outrage from news publishers that produce online content and rely on Meta’s platforms for distribution—were set to go into effect on Friday, October 30.

Now, without any notice, Meta has pushed back the date of the change by three weeks to Friday, November 20. The delay comes one day after a major trade group for news publishers sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that the forthcoming terms be withdrawn.

Despite the delayed date, the controversial language in the updated terms appeared to still be intact as of Friday...

On Thursday, October 22, the News/Media Alliance, which represents over 2,000 publications, wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg demanding that the company withdraw the updated commercial terms of use before they go into effect. 

The letter points to concerns that Meta will use publishers’ own content to compete with them, while giving them minimal ability to use Meta’s services and block ad crawlers. It further states that the new terms of use “grant Meta the right to exploit, without prior permission or fair compensation, journalism”

“These harms threaten the financial viability of the free press,” the letter, signed by News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey, further states.

It continues: “Once Meta has copied publishers’ content and built it into its products, the harm will be practically impossible to undo.”

The Myth of Safe AI; The Atlantic, October 22, 2026

Matteo Wong , The Atlantic; The Myth of Safe AI

Silicon Valley promises to make AI benevolent. That may be technically impossible.

"Three months prior to the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI published what would prove to be a prescient blog outlining the firm’s approach to ensuring that its AI models would be safe and beneficent. This goal, known as “alignment”—as in, aligning AI with human values—is nebulous, grand, and perhaps the AI industry’s most foundational promise. The notion is right there in OpenAI’s mission statement to ensure AI “benefits all of humanity” and listed as one of Anthropic’s “primary” goals.

Yet even in the summer of 2022, OpenAI was admitting a sort of defeat: “There is currently no known indefinitely scalable solution to the alignment problem,” three of its researchers wrote in that same blog post, adding that developing one “is likely very difficult.”

If the goal of keeping AI beneficial to mankind sounds rather vague, it is. Four years later, the alignment problem remains unsolved, and for that matter, there isn’t consensus about what the problem even is. Meanwhile, AI bots are autonomously hacking sovereign nations. And sending fake murder tips to police hotlines. And creating aliases to launch phishing campaigns. OpenAI and Anthropic still can’t really tell you what an aligned AI model looks like. But anybody can tell you it doesn’t look like this.

The most influential AI executives and investors in the world fundamentally disagree about the nature of the technology and, more pragmatically, how to make their products safe."

Isaac Newton’s remarkable year — and the plagiarism accusations that followed; Nature, September 7, 2026

Andrew Robinson, Nature; Isaac Newton’s remarkable year — and the plagiarism accusations that followed

"Another controversy was Newton’s famous clash with polymath Robert Hooke, who was also a key figure in the Royal Society in London. At issue was who had first discovered the inverse-square law of gravitation, which states that gravity’s force decreases with the square of distance. Hooke wanted acknowledgement of his relevant efforts in the preface to Principia Mathematica, but Newton refused, telling astronomer Edmond Halley — who was supervising the book’s publication — that he would rather suppress publication of its third volume than give Hooke any credit.

As the authors discuss in a lengthy chapter, Newton had originally told Halley that he would be willing to acknowledge Hooke’s assistance in book III of Principia. But then Hooke lashed out at Newton at the 1686 meeting of the Royal Society, and “once confronted with the charge of plagiarism, whatever goodwill Newton possessed vanished”."

Writers get some plagiarism protection with new AI-cloaking tool; AV Club, October 20, 2026

Dennis Perkins  , AV Club; Writers get some plagiarism protection with new AI-cloaking tool

"With writers everywhere understandably pissed that voracious AI tools are increasingly stealing their original works to train other AI tools, the Writers Guild of America East has some welcome relief. According to a WGAE press release today, all guild members will have access to Cloak, a patent-pending new software which will prevent most AI engines from “ingesting” their content. 

According to the Guild, writers can use Cloak to submit work to producers, agents, actors, and other actual humans who might want to read it, while ensuring no AI snooping agents can pilfer their hard work for nefarious, tech bro, copyright-dodging purposes."

Hundreds Sue Meta for Copyright Infringement, Rejecting Class Action Payouts; Publishers Weekly, October 21, 2026

 Ed Nawotka , Publishers Weekly; Hundreds Sue Meta for Copyright Infringement, Rejecting Class Action Payouts

"Nearly 300 authors filed copyright infringement claims against Meta Platforms on October 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging the company trained its AI models on pirated copies of their books and, more recently, on physical books it bought and scanned without a license.

Rather than join a class action suit, in which a few named plaintiffs sue on behalf of everyone, each author is pursuing an individual claim...

Plaintiffs range in prominence: Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries; Reyna Grande, a memoirist; Mark Spragg, a novelist; Rachel Nuwer, a journalist; Silvia Foti, author of The Nazi’s Granddaughter; and Minxin Pei, a scholar on China.

All of the authors signed up through ClaimsHero, a platform that partnered with Freedman Normand Friedland and Stris & Maher last fall to recruit authors to opt out of the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement and sue on their own. The new suits arrive as the first cases from that effort approach trial.

Suits brought by Chicken Soup for the Soul, by academic publisher Cognella and by Cambronne, the company of journalist John Carreyrou, are among the related cases against Meta scheduled for jury trials beginning May 3, 2027."

Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism; The New York Times, October 13, 2026

 Ségolène Le Stradic, The New York Times; Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism

"A Haitian-Canadian author accused of literary malpractice — including plagiarizing other writers and using artificial intelligence to write his award-winning new novel — has admitted to the plagiarism but denied using A.I. to write parts of the book.

The author, Thélyson Orélien, apologized in a statement on Tuesday for claiming “as my own texts that are not mine” — a reference to recent accusations that he had plagiarized the content of opinion articles and a short story that he published more than a decade ago.

But Mr. Orélien said that it was “slander and heresy” to claim that he had used A.I. to write parts of “It Was Either That or Die,” a novel published this year to initial acclaim.

“I did use research tools here and there, particularly when it came to foreign idioms,” Mr. Orélien said of writing that book, without clarifying what those tools were. “But no sentence in this book was created by a machine,” he added."

‘Man, I loved that’: Trump cheers South Carolina rally attender who hit protester; The Guardian, October 21, 2026

Uwa Ede-Osifo , The Guardian; ‘Man, I loved that’: Trump cheers South Carolina rally attender who hit protester

"Multiple protesters were removed from Donald Trump’s rally at South Carolina’s Clemson University on Wednesday, including one who was apparently punched by a rally attender – to the US president’s delight.

“That was great, man. Wow. Man, I loved that. I watched that,” Trump said. “That was incredible. Wow. That was unbelievable."

‘You are a humanitarian also, sir’: the US feeds Putin with lies as Ukraine’s children take cover and die; The Guardian, October 21, 2026

Andrew Roth, The Guardian; ‘You are a humanitarian also, sir’: the US feeds Putin with lies as Ukraine’s children take cover and die

"They say the first casualty of war is truth. For the Trump administration, the road to peace with Russia now encompasses some extraordinary lies.

Steve Witkoff delivered one as he sat down with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to close the deal on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine with the White House’s strategy of maximum pressure on Kyiv and saccharine flattery of the Kremlin.

“You talk so much about my president, President Trump, being a humanitarian,” said Witkoff, a real-estate mogul who, thanks to being Trump’s friend, is now the US’s senior envoy and diplomat to end the largest European conflict since the second world war. “You are a humanitarian also, sir, and I salute that. I commend you.”

In Putin’s 26 years in power, it is a rare moment when he has been granted that specific honour. Skim through Russia’s past wartime exploits – from the bombing campaigns in Chechnya and Georgia and Syria, to the thousands of Russian citizens jailed for dissent, to the violent deaths of prominent opposition journalists and politicians in barely disguised assassinations and poisonings – and it will be difficult to identify Putin’s credentials as a humanitarian."

Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown That Blindsided Ukraine; Wall Street Journal, October 21, 2026

Alexander Ward, Natalie Andrews and Josh Dawsey, Wall Street Journal; Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown That Blindsided Ukraine

"Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said.

Both Musk and President Trump have expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.

Musk and Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week, two of the people said. One of the people also claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter prior to the decision to throttle Starlink." 

Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy; The New York Times, October 21, 2026

 Eli Tan and Cecilia Kang, The New York Times ; Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy

The penalty, one of the largest levied against the tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

"A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion on Wednesday for deceiving users about its data privacy practices, one of the largest penalties levied against a tech giant.

New Mexico sued Meta in 2021 over a scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, saying the social media company had misled users with its public statements about their data privacy. Last month, after a two-week trial, a jury in the State District Court in Santa Fe ruled against Meta, saying the company had committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Each violation carried a penalty of up to $5,000.

On Wednesday, Judge Francis J. Mathew of the State District Court in Santa Fe issued the landmark penalty. 

The move was another blow to Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as it has racked up court losses over the harms that its social media platforms have caused users. States and consumers have filed thousands of lawsuits over issues such as how Facebook and Instagram endangered child safety, led to social media addiction, used people’s data without their consent and infringed on their privacy."

Canadian news publishers sue Anthropic for copyright infringement; The Globe and Mail, October 19, 2026

ANJA KARADEGLIJA, The Globe and Mail; Canadian news publishers sue Anthropic for copyright infringement

"A coalition of news publishers that includes Canada’s largest newspapers is suing the AI company Anthropic in an Ontario court.

Postmedia, Torstar, The Globe and Mail and The Canadian Press say Anthropic infringed on their copyright by using their content to develop its large language AI model Claude."

Mom Calls Out School for Making an AI-Generated Photo of 6-Year-Old Daughter as an Adult (Exclusive); People,October 20, 2026

Georgia Slater, People; Mom Calls Out School for Making an AI-Generated Photo of 6-Year-Old Daughter as an Adult (Exclusive)

"Anderson also raised concerns about how schools are using AI and whether parents are consenting to using these systems.

“I think the initial concern was ultimately the privacy implications. What software was used? Was it an outside platform? What happens to those pictures after? Did any of us actually consent to that?” she says. “Those are questions I think every parent deserves answers to.”

“Children cannot meaningfully consent to this sort of use; I think our children deserve protection, not only of their image, but of their minds,” Anderson adds."

New AI tool can predict cancer survival by a single patient selfie, study suggests; The Guardian, October 19, 2026

Andrew Gregory, The Guardian; New AI tool can predict cancer survival by a single patient selfie, study suggests

"Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.

The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.

It is one of the most comprehensive demonstrations to date of how AI analysis of a selfie could help assess a patient’s health and potentially guide their medical care, and was trained on data from more than 40 million facial photographs across a range of ethnicities and ages.

Details of the breakthrough were published in the Lancet Digital Health journal."