Well, here we go again. For years now, the legacy news industry, often led by lobbyists for Rupert Murdoch, have been pushing a bizarre plan to tax links on the internet. The entire rationale for this plan seems to be “news organizations used to be rolling in easy money, they failed to innovate with the […]
Ah, mission creep. The government loves it. Keeps people employed, keeps citizens on their toes, keeps privacy-focused sites in business, etc. In 2017, the DHS began quietly rolling out its facial recognition program, starting with international airports and aimed mainly at collecting/scanning people boarding international flights. Even in its infancy, the DHS was hinting this […]
The 2023 Complete Python Certification Bootcamp Bundle has 12 courses to help you become a Python expert. These courses will take you from beginner to expert in Python. They cover major topics including Object-Oriented Programming, Web Scraping, GUI development, and more. Courses also cover how to build your own smart devices, how to build your […]
Back in January, we wrote about the Seattle public school district filing an absolutely laughable lawsuit against basically all of big social media, based on a bunch of misread and misunderstood studies, and general moral panic that social media must be “bad” for kids. In February, we wrote about the school district in Mesa, Arizona […]
We’ve noted for a while now how the great TikTok moral panic of 2023 is largely a distraction. It’s a distraction from the fact we’ve refused to meaningfully regulate dodgy data brokers, who traffic in everything from your daily movement habits to your mental health diagnosis. And it’s a distraction from our corrupt failure to […]
Searching out stories we have done on intellectual property conflicts surrounding the Pokémon franchise will give you no shortage of results. Part of that is that there is simply a ton of content out there: books, cards, video games, animated TV shows, movies, and mobile games. It is also the case that there are a […]
In 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States overrode the Third Party Doctrine to declare cell site location info (CSLI) off-limits without a warrant. Recognizing the fact that ubiquitous cell phone use was generating reams of data daily that would allow law enforcement to engage in long-term tracking of people’s movements, the Supreme Court […]
If you’re an automaker or oil giant keen on slowing the rise of electric vehicles, there’s no shortage of captured lawmakers ready and willing to implement your terrible ideas, however harmful or impractical. In North Carolina, Republican leaders have pushed a bill demanding locals destroy any free electric vehicle stations on public land, if local authorities don’t […]
The people who claim to be confused about social media services and the First Amendment are never truly confused. It’s always the people you expect to claim they’re “confused.” Most social media users understand they’re playing on someone else’s playground. They know that if they act like inveterate assholes, the social media company will repeatedly […]
Sometimes it feels like we need to keep pointing this out, but it’s (1) often forgotten and (2) really, really important. Section 230 doesn’t just protect “big tech.” It also doesn’t just protect “small tech.” It literally protects you and me. Remember, the key part of the law so that no provider or user of […]
Get more out of your gaming experience with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. With over 100 high-quality games and new titles added all the time, you’ll always have something new to play with friends on console, PC, mobile devices or tablets. Plus, you get instant access to EA Play and other cool member benefits to create […]
The FBI has long enjoyed its close relationship with the NSA… or at least the NSA’s collections. Data and communications collected under the NSA’s Section 702 program contain plenty of “incidental” snooping on Americans. That’s because even though it’s a foreign-facing collection, Americans who communicate with people outside of the United States are swept up […]
Federal law specifically bans Federal Communications Commission (FCC) employees from owning “any stocks, bonds, or other securities of [any company] significantly regulated by the Commission.” That’s apparently news to FCC employees. A new report (hat tip, Ars Technica) by nonprofit watchdog group Campaign Legal Center found that numerous employees hold stock in Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is CSMcDonald with a comment about the comparison between Ron DeSantis attacking Disney and Gavin Newsom attacking Walgreens: One difference.. I don’t like Newsom’s posturing, but he’s just refusing do do business with a company. DeSantis is threatening to ruin a company by not allowing […]
So far in our series of posts on showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927, we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia and Best Visuals winner Urbanity. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the winner of the Best Adaptation category: To And Again […]
Walled Culture is a big fan of the public domain. The amazing artistic uses that people are able to make of material only once it enters the public domain are an indication that copyright can act as an obstacle to wider creativity, rather than something that automatically promotes it. But there’s a problem: because the public […]
Ring offers security products. Shame they’re not all that secure. Sure, things have improved in recent years, but there was nowhere to go but up. In December 2019, multiple reports surfaced of Ring cameras — most of them inside people’s houses — being hijacked by malicious idiots who used the commandeered cameras to yell nasty […]
Mainstream political news outlets like Axios have long been accused of “both sides” or “view from nowhere” journalism where they bend over backward to frame everything through a lens of illusory objectivity as to not offend. This distortion is then routinely exploited by authoritarians and corporations keen on normalizing bigotry, rank corruption, or even the […]
Question Presented: Does Section 230 Protect Generative AI Products Like ChatGPT? As the buzz around Section 230 and its application to algorithms intensifies in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s response, ‘generative AI’ has soared in popularity among users and developers, begging the question: does Section 230 protect generative AI products like ChatGPT? Matt Perault, a […]
Late last year, we wrote about the extremely misleading discussion around “shadow banning” on Twitter. The history of the term is important, as it originated as a tool to defeat trolls, and it had a very specific definition: making users who were deemed problematic to a site think their posts were still getting through, when […]
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