I suppose this was probably inevitable, but boy do I wonder if it’s smart. We were just talking about the celebrity drama du jour between Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Justin Baldoni. The very short version of this is that Lively and Baldoni starred in a movie together, Lively sued Baldoni and made a series […]
As the we wrote in our amicus brief (which it appears the justices did not read – guess they didn’t have time…), if the TikTok ban is blessed, it provides a roadmap for how to avoid the Constitution’s prohibition to “make no law” abridging free expression. All the government needs to do is declare that […]
Last year, Kashmir Hill at the New York Times published a major story confirming that automakers collect all sorts of driver behavior data then sell it to a long list of companies — without making that clear to car owners or getting consent. That includes insurance companies, which are now jacking up insurance rates if they see […]
Italy remains pretty fucking weird when it comes to all things Italian. From top prosecutors taking aim at vendors who “debase” respected Italian art by, say, offering products featuring Michelangelo’s “David” (mainly the naked bits, which is all of it) or fining government entities (even those engaged in promoting tourism) for using any other language […]
It seemed pretty obvious from the way the Supreme Court’s oral arguments went regarding the TikTok ban that this would be the outcome: a 9-0 per curiam decision saying “eh, it’s fine to ban TikTok.” There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, […]
Fuse Vint is a retro radio, speaker, and charger all in one! Indulge in the nostalgia of traditional radio broadcasts. Fuse Vint comes equipped with a built-in AM/FM radio tuner. Tune in to your favorite local radio stations and immerse yourself in the charm of traditional frequency-based broadcasting. It also works as a standalone speaker […]
Remember how Zuckerberg was “done with politics”? Remember how he promised that he was going to stop doing what politicians demanded he do? Now it turns out that he not only did his big set of moderation changes to please Trump, but did so only after he was told by the incoming administration to act. […]
A few years ago agricultural equipment giant John Deere found itself on the receiving end of an antitrust lawsuit for its efforts to monopolize tractor repair. The lawsuits noted that the company consistently purchased competing repair centers in order to consolidate the sector and force customers into using the company’s own repair facilities, driving up costs and […]
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
The NHL keeps doing this kind of crap to itself. Of all the major American sports leagues, I’d say it’s pretty clear that the National Hockey League trails all the others in terms of getting things right with the internet. The league finally piggybacked onto the MLB Advanced Media platform several years ago to power […]
On December 14, James Harr, the owner of an online store called ComradeWorkwear, announced on social media that he planned to sell a deck of “Most Wanted CEO” playing cards, satirizing the infamous “Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards” introduced by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2003. Per the ComradeWorkwear website, the Most Wanted CEO cards would offer “a critique […]
If you only remember two things about the government pressure campaign to influence Mark Zuckerberg’s content moderation decisions, make it these: Donald Trump directly threatened to throw Zuck in prison for the rest of his life, and just a couple months ago FCC Commissioner (soon to be FCC chair) Brendan Carr threatened Meta that if […]
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As I noted when the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court handed down its original decision back in 2023, I didn’t care much for the plaintiff, but I did care quite a bit about the First Amendment. Less-than-ideal litigants make some pretty good caselaw, and that’s how it went here. The plaintiff challenging Oregon’s surreptitious recording law […]
We’re still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on the TikTok ban case, which is expected to come today or tomorrow. But things are getting increasingly silly. The Biden administration, which actively pushed for the ban and eagerly signed it into law, is now making a last-ditch effort to… keep the app operating, even […]
There have been very few times I’ve encountered something in life that feels like it was absolutely made specifically for me. The Deadpool movie series is one of those few things. For my sensibilities, they’re just about perfect. And one of my favorite aspects of the films is the fourth-wall-breaking nature of the main character. […]
We’re at the halfway point of January, and that means we’re at the halfway point of the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! As in past years, we’re celebrating the entry of new works into the public domain by calling on game designers of all stripes and levels of […]
Mark Lemley is one of, if not the biggest names in IP law. So when Lemley makes a move, it’s worth paying attention. And that’s exactly what happened this week when he announced that he has “fired Meta as a client.” There are various lists that come out from time to time about the “most […]
A new Consumer Reports study unsurprisingly finds that popular exercise equipment makers collect way more data on users than is necessary, then sell access to that data to a wide variety of dodgy and largely unregulated data brokers and middle men, who in turn generally play fast and loose with it. Consumer Reports studied ten […]
Go from absolute zero to GIMP pro with this comprehensive 9 course bundle. Jump into the Complete Master GIMP Design Bundle, and you’ll go all the way from installing the GIMP software and configuring it to run on Windows, to producing banners, book covers and even memes that you’ll display using Facebook and other social […]