Shortly before the Supreme Court inflicted enormous damage on the Voting Rights Act, the Reconstruction Amendments of the Constitution, any pretense of constitutionally guaranteed Equal Protection, the civil rights movement, its credibility, and our democracy writ large with its Alito-penned decision in Louisiana v. Callais, it released a separate decision in First Women’s Choice Resource […]
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Former judge Roy Moore made quite a name for himself while attempting to convert his sketchy judicial career into a presumably equally sketchy career as US senator. Prior to his run for office in the 2018 mid-term election, Moore had already been suspended from the Alabama bench for a long list of violations: A normal […]
Brendan Carr’s FCC claims to be moving forward their their plan to “review ABC’s broadcast licenses” because Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about the president’s wife. And it’s every bit as dumb and legally baseless as you might expect. Carr has sent a letter to ABC/Disney saying he’s accelerating the review of their existing broadcast […]
Over a decade ago, Microsoft was getting set to release its new Xbox One console. In the lead-up to launch day, a bunch of rumors began swirling about some of the online requirements the console would come with. Details weren’t to be found, so the public was left to speculate what these requirements would entail. […]
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 roundup of the latest news in online […]
Lawmakers in Congress are moving quickly on the GUARD Act, an age-gating bill restricting minors’ access to a wide range of online tools, with a key vote expected this week. The proposal is framed as a response to alarming cases involving “AI companions” and vulnerable young users. But the text of the bill goes much further, and could […]
There’s a famous Mitchell & Webb sketch where two SS officers, mid-conversation on the Eastern Front, suddenly notice something troubling about their uniforms. “Hans,” one asks, peering at his cap, “are we the baddies?” The skulls had been there the whole time. The skulls are kind of a giveaway. But it took a while for […]
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Not that ICE was ever that great about taking care of all the people it detains. It certainly wasn’t during Trump’s first term. The DHS Inspector General released a report that said there were numerous problems in a single detention facility. Not only that but what was contained in the report was incomplete because the […]
More than 4,000 Hollywood insiders recently signed a letter blasting Paramount’s planned $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers, noting that the massive consolidation will be very harmful to labor, consumers, and creatives. As we saw with the AT&T Warner deal, history generally supports this; these debt-riddled deals are broadly, uniformly harmful. Companies that take on […]
You’re all sick of me saying we need to have more nuance in the discussion about AI use in the gaming industry. I get it. I’m also not going to stop. And I hope you will have noticed that I have called for nuance in both directions. While I’m more optimistic than many in our […]
As numerous posts on this blog have emphasised, the underlying idea of open access (OA) – allowing anyone to read and share published academic research for free – is great in principle, but in practice has failed in important ways. That’s because traditional academic publishers have subverted the open access model to such an extent that the […]
Raids and arrests around the nation by federal immigration officers all feature the same thing: a bunch of people in masks shoving people into unmarked vehicles. What’s happening under Trump during his second term doesn’t feel like America. And it certainly doesn’t look like America. Instead, it looks like the actions of paramilitary jump-out squads, […]
James Comey is not exactly someone we’ve ever been a fan of on Techdirt. He was a terrible FBI director in so many ways. We’ve spent years criticizing the man — for his crusade against encryption, his supporting the FBI’s ridiculously aggressive impersonation of reporters, his embrace of the FBI’s program to coerce and entrap […]
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The administration’s anti-migrant tactics are now months into an indefinite period of continuous escalation. That protest efforts have escalated alongside it apparently means nothing to the officials spearheading this brazen attack on non-white people. It wasn’t until federal officers began killing people in front of witnesses that the administration decided to dial things back a […]
Anonymous insiders tell the access journalists at Semafor that Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is cooking up a “review” of ABC broadcast licenses after Jimmy Kimmel once again made the President sad. The FCC clearly leaked word of the inquiry to Semafor in the hopes that Semafor would present it as a serious, big boy […]
We discussed RFK Jr.’s recent appearance before Congress, where he bravely declared that the current measles outbreak in America has absolutely nothing to do with him, despite that definitely not being true. But, unsurprisingly, that wasn’t the only craziness that Kennedy put on display in the hearing. The Secretary of HHS doesn’t believe in the […]
There’s still a meaningful effort afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own. All fifty states have at least flirted with the idea, though only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws. Alaska […]
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