Every entry pairs a person's own words, dated and sourced, with the record that followed: a filing, a vote, a disclosure, a court position. Five kinds of pairing live in one ledger. Filter by kind, or search a name. For one person's positions over time, see By person.
51entries
35people and companies
5kinds of pairing
Court vs. conduct: argued one rule in court, lived by another.
Training large language models on the entire public web — including paywalled, copyrighted news articles — is transformative fair use. The model's outputs do not substitute for the original works, and the public benefit of advanced AI outweighs any…
Users may not 'use Output to develop models that compete with OpenAI'; OpenAI publicly accused DeepSeek of using its model outputs to train competing models in violation of those terms, and is preparing legal action. (OpenAI Terms of Use — Section 2…
Why it matters OpenAI's fair-use defense in the NYT case turns on the principle that ingesting copyrighted material to train a derivative system that competes with the original is non-infringing because of transformative purpose.…
OpenAI's pivot from a charitable, open-source AI research nonprofit to a closed, for-profit subsidiary of Microsoft is a betrayal of its founding charter. The 'capped-profit' structure is a sham that funnels public-good research into private monopoly rents.…
xAI operates as a closed, equity-funded for-profit Delaware corporation, with Musk as majority shareholder, raising $6B at a $50B valuation while marketing its Grok model as a competitor to OpenAI. No nonprofit charter; no open-sourcing of training data,…
Why it matters Musk's central legal argument in suing Altman is that AI research of this magnitude should be conducted as a nonprofit, open-source public good, and that pivoting to a closed for-profit structure is itself the harm.…
Palantir's source code, ranking algorithms, and data-model schemas are protected trade secrets. Disclosure — even under court-ordered protective order — would cause irreparable competitive harm. Confidentiality clauses must override any third-party…
Marketing position: Palantir Foundry/Gotham provides 'auditability', 'transparency', and 'civil-liberties protections' that justify entrusting it with NHS patient records, IRS taxpayer files, and ICE detention data. The same platform whose code is a sealed…
Why it matters Palantir's commercial-litigation posture is that its software is so proprietary and confidential that even a federal court cannot compel meaningful disclosure of how its ranking and matching algorithms work. Its…
Public-facing position throughout the 1990s–2000s: 'the scientific evidence is inconclusive as to whether human activities are having a significant effect on the global climate.' Exxon argued in defense filings that its statements were protected…
Exxon's own scientists, in internal memos, accurately projected the magnitude and rate of human-caused warming decades before the public statements that called the same science 'inconclusive'. The peer-reviewed analysis shows the internal projections tracked…
Why it matters Exxon's defense to state-level consumer-protection suits is that climate science was genuinely uncertain when it told the public it was uncertain — i.e., a good-faith reading of the science at the time. The Supran et…
Boeing entered a guilty plea to conspiracy to defraud the FAA in connection with 737 MAX MCAS disclosures; agreed to a $487M fine and oversight monitorship. Corporate position: the company accepts responsibility for its employees' conduct as a corporate act.…
In the only individual criminal prosecution arising from the same MCAS fraud, Boeing's position (through company-witness testimony and document production) was that the relevant senior managers had no knowledge of the safety-critical changes and that the…
Why it matters Boeing the corporation pleaded guilty to defrauding the FAA — admitting, in its corporate capacity, that the criminal acts occurred. In the parallel individual prosecution of the only Boeing employee charged, the…
An outgoing president retains absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for any official act, including the retention of classified national-defense information after leaving office. Executive privilege survives the end of the term; the Presidential…
As a former president, Trump asserted executive privilege to block the National Archives from releasing his administration's records to the January 6 select committee — arguing the sitting president (Biden) could not waive his predecessor's privilege. (Trump…
Why it matters In Trump v. Thompson, Trump's position was that executive privilege over presidential records is an enduring protection that a successor cannot waive. In the SCOTUS immunity case, the same privilege framework was…
Algorithmic feed ranking, content moderation, and amplification choices are protected editorial speech of the platform; Texas HB20 unconstitutionally compels speech by limiting Meta's ability to curate its product. (NetChoice, LLC v. Paxton (consolidated;…
Algorithmic amplification of third-party content is not the platform's own speech; Facebook is a neutral interactive computer service entitled to full § 230 immunity for the editorial outcomes of its ranking algorithms. (Force v. Facebook, Inc. (and progeny…
Why it matters The same ranking-and-amplification system is described as 'protected editorial speech' when Meta wants to defeat must-carry laws, and as 'neutral conduit conduct of an interactive computer service' when Meta wants §…
