Primanti Bros. faces lawsuit over mural; TribLive, June 12, 2026

 Julia Burdelski and Megan Trotter, TribLive ; Primanti Bros. faces lawsuit over mural

"A local artist in a lawsuit filed Thursday accused Primanti Bros. of reproducing a mural he painted at the sandwich shop’s Market Square location without his permission.

Artist James Kanfoush in the lawsuit claimed Primanti Bros. violated copyright rules and the Visual Artists Rights Act by displaying replicas of his mural at their Cranberry and Grove City restaurants.

Kanfoush in 1997 and 1998 created an original mural featuring famous Pittsburgh sports figures at the restaurant’s Market Square site. The artwork includes Kanfoush’s name and contact information."

More courts are coming down on ‘non-offending counsel’ for AI missteps; ABA Journal, June 10, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT , ABA Journal; More courts are coming down on ‘non-offending counsel’ for AI missteps

"Amid the proliferation of cases involving artificial intelligence-generated hallucinations, more judges are expressing frustration not only at the attorneys who make the mistakes but at opposing counsel for not pointing it out. 

In the past year, courts have admonished attorneys for failing to identify and report fake citations in their opponents’ court filings. In at least two cases, judges refused to award attorney fees or grant relief to counsel who didn’t bring AI-induced errors to their attention."

Federal judge removes 4 plaintiff and defense attorneys over AI errors; ABA Journal, June 10, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT, ABA Journal ; Federal judge removes 4 plaintiff and defense attorneys over AI errors

"A federal judge in Mississippi on Monday disqualified the plaintiff counsel and the defense counsel after both parties filed briefs with artificial intelligence-generated mistakes in a dispute over attorney fees.

“This case presents the court with an unusual scenario—attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,” said Senior U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock of the Northern District of Mississippi in her June 8 order...

Aycock revoked Wilson’s and Williams’ pro hac vice statuses and barred them from appearing in the Northern District of Mississippi for two years. The judge also ordered all four attorneys to pay monetary sanctions, ranging from $1,000 each for the local counsel to $2,500 for Williams and $3,500 for Wilson."

Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists; The New York Times, June 12, 2026

 Ephrat Livni, The New York Times ; ‘Operation Pushkin’: Paris Trial Puts Spotlight on Rare-Book Heists

One by one, valuable works by Russian masters like Pushkin and Gogol were disappearing from libraries across Europe. Now six defendants are being prosecuted.

"The latest chapter in the saga of an international book heist that stripped prominent libraries across Europe of more than 170 rare Russian literary works is being written in a Paris courtroom this week.

Alexander Pushkin, the 19th-century poet and novelist considered the father of modern Russian literature, is a main character. Most of the thefts targeted his works — worth nearly $3 million in total — from libraries in the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland.

The other characters have a less literary pedigree. They are six Georgian defendants standing trial, most unnamed by the French authorities, on accusations of conspiracy and theft...

The crimes stunned librarians, bibliophiles and prosecutors alike because of their scale, the prominence of the libraries targeted and the near-singular focus of the suspects. The investigation became known as “Operation Pushkin.”

The thieves used different background stories, giving various reasons for their interest in rare Russian books, according to a law enforcement arm of the European Union, the Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation. They often worked in pairs, with one distracting librarians while the other replaced the original work with a copy, usually after multiple visits."

Federal court hears oral arguments in appeal of Arkansas’ library obscenity law; Arkansas Advocate, June 11, 2026

 TESS VRBIN, Arkansas Advocate; Federal court hears oral arguments in appeal of Arkansas’ library obscenity law

"A federal appeals court heard arguments Thursday to uphold the injunction of a 2023 Arkansas law governing challenges to library content, while Arkansas’ solicitor general said the plaintiffs’ allegations were “too speculative.”

The three-judge panel from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis will rule on whether two sections of Act 372 of 2023 can go into effect. A district judge blocked the provisions in 2024, and the state appealed the ruling in 2025.

The two challenged sections would create criminal liability for librarians who distribute content that some consider “obscene” or “harmful to minors,” and give city and county governing bodies the final say over library content.

The 18 plaintiffs in the case include libraries, bookstores, advocacy groups and individual library patrons. The defendants are Arkansas’ 28 prosecuting attorneys, Crawford County and its county judge, Chris Keith.

Crawford County lost another federal lawsuit in 2024 after three parents claimed the county library violated the First Amendment by moving LGBTQ+ children’s books into separate “social sections” that only adults could access."

AI company argues its use of scraped Westlaw legal data was transformative; Courthouse News Service, June 11, 2026

 SYDNEY HAULENBEEK , Courthouse News Service; AI company argues its use of scraped Westlaw legal data was transformative

"“Fair use ruling here brings into question the core technology of the AI revolution,” Mark S. Davies of White & Case in Washington, attorney for ROSS, argued...

“This is a copyright case,” he said. “It’s an interesting case, it raises lots of issues, but it’s a copyright case and the point of copyright is progress.”

“Copyright is not a privilege reserved for the well-behaved,” Davies added."

The Kennedy Center Is a Metaphor for De-Trumpification; The Atlantic, June 11, 2026

 David A. Graham, The Atlantic; The Kennedy Center Is a Metaphor for De-Trumpification

"No event at the Kennedy Center in recent months has drawn as much anticipation in Washington as the removal of President Trump’s name from the building’s facade. The date and time of the performance are not yet public, but residents and reporters are on alert to watch workers pull down the letters that were hastily added in December, when the institution was ungrammatically rechristened “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Already, as my colleague Janay Kingsberry reported last week, Trump’s name has been removed from the center’s website, as well as from “email signatures, email communications, letterhead, website, brochures, promotional materials, press releases, signs, references in contracts, MOUs, and other agreements.” These are signs of the center moving to comply with a judge’s ruling late last month that ordered it to revert to its statutory name.

The re-renaming is a welcome win for the rule of law, but the precarious path ahead for the Kennedy Center is a useful metaphor for the United States in the Trump era as a whole. Removing Trump’s name is the easy part—a discrete step that a judge can straightforwardly mandate—but repairing the damage will be a much longer and more difficult process, assuming it’s possible at all."

Sex, Lies and Secrets: A Federal Judge’s Trysts Go Public; The New York Times, June 11, 2026

 Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Mattathias Schwartz, The New York Times; Sex, Lies and Secrets: A Federal Judge’s Trysts Go Public

"The ensuing investigative report is a chronicle of sex, lies and ethical breaches, much of which is cloaked in secrecy because America’s federal court system affords judges broad deference."

Musk’s Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.; The Washington Post, June 11, 2026

 Faiz Siddiqui , The Washington Post; Musk’s Starlink hooked rural customers. Then came the price increases.

[Kip Currier: Unfortunately, Starlink raising prices on Internet access for rural customers is absolutely no surprise. This is what happens when administrations implement anti-competitive policies that enable monopolistic economic conditions.

Indeed, I commented on this kind of foreseeable scenario one year ago, in June 2025: See https://kipcurrierethics.blogspot.com/2025/06/trump-admin-tells-pennsylvania-other.html]

"Starlink told some U.S. customers last month it was raising prices and increased the cost of most plans for a service that counts millions of users across the country.

“I can complain about Starlink raising their prices, but it’s the only real option we have,” said Slama, a Republican and former Nebraska state senator. “Once they have rural customers on their service with no meaningful alternatives, they’re free to raise prices at will.”

Musk has long billed Starlink as a lifeline: an internet service that will finally bring reliable connectivity to people in the world’s rural and off-the-grid locales.

As its parent company moves toward an IPO, rural broadbandadvocates say the company has begun to squeeze its isolated U.S. users, raising prices in areas where options are limited and striving to box out competition.

SpaceX has lobbied against federal spending that would benefit Starlink’s rural broadband alternatives, calling the issue it targets “effectively … solved,” an assertion disputed by advocates for wider broadband access and many residents of rural areas."

How to share AI riches: From Donald Trump to Sam Altman, the idea of redistributing them is catching on. Does it make sense?; The Economist; June 11, 2026

 The Economist; How to share AI riches: From Donald Trump to Sam Altman, the idea of redistributing them is catching on. Does it make sense?

"The artificial-intelligence boom has minted vast fortunes. Jensen Huang’s stake of nearly 4% in Nvidia, the chipmaker he co-founded in 1993, is worth $175bn, up 50-fold in seven years. Anthropic’s latest funding round, which valued the ai lab at nearly $1trn, more than doubled the estimated wealth of its boss, Dario Amodei. Yet as new plutocrats gain riches, most Americans doubt the gains from ai will be widely shared. Less than one in three think the technology will make ordinary people richer."

Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds; Columbia, May 8, 2026

 Columbia ; Nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations, a Columbia Nursing AI-assisted audit finds

"A new Columbia University School of Nursing AI-assisted audit reveals nearly 3,000 peer-reviewed medical papers have fake citations that do not exist in scientific databases. The results highlight an alarming trend in academic publishing as the use of AI grows.  The peer-reviewed research letter, “Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers, was published in The Lancet on May 7, 2026."

Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers; The Lancet, May 9, 2026

 Maxim Topaz,  Nir Roguin,  Pallavi Gupta,  Zhihong Zhang,  Laura-Maria Peltonen, The Lancet ; Fabricated citations: an audit across 2·5 million biomedical papers

"Scientific literature depends on the integrity of its references. Each reference implicitly asserts that a verifiable source exists and supports the claims being made. When references point to non-existent studies, readers, reviewers, and policy makers are unable to evaluate the evidence.

Fabricated references (references whose claimed titles correspond to no existing publication) can arise from paper mill activity, intentional misconduct, or uncritical use of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools.1 Large language models (LLMs) generate plausible sounding but fictitious references, a well documented failure mode; previous studies estimate that 30–69% of LLM-generated references in biomedical contexts are fabricated.2,3 These references are often correctly formatted, attributed to real researchers, and bear plausible publication dates, making them difficult to detect by conventional peer review.4 To our knowledge, no systematic audit of reference integrity across the biomedical literature has been conducted until now.

We present findings from a reference-integrity audit of 2·5 million biomedical papers spanning 3 years, showing that fabricated references are embedded in the peer-reviewed literature at scale, and that the rate of fabrication is accelerating."

The invisible infrastructure in the sky; TED2026

  Adam Bry, TED2026;The invisible infrastructure in the sky

"Drones aren't just weapons of war; they're becoming first responders, infrastructure inspectors and guardians of the grid. Adam Bry, who leads the top drone manufacturer in the US, shows how autonomous flying robots are transforming emergency response and public safety — from detecting faulty power lines and preventing wildfires to catching crime in real time. Watch as he demos the technology live from the TED stage, piloting a drone in Tokyo from his laptop in Vancouver. (Followed by a note from TED guest curator Bilawal Sidhu)"

Dealership revoked offer to buy back customer's BMW, blaming wayward AI chatbot; CBC, June 11, 2026

 Sophia Harris, CBC; Dealership revoked offer to buy back customer's BMW, blaming wayward AI chatbot 

"After his 2021 BMW required major repairs, Zack Giacomelli decided last month he wanted to sell it back to BMW Toronto — the same dealership from which he bought the used car in 2023.

At first, the buy-back process seemed easy. After submitting an online inquiry, Giacomelli got a text from Quinn at BMW Toronto, who was eager to help. 

Quinn expressed sympathy for Giacomelli's car troubles and asked questions about the vehicle, which was still being repaired at the dealership. Later in the same text conversation, Quinn made a firm buy-back offer: $27,162.79.

Giacomelli, a 31-year-old funeral director, was satisfied, as the offer was just enough to cover what he still owed on the car. 

"I felt this Quinn person was finally hearing me out," he said. "I was feeling really good."

The good feeling didn't last. Moments later, Giacomelli said, a BMW Toronto sales consultant called to revoke the offer, explaining that Quinn wasn't a real person, but rather an artificial intelligence chatbot that had made the offer in error."

Copyright law ‘struggling’ to parse AI’s ascendancy; Harvard Law Today, June 10, 2026

 Rebecca Beyer, Harvard Law Today; Copyright law ‘struggling’ to parse AI’s ascendancy

"Deferring hard decisions about which kinds of machine-assisted creative works can be copyrighted over nearly 250 years has made it harder to ascertain whether works produced with the help of artificial intelligence can receive legal protection, according to Harvard Law School Professor Rebecca Tushnet...

Tushnet, the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, spoke as part of a panel discussion, “Copyright in AI Outputs: Who Owns AI-Created Works?,” that was presented by HLS Beyond in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s March decision to deny certiorari in Thaler v. Perlmutter, a case in which lower courts upheld the Copyright Office’s decision not to issue a copyright to an AI-generated image because “copyright law … requires human authorship.” Matt Kristoffersen ’27 moderated the discussion, which included Boston University School of Law Professor Jessica Silbey, Harvard Law Professor Christopher T. Bavitz, and an extensive Q&A session with audience members."

Rare Full Court Rehearing Granted in Copyright Case Against Kat Von D’s Miles Davis Tattoo; PetaPixel, June 10, 2026

 THOMAS MADDREY, PetaPixel; Rare Full Court Rehearing Granted in Copyright Case Against Kat Von D’s Miles Davis Tattoo

"On June 9, Chief Judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Mary H. Murguia issued an Order in the case of Jeffery B. Sedlik v. Katherine von Drachenberg, aka Kat Von D, et. al. granting an en banc rehearing by the full court...

In a nutshell, this rare move by the Court tells the litigants that even though a panel of three Ninth Circuit judges have rendered an opinion in the case, the question is unsettled enough that a hearing by the full 11-judge panel is warranted. 

This is not a common occurrence: in 2024, for example, the Court received 625 petitions for en banc review, 29 cases were then voted on by the Court to see if they should be heard, and only nine cases succeeded in that vote. In some years, this number increases, but rarely are more than 20 cases a year granted such a special evaluation. The Court reserved this designation for those cases that indicate a clear split with other Circuit Courts around the country, cases that are likely to be reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, and if the issues presented affect many others similarly situated, among other considerations. This case checks all those boxes."

Congress Just Rushed Through a Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), June 10, 2026

 JOE MULLIN , Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Congress Just Rushed Through a Disastrous Copyright Office Overhaul; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

"In a voice vote earlier this week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. 

H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The bill removes the Library of Congress’ current supervisory role over the Copyright Office, transfers several powers directly to the Register of Copyrights, and makes the Register a presidential appointee, confirmed by the Senate. 

These changes would make an office that’s already hugely influential in copyright and tech policy much more political. EFF first explained why that’s a terrible idea when it came up nearly a decade ago. This bill, like the older one, weakens the few public-interest checks and balances that do exist.  We hope the Senate promptly rejects this bill."

Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google; Ars Technica, June 10, 2026

 ASHLEY BELANGER  , Ars Technica; Nobody needs AI to search the Internet, court says in ruling against Google

"Potentially impacting all AI search engines and chatbots known to poorly paraphrase source links, a German court has ruled that Google is liable for false statements in AI Overviews.

The preliminary ruling came in a case flagged by The Decoder, where two publishers found that Google’s AI Overviews incorrectly linked them to scams and other sketchy business practices. After smearing publishers by making affirmative statements like “Yes, [it] is known for dubious business practices and is often perceived as a scam,” Google failed to correct the misleading output, even after the publishers sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year.

Google tried the usual arguments to shield itself from liability for false statements in AI Overviews, such as arguing that most users understand that AI outputs aren’t always accurate and must be verified.

But the court found that, unlike traditional search engines that merely present lists of links to third-party statements, Google’s tool made “independent, new, and substantive statements” based on its own misinterpretation of links on the Internet.

That’s a problem, the court said, because while publishers may have been able to sue to stop third parties from publishing defamatory statements appearing in Google search results, only Google can correct the underlying algorithm and outputs displayed in AI Overviews. And because, at least initially, the company did not, it therefore “must be held accountable,” the court ruled. Beyond that, Google’s argument was deemed particularly weak, since the AI overview in this case “contains statements that do not appear in the search results at all.”

The court’s order—requiring a temporary injunction barring Google from spreading the false claims in any further AI Overviews—may have global implications, as the court seems to be the first to hold an AI firm liable for AI speech."

Sales of Meta whistleblower’s memoir soar after Hay festival ‘silencing’; The Guardian, June 10, 2026

 Ella Creamer , The Guardian; Sales of Meta whistleblower’s memoir soar after Hay festival ‘silencing’

"Sales of the whistleblowing memoir Careless People increased by more than 300% in the UK the week after its author was “silenced” during an appearance at Hay festival following legal action by Meta, the subject of the book.

Sarah Wynn-Williams – who between 2011 and 2017 served as the director of global public policy at what was then called Facebook – sat on stage but did not speak during her hour-long appearance on 31 May on the advice of her lawyer. She appeared alongside the journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu.

The sales boost – 304.5% week-on-week – has nudged the book, published last March, to the number one spot in the paperback nonfiction chart.

Upon publication, Meta obtained an order blocking Wynn-Williams from promoting her book, which accuses the company of a toxic internal culture and manipulative political influence."

Why Employees Aren’t Transparent About Their AI Usage; Harvard Business Review, June 10, 2026

Eric Anicich and Jeslyn Brouwers, Harvard Business Review ; Why Employees Aren’t Transparent About Their AI Usage

"To be sure, knowledge hoarding has always existed in organizations. The research on organizational silence—why employees withhold information, concerns, and ideas—is well established. But that work has largely focused on the suppression of problems: bad news, ethical concerns, operational risks. What AI introduces is the suppression of solutions. When individually generated workflow innovations can cut a three-hour task to 20 minutes, and when those innovations are easy to conceal, silence becomes economically consequential in a way it hasn’t been before."

Book bans in Washington County School District may have flouted state law; St. George News, June 9, 2026

Eric Peterson, The Utah Investigative Journalism Project, St. George News; Book bans in Washington County School District may have flouted state law

"Ed. note: The following story was reported by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project in partnership with Utah News Dispatch and St. George News.

A law passed in 2024 allows just three school districts to decide what books can be removed from school library shelves across the state for obscene content. Records obtained by The Utah Investigative Journalism Project now indicate one of the most prolific school districts for banning books may have been doing so in violation of state law, leading to the removal of “obscene” books statewide based on recommendations from book-ban activists."

Forget Coders. The Real A.I. Threat Is in the Back Office.; The New York Times, June 10, 2026

Ben Casselman, The New York Times; Forget Coders. The Real A.I. Threat Is in the Back Office.

"If artificial intelligence disrupts the job market, which workers will be most vulnerable?"

Library straddling Quebec-Vermont border to inaugurate new Canadian entrance today; CBC, June 10, 2026

 CBC News , CBC; Library straddling Quebec-Vermont border to inaugurate new Canadian entrance today

"A new entrance to the iconic library that sits on the border between Quebec and Vermont is now welcoming Canadian bookworms after the U.S. limited entry to the building last year.

The Haskell Free Library and Opera House is inaugurating its Canadian entrance on Wednesday in a ceremony that will gather residents and representatives from both sides of the border.

With one door opening to Stanstead, Que., and the other to Derby Line, Vt., the more-than-a-century-old library has long been a symbol of harmony between Canada and the U.S. A thick black line runs across the library floor to show where one country ends and the other begins.

Last year, the Trump administration barred Canadians from using the library's main entrance on the Vermont side."

Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today; TechCrunch, June 9, 2026

 Rebecca Bellan , TechCrunch; Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5 is a version of Mythos the public can access today

"Anthropic is bringing its most powerful AI model to the general public for the first time, but it’s doing it with guardrails. 

On Tuesday, the AI firm launched Claude Fable 5, the first publicly available version of its Mythos model. Anthropic says Fable 5 excels at software engineering, knowledge work, and vision, but it comes with hard safety limits. In high-risk areas like cybersecurity, biology, chemistry, and distillation, the model blocks responses and falls back to Claude Opus 4.8.

Pricing for both Fable 5 and Mythos 5 is $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens, double the price of Opus 4.8. That price alone might serve as a deterrent for widespread use.

Many enterprises are growing critical of AI costs after seeing the bills come inor blowing through their yearly AI budgets early. Advanced models like Opus 4.8 can exacerbate those issues, with advanced reasoning skills that can split a single request into multiple tasks."

Anthropic, Nvidia Sway Judge to Split Authors’ AI Copyright Suit; Bloomberg Law, June 9, 2026

  Annelise Levy, Bloomberg Law; Anthropic, Nvidia Sway Judge to Split Authors’ AI Copyright Suit 

"A group of big tech companies convinced a federal judge to split up authors’ copyright lawsuit accusing them of pirating books to build artificial intelligence models.

The authors’ allegation that Anthropic PBC, Google LLC, Apple Inc., Nvidia Corp., Perplexity AI Inc., and xAI Corp. used the same library of pirated books to infringe isn’t sufficient to lump all of the companies into one lawsuit, Judge P. Casey Pitts of the US District Court for the Northern District of California ruled Monday. The lawsuit will proceed against Anthropic, and claims against the other companies are severed into five separate actions."