On June 2, 2022, the New York Legislature passed a bill, S6486D, that would place a two-year moratorium on certain new cryptocurrency mining operations at fossil fuel energy plants in New York. The bill would also limit circumstances in which mining operations currently operating at plants in New York would…
Who are you, really? Identity can be hard to define. In the real world, we don different (often overlapping) masks depending on the situation—family, work, public service or private play. Online, the distance between the “real you” and these masks is often more pronounced. We adopt pseudonyms, handles, avatars and…
On May 4, 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-9-22 to create a coordinated state regulatory approach for cryptocurrency and blockchain, with the further aim of harmonizing the state’s laws with those (potentially) enacted at a federal level. Another goal of the Order is to determine the usage…
In this week’s News of Note, ransomware continues to ravage institutions—including a 157-year-old college and the government of Costa Rica—AI learns to accurately predict a patient’s race based on their medical images, cryptocurrency crashes, and more. Threat intelligence research firm AdvIntel claims that the Conti ransomware organization has splintered into…
We’ve written extensively on the still somewhat recent arrival of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as both a potential revenue stream, caveat-filled investment destination and pop culture marker of the moment. Back in 2018, we wrote about the Los Angeles Dodgers giving away digital bobbleheads to fans, who could redeem a private…
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are changing how we think about asset ownership in the real world and in the digital world. NFTs—unique digital tokens stored on a blockchain ledger that represent ownership of an asset, either real or virtual—have gained significant popularity in realms such as art, gaming and entertainment, as…
Between February and April 2022, a professional photographer from Cologne, Germany, filed nine copyright infringement lawsuits in U.S. federal courts. What makes the cases unique is that in each one, the defendant had a Creative Commons license to use the image for commercial purposes free of charge. Knowing the potential…
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in HiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn that automated web scraping of publicly accessible websites does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), even if the website owner objects to the scraping. This marks the second time in this case where…
The Metaverse is an immersive world combining virtual reality and augmented reality, where users are represented by avatars and roam virtual spaces. It comprises a variety of platforms and environments that can be explored, experienced, and developed. Online social games like Second Life, Fortnite and Minecraft are among the first…
In today’s News of Note, we explore ransomware-as-a-service profits, the continued untangling of IP issues with NFTs, the prospect of scented virtual reality experiences, the development of a humanoid robot, and much more. Hackers use source code revealed in Conti ransomware leak to target Russian organizations. (Lawrence Abrams, Bleeping Computer)…