Isaiah Poritz

Judge Alsup’s Passion Informs Sharp Focus of Legal Opinions William Alsup was camping in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains when he looked up to see massive thunderheads and broken white clouds forming.

He's maybe one of the most important judges in the world of tech. And he's overseen some of the biggest challenges to the Trump administration.

Here's my profile of Judge William Alsup, who plans to fully retire Dec. 31:

Judge Overseeing Biggest Tech, Trump Cases Plans to Go Inactive William H. Alsup, the San Francisco federal judge who for a quarter century has presided over legal battles that shaped Silicon Valley’s tech industry and has overseen major challenges to President Do...

US District Judge William Alsup, who has presided over Silicon Valley’s biggest legal battles since he was appointed in 1999, said today he will likely assume inactive status by the end of the year.

He is an institution on the ND Cal bench. news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-tel...

Federal Worker Firings Partially Blocked by California Judge (1) A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to pause the mass firings of some of the government’s newest employees as he prepares to rule on whether the memos underpinning the terminations are il...

Judge William Alsup in San Francisco this afternoon blocked the Trump administration from firing some probationary federal workers.

That includes workers at NPS, NSF, BLM, and the VA, but not all agencies. "Probationary workers are the lifeblood of our government," Alsup said.

WhatsApp Wins NSO Spyware Case Over Hacking of 1,400 Phones (1) Meta Platforms Inc.'s WhatsApp won its long-running legal case against the Israeli spyware developer NSO Group Technologies Ltd. after a judge on Friday ruled that NSO’s deployment of its Pegasus malw...

It took just over 5 years, but WhatsApp is now victorious in its lawsuit against Israeli intelligence firm NSO Group, maker of the notorious Pegasus spying software used by governments around the world.

A trial on damages is set for March next year in ND Cal.

ByteDance Whistleblower Abused Judicial Process, Faked Evidence A ByteDance Inc. whistleblower suing the Chinese tech conglomerate for wrongful firing engaged in bad faith conduct, abused the judicial system, and fabricated a key witness in the case, a San Francis...

NEW: A ByteDance whistleblower who exposed the CCP's backdoor access to company data is being sanction by a federal court for lying in his deposition and fabricating a key witness.

Yintao "Roger" Yu engaged in "obstructive and mendacious" conduct in his wrongful firing suit against the company.

Full opinion here: aboutblaw.com/bgv9

AI Content Moderation Protected by Platform Shield, Judge Says Elon Musk’s X Corp. succeeded in fending off an account suspension lawsuit on Monday when a California court ruled that the tech industry’s legal shield known as Section 230 protects AI-based content ...

Interesting opinion out yesterday from Judge Orrick in ND Cal.

He says AI-based content moderation systems used by X are protected by Section 230. “No court has held otherwise," he says.

SCOTUS has contemplated AI content moderation but provided no guidance, he says.

The 9th Circuit will stop at nothing to administer justice lol. The San Francisco tsunami alert came in the middle of oral arguments I was watching this morning.

Judge Bress: "Welcome to San Francisco."

"That's a first for us with the tsunami warning, but why don't we go ahead."

Supreme Court Social Media Battles Fueled by Brash Tech Lobby With Meta Platforms Inc., X Corp. and TikTok Inc. among its members, NetChoice has emerged as Silicon Valley’s litigation powerhouse. The Washington-based lobby’s revenues swelled from $3 million to $...

Our profile of NetChoice, the small but aggressive tech industry lobby shop with two cases before the US Supreme Court.

With about a dozen employees, it's punching far above its weight in influencing internet policy through litigation:

Snapchat doesn't get Section 230 protection in a lawsuit claiming the app connected kids with drug dealers who sold them fentanyl-laced counterfeit pills that caused deadly overdoses.

Here's a ruling from the LA County Superior Court: aboutblaw.com/bb9O

AI’s Billion-Dollar Copyright Battle Starts With a Font Designer A handful of lawsuits assert the budding AI industry has unfairly vacuumed up the creative work of authors, artists, and programmers to train the chatbots and image generators that will ultimately rep...

Matthew Butterick has been called a Luddite. Others applaud him for leading the fight to hold AI accountable.

Here's the story of how a font designer and lawyer found himself at the center of a battle that may alter the foundation and future of the AI industry.

Judge to Narrow Sarah Silverman’s AI Copyright Case Against Meta A federal judge said at a Thursday hearing in San Francisco he would likely dismiss large portions of Sarah Silverman’s copyright infringement lawsuit claiming Meta Platforms Inc.'s generative AI mo...

The judge overseeing Sarah Silverman’s AI copyright case against Meta was prepared to dismiss most of her claims at a hearing today in San Francisco.

But he was far more friendly to her core infringement theory: that Meta used pirated books to train its large language model.

Social Media Youth Addiction Lawsuit Judge Is Skeptical Referee Hundreds of lawsuits alleging that TikTok, Instagram and other Big Tech social media platforms have sparked a child mental health emergency are in the hands of a path-breaking California federal judge...

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who is overseeing hundreds of youth addiction suits against Big Tech, is a veteran of high profile tech disputes, having overseen the Epic Games v. Apple antitrust trial.

One thing is for sure: She has zero tolerance for legal gamesmanship. My profile:

List of the comments:

OpenAI: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...
Microsoft: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...
Meta: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...
Stability AI: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...
Google: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...
Anthropic: regulations.gov/comment/COLC...

Top AI Firms Tell Copyright Office Model Training is Fair Use AI companies facing a flurry of copyright infringement lawsuits told the US Copyright Office that scraping enormous volumes of text and images to train large language models without permission is lega...

The US Copyright Office has released almost ten thousand comments it received for its generative AI-copyright inquiry.

All the major AI firms being sued for infringement have filed comments, providing one of the most comprehensive pictures yet of where the industry stands on copyright issues.

The full 89-page ruling is here: aboutblaw.com/baZe

Social Media Addiction Suits Advance in California State Court The companies behind Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube failed to completely escape hundreds of lawsuits on Friday claiming the social media platforms cause addiction and harm to child...

Big Section 230 news to end the week: Hundreds of personal injury lawsuits claiming TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube cause addiction and contribute to mental health harms among adolescents can partially advance in California state court. news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-tel...

Bipartisan Senate group today circulated a draft of a national right-of-publicity bill: www.coons.senate.gov/imo/media/do...

It would include post-mortem rights, which varies across existing state right-of-publicity laws.