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Recent philosophy-related news*, and a request…
1. Stephen Kershnar (SUNY Fredonia), whose February 2022 discussion of adult-child sex on the Brain in a Vat podcast sparked viral outrage and led to his removal from campus, has “filed a lawsuit this week in U.S. District Court in Buffalo asking the court to declare that Fredonia’s administrators violated his First Amendment rights by removing him from the classroom after the comments he made on a podcast kicked off a social-media firestorm,” according to the Buffalo News. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has filed the lawsuit on his behalf, Kershnar says.
UPDATE: Here is the lawsuit and the motion for injunction (via Stephen Kershnar).
2. The editors of Philosophy, the flagship journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, have announced the winners of their 2022 Essay Prize, which was on the topic of emotions. They are: Renee Rushing (Florida State) for her “Fitting Diminishment of Anger: A Permissivist Account” and Michael Cholbi for his “Empathy and Psychopaths’ Inability to Grieve.” Mica Rapstine (Michigan) was named the runner-up for his “Political Rage and the Value of Valuing.” The prize of £2500 will be shared between the winners, and all three essays will be published in the October 2023 issue of the journal.
3. Some philosophers are on the new Twitter alternative, Bluesky. Kelly Truelove has a list of those with over 50 followers here. And yes, you can find me (and Daily Nous) on it.
4. One philosopher is among the new members of The American Philosophical Society, a learned society that aims to “honor and engage leading scholars, scientists, and professionals through elected membership and opportunities for interdisciplinary, intellectual fellowship.” It is John Dupré of the University of Exeter, who specializes in philosophy of science. The complete list of new members is here. Professor Dupré joins just 21 other philosophers that have been elected into the society since 1957 (the society was founded in 1743).
5. I’ve decided that some news items I had been planning to include in these summary posts over the summer should instead get their own posts. These are posts about philosophers’ deaths and faculty moves. Regarding the former, it would be wonderful if individuals volunteered to write up memorial notices for philosophers they knew, or whose work they are familiar with, including at least the kinds of information I tend to include in these posts (see here). Recently, philosophers Henry Allison, Richard W. Miller, and Donald Munro have died. If you are interested in writing up a memorial notice for one of them, please email me. Generally, over the summer, these posts and faculty move notices may take longer to appear than usual.
* Over the summer, many news items will be consolidated in posts like this.
The post Philosophy News Summary (updated) first appeared on Daily Nous.
A Federal judge's ruling offered a stern rebuke of the Internet Archive's National Emergency Library and its controlled digital lending service, providing a significant victory for the four publishers that had filed suit.
The post Controlled Digital Lending Takes a Blow in Court appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Meet Minnesota artist Marlene Bourne. Bourne thinks she may be a ghost and finds messages hidden in movies, song lyrics, and overheard conversations. Fox News found Bourne credible enough to base its election fraud claims on a letter Bourne sent to notoriously unreliable Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. — Read the rest
You can sue for anything, even if all you can win from the effort is an unblock and the public learning once again that you're an attention-seeking cockalorum.
— Read the rest"She wants to kill babies but she's still beautiful. You look very beautiful in that dress.
Five pending cases may set new ground rules for use of training materials for AI. Here is what to watch.
The post Some Thoughts on Five Pending AI Litigations — Avoiding Squirrels and Other AI Distractions appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
A California couple is suing a snorkeling company in Maui after their tour group left them high and dry — or in this case, behind and wet.
The experienced snorkelers were on their honeymoon when they booked a day trip with Sail Maui from Lahaina to Lanai. — Read the rest
"We applaud President Biden for upholding the ITC's ruling and holding Apple accountable for infringing the patents that underpin our industry-leading ECG technology," said Priya Abani, CEO of AliveCor. "This decision goes beyond AliveCor and sends a clear message to innovators that the U.S. will protect patents to build and scale new technologies that benefit consumers."In the December ruling, the ITC recommended a limited exclusion order and a cease-and-desist order for Apple Watch models with ECG features. Were it to be enforced, Apple would no longer be able to import new Apple Watch models that support the ECG app. Apple plans to appeal the ITC's decision in a federal courthouse.
In January 2021, after a sleepover with her best friend, 12-year-old Molly Steinsapir got onto an e-bike in her Los Angeles neighborhood, crashed, and died. Who was responsible for the tragedy? Molly’s parents have sued Rad Power Bikes, a popular e-bike manufacturer. Author Peter Flax examines the thorny legal questions at the heart of the lawsuit and illuminates the potential pitfalls of the e-bike industry’s explosive, largely unregulated growth, in part by speaking with other Rad Power Bike users who, like Flax, have experienced worrying equipment problems:
I started talking to my neighbors. During the pandemic, hundreds of teenagers in my community took to the streets on RadRunners and other inexpensive DTC e-bikes with mechanical disc brakes, and I discovered that many of them were having similar issues. Some parents were clued into the problem and were either scheduling regular maintenance with local shops or learning how to make the fixes at home, while others had no idea that their kids were riding heavy electric bikes that couldn’t stop properly without frequent maintenance. I started a thread on Nextdoor with a summary of the problem and how to address it, and soon I was DMing with parents who wanted tips on barrel and caliper adjustments.
One of my neighbors — his name is Ezra Holland and he lives about five blocks from me — says that almost immediately he started noticing disturbing braking issues with the RadRunner he purchased early in 2022. Two or three weeks after he got it, Holland, an experienced road cyclist, noticed that the responsiveness of the brakes was poor, and he decided to remedy the problem by tightening the cables that run from the levers to the calipers. But he learned that this only bought him a few weeks, and that after tightening those cables a few times, one of the calipers clicked into a different position where there was zero braking action. “That is pretty scary,” he says.
Thus began a year of education, vigilance, maintenance, and communication with Rad. Holland now buys pads in bulk on Amazon; he checks and adjusts both calipers every two weeks, always on alert for a failure. He’s experienced the rear brake fail going downhill and is especially concerned about that happening while his 17-year-old is using the bike. Rad has sent him new brakes and new pads, but Holland says that in his ongoing phone calls with the brand, customer service reps and supervisors have told him that other customers aren’t experiencing braking issues like he has. But he alone knows a half dozen friends and neighbors struggling with the same problems. “I just got to a point where I started questioning my own thinking, because they keep saying I’m wrong,” he says. “I start thinking that maybe I’m just making a fuss here for no reason. Which I think is not fair, because I think it’s not true.”
Enlarge / Let's see, you landed on my "Google Ads" space, and with three houses... that will be $1,400. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Hasbro)
It has been expected for some time, but today the Justice Department and eight states are suing Google over its purported domination of the online advertising market. The government has a problem with Google's position in "ad tech," or the tools used to automatically match advertisers with website publishers. To solve it, apparently, the DOJ has told Google it's considering breaking the company up.
“Today’s complaint alleges that Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful conduct to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland. “No matter the industry and no matter the company, the Justice Department will vigorously enforce our antitrust laws to protect consumers, safeguard competition, and ensure economic fairness and opportunity for all.”
The press release gives a quick rundown of the DOJ's list of Google’s anticompetitive conduct:
In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted that he was about to take Tesla private at $420 a share, sending the company's stock into turmoil for weeks. The general presumption was that he was fooling around and making a weed joke for his social media followers. — Read the rest
Enlarge / A computer-generated gavel hovers over a laptop. (credit: Getty Images)
Some artists have begun waging a legal fight against the alleged theft of billions of copyrighted images used to train AI art generators and reproduce unique styles without compensating artists or asking for consent.
A group of artists represented by the Joseph Saveri Law Firm has filed a US federal class-action lawsuit in San Francisco against AI-art companies Stability AI, Midjourney, and DeviantArt for alleged violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, violations of the right of publicity, and unlawful competition.
The artists taking action—Sarah Andersen, Kelly McKernan, Karla Ortiz—"seek to end this blatant and enormous infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work," according to the official text of the complaint filed to the court.
Enlarge (credit: ANGELA WEISS / Contributor | AFP)
The weekend delivered some disappointing news for laid-off Twitter employees who launched a class-action lawsuit in November against the social media platform immediately after CEO Elon Musk kicked off the first round of layoffs at the company. On Friday, a US district judge ruled that five plaintiffs who proposed the class action would instead have to enter individual arbitration to pursue their claims that Twitter violated employment laws.
This doesn’t mean the class-action lawsuit has completely fallen apart, though. US District Judge James Donato wrote in his order that while these five employees waived their right to sue by signing optional arbitration agreements under Twitter’s prior owner, three other plaintiffs later added to the lawsuit said they opted out. Those employees still have the right to pursue the proposed class action, which alleges sex and disability discrimination during layoffs and argues that Twitter still owes proper severance payments and lost wages.
“After Twitter filed its motion, plaintiffs amended their complaint to add three named plaintiffs who say that they opted out of Twitter’s arbitration agreement,” Donato wrote.
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