#lawsuit against big companies

[coochiequeens]

A man who wore prosthetic breasts and was asked to "tone down" his make up is crying victim because his boss called him his by legal name before he started the legal process to change his sex.

By Amy Hamm July 1, 2024

A trans-identified male in the Maine-et-Loire region of France has been awarded €7,000 in compensation after a court determined he was the victim of “gender discrimination” by his former employer.

Syntia Dersoir, 22, had filed a complaint against the McDonald’s franchise where he worked after management referred to him by his legal, male name and asked him to remove the makeup he wore during his shift.

Dersoir began working at a McDonald’s located in Segré-en-Anjou Bleu beginning from September 2022. He was hired under his birth name and was legally registered as a male at the time. In early 2023, he began wearing makeup and prosthetic breasts to work, and, by the spring of 2023, he obtained an alteration of his identification documents.

Dersoir alleged that the discrimination happened over several weeks in 2023 after he began wearing his prosthetic breasts and makeup to work. Management at the McDonald’s branch where Dersoir was employed continued to refer to him by the name he had been hired under, his male name, despite his requests to be called by his feminine preferred name.

The man also alleged that management instructed other staff to also refer to him by his male name.

According to his legal complaint, Dersoir detailed that during one shift, when he was wearing lipstick, a manager asked him to leave or to go to a nearby store and purchase makeup remover. In March of 2023, Dersoir obtained a note from his doctor allowing him to take sick-leave, citing the stress he was suffering from the discrimination he had been subjected to.

Dersoir complained to the French Labour Inspectorate, and was provided a lawyer by the French Democratic Confederation of Labour (CFDT), a conglomorate of national labour unions. He also filed a criminal complaint against the management at the McDonald’s where he had been working.

In response to Dersoir’s allegations, the lawyer representing McDonald’s, Maître Pascal Landais, claimed that management had only ever asked Dersoir to follow the workplace makeup policy that applied to all staff.

“We asked him to tone down his make-up, not to remove it,” she clarified. The McDonald’s policy described that all employees should wear “light and discreet makeup” only for both uniform and hygiene purposes.

French media has run sympathetic stories on Dersoir, profiling him as a victim of discrimination. Some outlets are criticizing the managers at the fast-food chain, which uses the slogan “come as you are” in the country. One outlet suggested that Dersoir’s bosses had “trampled on” the sentiment behind the slogan and are “guilty of moral harassment and discrimination.” 

On June 24, the employment tribunal of Angers ruled in Dersoir’s favor, ordering the franchise to pay him €7,000 in compensation. Dersoir’s lawyer was excited about the verdict, noting that it set a precedent and that other “victims” may now be able to come forward.

“As soon as a large brand is convicted … it necessarily provokes a discussion. This is a first to condemn McDonald’s, which presents itself from the angle of tolerance, for precisely the opposite,” the lawyer said.

Charlotte Duval, the Deputy Secretary General of the Maine-et-Loire Services Union, similarly praised the decision, stating: “This ruling is very positive … it is the recognition of [Dersoir’s] victimization. It may also open the door to other people who are experiencing this kind of situation to talk about it.”

Dersoir is in fact the second trans-identified male in Europe to take legal action against a local McDonald’s for “gender discrimination,” with the other incident occurring in Germany.

One day after Dersoir won his case, a trans-identified male in Berlin appeared at the Berlin Labor Court after filing a case against the Central Station franchise where he had been employed.

Kylie Divon, 27, is seeking compensation for “gender identity discrimination” after being denied access to the changing room reserved for female employees.

[dreamsweet]

i don’t know if it’s just me but the insane push for ozempic and wegovy for use in non-diabetic people being on the heels of high profile lawsuits regarding the opioid crisis is so strange? these drugs aren’t even facing the same scrutiny the covid vaccine did because they promise an “easy way” to lose weight even though you have to be on them the rest of your life and there’s already crazy side effects people have been having

[mxbitters]

i think i just met a cool business major for the first time ever holy shit

[procrastinatingattorney]

while its like "yeah boycott disney for more news of them being comically evil of course" its also like...... you haven't been avoiding it before when there's a literal genocide they're supporting??

[odinsblog]

That last tweet sums it up perfectly: “They realize COVID isn’t over. But while they may not take precautions to protect your health, they will to protect their money.”

Pretending that COVID is over is one of the worst things our government has done to us, but COVID isn’t over. It’s not even close to being over. If it were, insurance companies and big businesses wouldn’t be going through such extreme measures to protect themselves against coronavirus-related lawsuits. And you just know if a case went all the way up, this illegitimate, morally bankrupt & corrupt Supreme Court would rule in favor of big business having no responsibility to protect their customers.

In our ass backwards society, antivaxxers and anti-maskers practically can’t be barred from going everywhere they want, and businesses probably won’t be held liable for conditions that expose people to dangerous diseases (and the antivaxxers who love spreading diseases).

Anyway, I got all my scheduled vaccines and I still mask up in public. 😷

[probablyasocialecologist]

It was recently revealed that agrochemical giant Monsanto runs an “intelligence fusion center” to compile information on and conduct disinformation and harassment campaigns against journalists and activists who threaten the company’s financial interests through their research or organizing. “Fusion center” is the same term the FBI uses for its counterterrorism centers. In just one example, Monsanto targeted a Reuters journalist investigating the carcinogenic effects of the company’s star product, glyphosate, or Roundup. Their campaign included coordinating “third parties” to post negative reviews of the book, hiring scientists to cast doubt on the book’s conclusions, pressuring the journalist’s editors at Reuters “very strongly every chance we get” in the hope “she gets reassigned,” covering up their financial relationship with scientists claiming their product was safe, accusing the journalist of being a “pro-organic capitalist” activist, as though there were big bucks to be made in opposing some of the world’s largest chemical companies, and contracting search engine optimization (SEO) experts to make sure that their alternative facts, their negative reviews, and their various slanders of said journalist would appear in search engines above results showing how Roundup causes cancer.

The above case illustrates how corporations can orchestrate subtle campaigns of censorship, often without revealing their hand. In 2020, an academic publisher abruptly canceled the publication of a book that showed how Canadian mining companies benefited from the genocide in Guatemala, moving in to stake their claims sometimes even before the death squads had left. The publishers expressed fears of lawsuits for defamation, though they refused to point out what part of the book, which received favorable peer reviews, might be considered defamation. And in Canada, the RCMP spied on the release event of a book against mining.

Peter Gelderloos, The Solutions are Already Here

[mariacallous]

In a product demo last week, OpenAI showcased a synthetic but expressive voice for ChatGPT called “Sky” that reminded many viewers of the flirty AI girlfriend Samantha played by Scarlett Johansson in the 2013 film Her. One of those viewers was Johansson herself, who promptly hired legal counsel and sent letters to OpenAI demanding an explanation, according to a statement released later. In response, the company on Sunday halted use of Sky and published a blog post insisting that it “is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice.”

Johansson’s statement, released Monday, said she was “shocked, angered, and in disbelief” by OpenAI’s demo using a voice she called “so eerily similar to mine that my closest friends and news outlets could not tell the difference.” Johansson revealed that she had turned down a request last year from the company’s CEO, Sam Altman, to voice ChatGPT and that he had reached out again two days before last week’s demo in an attempt to change her mind.

It’s unclear if Johansson plans to take additional legal action against OpenAI. Her counsel on the dispute with OpenAI is John Berlinski, a partner at Los Angeles law firm Bird Marella, who represented her in a lawsuit against Disney claiming breach of contract, settled in 2021. (OpenAI’s outside counsel working on this matter is Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati partner David Kramer, who is based in Silicon Valley and has defended Google and YouTube on copyright infringement cases.) If Johansson does pursue a claim against OpenAI, some intellectual property experts suspect it could focus on “right of publicity” laws, which protect people from having their name or likeness used without authorization.

James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University, believes Johansson could have a good case. “You can't imitate someone else's distinctive voice to sell stuff,” he says. OpenAI declined to comment for this story, but yesterday released a statement from Altman claiming Sky “was never intended to resemble” the star, adding, “We are sorry to Ms. Johansson that we didn’t communicate better.”

Johansson’s dispute with OpenAI drew notice in part because the company is embroiled in a number of lawsuits brought by artists and writers. They allege that the company breached copyright by using creative work to train AI models without first obtaining permission. But copyright law would be unlikely to play a role for Johansson, as one cannot copyright a voice. “It would be right of publicity,” says Brian L. Frye, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Law focusing on intellectual property. “She’d have no other claims.”

Several lawyers WIRED spoke with said a case Bette Midler brought against Ford Motor Company and its advertising agency Young & Rubicam in the late 1980s provides a legal precedent. After turning down the ad agency’s offers to perform one of her songs in a car commercial, Midler sued when the company hired one of her backup singers to impersonate her sound. “Ford was basically trying to profit from using her voice,” says Jennifer E. Rothman, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who wrote a 2018 book called The Right of Publicity: Privacy Reimagined for a Public World. “Even though they didn't literally use her voice, they were instructing someone to sing in a confusingly similar manner to Midler.”

It doesn’t matter whether a person’s actual voice is used in an imitation or not, Rothman says, only whether that audio confuses listeners. In the legal system, there is a big difference between imitation and simply recording something “in the style” of someone else. “No one owns a style,” she says.

Other legal experts don’t see what OpenAI did as a clear-cut impersonation. “I think that any potential ‘right of publicity’ claim from Scarlett Johansson against OpenAI would be fairly weak given the only superficial similarity between the ‘Sky’ actress' voice and Johansson, under the relevant case law,” Colorado law professor Harry Surden wrote on X on Tuesday. Frye, too, has doubts. “OpenAI didn’t say or even imply it was offering the real Scarlett Johansson, only a simulation. If it used her name or image to advertise its product, that would be a right-of-publicity problem. But merely cloning the sound of her voice probably isn’t,” he says.

But that doesn’t mean OpenAI is necessarily in the clear. “Juries are unpredictable,” Surden added.

Frye is also uncertain how any case might play out, because he says right of publicity is a fairly “esoteric” area of law. There are no federal right-of-publicity laws in the United States, only a patchwork of state statutes. “It’s a mess,” he says, although Johansson could bring a suit in California, which has fairly robust right-of-publicity laws.

OpenAI’s chances of defending a right-of-publicity suit could be weakened by a one-word post on X—“her”—from Sam Altman on the day of last week’s demo. It was widely interpreted as a reference to Her and Johansson’s performance. “It feels like AI from the movies,” Altman wrote in a blog post that day.

To Grimmelmann at Cornell, those references weaken any potential defense OpenAI might mount claiming the situation is all a big coincidence. “They intentionally invited the public to make the identification between Sky and Samantha. That's not a good look,” Grimmelmann says. “I wonder whether a lawyer reviewed Altman's ‘her’ tweet.” Combined with Johansson’s revelations that the company had indeed attempted to get her to provide a voice for its chatbots—twice over—OpenAI’s insistence that Sky is not meant to resemble Samantha is difficult for some to believe.

“It was a boneheaded move,” says David Herlihy, a copyright lawyer and music industry professor at Northeastern University. “A miscalculation.”

Other lawyers see OpenAI’s behavior as so manifestly goofy they suspect the whole scandal might be a deliberate stunt—that OpenAI judged that it could trigger controversy by going forward with a sound-alike after Johansson declined to participate but that the attention it would receive from seemed to outweigh any consequences. “What’s the point? I say it’s publicity,” says Purvi Patel Albers, a partner at the law firm Haynes Boone who often takes intellectual property cases. “The only compelling reason—maybe I’m giving them too much credit—is that everyone’s talking about them now, aren’t they?”

[thefugitivesaint]

If you've been a frequent, repeat visitor to this tumblr and you actually follow my "source" links, you'll know that many (if not most) of those links refer you back to the Internet Archive. I spend many hours combing through the archive for images I find interesting and aesthetically pleasing from artist's whose work I enjoy. I then transfer that labor, freely, into "content" for your viewing pleasure (or so I hope). If you were not aware of this, the book industry (which is basically controlled by 5 companies) brought a suit against the Internet Archive in 2020 that claimed that the Open Library program offered by the IA was financially damaging to the publishers themselves through "copyright infringement." During the COVID-19 lockdowns, the IA created the 'National Emergency Library' which removed lending restrictions on lent digital material allowing for expanded access to books at a time when public libraries were, in many cases, not operating (or operating at a very limited capacity). In response to the NEL, four book publishers sued the Internet Archive claiming that CDL (controlled digital lending) was not an example of fair use and that offering books without wait restrictions was a violation of their copyrights. The argument made by the publisher's was only partially aimed at the NEL, the ACTUAL target of their lawsuit was with the process of CDL itself. A lower court agreed and the Internet Archive appealed. The case was taken to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit only to have that court affirm the lower court rulings on a unanimous decision (with some seriously questionable reasoning involved).

What does this mean for the Internet Archive? What about public libraries in general? Read the piece and the links provided in the piece. I don't do in-depth analysis here. I just refer you (dear reader) to smarter people who are putting in the work. I really just dig pictures. Pretty pictures. *Homer Simpson drooling* Seriously though, if the topic interests you, follow the links and do yourself some learning.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

CDA 230 bans Facebook from blocking interoperable tools

I'm touring my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me TONIGHT (May 2) in WINNIPEG, then TOMORROW (May 3) in CALGARY, then SATURDAY (May 4) in VANCOUVER, then onto Tartu, Estonia, and beyond!

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the most widely misunderstood technology law in the world, which is wild, given that it's only 26 words long!

https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act/

CDA 230 isn't a gift to big tech. It's literally the only reason that tech companies don't censor on anything we write that might offend some litigious creep. Without CDA 230, there'd be no #MeToo. Hell, without CDA 230, just hosting a private message board where two friends get into serious beef could expose to you an avalanche of legal liability.

CDA 230 is the only part of a much broader, wildly unconstitutional law that survived a 1996 Supreme Court challenge. We don't spend a lot of time talking about all those other parts of the CDA, but there's actually some really cool stuff left in the bill that no one's really paid attention to:

https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/supreme-court-decision-striking-down-cda

One of those little-regarded sections of CDA 230 is part (c)(2)(b), which broadly immunizes anyone who makes a tool that helps internet users block content they don't want to see.

Enter the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and their client, Ethan Zuckerman, an internet pioneer turned academic at U Mass Amherst. Knight has filed a lawsuit on Zuckerman's behalf, seeking assurance that Zuckerman (and others) can use browser automation tools to block, unfollow, and otherwise modify the feeds Facebook delivers to its users:

https://knightcolumbia.org/documents/gu63ujqj8o

If Zuckerman is successful, he will set a precedent that allows toolsmiths to provide internet users with a wide variety of automation tools that customize the information they see online. That's something that Facebook bitterly opposes.

Facebook has a long history of attacking startups and individual developers who release tools that let users customize their feed. They shut down Friendly Browser, a third-party Facebook client that blocked trackers and customized your feed:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/once-again-facebook-using-privacy-sword-kill-independent-innovation

Then in in 2021, Facebook's lawyers terrorized a software developer named Louis Barclay in retaliation for a tool called "Unfollow Everything," that autopiloted your browser to click through all the laborious steps needed to unfollow all the accounts you were subscribed to, and permanently banned Unfollow Everywhere's developer, Louis Barclay:

https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-everything-cease-desist.html

Now, Zuckerman is developing "Unfollow Everything 2.0," an even richer version of Barclay's tool.

This rich record of legal bullying gives Zuckerman and his lawyers at Knight something important: "standing" – the right to bring a case. They argue that a browser automation tool that helps you control your feeds is covered by CDA(c)(2)(b), and that Facebook can't legally threaten the developer of such a tool with liability for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or the other legal weapons it wields against this kind of "adversarial interoperability."

Writing for Wired, Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University speaks to a variety of experts – including my EFF colleague Sophia Cope – who broadly endorse the very clever legal tactic Zuckerman and Knight are bringing to the court.

I'm very excited about this myself. "Adversarial interop" – modding a product or service without permission from its maker – is hugely important to disenshittifying the internet and forestalling future attempts to reenshittify it. From third-party ink cartridges to compatible replacement parts for mobile devices to alternative clients and firmware to ad- and tracker-blockers, adversarial interop is how internet users defend themselves against unilateral changes to services and products they rely on:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

Now, all that said, a court victory here won't necessarily mean that Facebook can't block interoperability tools. Facebook still has the unilateral right to terminate its users' accounts. They could kick off Zuckerman. They could kick off his lawyers from the Knight Institute. They could permanently ban any user who uses Unfollow Everything 2.0.

Obviously, that kind of nuclear option could prove very unpopular for a company that is the very definition of "too big to care." But Unfollow Everything 2.0 and the lawsuit don't exist in a vacuum. The fight against Big Tech has a lot of tactical diversity: EU regulations, antitrust investigations, state laws, tinkerers and toolsmiths like Zuckerman, and impact litigation lawyers coming up with cool legal theories.

Together, they represent a multi-front war on the very idea that four billion people should have their digital lives controlled by an unaccountable billionaire man-child whose major technological achievement was making a website where he and his creepy friends could nonconsensually rate the fuckability of their fellow Harvard undergrads.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/02/kaiju-v-kaiju/#cda-230-c-2-b

Image: D-Kuru (modified): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MSI_Bravo_17_(0017FK-007)-USB-C_port_large_PNr%C2%B00761.jpg

Minette Lontsie (modified): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Facebook_Headquarters.jpg

CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

[reasonsforhope]

I keep seeing news about charges and what-not being piled onto Trump, and all I can keep saying to myself is "but is he going to experience one (1) single consequence of this?" So... is there any iota of a hope that something could come of this circus that will make the slightest ding in his capacity to run in 2024?

So, the answer to this is a bit complicated - partly because there are a lot of factors and a long time scale, and partly because it depends on how you define "consequences"

If you mean "any serious consequences at all," good news, that has already happened!

If you need to catch up on the whole "cases against Trump" situation, read this: The Cases Against Trump: A Guide. Via The Atlantic, November 1, 2023

1. The New York Fraud Case

A judge has ordered that the Trump Organization must be dissolved in a ruling that is being widely described as a "corporate death penalty." This is an incredibly rare ruling, and a huge deal.

The details will take a while to hash out - currently, Trump's kids are in the middle of testifying in a trial for this fraud case, but it's not to determine whether he's guilty - only the extent of the damages and the outline of how the org will be dissolved. It's extraordinarily unlikely Trump will be able to get out of this one. And high up on the list of things he's probably going to lose? Trump Tower itself.

Now, admittedly, this actually isn't because of, you know, the whole attempted coup thing. It's because the Trump Organization's finances were built on decades of absolutely massive fraud - including the very wealth that Trump lied about in order to explain why people should vote for him.

Oh, and let's not forget that in this case, Donald Trump spent weeks absolutely shit talking the judge to try to "poison the jury pool" (make sure that people on the jury would go in with a negative opinion of the judge already). ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT THERE IS NO JURY IN THIS CASE because his attorneys forgot to request one, so the sole arbiter of his fate is the judge he just spent weeks absolutely slandering in an attempt to win over the jury! And all else aside, judges very infamously do not like being insulted

Oh yeah, and the prosecutors are seeking a permanent ban on Trump doing business in the state of New York

Fraud trial explainer (New York Times, no paywall) Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

2. 14th Amendment Lawsuit

Okay so I did all the other sections first, then came back and wrote this one. It's shorter because of that, and because this issue is a lot newer and doesn't have nearly as much legal stuff or investigations going on yet.

What's happening here is that several states have people who are filing petitions and lawsuits to try to get Trump taken off the ballot for the 2024 election, under the 14th Amendment, which was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War and bars anyone who has committed insurrection from holding office.

So far (as of the first week of November, there are cases to kick Trump off the ballot in about 20 states. Oral arguments have started in Colorado and Minnesota.

Basically, my take on the short version is that this could happen, but we'll have to wait at least a few more months to see how likely it is.

However, even if it does go through, Trump would only be kicked off the ballot on a state by state basis. So, if Colorado kicks him off the ballot, he'll still be on the ballot in the other 49 states, and the process would have to be repeated in each one. Still, even if it was just one state, that could be a big deal, voting-wise - and if he gets kicked off the ballot in more than a couple states, he might not end up being the Republican nominee anymore, given the size of that disadvantage.

Correction, 6 min after posting: It's expected that if Trump DOES get kicked off the ballot in any state, the Supreme Court will hear the case and weigh in. The decision would be binding for all states. Supreme Court probably unlikely to ban Trump from the ballot since they cheated their way into a conservative supermajority and 3 of them are Trump appointees

Explainer: Trial to kick Trump off the ballot in Colorado Explainer: Strengths and weaknesses of cases to kick Trump off the ballot Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x

3. The Classified Documents Case

So, the fraud case above is actually a civil case (that is, not a criminal case). The classified documents case, however, is a criminal case, and it's arguably the one most likely to lead to legal and political consequences for Trump, in large part because everything's very clear cut.

Like, Trump has literally admitted he retained classified documents on purpose - which is super against the law! Trump is just arguing a variety of nonexistent technicalities for why that law doesn't apply to him. But he did it! We know he did! We have photos of classified documents stored in the Mar-a-Lago bathroom! We have testimony from the employees he ordered to secretly move the boxes before the FBI probe. We have records proving he asked Mar-a-Lago's IT guy about erasing the surveillance footage of the move! We even have proof that a) he stole nuclear secrets, and b) a recording of him waving around the "plans of attack," bragging about them to other people!

All super damning.

(Post continues below, at length; sources at the end of each section.)

And another thing that's extremely key: Trump is charged in this case with violating the Espionage Act. And the Espionage Act explicitly does not give a single fuck about why you retained documents, or whether there's any proof you intended to show anyone. Any and all hoarding of national defense documents is illegal under the Espionage Act - EVEN if they're not classified, which is great since "I declassified them with my brain" (not how it works) is Trump's main defense here.

So, this case is basically the surest criminal conviction - and the most likely to have electoral consequences. Partly because Republicans, as few issues as they care about, generally are security hawks - "Trump stole nuclear secrets and showed them to people" is giving Repubs pause in a way that the insurrection just isn't, probably esp in the military and ex-military demographic.

Trump could also serve jail time if convicted in this case (which again he probably will be).

However, violating the Espionage Act doesn't ban you from running for or holding public office, which imho seems like a pretty major oversight.

Classified documents case explainer Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

4. The Insurrection

So, this is where things get really complicated, because the case is complicated and so many things about it are so unprecedented.

There are two different cases here: a criminal case in the state of Georgia and a federal criminal case (that's the one run by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is also running the classified documents case).

I definitely can't summarize all of this huge situation here, but here's some key points re: whether there will be legal consequences:

I actually have a pretty high level of trust in Jack Smith, in large part due to his record: he's serving as special prosecutor while on sabbatical from his normal job of prosecuting war crimes at the Hague. And he's specifically been prosecuting war crimes from the wars and genocides in former Yugoslavia in the 80s and 90s. That specifically gives me a lot of confidence because - as someone whose family is from the region - I think it's a really strong demonstration of his abilities. It means he has a lot of experience prosecuting high-level government and army officials, in a complicated, multi-year, multi-war conflict, where there were way more sides and factions than we have, along with way less documentary evidence (bc 90s), and a lot of history of political corruption and coverups. I find that really reassuring, especially the "experience prosecuting high-level government and army officials" thing in a situation with, shall we say, extremely contested and variable national leadership, during the course of multiple civil wars

"Schwendiman compared it to prosecuting Kosovo’s equivalent of Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton. “If you indict these people, you’re saying, ‘The founding fathers of Kosovo have committed atrocities, and I’m ready to prove it, in an independent court, with independent judges and rules that apply to everyone.’” And that was Kosovo's founding president. So yeah, I think Jack Smith can handle Trump. Source

Okay now to the points you might have actually heard of lol

The Georgia case is a state level case, which means that no matter what, Trump can't pardon himself in that case

The Georgia case is also charging Trump under the RICO act - aka the rackeeting act, usually used to prosecute organized crime. And convictions under the Georgia RICO Act come with MANDATORY jail time

I think the evidence here is pretty compelling, see: the congressional Jan 6 hearings

There is a pretty high chance that, in a massively unusual step, filming will be allowed inside the trial/hearings. This is HUGE, especially because Trump supporters would actually be watching it too (unlike, generally, the congressional hearings), and that evidence all laid out looks really goddamn bad

Also, if yesterday's fraud trial testimony is any indication, Trump is likely to end up yelling and screaming at the judge, etc. in the trial, which is going to look wildly unprofessional

The federal trial will be taking place in Washington DC, where it should be very doable to get a jury that isn't stuffed with Trump cronies (unlike, say, if the case was brought in Florida)

Trump has attempted witness tampering on a lot of occasions, and tried to poison the jury pool, and he got caught so now he's under a gag order that restricts what he can say re: both of those.

Important note: Jack Smith has brought the narrower of two possible cases against Trump. He's filed against Trump with several conspiracy charges, including "conspiracy against rights," which was historically created to prosecute the KKK for racial terrorism

However, Jack Smith did not actually charge Trump with inciting an insurrection. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, but it mostly boils down to the fact that "inciting an insurrection" is significantly less objectively provable, in this case, esp since "insurrection" isn't actually defined in the relevant law

So, Jack Smith has traded a broader case (the one including insurrection charges) for a case that is much simpler and quicker to argue, and that he's sure he can prove

Jack Smith absolutely knows that he has an effective deadline of November 2024 (aka the next election, because a Republican president would shut down the investigation immediately), and he's planning accordingly

Look. Federal prosecutors - and the prosecutors in Georgia and the other NY case, for bribery of porn star Stormy Daniels - would not be bringing these charges if they did not feel sure they would win. Democracy aside, if any of them lose their cases? That is almost guaranteed to end their careers. So they have a very vested self-interest in only taking on what they are absolutely sure they can prove

The judge in the federal Jan 6 trial is the judge who has given the harshest sentences against any of the Jan 6 rioters, and she is the only judge to have sentenced rioters to more time than the prosecutors asked for

Jan 6 charges against Trump, explainer Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

A Very Hot Take: It might not be a bad thing that Trump is still allowed to run

So, this is my personal take on the situation - I acknowledge that it's a very hot take on the Left, and that I might well be wrong about this. I might be totally misreading the field here. But I genuinely do think that Trump being the Republican candidate for president could be a good thing, and in fact I'll genuinely worry significantly more if Trump isn't the Republican nominee for president.

The why all basically comes down to this: I think Trump will be easier to defeat in the 2024 general election.

Again, look, I may totally be misreading this, and that would be really bad, but here are my thoughts:

Trump is super popular with the far right base - but that same strength makes him a huge liability in the general election. You CAN'T WIN a presidential election without the support of independents and moderates (including "moderates"). This is a really common problem for Republican candidates, actually: the more they move to the right to win the core Republican base, the more they risk hurting their chances in the general election

Independents and moderate Republicans - again, who Trump needs to win with to get the presidency - are significantly more likely to care about, you know, all the stealing classified documents and committing treason things

I can't think of anything that will guarantee people on the left get their asses to the polls better than "Vote or Trump is president again." A lot of the time, with someone who hasn't been president before, voters can lie to themselves and go "Oh it won't be that bad once he's in office," esp among moderates. But now we have proof that isn't the case!

Look, I don't know if Trump is getting dementia or what, but his faculties really do appear to be declining. They'll likely be significantly worse in another year - his speeches are already way worse than there were in 2016. He just can't track what he's saying well enough anymore. This makes it harder for him to make his case to the electorate

He's also the only actual Repub candidate that's about the same age as Biden - which will do a lot to stop the Right from using Biden's age as an effective weapon to get a Repub in office

Honestly, my biggest worry is that DeSantis will be the Republican nominee. I am way more scared of Biden vs. DeSantis than Biden vs. Trump.

Reasons I would absolutely rather Biden face Trump than DeSantis include: DeSantis is way younger and he has way less baggage. Because he hasn't been president yet, voters can do that self-delusion thing that he won't be that bad - that he'll be better than Trump - and that unlike Trump's, his plans will work. People on the left and in the center often don't know who he is yet, and there's not such a huge current of electoral energy to get them to the polls. And most of all - unlike Trump, DeSantis is actually smart. And as part of that, he is capable of a deep and absolutely premeditated cruelty that Trump just doesn't have the attention span or the patience for. Biggest example: actually literally kidnapping undocumented immigrants and sending them to Martha's Vineyard, and all the awfulness that went along with that, including the part where he started a goddamned trend.

Nikki Haley I'm less worried about because her core support base - conservatives - is also the country's core support base for misogyny. I hate to be glad about misogyny, but it genuinely would make it harder for her to turn out ultraconservative votes, especially evangelicals.

Sources: x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x, x

So, yeah, all told I don't actually have "Trump still gets to run for president" super high on the list of things I'm worried/mad about.

Also worth saying that we don't want just being indicted (aka charged with a crime) to disqualify people from running for office, because then all Republicans (or anyone) would have to do to disqualify an opposing candidate is find literally any excuse to charge them with something

But back to your original question! I genuinely DO think he'll face legal consequences, and I genuinely DO think he'll probably face jail time. Which obviously I am rooting for very hard

[donald-trump-official]

Ok so I know it’s really easy to think, “oh yeah the trump org conviction is just a million dollar fine, they didn’t even charge trump, it’s nothing but a slap on the wrist”. I understand why it seems that way. Not just because of the pitiful sentence they’re about to receive, but because it still seems as if Trump and his cronies will escape Justice.

But hear me out.

This is just the beginning.

This is absolutely just the beginning of the end of the trump organization.

The trump org has a lot of debt. Like. A shit ton. Donald trump has called himself “the king of debt”, because he built his empire off nothing but loans and over-inflated property as collateral for those loans. Most of the trump org’s wealth is is tied into those properties. Most of the property is tied into the loans. And most of Donald Trump’s wealth is tied into the trump org and it’s properties.

With their still hot and fresh convictions, the trump org’s biggest issue is it’s bank problem. Using fraudulent business records on a bank loan will invalidate the loan. A jury just found that the trump org filed fraudulent business records. It’s a safe bet that right now, banks are auditing their loans with them, to find out if the documents submitted on their applications were fraudulent.

Banks don’t take too kindly to their borrowers lying to them or using fraudulent records to secure a loan. If the banks find out the trump org lied on their loan applications, they’re gonna start calling in these loans. Loans the Trump Org doesn’t have the cash on hand to cover, because their wealth is tied into their assets.

Of course, he could always go out and ask for another loan from a different bank. But since the trump org was just found guilty of falsifying their business records, no bank is ever going to go near them again. Let alone loan them ANOTHER 1 billion dollars. Their credibility as a company who can be trusted with big money loans is dead and gone. They’ve been blacklisted.

Which leaves the trump org and it’s owners in a very precarious situation. They need cash to pay off these loans, but they don’t have it. So they can steal top secret documents and sell them, or they will have to liquidate their assets to garner the cash to pay the loans.

Small problem, though. The Trump Org used their property as collateral, meaning they can’t sell their properties without notifying the banks, getting their approval, and giving the banks their fair share of the final sale. And if they were to try to sell their properties, they wouldn’t be allowed to. Because the trump org overinflated the value of it’s assets to secure the loans in the first place. So the real value of its assets is *much* lower than what the banks were told it was worth, and what they were given in loans. The bank is never going to let them sell their assets for pennies on the dollar. Instead, they’re going to invalidate the loan and make them pay it in full. And if they can’t pay, they will keep the collateral.

Knowing they have shit tons of debt that is likely to be called in, AND that they can’t liquidate their assets to pay it, this leaves the trump org with only one viable option: declaring bankruptcy. A last ditch effort.

Bankruptcy could be an out for them. We’v seen it before. A company declares bankruptcy, moves their assets around, and then reforms under the guise of a different company that has, effectively, a clean slate.

Enter: the state of New York. Also the trump orgs biggest problem.

New York District Attorney Letita James has been investigating the trump org’s finances for years now, uncovering a litany of fraud and tax evasion in the process. She worked in conjunction with the Manhattan DA to bring the charges the trump org was just convicted of. She has filed a civil lawsuit against the trump org, accusing them of a years-long practice of, you guessed it: tax fraud and filing fraudulent business records.

Her lawsuit is now a complete slam dunk. She is arguing that the trump org committed tax fraud and defrauded the state by falsifying it’s business records. Not only does she have all of the trump orgs financial records and bank statements, which in itself is enough to win the lawsuit, but the trump org was just criminally charged with 17 counts of tax fraud and falsifying business records. Pretty strong and convincing evidence the company committed the crime, if you were a person sitting on that jury.

The lawsuit seeks to revoke the business license of the owners of the trump org in the state of New York, forcing them to relocate the business and apply for a business license in a different state. This would require submitting the company’s business records and getting approval for a business license. And since the trump orgs business records have been proven to be fraudulent, there’s a next to 0 chance they get approval for a license outside of NY. Leaving the trump org stuck in NY and at the mercy of the NYAG.

On top of that, the lawsuit also seeks $250 million in damages, which the trump org doesn’t have the cash to cover. Because their wealth is tied into assets they have used as collateral for loans. If they lose the lawsuit, which is a guarantee, and they don’t have the cash to cover the fine, they are subject to having their assets seized by the state of New York.

So unable to pay off the loans, unable to sell their assets, unable to pay the fine from the lawsuit, and unable to relocate their business to a different state, that brings us back to bankruptcy. The trump orgs last and only option to avoid all of this.

Letita James knows bankruptcy is in the future of the trump org. She knows they would attempt to avoid accountability by declaring bankruptcy and starting a new company to transfer their assets (fun fact, trump started a second company in NY called “Trump Org 2”. It was *that* obvious). So just within the past couple of months, she asked the court to appoint a monitor to oversee the trump org’s finances. And that request was granted.

The trump org now has a court ordered monitor overseeing their finances, effectively freezing them and preventing them from wiggling away. They cannot move around their assets and restructure them under the guise of a different company without the knowledge, and approval, of the court. They also cannot sell any of their assets without the knowledge and approval of both the court, and the banks. And every financial statement or transaction from here on out must be approved by the court, meaning they can no longer file false business records to secure massive loans.

(TL;DR) The trump org has been effectively backed into a corner from all sides. If the banks don’t invalidate their loans, they will default on them because the trump org doesn’t have the cash to pay them. If they do invalidate their loans, they trump org will not be able to pay them, and their assets will be seized by the banks. They cannot sell their assets, because their overinflated value was used as collateral. And they risk having their assets seized by the state of NY, which has also appointed a court ordered monitor that prevents them from declaring bankruptcy to avoid accountability.

Oh, and did I mention that Allen Weisselburg, the trump orgs chief financial officer who was given a plea deal after agreeing to testify against the trump org, testified at trial that Donald trump was personally involved in the crimes he, and the trump org, committed. So the owners of the trump org, trump, ivanka, jr, risk potential criminal prosecution and could face the same felonies as their CFO. Because they were directly implicated in the crimes the trump org was convicted of.

So yeah. On its face, the trump org convictions seem inconsequential. But if you were Donald trump, or any of the owners of the trump org, you would be pissing yourself in fear, backed into a corner from all sides awaiting the first of many death blows to land.

[wolvzephyr]

Looks like we've got Project Moon's official statement in English now. Essentially, they're claiming the lawsuits/copyrights were first filed by the union and the artists (Mimi and Monggeu) to claim copyright over WonderLab and Leviathan (the comic portion of Leviathan, not the novel portion), and the union + Mimi have filed a civil suit for it. (The wording of the union's post DOESN'T contradict this interpretation, but they do specify that Monggeu was sued over reparations for speaking out against the company, which was not mentioned in PM's version.) PM is claiming ownership by saying they paid and treated the artists like full-time employees during their contract, so it's company work and therefore company property. (Again, this WOULD be standard industry practice, but if they have to argue this at all then that means Project Moon messed up on writing the contract.)

Honestly, it's a toss-up whether Mimi gets WonderLab or not—The court'll decide, since she wrote, designed, and drew it all and it seems it must not have been specified in her contract who gets the rights.

UPDATE: Apparently freelancers keep their copyright in Korea!? Wow, that's nice. Mimi is probably going to win, then. Cool.

If they're going to gun for it, I don't think Monggeu is going to get the rights to Leviathan's comic section though, considering the amount of PM oversight for it.

Either way, although I don't think this is as big a catastrophe as some are making it out to be, I definitely don't think PM (or KJH) has learned much, if anything. That'll be it from me.

[she-is-ovarit]

Ashli Streeter said Stevens Transport did not hire her because it had no women to train her. Credit...Montinique Monroe for The New York Times

The trucking industry has complained for years that there is a dire shortage of workers willing to drive big rigs. But some women say many trucking companies have made it effectively impossible for them to get those jobs. Trucking companies often refuse to hire women if the businesses do not have women available to train them. And because fewer than 5 percent of truck drivers in the United States are women, there are few female trainers to go around. The same-sex training policies are common across the industry, truckers and legal experts say, even though a federal judge ruled in 2014 that it was unlawful for a trucking company to require that female job candidates be paired only with female trainers. Ashli Streeter of Killeen, Texas, said she had borrowed $7,000 to attend a truck driving school and earn her commercial driving license in hopes of landing a job that would pay more than the warehouse work she had done. But she said Stevens Transport, a Dallas-based company, had told her that she couldn’t be hired because the business had no women to train her. Other trucking companies turned her down for the same reason. “I got licensed, and I clearly could drive,” Ms. Streeter said. “It was disheartening.” Ms. Streeter and two other women filed a complaint against Stevens Transport with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Thursday, contending that the company’s same-sex training policy unfairly denied them driving jobs. The commission investigates allegations made against employers, and, if it determines a violation has occurred, it may bring its own lawsuit. The commission had brought the lawsuit that resulted in the 2014 federal court decision against similar policies at another trucking company, Prime. Critics of the industry said the persistence of same-sex training nearly a decade after that ruling, which did not set national legal precedent, was evidence that trucking companies had not done enough to hire women who could help solve their labor woes. “It’s frustrating to see that we have not evolved at all,” said Desiree Wood, a trucker who is the president and founder of Real Women in Trucking, a nonprofit. Ms. Wood’s group is joining the three women in their E.E.O.C. complaint against Stevens, which was filed by Peter Romer-Friedman, a labor lawyer in Washington, and the National Women’s Law Center. Companies that insist on using women to train female applicants generally do so because they want to avoid claims of sexual harassment. Trainers typically spend weeks alone with trainees on the road, where the two often have to sleep in the same cab. Critics of same-sex training acknowledge that sexual harassment is a problem, but they say trucking companies should address it with better vetting and anti-harassment programs. Employers could reduce the risk of harassment by paying for trainees to sleep in a hotel room, which some companies already do. Women made up 4.8 percent of the 1.37 million truck drivers in the United States in 2021, according to the most recent government statistics, up from 4 percent a decade earlier. Long-haul truck driving can be a demanding job. Drivers are away from home for days. Yet some women say they are attracted to it because it can pay around $50,000 a year, with experienced drivers making a lot more. Truck driving generally pays more than many other jobs that don’t require a college degree, including those in retail stores, warehouses or child care centers.

The infrastructure act of 2021 required the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration to set up an advisory board to support women pursuing trucking careers and identify practices that keep women out of the profession. Robin Hutcheson, the administrator of the agency, said requiring same-sex training would appear to be a barrier to entry. “If that is happening, that would be something that we would want to take a look at,” she said in an interview. Ms. Streeter, a mother of three, said she had applied to Stevens because it hired people straight out of trucking school. She told Stevens representatives that she was willing to be trained by a man, but to no avail. Bruce Dean, general counsel at Stevens, denied the allegations in the suit. “The fundamental premise in the charge — that Stevens Transport Inc. only allows women trainers to train women trainees — is false,” he said in a statement, adding that the company “has had a cross-gender training program, where both men and women trainers train female trainees, for decades.” Some legal experts said that, although same-sex training was ruled unlawful in only one federal court, trucking companies would struggle to defend such policies before other judges. Under federal employment discrimination law, employers can seek special legal exemptions to treat women differently from men, but courts have granted them very rarely. “Basically, what the law says is that a company needs to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Deborah Brake, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in employment and gender law. “They need to be able to give women equal employment opportunities and prevent and remedy sexual harassment.” Ms. Streeter said she had made meager earnings from infrequent truck driving gigs while hoping to get a position at Stevens. Later this month, she will become a driver in the trucking fleet of a large retailer. Kim Howard, one of the other women who filed the E.E.O.C. complaint against Stevens, said she was attracted to truck driving by the prospect of a steady wage after working for decades as an actor in New York. “It was very much a blow,” she said of being rejected because of the training policy. “I honestly don’t know how I financially made it through.” Ms. Howard, who is now employed at another trucking company, said she had worked briefly at a company where she was trained by two men who treated her well. “It’s quite possible for a woman to be trained by a man, and a man to be a professional about what the job is,” she said. Other female drivers said they had been mistreated by male trainers who could be relentlessly dismissive and sometimes refused to teach them important skills, like reversing a truck with a large trailer attached. Rowan Kannard, a truck driver from Wisconsin who is not involved in the complaint against Stevens, said a male trainer had spent little time training her on a run to California in 2019. At a truck stop where she felt unsafe, Ms. Kannard said, the trainer demanded that she leave the cab — and then locked her out. She asked to stop the training and was flown back to Wisconsin. Yet she said she did not believe that same-sex training for women was necessary. “Some of these men that are training, they should probably go through a course.” Click the article to read more. The author is Peter Eavis.

[mariacallous]

The US Department of Justice has sued Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, for abusing their alleged monopoly in the ticketing market to trample competitors.

Filed on Thursday in the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit focuses on Ticketmaster’s long-term exclusivity contracts with many of the largest music venues, making it the predominant ticketing service available to concertgoers. The firm secures these deals in part by “threatening and retaliating against venues that work with rivals,” the DOJ alleges.

In the complaint, the DOJ accuses Ticketmaster and Live Nation, which acts as a promoter for hundreds of high-profile artists, of exploiting their relationship to establish a “self-reinforcing flywheel” that blocks competitors from gaining a foothold. Live Nation parlays its exclusive promotion deals into exclusive ticketing deals with venues, the DOJ claims, which are left with no practical choice but to go with Ticketmaster, for fear of losing access to sought-after acts represented by its parent company. The DOJ is seeking to break up the joint organization.

“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters, and venue operators,” says attorney general Merrick Garland in a statement. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out, and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation–Ticketmaster.”

In a lengthy statement provided to WIRED, Live Nation disputes the DOJ's allegation that it and Ticketmaster wield monopoly power. “The DOJ's lawsuit won't solve the issues fans care about relating to ticket prices, service fees, and access to in-demand shows,” the company says. “Calling Ticketmaster a monopoly may be a PR win for the DOJ in the short term, but it will lose in court because it ignores the basic economics of live entertainment, such as the fact that the bulk of service fees go to venues, and that competition has steadily eroded Ticketmaster’s market share and profit margin.”

The charges brought by the DOJ mirror allegations made previously against Ticketmaster in two ongoing private lawsuits.

In December 2022, Ticketmaster was sued by hundreds of Taylor Swift fans, who brought a case in response to a high-profile ticketing debacle that reportedly left them queuing for hours to pay for tickets that they had been assigned under an early access program, with many ultimately unable to claim their allocations. The incident led to a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on consolidation in the ticketing industry and, reportedly, helped catalyze the investigation into Ticketmaster by the DOJ.

In their lawsuit, the Swift fans accused Ticketmaster of abusing its dominant position to impose “higher prices in the presale, sale, and resale market for concert tickets.” The company has “effectuated this anticompetitive scheme by forcing fans of musicians to use Ticketmaster exclusively to buy concert tickets,” the lawsuit alleged.

In the second case, a class action brought in 2022 on behalf of Ticketmaster customers in the US, Live Nation and Ticketmaster were accused of abusing the complementary relationship between their services to overcharge consumers and sustain their monopoly. “Live Nation controls the vast majority of the big national touring acts and, either explicitly or implicitly, coerces concert venues into selecting Ticketmaster as their ticketing service provider on pain of losing high-value acts,” claims Adam Wolfson, a partner at Quinn Emanuel, the law firm representing the plaintiffs.

This type of conduct, known as tying, was explicitly forbidden under the consent decree imposed upon Live Nation and Ticketmaster by the DOJ as a condition of their 2010 merger. “Our allegation is that they did it anyway,” says Wolfson. “Ticketmaster’s behavior is an open secret—everyone talks about it.”

In a corporate blog post published in March, Dan Wall, executive vice president of corporate and regulatory affairs at Live Nation, rejected allegations that Ticketmaster is driving up the price of tickets. The face value of a ticket is decided by the artist, he wrote, while the service charge—from which Ticketmaster draws its cut—is set by the venue.

In a call with reporters, a senior DOJ official described this line of defense as a “red herring” in the context of the alleged antitrust violations. “Our position is that removing the chokehold that Live Nation has at all levels of the ecosystem will be beneficial with respect to the way prices are set.”

A problem common to antitrust disputes, says Bradley Justus, an antitrust attorney at law firm Axinn, is the difficulty in distinguishing easily between practices that amount to anticompetitive behavior and those that might be considered sensible business strategy. The DOJ will argue that the exclusive deals entered into by Ticketmaster are categorically anticompetitive. “The antitrust question is: How extensive is the scope of those agreements? Are they truly so broad that another competitor couldn’t enter and scale?” says Justus.

The DOJ claims that the terms of the contracts mean that “venues cannot consider or choose rival ticketers or switch to better or more cost-effective ticketing technology.” The effect, it claims, is both to stifle competitors and minimize the pressure for Ticketmaster to improve its own product, to the detriment of concertgoers.

Although the DOJ has petitioned for Live Nation to be broken up, it has not outlined the specific structural changes it will go after, nor any injunctions it may try to impose with respect to the company’s exclusive contracts. “A breakup is absolutely on the table, but it’s important not to put the cart before the horse. In antitrust cases, any remedy has to be specifically tailored to the violation found,” a senior DOJ official told the press. “Based on the allegation that Live Nation and Ticketmaster have exerted control at every level of the ecosystem, aspects of the company need to be broken apart in order for competition to flourish in the live music industry.”