It’s that time of the year in the Midwest, when the skies darken early and the temperature drops. And that means it’s pho season. As a lover of pho, allow me to educate anyone that hasn’t heard of it. It’s a soup of sorts, with rice noodles, spices, and meat. And it’s considered the national […]
Well, a wrong has been righted. Kind of. And for how long, no one really knows. Texas is on the leading edge of book censorship in the United States — you know, the land most famous for its freedoms, one of which is the famous/infamous (depending on who you ask) First Amendment. It’s only second […]
The release of a bipartisan draft of the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) reinvigorated the effort to pass a federal consumer privacy law, only to sputter and stall amid concerns raised from across the political spectrum. All that is gone, however, is not forgotten: it is only a matter of time before Congress returns its […]
Last week, Bluesky, where I am on the board (so feel free to consider this as biased as can be), announced that it had raised a $15 million seed round, and with it announced some plans for building out subscription plans and helping to make the site sustainable (some of which may be very cool […]
Donald Trump and the politicians that either think like him, or think saying things like this might make him like them, continue to pretend major US cities are besieged by violent criminals. While there have been a few spikes in certain cities, for the most part, crime rates are returning to their normal, historic lows […]
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Hey Jeff, Since I know you’ll never actually read this, I figured the best way to set this up as an open letter. One that you should read, but never will. It appears that your stupendously cowardly decision to block the Washington Post from publishing its planned endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the […]
Earlier this month the FTC announced it was modifying some existing rules to crack down on companies that make it extremely difficult to cancel services. The agency’s revamp of its 1973 “Negative Option Rule” requires companies be completely transparent about the limitations of deals and promotions, requires consumers actively consent to having read terms and deal […]
There must be something about the alcohol business that creates silly trademark disputes over geographic terms. We’ve seen this several times in the past, such as in the whole Ravinia Festival dispute, or the time two breweries fought over a trademark for the neighborhood one of them operated out of. While these don’t always turn […]
Considering how to increase competition in the search space without damaging end users is a trickier question than it seems at first. Many of the suggestions that people have tossed out have tended to focus on ideas that are purely punitive to Google, but which would also have negative impacts on users (and even some […]
As Mike and others have pointed out, the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post have utterly failed the public. While it is of course their right to endorse, or not endorse, anyone they choose, the refusal to provide any such endorsement in an election with such high stakes abandons the important role the press plays […]
Well, this is certainly one of the more entertaining decisions I’ve ever read, even though most of it deals with the more boring side of civil rights litigation, i.e., questions of standing and mootness. I mean, those can be interesting but they’re far less interesting than seeing a court dig into cases where the either […]
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The NY Times has real difficulty not misrepresenting Section 230. Over and over and over and over and over again it has misrepresented how Section 230 works, even having to once run this astounding correction (to an article that had a half-page headline saying Section 230 was at fault): A day later, it had to […]
After countless years pondering the idea, the FCC in 2022 announced that it would start politely asking the nation’s lumbering telecom monopolies to affix a sort of “nutrition label” on to broadband connections. The labels will clearly disclose the speed and latency (ping) of your connection, any hidden fees users will encounter, and whether the connection comes […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about the legality of Elon Musk’s vote-buying scheme: My trainers say it’s illegal (volunteer voter registrar) We were taught that under no circumstances could we induce or attempt to induce anyone to register to vote, let alone to vote, let alone […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, congress rushed to pass a bill empowering copyright trolls to shake people down, while Ajit Pai was complaining about the state-level net neutrality laws he helped create. Donald Trump was threatening to sue CNN for its coverage based on a dumb legal theory, while we wrote about how […]
Newspaper presidential endorsements may not actually matter that much, but billionaire media owners blocking editorial teams from publishing their endorsements out of concern over potential retaliation from a future Donald Trump presidency should matter a lot. If people were legitimately worried about the “weaponization of government” and the idea that companies might silence speech over […]
Over a decade ago, we wrote about how the flurry of trademark lawsuits seen at that time over competitors buying up Google Adwords to get their company ads displayed when competitors are searched might finally be coming to an end. While these types of suits have certainly reduced in number based on anecdotal evidence, they […]
The copyright world is currently trying to assert its control over the new world of generative AI through a number of lawsuits, several of which have been discussed previously on Walled Culture. We now have our first decision in this area, from the regional court in Hamburg. Andres Guadamuz has provided an excellent detailed analysis of a ruling that is important […]
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