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Settles

Shuttered ShapeShift Crypto Exchange Settles Sanctions Violations for $750K

by admin September 23, 2025

In brief

Shuttered crypto exchange ShapeShift will pay $750,000 to settle alleged sanctions violations from the U.S. Treasury Department.
The Treasury Department alleges that the exchange allowed users from sanctioned countries like Cuba to make transactions.
ShapeShift, founded by crypto O.G. Erik Voorhees, closed down in 2021.

Defunct crypto exchange ShapeShift has agreed to pay $750,000 to settle violations of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said Tuesday.

The government department said that the exchange—founded by early crypto entrepreneur Erik Voorhees—took money from users based in sanctioned countries Cuba, Iran, Sudan, and Syria.

Feds alleged that ShapeShift had “no sanctions compliance program in place to screen users or transactions for a nexus to sanctioned jurisdictions,” and processed over $12.5 million in crypto transactions by users from sanctioned countries between December 2016 and October 2018.

“Only after ShapeShift received an administrative subpoena from OFAC did it adopt a sanctions compliance program,” the Treasury Department’s announcement read.

“ShapeShift had reason to know that such users were located in sanctioned jurisdictions, including on the basis of IP address data,” the Treasury Department continued, adding that the exchange “conveyed economic benefit to persons in several jurisdictions subject to OFAC sanctions and thereby harmed the integrity of multiple OFAC sanctions programs.”

It said that the fine was small as ShapeShift is a shuttered exchange with limited assets. ShapeShift closed in 2021.

The exchange—founded in 2014, incorporated in Switzerland, and run out of Denver, Colorado before it shut down—allowed users to swap digital coins and tokens without having to sign up with typical know-your-customer or KYC details, such as addresses or bank details. Clients could therefore trade cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum with a degree of anonymity.

ShapeShift received early funding from early crypto bigwigs like Roger “Bitcoin Jesus” Ver and Digital Currency Group CEO Barry Silbert.

But the exchange ran into trouble when the Securities and Exchange Commission started investigating the platform for not registering as a broker or exchange.

ShapeShift last year agreed to a cease-and-desist order and a $275,000 fine to settle allegations from the SEC.

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September 23, 2025 0 comments

Game Updates

Nintendo and accessories manufacturer Genki settles Switch 2 trademark infringement lawsuit

by admin September 9, 2025

Nintendo’s lawsuit against accessory manufacturer Genki, which earlier this year debuted a mock-up Switch 2 unit before the console had actually been officially unveiled, has come to an end.

Back in May, Nintendo filed a copyright claim against Genki, when it accused the manufacturer of “capitalising” on demand for Switch 2 news and giving “contradictory and inconsistent” statements.

Nintendo and Genki have now reached a settlement, without any further need for a trial. As per official court documents, Genki is required to pay an undisclosed amount to Nintendo for damages.

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In addition, Genki along with all other subsidiaries of its parent company Human Things are banned from using any Nintendo logo, design or “anything confusingly similar thereto”, in “any manner in connection with its business”.

Genki is now also prohibited from using approximations such as ‘Glitch’, ‘Glitch 2’, ‘Genki Direct’ and ‘Genki Indirect’ when promoting its own products, with these of course being very close to Nintendo’s own Switch and Nintendo Direct-related branding.

The accessories manufacturer is also no longer able to use colour schemes in any of its products or packaging which are “confusingly or substantially” similar to Nintendo’s. The court document states: “Namely, red and white, red and blue, green and pink, blue and yellow, purple and orange, pink and yellow, and purple and green.”

You can read the full court document here.

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September 9, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Disney Settles FTC Complaint With YouTube Over Children’s Data Collection

by admin September 4, 2025

Disney will pay a $10 million penalty over allegations that it mislabeled videos on YouTube and allowed personal data to be collected from children without notifying parents or getting their consent, the FTC said in an announcement on Tuesday.

The complaint filed in a US District Court alleged that Disney uploaded videos to YouTube in channels that defaulted to “Not Made For Kids” when the videos should have been labeled “Made For Kids.”

Due to the mislabeling, videos intended for children collected more information than they should have and used that information to target advertising to children under 13, the FTC said. The error, which enabled features like autoplay on the videos, allegedly violated COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule.

“Supporting the well-being and safety of kids and families is at the heart of what we do. This settlement does not involve Disney-owned and operated digital platforms, but rather is limited to the distribution of some of our content on YouTube’s platform,” a Disney spokesperson told CNET. “Disney has a long tradition of embracing the highest standards of compliance with children’s privacy laws, and we remain committed to investing in the tools needed to continue being a leader in this space.”

In addition to the $10 million civil penalty for allegedly violating COPPA, Disney has agreed to ensure COPPA compliance by notifying parents and getting consent for videos that are “Not Made For Kids” and establishing a review program on how videos should be labeled. According to the FTC, “this forward-looking provision reflects and anticipates the growing use of age assurance technologies to protect kids online.”

Separately, the FTC also took COPPA-related action against toy maker Apitor Technology, which makes robots aimed at children ages 6 to 14. The FTC alleges the company collected geolocated information from children via a third-party app in China. The FTC is imposing a $500,000 penalty.

When even big companies ‘miss the mark’

Since COPPA was passed in 1998, technology that can reach young people has evolved dramatically, but enforcement hasn’t eased off as regulators shift their expectations of how companies should comply. That can be a challenge even for companies like Disney.

“For any company that interacts with children or collects children’s data, getting privacy compliance right means investing in the internal knowledge and resources to meet these evolving standards,” said Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director of the Washington, DC office of the nonprofit IAPP.

In addition to the federal rules, there are also state laws that companies have to keep up with.

“This means more protections for consumers and families. It also means a lot of work for privacy teams in a wide variety of organizations,” Zweifel-Keegan told CNET. “As standards change, and given the complex ecosystem involved in providing kids with a safe online experience, even businesses that invest a lot in privacy compliance can miss the mark.

“When they don’t, they can miss the mark by a wider margin.”

Disney has missed the mark on child privacy before, however: in 2011, the company paid a $3 million FTC fine over similar allegations against its Playdom social networking service.

“If a company with Disney’s reputation is doing this, you can bet many other brands, big and small, are too,” said Mark Weinstein, a privacy expert and author of Restoring Our Sanity Online. “Disney is one of the most trusted brands in the world, yet they knowingly broke the rules. YouTube reportedly warned them in 2019, but Disney still went on for years collecting ad revenue likely worth millions of dollars while hoping they wouldn’t get caught.”

Weinstein said there’s emerging legislation that may do more to protect kids from targeted ads and other online dangers, especially amid the emergence of AI and increased spyware. “Fines alone won’t solve this because dominant companies like Disney and Google pay them as ‘costs of doing business,'” Weinstein said.

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September 4, 2025 0 comments

Gaming Gear

Anthropic Settles High-Profile AI Copyright Lawsuit Brought by Book Authors

by admin August 26, 2025

Anthropic has reached a preliminary settlement in a class action lawsuit brought by a group of prominent authors, marking a major turn in of the most significant ongoing AI copyright lawsuits in history. The move will allow Anthropic to avoid what may have been a financially devastating outcome in court.

The settlement agreement is expected to be finalized September 3, with more details to follow, according to a legal filing published on Tuesday. Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Anthropic declined to comment.

In 2024, three book writers, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, sued Anthropic, alleging the startup illegally used their work to train its artificial intelligence models. In June, California district court judge William Alsup issued a summary judgement in Bartz v. Anthropic largely siding with Anthropic, finding that the company’s usage of the books was “fair use,” and thus legal.

But the judge ruled that the manner in which Anthropic had acquired some of the works, by downloading them through so-called “shadow libraries,” including a notorious site called LibGen, constituted piracy. Alsup ruled that the book authors could still take Anthropic to trial in a class action suit for pirating their works; the legal showdown was slated to begin this December.

Statutory damages for this kind of piracy start at $750 per infringed work, according to US copyright law. Because the library of books amassed by Anthropic was thought to contain approximately seven million works, the AI company was potentially facing court-imposed penalties amounting to billions, or even over $1 trillion dollars.

“It’s a stunning turn of events, given how Anthropic was fighting tooth and nail in two courts in this case. And the company recently hired a new trial team,” says Edward Lee, a law professor at Santa Clara University who closely follows AI copyright litigation. “But they had few defenses at trial, given how Judge Alsup ruled. So Anthropic was starting at the risk of statutory damages in ‘doomsday’ amounts.”

Most authors who may have been part of the class action lawsuit were just starting to receive notice that they qualified to participate. The Authors Guild, a trade group representing professional writers, sent out a notice alerting authors that they might be eligible earlier this month, and lawyers for the plaintiffs were scheduled to submit a “list of affected works” to the court on September 1. This means that many of these writers were not privy to the negotiations that took place.

“The big question is whether there is a significant revolt from within the author class after the settlement terms are unveiled,” says James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and internet law at Cornell University. “That will be a very important barometer of where copyright owner sentiment stands.”

Anthropic is still facing a number of other copyright-related legal challenges. One of the most high-profile disputes involves a group of major record labels, including Universal Music Group, which allege that the company illegally trained its AI programs on copyrighted lyrics. The plaintiffs recently filed to amend their case to allege that Anthropic had used the peer-to-peer file sharing service BitTorrent to download songs illegally.

Settlements don’t set legal precedent, but the details of this case will likely still be watched closely as dozens of other high-profile AI copyright cases continue to wind through the courts.

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August 26, 2025 0 comments