Elon Musk’s satellite internet service Starlink was given a cease-and-desist order by Namibia’s Communications Regulatory Authority on Thursday for operating in the nation without a licence.
TakeAway Points:
- The Communications Regulatory Authority of Namibia said on Thursday it has issued a cease-and-desist order to Elon Musk’s satellite internet provider Starlink for operating in the country without a license.
- Starlink has applied for a licence to provide telecommunications services in Namibia; however, the application is still being reviewed, thus the regulator has not yet granted the licence.
- China’s ByteDance is suing a former intern for $1.1 million, alleging he purposefully targeted their artificial intelligence large language model training infrastructure.
Starlink to cease operation in Namibia
Starlink, the satellite unit of SpaceX, operates in several African countries but has faced regulatory challenges in others and resistance from state telecom monopolies.
The company has submitted an application for a telecommunications service license in Namibia; however, the regulator has not issued the license as the application is under review.
“Following an investigation, CRAN has established that Starlink is operating a network within Namibia without the required telecommunications license,” CRAN said in a statement.
“On 26 November 2024, the Authority issued a cease-and-desist order to Starlink, instructing the company to immediately cease all operations in Namibia.”
The regulator also advised the public not to purchase Starlink terminal equipment or subscribe to its services, as such activities are illegal in Namibia.
Its investigators have already confiscated illegal terminals from consumers and have opened criminal cases with the Namibian Police in this regard, it added.
Earlier this year, Cameroon ordered the seizure of Starlink equipment at ports as it was not licensed.
ByteDance seeks $1.1 million in damages from intern in AI breach case
China’s ByteDance is suing a former intern for $1.1 million, alleging he deliberately attacked its artificial intelligence large language model training infrastructure, a case that has drawn widespread attention within China amid a heated AI race.
The parent company of TikTok is seeking 8 million yuan ($1.1 million) in damages from the former intern, Tian Keyu, in a lawsuit filed with the Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing, the state-owned Legal Weekly reported this week.
While lawsuits between companies and employees are common in China, legal action against an intern for such a large sum is unusual.
The case has drawn attention due to its focus on AI LLM training, a technology that has captured global interest amid rapid technological advances in so-called generative AI, used to produce text, images or other output from large bodies of data.
ByteDance declined to comment on the lawsuit on Thursday. Tian, whom other Chinese media outlets have identified as a postgraduate student at Peking University, did not immediately respond to emailed messages.
Tian is alleged to have deliberately sabotaged the team’s model training tasks through code manipulation and unauthorized modifications, according to Legal Weekly, which cited an internal ByteDance memo.
In a social media post in October, ByteDance said it had dismissed the intern in August. It said that, while there were rumors that the case had cost ByteDance losses in millions of dollars and involving over 8,000 graphics processing units, these were “seriously exaggerated.”
