The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles is pretty much just renting a car from Hertz. Participating in either system greatly increases your chances of spending time jailed for crimes you didn’t commit. Hertz’s inability to perform basic inventory control functions means renters in good standing are being treated to guns out traffic stops and felony […]
Earlier this month we noted how a sleazy telecom and media giant smear campaign successfully derailed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn, keeping the agency gridlocked (quite intentionally) without the voting majority to do much of anything deemed “controversial” by industry. While the GOP and telecom giants deserve the lion’s share of the […]
You may have heard that the Biden administration has told TikTok that it must be divested from ByteDance or it will be banned in the US. At least that’s what TikTok said the administration has said. The end result of this might well be that ByteDance divests of TikTok, but we should be clear: the […]
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Well… fuck the Supreme Court, I guess. That’s how law enforcement is working these days, bypassing the restraints of the Carpenter decision to do what they want, when they want, with whatever location data they can purchase from private third-party brokers. It’s the “third party” that counts. It’s also the narrower aspects of the Supreme […]
We’ve noted for a while that the performative histrionics surrounding TikTok are really just a distraction from our corrupt failure to police dodgy data brokers or pass even a basic privacy law for the internet era. U.S. companies don’t want to lose money by empowering consumers or being ethical, and the U.S. government doesn’t want […]
Microsoft continues to make moves to get its purchase of Activision Blizzard past the various regulatory bodies that have voiced their concerns. While there are plenty of signs that the EU regulators are getting ready to approve the deal, there is still the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) […]
One of the life’s certainties is that copyright maximalism will continue to encourage absurd rulings by complaisant courts. Here’s a rather spectacular case from Germany. It involves a “photo wallpaper”. For those of you who – like me – aren’t quite sure what that means, it is the name given to wallpapers that are essentially […]
Misunderstandings (honest or otherwise) about Section 230 abound — across the political spectrum and, of course, in Congress. Each side believes weakening or eliminating the law will achieve its own distinct goals, and both sides are wrong. Following the most recent (but far from the first) very frustrating congressional hearing about Section 230, this week […]
The UK government is entertaining even more plans to undermine (or actually outlaw) end-to-end encryption. And it’s not gaining any support from the multiple services (and multiple people) these efforts would harm. Both Signal and Proton have made it clear they’ll pull their services rather than weaken their encryption to comply with UK government demands. […]
There’s been a lot of discussion of late, especially because of the various Twitter Files, regarding where the line is between governments simply flagging content for social media websites to vet against their own policies as compared to unconstitutional and impermissible suppression of speech in violation of the 1st Amendment. As we’ve highlighted over and […]
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I don’t know, maybe don’t do this? A Tarrant County man is suing Dallas County and a sheriff’s deputy after he says his personal information was revealed to more than 100 people after the deputy livestreamed a traffic stop through TikTok. So, there’s a lot going on here, most of it in favor of the […]
Last week, Congress failed to shake off corruption and buckled to a telecom industry’ smear campaign to scuttle the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC. This week, the government body shifted from corruption to ordinary incompetence, after it failed to renew the FCC’s Spectrum Auction authority for no coherent reason. The FCC is in […]
Back in the early days of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, one of the most captivating stories was that of Snake Island, a small island in Ukrainian territorial waters. Under constant radioed threats from a Russian cruiser, Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov uttered his now iconic response to the warship: “Russian warship, go fuck […]
Another FOIA lawsuit has paid off for the ACLU. But there are no real winners here, since the documents pried from the government’s grasp detail a bunch of stuff we all wish the government wouldn’t be doing with its time and our money. Here’s Drew Harwell with the details for the Washington Post: The FBI […]
The AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers were a monumental disasters. AT&T spent $200 billion to acquire both companies thinking it would dominate the video and internet ad space. Instead, the company lost 9 million subscribers in nine years, fired 50,000 employees, closed numerous popular brands (including Mad Magazine), and stumbled around incompetently for several years […]
For years, we’ve written about the many, many, many ways in which people are wrong about the 1st Amendment, from trotting out the “fire in a crowded theater” line (for which we have a t-shirt, mug, pillow, and notebook) or how people falsely believe that hate speech is not protected by the 1st Amendment (it […]
Massive sports events tend to make everyone crazy. The NFL has turned the Super Bowl into The Game That Must Not Be Named (without express written [and paid] permission) by unapproved advertisers and promoters. The Olympic Committee has abused pretty much every available IP law to ensure the Olympic brand remains known as… a massive […]
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