Welcome to America! Fuck everything! And not in the sexual sense, as any person would immediately understand unless, of course, they just want to hit people with criminal charges for maximizing the use of limited space to criticize the government. Local governments tend to get pretty weird about “community standards” and “protecting children,” something that […]
One of the striking features of the copyright industry is the fact that enough is never enough. Give companies stronger enforcement of copyright, and they will still start pushing for more. An example is the EU’s Copyright Directive. Even when upload filters were approved against all expert advice, on the grounds that sufficient safeguards were […]
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The Freedom of Information Act was enacted 55 years ago. To its credit, it has resulted in an unprecedented amount of access to documents and communications created by federal agencies. But there has been a lot of resistance. Government agencies continue to abuse FOIA exemptions to withhold documents that shouldn’t be withheld. These efforts far […]
Cable giants like Comcast and Charter continue to struggle to retain traditional TV subscribers, so they’re extracting their pound of flesh from their captive cable broadband customers that have no alternative ISPs to flee to thanks to a continued lack of competition in the United States. Both companies were quick to jack up broadband prices […]
Perhaps the last people who should be asked to define “consent” would be cops. They exist in an alternate reality where only those cuffed and/or beaten to a pulp can plausibly raise a claim that their questioning or search was non-consensual. This possibly explains why so many cops get charged with sexual assault, as well […]
Back in June we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit filed by a guy named Andy Stone, but who performs as Vince Vance and the Valiants, against Mariah Carey, claiming copyright infringement from her song “All I Want for Christmas is You.” As we noted at the time, the only similarity between the two songs […]
Big businesses really should know better as to how trademark law works. Or, failing that, their corporate counsels should. And yet we see far too often that big businesses take an aggressive approach to anything remotely resembling trademark infringement that they do not like. Take The Store is Closed, an as yet unreleased video game […]
Yesterday, we gave Elon Musk a cheat sheet for speedrunning the content moderation learning curve that any website doing any kind of content moderation learns over time. As we noted earlier this year, it appeared that he did not understand the issues at all and was setting his fans up to be extremely disappointed once […]
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After weeks of protests erupted following the murder of unarmed black man George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, President Trump made it clear he felt the protesters were the real problem. As he stated immediately following his election, he was here to end the “dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America.” He followed through with […]
While traditional local papers deserve no shortage of blame for their failure to adapt, media scholars have long pointed out that media consolidation paved the way for a lot of the problems we’re seeing today. The end result of consolidation was the gradual elbowing out of small local news outfits, leaving the sector peppered with […]
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has long since abandoned any pretense of serving the public. In fact, it may never have pretended to respect this ideal at any point in its history. It has been a rogue agency for years, openly hostile to oversight, boldly breaking the laws it has sworn to uphold, filling its […]
While we’ve had a lot of conversations about how some forward-thinking content creators have managed to look at understandably frustrating things like copyright infringement as opportunities rather than threats. There’s a lot of ways that can happen: looking at infringement as free marketing research, looking at it as an avenue for exposure, looking at infringers […]
I’m not here to make broad statements about the state of Iowa, its various governing entities, or its court system, but it does seem that the state periodically struggles with recognizing long-held, pretty much unassailable rights. Lots of assailing in recent years, with only one instance working out for the government, and even that’s unlikely […]
Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications. The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming […]
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It’s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media network. They show up, insist that they’re the “platform for free speech” without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid (often sloppy) changes… and in the end, […]
We’ve noted repeatedly how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr doesn’t have the authority to regulate social media. And over in the sector he does actually regulate, telecom, Carr is routinely a no show. He’s been a consistent opponent of holding telecom monopolies like AT&T accountable for pretty much anything, and generally doesn’t believe government has any […]
I have to admit I’m amused by recent court activity dealing with chalking tires. Something that has been done for years with zero protest — marking tires with chalk to determine how long a vehicle has been parked — is now fodder for federal appellate decisions. It’s a low tech solution to a low tech […]
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