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A federal judge has denied an attempt by conservative social network Parler to force Amazon to host it on AWS. As expected by most who read Parler’s ramshackle legal arguments, the court found nothing in the lawsuit that could justify intervention, only “faint and factually inaccurate speculation.”
In the order, filed in the Western Washington U.S. District Court, Judge Barbara Rothstein explained how little Parler actually brought to the table to support its allegations that Amazon and Twitter were engaged in antitrust collusion and that AWS had broken its contract.
On the question of antitrust, Parler fell far short of demonstrating anything at all, let alone collusion in breach of the Sherman Act.
The evidence it has submitted in support of the claim is both dwindlingly slight, and disputed by AWS. Importantly, Parler has submitted no evidence that AWS and Twitter acted together intentionally — or even at all — in restraint of trade.
… Indeed, Parler has failed to do more than raise the specter of preferential treatment of Twitter by AWS.
Amazon had explained in its filing that not only does AWS not even host Twitter yet, though there are plans to do so, but that there are strict rules in place to prevent discussing one client with another. This was more than enough to dispute Parler’s flimsy claim, Rothstein noted.
On breach of contract, Parler had in the course of its argument essentially admitted to breach of contract on its end, but said that Amazon had broken its side of the bargain by not giving it 30 days to fix the problem as stipulated in the customer service agreement (CSA) at Section 7.2(b)(i). Turns out that doesn’t even matter:
Parler fails to acknowledge, let alone dispute, that Section 7.2(b)(ii) — the provision immediately following — authorizes AWS to terminate the Agreement “immediately upon notice” and without providing any opportunity to cure …
So the 30-day agreement was never in play if Amazon didn’t want it to be; one imagines that the clause is for less immediately concerning causes for action. Contract breach argument denied.
Parler’s allegation that Amazon was “motivated by political animus” likewise holds no water, according to the judge.
Parler has failed to allege basic facts that would support several elements of this claim. Most fatally, as discussed above, it has failed to raise more than the scantest speculation that AWS’s actions were taken for an improper purpose or by improper means … To the contrary, the evidence at this point suggests that AWS’s termination of the CSA was in response to Parler’s material breach.
The company also made the argument that it would suffer “irreparable harm” if AWS services were not restored, and in fact Rothstein had no reason to doubt Parler’s claims that it may face “extinction” as a result of these circumstances. Except that “Parler’s claims to irreparable harm are substantially diminished by its admission ‘that much of that harm would be compensable by damages.'”
In other words, money would fix it — which means it isn’t exactly irreparable.
On other legalities and technicalities, Rothstein finds that Parler makes no case or that Amazon’s case is much stronger — for instance, that being forced to host violent and hateful content would damage AWS’s reputation, perhaps even irreparably.
As is important to note in cases like this, the judge is not ruling on the merits of the whole case, only on the arguments and evidence presented in the request for an injunction to restore services while the case proceeds.
“To be clear, the Court is not dismissing Parler’s substantive underlying claims at this time” — which is to say that it is not dismissing the substance of the claims, nor asserting that they have substance. But Parler “has fallen far short” of demonstrating what it needs to in order to justify a legal intervention of that type.
The case will proceed to its next date, if indeed Parler has not faced the “extinction” it warned of by then.
Rothstein Order on Parler i… by TechCrunch
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/judge-denies-parlers-bid-to-make-amazon-restore-service/
Late last year, Solugen, a startup using synthetic biology to take hydrocarbons out of the chemicals industry, decided against pursuing a new round of funding that would have valued the company at over $1 billion, TechCrunch has learned.
Instead, the Houston-based bio-manufacturing company raised an internal round of roughly $30 million from existing investors and continued working on its latest project — a new bio-based manufacturing process for a high-value specialty chemical that can act as an anti-corrosive agent.
That work represents a potentially lucrative new product line for the company and charts a course for a host of other businesses that are refashioning the basic building blocks of life in an attempt to supplant chemistry with biology for manufacturing and production.
If Solugen can get its high value chemical into commercial production, the company can follow the path that sustainable tech companies like Tesla have mastered — moving from a pricy specialty product into the mass market. And rather than over-promise and underdeliver. Solugen wanted to get the product line right first before raising big bucks, according to people familiar with the company’s thinking.
As the world looks to move away from oil and its byproducts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down or reverse global climate change, the chemicals industry is in the crosshairs as a huge target for disruption. Vehicle electrification solves only one part of the oil problem. The extractive industry doesn’t just produce fuel, but also the chemicals that make up most of the products that defined consumer goods in the twentieth century.
Chemicals are everywhere and they’re a huge business.
Companies like Zymergen raised hundreds of millions of dollars last year to develop industrial applications for synthetic biology, and they’re not alone. Startups including Geltor, Impossible Foods, Ginkgo Bioworks, Lygos, Novomer, and Perfect Day have all raised significant amounts of capital to reduce the environmental footprint of food, chemicals, ingredients, and plastics through synthetic biology.
Some of these companies are seeing early success in food replacements and ingredients, but the promise of biologically based chemicals have been elusive — until now.
Solugen’s new product will produce glucaric acid, a tough-to-make chemical that can be used in water treatment facilities and as an anti-corrosive agent — and the company can make it with a zero carbon (or potentially carbon negative) manufacturing process, according to Solugen co-founder and chief technology officer, Sean Hunt.
The glucaric acid from Solugen is cheaper to produce and more environmentally friendly than existing phsophonates that are used for water treatment — and the company has the benefit of competing against chemicals manufacturers in China.
Given the continuing tensions between the two countries, the U.S. is looking to make more high value products — including chemicals — domestically, and Solugen’s technology is a good way forward to have home grown supplies of critical materials.
Solugen still intends to raise more capital, the company just wanted to wait until its latest production plant for the acid came online, according to Hunt.
It’s also the fruit of years of planning. The two co-founders, Hunt and Gaurab Chakrabarti first realized they could potentially use the technology they’d developed to make specialty chemicals back n 2017, according to Hunt. But first the company had to make the hydrogen peroxide as a precursor chemical, Hunt said.
“It’s advantageous for us to focus on this,” said Hunt. “As we scale, we can enter more commodity type markets down the road.”
It’s all part of the significant strides the entire industry is making, said Hunt. “Synthetic biology has really made significant strides,” he said. “We have our commercial plant coming online this summer [and it proves] synthetic biology has gotten to the point where we can compete on price and performance.”
So the capital infusion will come as the company gets closer to the completion of these commercial scale facilities.
“It’s not like we were sitting on a term sheet and we said no,” Hunt said. “We want to make sure that we are hitting the milestones and the goals at a commensurate pace which is this year. I’m extremely bullish and optimistic of 2021.”
Solugen’s co-founder sees the path that his company is on as one that other startups working in the synthetic biology space will pursue to bring profitable products to market at the higher end before competing with more sustainable versions of commodity chemicals.
“How do you start a company that has this level of capital intensity?” Hunt asked. “You can start in the fine chemicals space where everything sells for tens to hundreds of dollars per pound. For us, glucaric acid is that specialty chemical and then we will do commodity.”
The Biden administration has officially appointed Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel acting FCC chairwoman, and she very well may be the first woman to hold the official position if she is nominated for it later this year, as many expect. With her record of standing for equal access, industry accountability and net neutrality, Rosenworcel’s FCC will be very different from her predecessor’s.
(Update: This article previously stated that Rosenworcel would be the first acting FCC chairwoman, but the formidable Mignon Clyburn briefly held the acting role in 2013 while Tom Wheeler was being confirmed. If nominated and confirmed, Rosenworcel would be the first nonacting chairwoman.)
“I am honored to be designated as the acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission by President Biden. I thank the president for the opportunity to lead an agency with such a vital mission and talented staff. It is a privilege to serve the American people and work on their behalf to expand the reach of communications opportunity in the digital age,” she said in a statement.
While Rosenworcel’s agenda will be made clear over the coming weeks and months, it is likely we will see the return of net neutrality from the shallow grave dug for it by Ajit Pai, and probably a new effort to better understand where in the country actually needs help getting broadband to those who need it, and how to do so quickly and equitably. Her first items of business, however, will likely pertain to getting internet access to those most affected by the pandemic.
(Disclosure: The FCC regulates TechCrunch’s parent company, Verizon, but this has no effect on our coverage.)
Rosenworcel first started at the FCC in 2003 and filled other federal communications regulation roles over the years. She was nominated for commissioner by President Obama in 2011 (confirmed in 2012), and was in the running for chair in 2013, though Tom Wheeler ended up taking the spot. Her second term as commissioner began in 2017.
Throughout her tenure at the FCC Rosenworcel has pushed for net neutrality and improved broadband access for schools and economically disadvantaged areas. During Ajit Pai’s tumultuous term as chairman she offered implacable resistance to what she saw as an unjustified hands-off approach to regulating telecoms, and a fierce indictment of the FCC’s failure to act in the best interest of the people it serves. Here are a few examples.
At the 2017 vote killing net neutrality, Rosenworcel was unsparing in voicing her fury at the shadiness of the entire rule-making process:
I dissent from this rash decision to roll back net neutrality rules. I dissent from the corrupt process that has brought us to this point. And I dissent from the contempt this agency has shown our citizens in pursuing this path today. This decision puts the Federal Communications Commission on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of the American public.
In 2018, with an epidemic of robocalling growing by the month, she contradicted Pai’s claim that a $120 million fine (almost certainly never collected) for one offender proved there was a “cop on the beat”:
Today the FCC adopts a forfeiture order to impose a penalty on one operation that made tens of millions of robocalls two years ago. I support it. But let’s be honest: Going after a single bad actor is emptying the ocean with a teaspoon — and right now we’re all wet.
That the industry still has not widely adopted the framework that would nip robocalls in the bud is testament to this, though they should soon after the FCC finally got in gear. (This year she also contributed a piece to TechCrunch to call for immediate action on the rollout of 5G.)
In 2019, Rosenworcel called out the agency’s seeming lack of concern about a major loophole in telecoms regulation that allowed every mobile service vendor to essentially sell real-time location data to anyone willing to pay for it:
The FCC has been totally silent about press reports that for a few hundred dollars shady middlemen can sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data. That’s unacceptable.
Her office released letters to the agency from the major carriers as a stopgap measure to inform people. When the FCC finally formally moved against the practice, she noted, “It’s a shame that it took so long for the FCC to reach a conclusion that was so obvious.”
In 2020, Rosenworcel raised for the nth time the FCC’s lack of good data concerning broadband deployment in the country. The problem had rankled for years but was highlighted by a spectacular failure to vet industry data provided more or less on the honor system, which ended up throwing off numbers nationally:
This should have set off alarm bells at the FCC. In fact, agency staff reached out to the company nearly a dozen times over multiple years, including after this suspect data was filed. Despite these efforts behind the scenes, on February 19, 2019, the FCC used the erroneous data filed by BarrierFree in a press release, claiming great progress in closing the nation’s digital divide. When an outside party pointed out this was based on fraudulent information, the FCC was forced to revise its claim.
An embarrassing demonstration of how poor the current system is. Of the broadband report itself she had written earlier:
This report deserves a failing grade. Putting aside the embarrassing fumble of the FCC blindly accepting incorrect data for the original version of this report, there are serious problems with its basic methodology. Time and again this agency has acknowledged the grave limitations of the data we collect to assess broadband deployment.
After all, if the FCC doesn’t know who actually is getting decent broadband and who isn’t, how can they direct funds to help bridge that gap?
Lastly, late in 2020 when Pai caved to administration pressure to reevaluate the hugely important Section 230, which limits the liability of internet platforms for the content posted on them, Rosenworcel once again summed up the situation simply and honestly:
The timing of this effort is absurd. The FCC has no business being the president’s speech police.
This abortive attempt to weaken Section 230 never had legs to begin with and will not be pursued further, according to an FCC source.
These are only a handful of the more high-profile moments of Rosenworcel’s latest term, and in fact it is something of a disservice to list just them. The work of an FCC commissioner, their staff and the bureaus they rely on, is largely obscure and technical, with moments like those listed above more the exception than the rule.
With the last-minute confirmation of Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington, the FCC is currently at a 2-2 in its normally 3-2 partisan makeup in favor of the presiding administration. Since Democrats won both Senate seats in Georgia, the feared deadlock will likely be avoided, with a fifth commissioner nominated and confirmed in short order so that work can begin. We’ll know more about Rosenworcel’s priorities and agenda soon.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/the-fcc-has-its-first-chairwoman-in-jessica-rosenworcel/
The Biden administration has officially appointed Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel acting FCC Chairwoman, making her the first woman to hold the position, and she will likely be nominated to fill the position formally later in the year. With her record of standing for equal access, industry accountability, and net neutrality, Rosenworcel’s FCC will be very different from her predecessor’s.
“I am honored to be designated as the Acting Chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission by President Biden. I thank the President for the opportunity to lead an agency with such a vital mission and talented staff. It is a privilege to serve the American people and work on their behalf to expand the reach of communications opportunity in the digital age,” she said in a statement.
While Rosenworcel’s agenda will be made clear over the coming weeks and months, it is likely we will see the return of net neutrality from the shallow grave dug for it by Ajit Pai, and probably a new effort to better understand where in the country actually needs help getting broadband to those who need it, and how to do so quickly and equitably. Her first items of business, however, will likely pertain to getting internet access to those most affected by the pandemic.
(Disclosure: The FCC regulates TechCrunch’s parent company, Verizon, but this has no effect on our coverage.)
Rosenworcel first started at the FCC in 2003, and filled other federal communications regulation roles over the years. She was nominated for Commissioner by President Obama in 2011 (confirmed in 2012), and was in the running for Chair in 2013, though Tom Wheeler ended up taking the spot. Her second term as Commissioner began in 2017.
Throughout her tenure at the FCC Rosenworcel has pushed for net neutrality and improved broadband access for schools and economically disadvantaged areas. During Ajit Pai’s tumultuous term as Chairman she offered implacable resistance to what she saw as an unjustified hands-off approach to regulating telecoms, and a fierce indictment of the FCC’s failure to act in the best interest of the people it serves. Here are a few examples.
At the 2017 vote killing net neutrality, Rosenworcel was unsparing in voicing her fury at the shadiness of the entire rulemaking process:
I dissent from this rash decision to roll back net neutrality rules. I dissent from the corrupt process that has brought us to this point. And I dissent from the contempt this agency has shown our citizens in pursuing this path today. This decision puts the Federal Communications Commission on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.
In 2018, with an epidemic of robocalling growing by the month, she contradicted Pai’s claim that a $120M fine (almost certainly never collected) for one offender proved there was a “cop on the beat”:
Today the FCC adopts a forfeiture order to impose a penalty on one operation that made tens of millions of robocalls two years ago. I support it. But let’s be honest: Going after a single bad actor is emptying the ocean with a teaspoon—and right now we’re all wet.
That the industry still has not widely adopted the framework that would nip robocalls in the bud is testament to this, though they should soon after the FCC finally got in gear. (This year she also contributed a piece to TechCrunch to call for immediate action on the rollout of 5G.)
In 2019, Rosenworcel called out the agency’s seeming lack of concern about a major loophole in telecoms regulation that allowed every mobile service vendor to essentially sell real-time location data to anyone willing to pay for it:
The FCC has been totally silent about press reports that for a few hundred dollars shady middlemen can sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data. That’s unacceptable.
Her office released letters to the agency from the major carriers as a stopgap measure to inform people. When the FCC finally formally moved against the practice, she noted “It’s a shame that it took so long for the FCC to reach a conclusion that was so obvious.”
In 2020, Rosenworcel raised for the nth time the FCC’s lack of good data concerning broadband deployment in the country. The problem had rankled for years but was highlighted by a spectacular failure to vet industry data provided more or less on the honor system, which ended up throwing off numbers nationally:
This should have set off alarm bells at the FCC. In fact, agency staff reached out to the company nearly a dozen times over multiple years, including after this suspect data was filed. Despite these efforts behind the scenes, on February 19, 2019, the FCC used the erroneous data filed by BarrierFree in a press release, claiming great progress in closing the nation’s digital divide. When an outside party pointed out this was based on fraudulent information, the FCC was forced to revise its claim.
An embarrassing demonstration of how poor the current system is. Of the broadband report itself she had written earlier:
This report deserves a failing grade. Putting aside the embarrassing fumble of the FCC blindly accepting incorrect data for the original version of this report, there are serious problems with its basic methodology. Time and again this agency has acknowledged the grave limitations of the data we collect to assess broadband deployment.
After all, if the FCC doesn’t know who actually is getting decent broadband and who isn’t, how can they direct funds to help bridge that gap?
Lastly, late in 2020 when Pai caved to administration pressure to reevaluate the hugely important Section 230, which limits the liability of internet platforms for the content posted on them, Rosenworcel once again summed up the situation simply and honestly:
The timing of this effort is absurd. The FCC has no business being the president’s speech police.
This abortive attempt to weaken Section 230 never had legs to begin with and will not be pursued further, according to an FCC source.
These are only a handful of the more high-profile moments of Rosenworcel’s latest term, and in fact it is something of a disservice to list just them. The work of an FCC Commissioner, their staff, and the bureaus they rely on, is largely obscure and technical, with moments like those listed above more the exception than the rule.
With the last-minute confirmation of Republican Commissioner Nathan Simington, the FCC is currently at a 2-2 in its normally 3-2 partisan makeup in favor of the presiding administration. Since Democrats won both Senate seats in Georgia, the feared deadlock will likely be avoided, with a fifth Commissioner nominated and confirmed in short order so that work can begin. We’ll know more about Rosenworcel’s priorities and agenda soon.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/the-fcc-has-its-first-chairwoman-in-jessica-rosenworcel/
Regulators may still want to imply Bitcoin is merely a tool for criminals, but for many middle-class users, it’s proving to be a lifeline.
Even as politicians like European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde criticize cryptocurrency for providing “loopholes” used for “funny business,” people like Saeed, an Iranian immigrant to France, see cryptocurrency as a necessity, because of the difficulty using mainstream financial systems.
Until 2020, Saeed, who asked to be identified only by his first name, was a software engineer in Iran whose salary barely reached €300 due to rampant inflation. In 2017, he started freelancing for international clients that paid him in Bitcoin. By September 2020, he’d finally saved enough Bitcoin to go to graduate school in France. However, the pandemic made his immigration process much harder.
“I passed all that strange bureaucracy and to get to a course in France last September, with only €1,000 in my pocket,” Saeed said. “HSBC, Banque Nationale de Paris, La Banque Postale, all rejected me, declining to open a bank account. I finally found a bank after a month.”
In the meantime, Saeed used Bitcoin. He is exactly the type of person who benefits from “loopholes” in the traditional banking system.
“Many people in Iran are working with European tech companies,” Saeed said. “Maybe I can’t buy Bitcoin directly from the exchange because of my nationality.”
Saeed thinks Lagarde represents bankers’ and government interests, not average citizens, who are happy to work with him. He said stricter regulations would make his access to the financial system more time-consuming and expensive, because he’d have to pay friends and colleagues to transact on his behalf. However, Iranian migrants are hardly the sole user group relying on Bitcoin during the pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, a British expat named Paul found himself trapped in London when flights back to his Asian country of residence got canceled. Due to tight capital controls in his former country, and the challenges of repatriation during constant lockdowns, Paul was living in between regulatory systems.
“I closed down the business [in Asia] just before the pandemic started. My father passed away and it was difficult to continue my company,” Paul said. “I was in hotels and Airbnbs for weeks and didn’t have a residential address…without Bitcoin I would have been locked out of cash. I could only take money out of the ATM for a certain number of months because it’s limited to holidays.”
Luckily, Paul had a little Bitcoin from earlier that year. Unlike Saeed, he didn’t feel comfortable with the technical aspects, but he learned quickly. He used Bitcoin to buy gift cards for groceries, phone bills, hotels and Uber, plus paid a friend back in Asia to help wrap up his apartment and put things in storage.
“I think it was generally a bad idea but, at least with Brexit, thank god we won’t be subject to whatever Lagarde does,” Paul said, adding that regulation can be beneficial if it avoids restrictions for people who don’t have banking access.
Today, almost a year later, Paul still doesn’t have access to most of his financial accounts. Instead, he downloaded Monzo, a banking app that uses passports for identity verification instead of residential addresses. He pays friends in London to deposit to his Monzo account.
“It becomes really convoluted. I primarily use crypto because it’s easier,” Paul said. “One of my friends is a student from Nigeria and had a similar experience. He used Bitcoin to pay his school fees… I’ve been at my current residence for a couple of months, so I would be able to finally open a bank account. But now I don’t really see the need, especially with the news of negative interest rates.”
Meanwhile, the fiat-denominated price of Bitcoin surged over the past six months. This provided Saeed and Paul both with a little extra capital to spend time figuring out what they want to do next. For Saeed, does it make sense to do the graduate program online, with fewer networking benefits and hands-on experiences (the reason he came to France)? How does Paul move forward with his career now that his family business closed and his sector (music marketing) is in shambles?
Buying Bitcoin could be considered a form of gambling. Indeed, many middle-class hobbyist traders accrued life-changing amounts of wealth over the past year, usually by experimenting with risky software. For people like Paul and Saeed, who generally avoid experimental trades and lack alternative investment options, Bitcoin’s price appreciation is helping them get through a period of abysmal job markets and intermittent lockdowns. People don’t need to live in a dictatorship or a country suffering from high inflation to benefit from Bitcoin. I would know; I’m one of them.
Like many people during the pandemic, my living situation changed dramatically and I initially couldn’t work full-time from home. I was lucky to sell a few poems in exchange for cryptocurrency, usually via direct messages and Bitcoin wallets or as digital collectibles through collaborations with tech-savvy artists. Then the bull market surged again, sending those meager earnings high enough to cover some of my bills. A valet worker and student in Kansas named Hess had a similar experience.
Quarantine helped kill his relationship of six years and he found himself needing to move out. He put his savings into Bitcoin during spring 2020, so that by December he was able to move out.
“COVID hit and I was out of steady work for four months,” Hess said. “Honestly, if it wasn’t for my decision to basically throw 70% of my net worth into Bitcoin, I don’t think I would be in as good of a place mentally and financially.”
To be clear, that is an extremely risky financial move and I would not advise it as a first resort. Yet, for many people experiencing unexpected change due to COVID-19, Bitcoin has become the lifeline it was for Hess.
Over the past year, Bitcoin donations may have gained popularity with several American communities, including some of the extremist groups involved with storming Capitol Hill. Incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen echoed Lagarde’s concerns about Bitcoin being used for criminal activities.
However, so far, the analytics company Chainalysis estimates such donations add up to roughly $522,000. These numbers might also be compared to the cumulative totals managed by other subjects referenced in this article. For yet another lawful example, Lawrence Douglas, a former operations director at an event security company in California, lost his job as a result of the pandemic.
“Cash App pretty much changed my financial life,” Douglas said. “Bitcoin prices during the calendar year of 2020 provided me with lots of wiggle room, while I currently search for a new job.”
As an unemployed Black man, he was statistically less likely to have connections who could help him learn about stocks or precious metals, for example. He said Bitcoin, comparatively, has a “low barrier to entry.” In April 2020, he turned his stimulus check into a little Bitcoin nest egg. By November, he was utilizing a strategy called dollar-cost averaging, routinely buying small amounts of Bitcoin.
Douglas, like Paul, first bought cryptocurrency during the pandemic. On the other hand, when I interviewed more than a dozen Bitcoin users across Europe and North America for this article, most of them were crypto veterans who said Bitcoin gave them “peace” during the year-long crisis. Anesthesiologist Quentin Lobb, for example, said “bottom line, our net worth grew tremendously in 2020, thanks to Bitcoin. It has provided a pleasant and exciting sense of financial security.”
Yet another crypto veteran, Texas real estate agent broker Brandon Arnold, said the national political and economic situation was more “mentally taxing than ever before.” Against that backdrop, controlling a fraction of his own wealth gives him a sense of security. The price appreciation helps too, to be sure, though it’s not why Bitcoin is now so popular with middle-class users.
“If I factor in the risk of not having access to my capital, the price volatility doesn’t really matter,” Paul said. “As long as the price of Bitcoin doesn’t go to zero, it’s still more useful for me than the other options available.”
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/21/how-bitcoin-is-helping-middle-class-users-survive-the-pandemic/
