swarm – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Ukraine Turns To Flying Machine Guns And Autonomous AI-Controlled Drone Swarms To Counter Russian Numbers

from the crossing-the-line dept

It’s no secret that Ukraine is having a hard time in its fight against Russia at the moment. That’s in part because Ukraine is being limited in how deep into Russia it can attack using Western-supplied weapons. But mostly it is a matter of numbers: Russia has more men that it is willing to sacrifice in assaults, and more weapons and ammunition that it can use to pound Ukrainian positions and cities. As Alex Bornyakov, Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation, told the UK Times: “We don’t have as many human resources as Russia, they fight, they die, they send more people, they don’t care, but that’s not how we see war.” Since it can’t match Russia in raw manpower and firepower, Ukraine has turned to technology to help it fight back.

In particular, Ukraine has been using drones in a way that is re-defining modern war. First, it is deploying them on an unprecedented scale. Back in December, Ukraine’s President Zelensky said that his country would produce one million drones in 2024. More recently, Hanna Hvozdyar, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Strategic Industries, stated that they would in fact produce two million drones this year, although these are unverified claims. In addition to sheer numbers, Ukraine is also pushing forward the boundaries of drone design. In May, Euromaidan Press reported that Ukrainian forces are mounting machine guns on heavy octocopter drones “to strafe Russian infantry assaults and fire into the trenches from above”:

Right now, Ukrainians are using two types of drones against the Russian infantry: grenade-dropping drones, and kamikaze drones. Dropping grenades accurately is extremely difficult, especially if the infantry is moving, or if the infantry has electronic warfare kits that necessitate operating from a much higher altitude, further reducing the accuracy.

The kamikaze drones, in turn, can only be used once. The development of gun mounts, combined with thermal vision and machine aiming, will change the setting completely.

Another innovative approach involves the use of AI to create a “swarm” of up to seven drones that can work cooperatively to attack tanks and carry out reconnaissance. The Times spoke to a Ukrainian entrepreneur working on this technology in Kyiv, Serhii Krupiienko:

“It’s the equivalent of bringing the steam engine into the factory all those years ago,” says Krupiienko, a software engineer who studied at Stanford University, California. “Our core mission is to get robots to do the fighting, not humans.

“They can communicate with each other, making decisions on which one attacks, which gathers intelligence — and they’ll do it faster than any human.”

Ukraine’s deputy minister of digital transformation Bornyakov told The Times that the country is testing another company’s intelligent swarm technology as well. The New York Times reports on a number of Ukrainian laboratories and factories working on other low-cost autonomous weapons. Bornyakov insisted that Ukraine will not allow any of these killing machines to go “completely autonomous”, without a human making the final decision. But when your soldiers are struggling against larger, better equipped forces in a war that will determine whether your country continues to exist in any meaningful sense, it will be hard to maintain that ethical position. And once that line is crossed, how wars are conducted will have changed forever.

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Filed Under: ai, autonomous killing, drone, kamikaze, kyiv, reconnaissance, robots, swarm, tanks, ukraine, zelensky

Is Malibu Media About To Become The Righthaven Of Porn Trolls?

from the drop-the-bomb dept

Last month we wrote about an interesting case in which a judge effectively called the bluff of Malibu Media, a copyright trolling operation that has filed 365 lawsuits, targeting about 6,000 people. And, of course, it’s never taken a single one to an actual trial, because that does not appear to be the goal. Instead, it’s all about getting people to settle, and it sounds like Malibu has been successful on that front. In the case we mentioned last month, the judge made it clear that he wanted Malibu Media to actually go through a trial, and highlighted four defendants who had claimed innocence, and wanted to use those as a “bellwether” trial, to effectively test Malibu’s theories. The judge, Michael Baylson, was pretty clear that he would not be happy if Malibu Media tried to squeeze out of the case.

At the beginning of the month, Malibu filed its “amended complaint” against the “John Does” in question, which gave up on some of the arguments in the original complaint and instead focused on direct infringement claims — while also expanding the number of works infringed.

Yesterday, the Does hit back. It’s interesting to note that they’ve signed up Marc Randazza (along with Jordan Rushie) to help them, as Randazza has both been on the other side of some porn copyright trolling cases and was also the lawyer largely responsible for bringing down the famed copyright trolling operation Righthaven. His work with porn studios to take part in similar cases has resulted in some worries of ulterior motives in taking on John Does in other cases, though that seems to be a bit paranoid.

Either way, the Does hit back hard. They’re throwing the kitchen sink at Malibu Media. Among other things, they’re claiming that the decision to expand the case to other possible infringements is ridiculous since the defendants use dynamic IP addresses, and Malibu is basing the other infringements on the same IP, but a totally different date or time. Also: the defendants claim that Malibu initially argued that all of the Does needed to be lumped together in a single lawsuit because they represented a “swarm” and as such had to be tried together. Except, in the amended complaint, they move away from that completely (no surprise, since the judge carved out just these few defendants). However, the defendants point out the inconsistency:

When considering litigating the “swarm theory,” Malibu was faced with the prospect of

dozens of defendants, joined in their common defense against the plaintiff, with an initial seeder

who very well may have had a license to publish the works to BitTorrent or elsewhere. When

push came to shove, Malibu decided to dismiss more than eighty percent of the defendants it

initially sued, despite its prior claims that the cases were brought against unified “swarms.”

Malibu apparently thought better of the swarm theory, and decided to reduce the number of

defendants. However, Malibu cannot properly abandon its foundational theory and still leave the

case against Doe 13 intact. The swarm theory of liability relies upon a “swarm” of defendants

and renders these now-dropped defendants indispensable to the action. Without even an

allegation against the initial seeder, we have no idea whether Malibu itself seeded the relevant

files. As Malibu does freely distribute the relevant films, it is entirely possible, if not most

likely, that the initial seeder had permission to distribute the files via BitTorrent. If he or she

did not, it is entirely likely that a participant in the swarm, from whom Doe 13 received the file,

may have had such permission. Malibu’s omissions speak loudly in favor of dismissal. Unless

Malibu re-joins these previous defendants, including the initial seeder, the Court must dismiss

the action against Doe 13, who is by Malibu’s own theory incapable of according Plaintiff full

and complete relief.

That paragraph has footnotes to point out that the company Malibu was using to obtain IP addresses, IPP (formerly Guardaley — remember them?) is accused of actually seeding the files in the first place, which would suggest the copies were authorized. Of course, it’s worth noting that Randazza, when on the other side of these cases, has used the swarm argument in the past.

Either way, that’s just the warmup for the problems with the amended complaint. There’s also a few other problems — such as that it doesn’t appear that Malibu legitimately owned the copyright in question. Oops. First, there’s the fact that the filmmaker argued that the key film was a “work for hire” made for Malibu. Except, Malibu only came into existence in early 2011 and the movie was made years earlier. Malibu claimed this was an oversight in the registration process and then sought to register the copyrights properly just recently. However, again there are problems, as the assignment from the filmmaker failed to assign the specific rights under Section 106 of the Copyright Act, which are what you need if you want to sue. This was the critical defect in the Righthaven cases, in that they pretended to assign those rights, but it was in name only since the original copyright holder really retained all the key rights provided under Section 106. Furthermore, the defendants argue that the assignment statement does not really qualify as an assignment, and is, at best, a license.

In this case, the Assignment contains no provision of any exclusive rights from Field to

Malibu Media. The assignment is silent as to what, if any, rights Field has within the films.

Rather than transferring any discernible exclusive rights under Section 106 to Malibu Media, Mr.

Field has executed what is essentially a quit-claim deed to Malibu Media, giving Plaintiff a

jumble of unidentified rights (or perhaps none at all) that, on the face of the assignment, do not

include the rights required to sustain an infringement action: exclusive rights under Section

106. Absent any indication that Field possessed full, undivided interest in the copyrighted

works or exclusive rights therein, there is no basis on the face of the assignment for finding that

Malibu Media acquired any exclusive rights and nothing in the assignment addresses past

infringement.

Then they point out that even if the assignment is proper, it still doesn’t help Malibu, because it is not clear when the assignment was made. And, under the law, while you can transfer the right to sue (along with other exclusive rights) for past infringements, that needs to be expressly stated in the assignment. That’s not the case here.

Then there are other issues concerning the “swarm” argument. The defendants point out that if they were being sued as part of a swarm, the total awards across all the defendants can’t surpass the maximum statutory rate. Yet with a bunch of defendants having settled, it’s possible that Malibu has already been “made whole.”

Malibu has already recovered significant funds in connection with the infringements

alleged in the Amended Complaint.

Prejudice against Does #6 and #19 before this action was set for a bellwether. (Dkt. Nos. 16 and

17). Presumably, this was because Malibu received adequate settlements from these defendants.

In fact, Malibu may have received doubly-adequate settlements from them – in which case

Malibu is now triple-dipping by seeking damages that have already been satisfied by third parties

Malibu intentionally kept out of this litigation.

Because the swarm is global in scope, and the Plaintiff has likely already been made

whole by other undisclosed swarm members, nothing short of full disclosure and setoff would

allow Doe #13 to evaluate Plaintiff’s ability to bring this action that it repeatedly claims to be

based on the uploading and downloading the exact same file. Since the Plaintiff seeks statutory

damages, if the Plaintiff has already collected the statutory maximum for this work from other

defendants, then the Plaintiff must stop visiting the well.

Malibu filed Notices of Voluntarily Dismissal with

Thought they were done? Not yet. They also claim that Malibu is abusing subpoena powers outside of what was alleged in the complaint. In the amended filing, Malibu notes that its “partner” in identifying infringement, IPP, passed along the info that at least one of the Does has been accused by another IPP customer of infringement as well. As the defendants point out, that’s completely irrelevant to the case at hand:

Nucorp, Ltd. is not a party to this action or any other action against Doe #13, and this

allegation is scandalous and impertinent. Furthermore, set forth in more detail below, adding

allegation also violated two court orders forbidding Malibu from abusing its subpoena power for

purposes outside of what was alleged in the Complaint. Accordingly, Paragraph 53 and Exhibit

“F” of the Amended Complaint should be struck .

In one of the other Motions to Dismiss, questions are also raised about whether or not Malibu has the proper and necessary licenses to do business in Pennsylvania where the lawsuit was filed.

There’s more, but you get the idea. It certainly looks like some are trying to give Malibu the Righthaven treatment. And we all remember how that went…

Filed Under: copyright, copyright infringement, copyright trolls, marc randazza, swarm
Companies: malibu media, righthaven

DailyDirt: Spooky Spiders…

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Halloween is coming up, so there will be plenty of plastic spiders and fake cobwebs decorating suburban homes. But real spiders have been known to swarm over small towns and envelope sizable areas with acres of their webbing. If you’re not too comfortable around spiders, you might not want to read further. But if huge spider populations sound more cool than creepy to you, here are just a few examples of arachnids taking over.

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post.

Filed Under: arachnophobia, halloween, invasive, spiders, swarm, venom