Telecom lobbyists have been working overtime for years in both the US and EU, trying to get policymakers to support the idea of “Big Tech” paying “Big Telecom” billions of additional dollars for no coherent reason. This taxation effort always involves some variant of the claim that popular tech services are getting a “free ride” on the Internet, […]
There seems to be a direct correlation between the size of a sports league or group and the degree to which that same entity will jealously “protect” anything to do with its intellectual property. The International Olympic Committee is probably the apotheosis of this theory, though both FIFA and the NFL are strong showings as […]
Here comes a little more bad news for a company that’s seen quite a lot of it lately. SoundThinking, which formerly did business as ShotSpotter, is seeing another high-profile, would-be customer walk away from the table after determining the costs would outweigh the benefits. As Matt Markovich reports for KIRO News, Seattle has decided to […]
A suggestion for Elon: next time you take over a company and decide to immediately fire three-quarters of the staff, maybe hold onto a few of the payroll staff before you do. It might help you avoid some mistakes. You may recall that early on Musk laid off well over half of the staff at […]
A lot of laws have been passed in Europe that regulate the content American companies can carry. Most of these laws were passed to tamp down on speech that would be otherwise legal in the United States, but not so much in Europe where free speech rights aren’t given the same sort of protections found […]
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Forget everything you think you know about Mark Zuckerberg and his army of lobbyists blocking any attempt to regulate social media. The truth is more nuanced (but perhaps less complicated). Meta is actually happy with internet regulations: they keep down competitive threats. I’ve been trying to make this point for a while: while politicians and […]
Canadian Regulators are leaning on new authority built into the 2023 Online Streaming Act to impose a new 5 percent tax on streaming TV and music services like Netflix and Spotify; funding that the regulator says will then be used to help fund Canadian broadcasting. According to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announcement, […]
It will come as no shock to regular readers here when I remind you all that Nike is a notoriously aggressive actor when it comes to policing its intellectual property, including for trademarks it holds. The reason that reminder is important as a matter of throat-clearing in this case is that one of the worst […]
The problems and unfairness of the copyright system are so manifest that many would like to adopt alternative approaches. But that’s a big step, and one that undoubtedly requires a certain courage. Every example that shows how the move worked for others is important, since it not only demonstrates that alternatives exist, but that they […]
Plenty of people don’t care for all the forms of immunity the government has granted itself. And they don’t care for qualified immunity, which is a thing the Supreme Court cooked up on its own. These multiple forms of immunity have tended to become get-out-of-lawsuit-free cards for government employees, rather than the general encouragement to […]
Maybe the real artificial intelligence was the baseless lawsuits we filed along the way. In March, we wrote about Elon’s patently ridiculous lawsuit filed against OpenAI, claiming a contract violation of a contract that didn’t actually exist. The whole thing was silly. Elon was mad about the ways in which OpenAI had changed since the […]
While “AI” (language learning models) certainly could help journalism, the fail upward brunchlords in charge of most modern media outlets instead see the technology as a way to cut corners, undermine labor, and badly automate low-quality, ultra-low effort, SEO-chasing clickbait. As a result we’ve seen an endless number of scandals where companies use LLMs to […]
Color is everywhere and, with the innovative Nix Mini 2, you can now capture and recreate it anywhere you go. This compact, portable, and highly sophisticated device is designed for those who find color inspiration in everyday life. Now, you can harness the power of technology to bring color into your creative, professional, or personal […]
These lawsuits don’t work. They just don’t. And yet, they’re filed seemingly all the time. When YouTube decides as a private company it would rather you take your stupid shit elsewhere, it’s allowed to do so. Its terms and conditions contain a phrase found pretty much anywhere: “or for any other reason.” That means that […]
Back in May, Microsoft announced that it was bringing a new feature to Windows 11 dubbed “Recall.” According to Microsoft’s explanation of Recall, the “AI” powered technology was supposed to take screenshots of your activity every five seconds, giving you an “explorable timeline of your PC’s past,” that Microsoft’s AI-powered assistant, Copilot, can then help […]
Nearly two years ago, we wrote about a trademark opposition conflict in the UK between macro-distillery Campari and a tiny, one-man beer brewery operation called Dark Sky Brewery. Steve White, the owner/operator for Dark Sky Brewery, filed to trademark the name of his business. On the very last possible day of the objection window, Campari […]
There’s a lot of book banning going on right now in the Land of the Free. It’s mostly localized to certain areas of the country — states and cities overseen by bigots who finally feel they’re allowed to let their freak flag fly (instead of, or on top of the American flag which may or […]
There’s a broad legislative push for rules that would (supposedly) protect kids online. But as we’ve written about at length, while the concern for teen mental health might be genuine, the legislative response is highly problematic and based on a misdiagnosis of the underlying problems. This week, we’re joined by UNC’s Alice Marwick, one of […]
So on Monday you probably saw that Apple announced it was more tightly integrating “AI” into its mobile operating system, both via a suite of AI-powered tools dubbed Apple Intelligence, and tighter AI integration with its Siri voice assistant. It’s not that big of a deal and (hopefully) reflects Apple’s more cautious approach to AI […]
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