This is nonsense.

Sure, the actual training of the AI of not covered by copyright law. But much of its training material is very much covered by copyright law. And given the current long copyright terms, I suspect only a tiny fraction of publicly available sources are in the public domain.

And rightly so. This is exactly what I'm considering, given the widespread places my information goes in ad auctions.

Not all employers will see 2. as lost productivity. Idle chit-chat builds personal relationships that make working together work more smoothly. Also, the better employees also use office chit-chat for various minor adjustments and minor innovations that improve your process. Even IT is ultimately about people doing work.

On 1.: one way or another, employers will pay at least part of it. Less in a cool job market, sadly, but even then employers still face costs. More commute time reduces the labor pool, and a less friendly/flexible work environment (than your competitors) increases churn. Both increase the cost of doing business.

The nasty bit (for employees) is that these costs are not directly attributed to an employer being an asshole.

Of course not: many carriers charge per SMS. These may be low prices, but sending text messages can be very expensive. In the Netherlands, for example, the cost per SMS vary between zero and €0,31.

Using a message platform over the internet (especially via WiFi) reduces these per-message costs to zero, and is thus by far the most preferred option.

On the contrary! This judge has an opinion, which is allowed. Please read the remainder of the summary:

In other words: this judge says that democracy is more important than his own opinion.

Wrong. Requests to the Bing API always have an IP address (a technical necessity), which qualify as personal data in the EU. Also note that the GDPR term personal data extends beyond personally identifying information. So even if a bit of data does not uniquely identify you, it can still be personal data.

This also means that sending, for example, data on a search query for a medical condition makes that entire request sensitive personal data. Having/collecting such data for commercial purposes is definitely illegal.

Very much this, except that the rules for sensitive data such as medical information, race (images!), religion, sexual preference, location, etc. are even more severe.

For starters, you're not allowed to collect/use it unless you can prove that you cannot provide a necessary service without it. And it has to be necessary from the point of view of the data subject. This pretty much excludes all forms of marketing, and makes sensitive personal data a big no-go for Big Surveillance (like Meta, Google, etc.).

Not at all, at least in the Netherlands (but also elsewhere in Europe). Here, employers are required to provide everything needed to do the work. By law, regardless of sector.

For employers, providing the equipment also makes sense: if it's your equipment, you get to set the rules. But if the phone belongs to your employee, (s)he can set the rules for that phone. And not all employees are in the unfortunate position that you can bully them into submission by threat of firing.

For photographs, that's where portrait/personality rights (US: rights of publicity) come into play. Basically, you can control public use of any data related to you. I'm not certain what this means for private commercial use (like what Clearview is doing).

Then again, photographs of you are data where you are the data subject. So this definitely falls within the scope of e.g. the European GDPR. So what Clearview is doing is very much illegal where European data subjects are concerned. (not sure whether it's enforceable though)

It's wrong to assume the advertisers don't know my name. In fact, in their dataset 123456789 IS my name. It uniquely identifies me, as much as a SSN or name + address would. That is sufficient to target me personally.

And yes, the consequences for real-life stalking are visible and include physical harm. The consequences of being targeted by digital stalkers don't include physical harm but are still very real, and far more insidious:
* They influence my subconscious decisions: that's what marketing is about (already in 2015, NorthWestern University published a study demonstrating influencing sleeping consumers). I can't speak for others, but I'd like to decide on my own opinions.
* They influence my political views: that's why we try to limit fake news, and what the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal was about.

Exactly. I see collecting data for personal profiles as a blatant invasion of my privacy that should be treated the same as stalking: punishable with jail time for all perpetrators.

I don't mind context targeted advertising: ads for TVs when I'm searching for one. Search engines like DuckDuckGo do this (and make a profit doing so). But I very much dislike ads based on a personal profile. People collecting that data are scum IMHO.

Being flagged by this technology means you're accused of wrongdoing.

"Where there's smoke, there's fire": false accusations have a proven history of harm, especially with crimes people feel strongly about, like rape, child abuse, fraud/lying/cheating, etc. More so with our current social media culture, where exonerating evidence usually doesn't get spread around sufficiently.

This is (one of) the reason(s) libel and slander are also crimes.

And then there is the problem with proof & defense in such investigations. After all:

* How many students have the knowledge to challenge these new technologies?

* How strong is the "proof"? The software in the article mentions processes in the browser generating (i.e. faking) data...

* Is such evidence pollution detected? Does "innocent until proven guilty" also apply here? Or do we assign the responsibility to the student, and thus assume guilt until proven innocent?

* How well are students that are found innocent exonerated? Having dismissed charges on record can break careers, as it's seen as a risk...

Of course, his book also has the answer to that: the successor of Deep Thought, Earth with all its inhabitants, is calculating the answer as well. And both Douglas Adams and scientific research have written about the power of coincidences.

When I send or expect email, it arrives in the inbox 95% of the time. As intended. Email that doesn't is usually sent by companies and looks like an ad, so I'm not disappointed that it ends up in the spam folder.

Sure, it's N=1 and YMMV, but normal email use does still exist.

Yes, Epic broke the rules. They might even be assholes. But the rules they broke are set by a monopolist. That is the real subject of this case.

For all customers with an iPhone, you must go through Apple. There's no competition.

For all customers with an Android phone, you must go through Google. There's no meaningful competition.
(the only competitors to the Google Play Store with a significant market share are for the Chinese market only)