Ticketmaster is the victim of a cyber attack, its parent company, Live Nation, confirmed. The information stolen allegedly includes personal information from 560 million individuals, including names, numbers, addresses, and partial payment details. Hacking group ShinyHunters has demanded $500,000 in ransom money to prevent the data's sale and confirmed it held the 1.3TB of stolen data to Hackread.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Live Nation stated it had "identified unauthorized activity" on May 20 and subsequently started investigating it. On May 27, "a criminal threat actor offered what it alleged to be Company user data for sale via the dark web." 

Live Nation claims to be working to lower the risks posed to its customers and its own business. "As of the date of this filing, the incident has not had, and we do not believe it is reasonably likely to have, a material impact on our overall business operations or on our financial condition or results of operations," the company added. "We continue to evaluate the risks and our remediation efforts are ongoing."

Ticketmaster has faced previous breaches, including a bot attack during Taylor Swift ticket sales. The company also has a history as a hacker, illegally — and repeatedly — accessing the computer system of its rival, Songkick. Ticketmaster paid a $10 million criminal fine rather than face prosecution. However, the company's former head of Artist Services, Zeeshan Zaidi, pled guilty to conspiring to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud due to his role in the scheme.

Microsoft and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) have forged a labor neutrality agreement for all ZeniMax workers. The CWA says the deal is similar to the one from 2022 covering Activision Blizzard’s workforce, which went into effect in April of this year.

“Thousands of our ZeniMax co-workers now have a free and fair path to organize together for better working conditions,” Page Branson, a Senior Quality Assurance (QA) Tester, wrote in a CWA press release.

In 2022, the Xbox maker signed a formal agreement with CWA to respect Activision Blizzard employees’ right to organize. Set to take effect 60 days after Microsoft’s acquisition closed, it didn’t become official until earlier this year. It also extends Microsoft’s early 2023 recognition of ZeniMax QA workers’ right to unionize, and it now includes every eligible employee at ZeniMax.

The CWA says the new agreement means Microsoft will take a neutral approach when employees express interest in joining the union. The workers can communicate with their peers and union reps about membership “in a way that encourages information sharing and avoids business disruptions.”

According to the CWA, workers will have access to a decision-making process that respects their privacy if they wish. In addition, it includes a dispute resolution and arbitration process in the case of any disagreements between the union and Microsoft.

“When we organized our union under a similar legal agreement the process was clear and management did not try to influence anyone’s decision and the company did not try to interfere with the voting process,” Branson wrote. “There is strength in numbers, and as our numbers grow at ZeniMax, at Microsoft, and in the video game industry, we will gain the respect we deserve and raise the standards of working conditions for everyone across the video gaming industry. When we benefit, the consumer and the company will ultimately benefit with us and help keep this industry stable for current and future workers.”

Samsung's largest workers' organization, the National Samsung Electronics Union, has announced that it's planning to stage a walkout next week as part of its fight for fair compensation. Members are threatening to skip work for a day, on June 7, in hopes that the company would listen to their demands after their wage negotiations over the past months had come to a standstill. If it pushes through, BNN Bloomberg says it'll be the first strike ever by the company's employees since Samsung was founded. As Reuters reports, Samsung agreed to a 5.1 percent increase in wages this year, but the union is also negotiating to add one more day to workers' annual leaves and for more transparency when it comes to performance bonuses.

"What we want is not a 1-2 percent wage increase. What we want is to be paid fairly for the amount of work done," union leaders said in front of Samsung's offices in Seoul. "We want to be compensated for our labor fairly and transparently."

The National Samsung Electronics Union has 28,000 members, which represent over a fifth of the company's workforce. Union leaders aren't expecting the strike to have a significant impact on Samsung's production since most of its manufacturing processes are automated anyway, but they're still hoping that their walkout could compel the company to take them seriously. The union certainly has more power to negotiate now — apparently, its membership grew four-fold over the past couple of years after the company pledged to stop its union-busting schemes. 

Samsung used to be notorious for suppressing organized labor activities. In 2018, board chairman Lee Sang-hoon was indicted for sabotaging legitimate labor activities by threatening to lower wages of employees who join them, deliberately stalling negotiations between management and laborers and digging up dirt on key union personnel to persuade them to cease their activities. Lee stepped down as chairman of the board in 2020, the same year Samsung's Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee promised to end the company's union-busting practices. 

The union said, however, that there's "no change in the management’s attitude" despite Lee's promise to eliminate non-union management. "We can no longer stand by the company's lack of will to negotiate," it added. If the company refuses to engage in meaningful talks, the union is planning to stage more walkouts in the future. A Samsung spokesperson told BNN Bloomberg, however, that "the company remains committed to engaging in good faith negotiations with the unions, and is making every sincere effort to an agreement."

The families of the shooting victims at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas have sued Call of Duty publisher Activision and Meta. They alleged that the companies "knowingly exposed the shooter to the weapon [he used], conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it." The plaintiffs also accused the companies of "chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters." 

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs explained that the Uvalde shooter played Call of Duty, which featured an assault-style rifle made by gunmaker Daniel Defense. They also mentioned that he frequently visited Instagram, which advertised the gunmaker's products. The lawsuit claimed, as well, that Instagram gives gunmakers "an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night." It argued that the shooter was "a poor and isolated teenager" from small town Texas who only learned about AR-15s and set his sights on it, because he was exposed to the weapon from playing Call of Duty and visiting Instagram. In addition, it accused Meta of being more lenient towards firearms sellers than other users who break its rules. Meta prohibits the buying the selling of weapons and ammunition, but users can violate the policy 10 times before they're banned from its platforms. 

"The truth is that the gun industry and Daniel Defense didn’t act alone. They couldn’t have reached this kid but for Instagram," the plaintiffs' lawyer, Attorney Josh Koskoff, said at a news conference. "They couldn’t expose him to the dopamine loop of virtually killing a person. That's what Call of Duty does." Koskoff's law firm was the same one who reached a $73 million settlement with rifle manufacturer Remington for the families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. 

An Activision spokesperson told The Washington Post and Bloomberg Law that the "Uvalde shooting was horrendous and heartbreaking in every way," and that the company expresses its deepest sympathies to the families, but "millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts."

The US Department of Justice arrested a Wisconsin man last week for generating and distributing AI-generated child sexual abuse material (CSAM). As far as we know, this is the first case of its kind as the DOJ looks to establish a judicial precedent that exploitative materials are still illegal even when no children were used to create them. “Put simply, CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco wrote in a press release.

The DOJ says 42-year-old software engineer Steven Anderegg of Holmen, WI, used a fork of the open-source AI image generator Stable Diffusion to make the images, which he then used to try to lure an underage boy into sexual situations. The latter will likely play a central role in the eventual trial for the four counts of “producing, distributing, and possessing obscene visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and transferring obscene material to a minor under the age of 16.”

The government says Anderegg’s images showed “nude or partially clothed minors lasciviously displaying or touching their genitals or engaging in sexual intercourse with men.” The DOJ claims he used specific prompts, including negative prompts (extra guidance for the AI model, telling it what not to produce) to spur the generator into making the CSAM.

Cloud-based image generators like Midjourney and DALL-E 3 have safeguards against this type of activity, but Ars Technica reports that Anderegg allegedly used Stable Diffusion 1.5, a variant with fewer boundaries. Stability AI told the publication that fork was produced by Runway ML.

According to the DOJ, Anderegg communicated online with the 15-year-old boy, describing how he used the AI model to create the images. The agency says the accused sent the teen direct messages on Instagram, including several AI images of “minors lasciviously displaying their genitals.” To its credit, Instagram reported the images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which alerted law enforcement.

Anderegg could face five to 70 years in prison if convicted on all four counts. He’s currently in federal custody before a hearing scheduled for May 22.

The case will challenge the notion some may hold that CSAM’s illegal nature is based exclusively on the children exploited in their creation. Although AI-generated digital CSAM doesn’t involve any live humans (other than the one entering the prompts), it could still normalize and encourage the material, or be used to lure children into predatory situations. This appears to be something the feds want to clarify as the technology rapidly advances and grows in popularity.

“Technology may change, but our commitment to protecting children will not,” Deputy AG Monaco wrote. “The Justice Department will aggressively pursue those who produce and distribute child sexual abuse material—or CSAM—no matter how that material was created. Put simply, CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM, and we will hold accountable those who exploit AI to create obscene, abusive, and increasingly photorealistic images of children.”

A group of Amazon workers in Quebec have formed the first union at one of the company's Canadian warehouses. On Friday, the province's labor tribunal granted union accreditation to workers at the DXT4 warehouse in Laval, a Montreal suburb. It determined that a majority had opted to unionize after signing union cards.

A group of some 200 workers are organizing as the Laval Amazon Workers Union under the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN), which represents around 330,000 people across a variety of industries in Canada. A general assembly to decide on a constitution, bylaws and representatives will take place in the coming days. A consultation with union members will then take place to agree on a list of demands.

The union says Amazon is legally required to come to the negotiation table to hash out a contract. However, it expects Amazon to appeal the labor tribunal’s decision after allegedly attempting to stop the unionization efforts.

“First and foremost, this is a great victory for the men and women from Latin America, Chad, the Maghreb and Asia who were not afraid to stand up for their rights,” CSN president Caroline Senneville said in a statement. “Over the past few months, Amazon has pulled out all the stops to block our unionization campaign, flooding the workplace with scaremongering messages. DXT4 workers have given us all a lesson in courage. Of course, we hope it spreads.”

Amazon claimed in a letter to the labor tribunal on May 6 that the accreditation would not "respect the interests of its employees." The company argued that some workers signed union cards after being misled and that some aspects of the Quebec labor code run contrary to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

"We believe that all people should have the right to inform themselves and to vote according to their situation and convictions at the time," Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait told the CBC. "If a simple majority of people at an employer have joined a union at any point, then there's no vote and representation is automatic for all employees — including maybe dozens or hundreds of employees who didn't even know it was being considered."

Amazon has long been accused of attempting to upend unionization efforts at warehouses in the US and Europe. In 2022, workers at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, became the first in the company to form a union. But the Amazon Labor Union does not yet have a contract with Amazon, and reports suggest it's running low on funds ahead of a leadership election.

Apple's first unionized Store in Towson, Maryland has now authorized the first strike against the retail giant. That follows what the union called "over a year of negotiations with Apple management that yielded unsatisfactory outcomes," according to a press release from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers' retail coalition (IAM CORE). 

The Maryland store located in a Baltimore mall represents around 100 employees and unionized in 2022, becoming the first Apple Store to do so. The vote concluded last weekend and allows workers to walk out at any time, but no date has been set yet. 

While the sides have agreed on principle in 25 areas, other key matters remain unresolved. "The issues at the forefront of this action include concerns over work-life balance, unpredictable scheduling practices disrupting personal lives and wages failing to align with the area’s cost of living," the union wrote. 

"We deeply value our team members and we’re proud to provide them with industry leading compensation and exceptional benefits. As always, we will engage with the union representing our team in Towson respectfully and in good faith," Apple said in a statement.

The union previously accused Apple of illegally withholding new benefits including healthcare and other perks from workers at the Towson Store. Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said Apple violated federal law with anti-union meetings in Atlanta. A New York judge also issued a cease-and-desist order against Apple for abusing employee's rights. 

Apple and IAM CORE will return to the negotiating table on May 21, according to the union. "This vote today is the first step in demonstrating our solidarity and sends a clear message to Apple," the union said in a statement. "As discussions with Apple management continue, we remain committed to securing tangible improvements that benefit all employees." 

Continuing the long American tradition of wealthy corporate overlords making union-busting comments, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy went on a media blitz in 2022 to warn of the workplace-altering terrors of labor unions. (Surely, it’s an unfortunate happenstance that his urgent PSA coincided with an uptick in organizing efforts at Amazon.) Sadly for Mr. Jassy, the US still has a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), and CNBC reports that the board ruled Wednesday that his anti-union comments broke federal labor laws.

Jassy popped up on CNBC in April 2022 to say that if employees voted for and joined a union, they would become less empowered and could expect things to become “much slower” and “more bureaucratic.” In an interview with Bloomberg, he added, “If you see something on the line that you think could be better for your team or you or your customers, you can’t just go to your manager and say, ‘Let’s change it.’”

He capped off his union-busting trifecta at The New York Times DealBook conference, where the CEO said that a workplace without unions isn’t “bureaucratic, it’s not slow.”

It’s the latest in Amazon’s long history of union-busting behavior.

Amazon

NLRB Judge Brian Gee said Jassy violated labor laws by suggesting employees would be less empowered or “better off” without a union. However, Gee said the CEO’s other comments about worker-employer relationships changing were lawful. According to the judge, the difference is that the more aggressive quotes “went beyond merely commenting on the employee-employer relationship.”

Gee added that the comments “threatened employees that, if they selected a union, they would become less empowered and find it harder to get things done quickly.” The judge recommends that Amazon “cease and desist” from making similar comments in the future. The company is also required to post and share a note about the judge’s order with all of its US employees.

In December, Jassy’s Amazon shares were valued at $328 million, making him one of America’s wealthiest CEOs.

In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the judge’s ruling “reflects poorly on the state of free speech rights today.” Because, hey, what kind of free country do we even have if a retail magnate can’t tell low-income workers scary bedtime stories about the perils of voting to empower themselves in the workplace?

A federal judge has sentenced Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (often known as “CZ”) to four months in prison, as first reported by The New York Times. Prosecutors had recommended three years. Zhao pleaded guilty in November to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to set up an anti-money-laundering program.

The DOJ accused Zhao of allowing criminal activity to flourish on the crypto exchange. “Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in November.

The government accused Binance of refusing to comply with American sanctions and failing to report suspicious transactions related to drugs and child sexual abuse materials. Prosecutors said in court that Zhao had told Binance employees it was “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” while bragging that if Binance had obeyed the law, it wouldn’t be “as big as we are today.”

Under the plea deal’s terms, Binance agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion and pay a $1.8 billion fine. Zhao personally paid $50 million as part of the settlement.

Although the charges differed, Zhao’s sentence is dramatically shorter than the 25 years fellow crypto figurehead Sam Bankman-Fried received in March. SBF, as he’s often known, was convicted on seven counts of fraud and conspiracy for his role at the helm of the crypto platform FTX.

Zhao played an integral role in Bankman-Fried’s downfall — and the crypto industry’s broader decline in the last 18 months. The Binance founder tweeted in November 2022 that his company would liquidate its holdings in FTX’s de facto token. He said “recent revelations that have came[sic] to light” while citing “ethical concerns” and “regulatory risks.” The posts not only crushed FTX but the crypto world at large. (They likely helped attract the government’s attention as well.) When FTX’s wells dried up following the platform’s rapid collapse, Zhao briefly agreed to buy the company but quickly backed out.

Prosecutors said Zhao’s crime carried a standard federal sentence of 12 to 18 months but argued for a three-year term, describing his crimes as being “on an unprecedented scale.” But Judge Richard A. Jones saw it differently, sentencing him to a measly one-twelfth of the government’s suggested term.

“This wasn’t a mistake — it wasn’t a regulatory oops,” Kevin Mosley, a DOJ lawyer, reportedly said in court on Tuesday. “Breaking U.S. law was not incidental to his plan to make as much money as possible. Violating the law was integral to that endeavor.”

Late last year, over 100 employees of Avalanche Studios, the makers of Just Cause, announced an intent to unionize. The workers have officially ironed out a collective bargaining agreement with the Swedish labor unions Unionen and Engineers of Sweden. The agreement goes into effect during the second quarter of 2025.

While specifics of the agreement remain unknown, Avalanche said that it “will help standardize frameworks around essential areas such as salaries, benefits, employee influence, and career support.” The company says it’s working closely with both unions to ensure a smooth implementation of these frameworks.

Avalanche was founded in Sweden, but has since become a global entity. With this in mind, the move to unionize only impacts workers located in Sweden, which amounts to around 100 people. The company employs more than 500 workers globally.

Despite that caveat, this is still another high-profile move toward improving the rights of workers in the gaming industry. Avalanche joins several other companies that recently organized under collective labor contracts. Sega of America workers overwhelmingly voted to unionize last year, a move that impacted 200 employees. Over 300 ZeniMax Studios quality assurance workers voted to unionize last year, and parent company Microsoft didn’t stand in the way. Activision, another Microsoft company, boasts a union with over 600 members, which is the largest one in the entire industry.

This is all good news for workers, but there’s also a dark cloud floating around the industry. There have been a boatload of layoffs throughout the past several months. As a matter of fact, over 6,000 people lost their jobs in January alone. Impacted workers hail from many of the companies mentioned above, like Sega of America, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax.

As for Avalanche, it’s continuing work on the forthcoming Xbox exclusive Contraband. The game’s been in the pipeline since 2021 and it looks to be an open-world co-op adventure set in the 1970s.