CNN Business reports on the growing number of dogs that have gone missing or died while in the care of sitters provided by Rover, an Uber-like pet-sitting service. They report on six, but suspects there are many more because, it reports, the company uses arbitration and NDAs to muzzle customers. — Read the rest

After 75,000 individual Echo users were organized to file a mass arbitration claim, Amazon found it more cost-effective to drop their arbitration clause and instead be brought to court.

The Verge:

Amazon has recently changed its terms of service to allow its customers to bring lawsuits against the company instead of having to go through an arbitration process. 

Uber drivers systematically and illegally discriminated against Lisa Irving due to her disability, an arbitrator ruled today. One even falsely claimed to have arrived at her destination to get her (and her dog) out of the car, knowing that she was blind and wouldn't know any better. — Read the rest

Hated events company Ticketmaster was fined $10m by the U.S. Department of Justice for "intrusions" into a competitor's computer systems.

"Ticketmaster employees repeatedly – and illegally – accessed a competitor's computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence," stated Acting U.S.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Thursday that Russia cannot use its national anthem, flag, or even its name, at the next two Olympics, or at any world championships for the next two years. The sport court's punishment has to do with cheating, and specifically, doping. — Read the rest

My friends and I were really into the Star Wars Customizable Card Game one summer in the 90s, and I have a vague recollection of us trying to get into the DUNE game around the same time. For whatever reason, it failed, and I forgot about it until I saw these images of the game on Instagram:

You can check out more of the artwork on illustrator Mark Zug's website. — Read the rest

I tried to start Adobe Acrobat today, part of the Creative Cloud suite, and it wouldn't start unless I agreed to new Terms of Use. But to read the Terms of Use, I had to agree to the Terms of Use first. — Read the rest

Harry Arnold, the legendary Royal reporter for British tabloid 'The Sun,' used to tell the story of his meeting with Prince Charles, in which the Royal heir asked incredulously: "Where do you get your stories?"

Harry looked up into the air, as if following an unseen fly buzzing above his head, and suddenly shot his hand out, grabbing at the imaginary insect. — Read the rest

Matthew Luckhurst, the San Antonio police officer fired after giving a homeless man a shit sandwich, has won his appeal. KSAT reports that he won the appeal because of a government rule that "prevents law enforcement from disciplining an officer for conduct that occurred more than 180 days before they are disciplined." — Read the rest

"I still can't talk about what happened to me because of a non-disclosure agreement," says Gretchen Carlson.

The Ramones were never a happy family. They never gave much of a crap for the political idealism that would come to be associated with the sound that they defined, either. This is especially of guitarist Johnny Ramone, a notorious conservative who celebrated the bands' induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by declaring, "God bless President Bush." — Read the rest

Do Not Pay, the "robot lawyer" that can help you do everything from beat a traffic ticket to getting access to services for poor and homeless people, has rolled out a new service: "Do Not Sign," a tool to analyze terms of service agreements.

Spotted today in my Lyft app: a new set of terms and conditions that require you to "agree" to binding arbitration (an onerous condition heretofore reserved for downtrodden drivers), through which you agree to waive your right to join class action suits or pursue legal redress through the courts should Lyft, through its deliberate actions or negligence, cause you to be killed, maimed, raped or cheated — something that, not coincidentally, Lyft is in a lot of trouble over at the moment.

Google and the other big tech companies are some of the most lavish funders of climate denial "think tanks" and lobbying groups, something they've been at continuously for more than six years, without interruption.

An investigation by Propublica and Bayerischer Rundfunk found 187 servers hosting more than 5,000,000 patients' confidential medical records and scans (including a mix of Social Security numbers, home addresses and phone numbers, scans and images, and medical files) that were accessible by the public, "available to anyone with basic computer expertise."

California's Assembly Bill 5 isn't radical: it merely affirms the obvious fact that Uber and Lyft drivers (and other "gig economy" workers) are employees, something that the California Supreme Court already made obvious in the Dynamex decision.

On May 21, the American Law Institute — a kind of star chamber of 4,000 judges, law professors, and lawyers — was scheduled to pass a "restatement" of the law of consumer contracts, with the plan being to codify case-law to ensure that terms of service would be treated as enforceable obligations by US courts.

The American Law Institute is a group of 4,000 judges, law profs and lawyers that issues incredibly influential "restatements" of precedents and trends in law, which are then heavily relied upon by judges in future rulings; for seven years they have been working on a restatement of the law of consumer contracts (including terms of service) and now they're ready to publish.

Writing in Fortune, Beth Kowitt gives us a look inside the Googler Uprising, wherein Google staff launched a string of internal reform movements, triggered first by the company's secret participation in an AI/drone warfare project for the Pentagon, then a secret attempt to build a censored/surveilling search engine for use in China, then the revelation that the company had secretly paid off an exec accused of sexual assault, to tune of $150m.

Fox has been ordered to pay $179m to profit participants on the longrunning TV show Bones; the judgment includes $128m in punitive damages because the aribitrator that heard the case found that Fox had concealed the show's true earnings and its execs had lied under oath to keep the profit participants from getting their share of the take.