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Two crypto investors pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges they kidnapped and tortured an Italian man for his Bitcoin in an upscale Manhattan townhouse. William Duplessie and John Woeltz were ordered held in custody until their next court date on July 15 during their arraignment in Manhattan criminal court. Their lawyers had sought their release on $1 million bail and home confinement with their parents. They argued the victim wasn’t in distress during his time in New York, saying they had obtained video and photo evidence showing the accuser smiling and laughing during the time of his purported captivity. Among the evidence the lawyers said they have obtained are photos of the accuser moving freely in and out of the house, even taking a trip to an eyeglass store with one of the defendants. This narrative is entirely false,” said Sam Talkin, Duplessie’s lawyer. The story that he is selling doesnt make sense. Prosecutor Sania Khan argued that someone supporting the defendants was selectively leaking videos to present a counternarrative of the events Victims of abuse are not always going to act the way that we expect them to,” she added. Duplessie and Woeltz, who appeared in handcuffs and prison uniforms, didn’t speak in court other than to formally enter their pleas. They face charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful imprisonment and criminal possession of a weapon. Prosecutors say on May 6, the two men lured the victim, who they knew personally, to a posh townhouse in Manhattans Soho neighborhood by threatening to kill his family. The man, a 28-year-old Italian national who has not been named by officials, said he was held captive for 17 days. He said the two investors tormented him with electrical wires, forced him to smoke from a crack pipe and at one point dangled him from a staircase five stories high. The man said he eventually agreed to hand over his computer password, then managed to flee as his captors went to retrieve the device. Woeltz, 37, has described himself in interviews as a blockchain investor who spent time in Silicon Valley before returning to Kentuckys burgeoning crypto-mining industry. Duplessie, 32, is listed as a founder or investor at various blockchain-based companies. New York City police are also investigating two detectives who worked security at the townhouse where the man says he was tortured. The officers have been placed on modified leave pending the outcome of the inquiry, although their lawyer has said theres no indication either officer witnessed any of the alleged criminal activity. Philip Marcelo, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Disney and Universal have filed a copyright lawsuit against popular artificial intelligence image-generator Midjourney on Wednesday, marking the first time major Hollywood companies have enter the legal battle over generative AI. Filed in federal district court in Los Angeles, the complaint claims Midjourney pirated the libraries of the two Hollywood studios to generate and distribute endless unauthorized copies of their famed characters, such as Darth Vader from Star Wars and the Minions from Despicable Me. Midjourney is the quintessential copyright free-rider and a bottomless pit of plagiarism. Piracy is piracy, and whether an infringing image or video is made with AI or another technology does not make it any less infringing,” the companies state in the complaint. The studios also claimed the San Francisco-based AI company ignored their requests to stop infringing on their copyrighted works and to take technological measures to halt such image generation. Midjourney didnt immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In a 2022 interview with The Associated Press, Midjourney CEO David Holz described his image-making service as kind of like a search engine pulling in a wide swath of images from across the internet. He compared copyright concerns about the technology with how such laws have adapted to human creativity. Can a person look at somebody elses picture and learn from it and make a similar picture? Holz said. Obviously, its allowed for people and if it wasnt, then it would destroy the whole professional art industry, probably the nonprofessional industry too. To the extent that AIs are learning like people, its sort of the same thing and if the images come out differently then it seems like its fine. Major AI developers dont typically disclose their data sources but have argued that taking troves of publicly accessible online text, images and other media to train their AI systems is protected by the fair use doctrine of American copyright law. The studios case joins a growing number of lawsuits filed against developers of AI platformssuch as OpenAI, Anthropicin San Francisco and New York. Meanwhile, the first major copyright trial of the generative AI industry is underway in London, pitting Getty Images against artificial intelligence company Stability AI. Shawn Chen, AP technology writer
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump’s quest to erase his criminal conviction heads to a federal appeals court Wednesday. It’s one way he’s trying to get last year’s hush money verdict overturned.A three-judge panel is set to hear arguments in Trump’s long-running fight to get the New York case moved from state court to federal court, where he could then try to have the verdict thrown out on presidential immunity grounds.The Republican is asking the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene after a lower-court judge twice rejected the move. As part of the request, Trump wants the federal appeals court to seize control of the criminal case and then ultimately decide his appeal of the verdict, which is now pending in a state appellate court.The 2nd Circuit should “determine once and for all that this unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former and current President of the United States belongs in federal court,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.The Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Trump’s case, wants it to stay in state court. Trump’s Justice Departmentnow partly run by his former criminal defense lawyersbacks his bid to move the case to federal court.If Trump loses, he could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.Trump was convicted in May 2024 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels, whose affair allegations threatened to upend his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump denies her claim and said he did nothing wrong. It was the only one of his four criminal cases to go to trial.Trump’s lawyers first sought to move the case to federal court following his March 2023 indictment, arguing that federal officers including former presidents have the right to be tried in federal court for charges arising from “conduct performed while in office.” Part of the criminal case involved checks he wrote while he was president.They tried again after his conviction, arguing that Trump’s historic prosecution violated his constitutional rights and ran afoul of the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, which was decided about a month after the hush money trial ended.The ruling reins in prosecutions of ex-presidents for official acts and restricts prosecutors in pointing to official acts as evidence that a president’s unofficial actions were illegal.U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein denied both requests, ruling in part that Trump’s conviction involved his personal life, not his work as president.In a four-page ruling, Hellerstein wrote that nothing about the high court’s ruling affected his prior conclusion that hush money payments at issue in Trump’s case “were private, unofficial acts, outside the bounds of executive authority.”Trump’s lawyers argue that prosecutors rushed to trial instead of waiting for the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision, and that prosecutors erred by showing jurors evidence that should not have been allowed under the ruling, such as former White House staffers describing how Trump reacted to news coverage of the hush money deal and tweets he sent while president in 2018.Trump’s former criminal defense lawyer Todd Blanche is now the deputy U.S. attorney general, the Justice Department’s second-in-command. Another of his lawyers, Emil Bove, has a high-ranking Justice Department position.The trial judge, Juan M. Merchan, rejected Trump’s requests to throw out the conviction on presidential immunity grounds and sentenced him on Jan. 10 to an unconditional discharge, leaving his conviction intact but sparing him any punishment.Appearing by video at his sentencing, Trump called the case a “political witch hunt,” “a weaponization of government” and “an embarrassment to New York.” Michael R. Sisak, Associated Press
Category:
E-Commerce
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