Aug. 23 (ZFJ) — AI art generated “absent human involvement” is not eligible for copyright, ruled U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell on Aug. 18, Friday.
In her ruling for the federal district court in Washington, D.C., Howell upheld the U.S. Copyright Office’s denial of registration to computer scientist Stephen Thaler for the work he calls A Recent Entrance to Paradise.
BACKGROUND
Thaler, the plaintiff, owns an AI called the “Creativity Machine” that can generate visual works of art.
Aug. 7 (ZFJ) — Robert Bowers, 50, was sentenced to death by U.S. District Judge Robert J. Colville on Thursday, Aug. 3, for killing 11 congregants, wounding two others, and injuring five police officers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
“I have nothing specific that I care to say to Mr. Bowers,” Colville said, according to The Associated Press. “I am however convinced there is nothing I could say to him that might be meaningful.
Aug. 3 (ZFJ) — Rafaela Vasquez, 49, pled guilty to endangerment on Friday, July 28, for failing to stop a fully self-driving car from hitting and killing a 49-year-old woman.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge David W. Garbarino sentenced her to three years of supervised probation. Her charge will be designated a misdemeanor once she completes her sentence.
On March 18, 2018, Vasquez was the backup driver for a test vehicle belonging to Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group (ATG).
July 16 (ZFJ) – A Middlesex County man admitted to threatening to attack a synagogue and Jewish people via the internet.
19-year-old Omar Alkattoul pleaded guilty to one count of transmitting a threat in interstate and foreign commerce on Wednesday, July 12, regarding a crime committed around November 1, 2021.
Alkattoul used social media to share a link of his manifesto titled “When Swords Collide.” The document detailed his plans to attack a synagogue.
July 3 (ZFJ) — Affirmative action in college admissions violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ruled the Supreme Court in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (20-1199) and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (21-707) on Thursday, June 29. The EPC prohibits racial discrimination by the government.
Reversing the lower courts’ decisions, the Court struck down the admissions programs used by Harvard and UNC by a 6-2 and 6-3 vote, respectively.
May 28 (ZFJ) — The federal government can only regulate wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to adjacent “waters of the United States” under the Clean Water Act (1972), ruled the Supreme Court on Thursday, May 25, in Sackett v. EPA (21-454).
The CWA is the primary federal law regulating water pollution and prohibits the “discharge of any pollutant,” including “chemical wastes,” “rock,” and “sand,” into “navigable waters,” defined as “the waters of the United States, including the territorial seas.
