Another anomaly has popped up, which has the chance to create enough of a circuit split that the Supreme Court will need to weigh in on this issue. The good news (albeit undercut a bit by “good faith”) is that another federal court has ruled the Riley warrant requirement applies at the nation’s borders. Here’s […]
Back in March we noted how the GOP killed a popular program (the Affordable Connectivity Program, or ACP) that provided a $30 discount off of low-income users’ broadband bills. At the time, 22 million Americans were enrolled in the FCC effort to bring down broadband access prices for the most vulnerable. But after House leader […]
It’s been a decade or so since one of the silliest ways to combat the symptom of a broken copyright system came to be: safe streaming settings in video games. Because of the way licensing works for the musical compositions in video games, and because some games include mainstream music a la Grand Theft Auto, […]
The FCC has announced that it’s taking more direct aim at prison phone and videoconferencing monopolies that have a long history of ripping off inmates and their families. According to an agency announcement, the FCC has voted to further lower price caps on prison phone calls and closed a loophole allowing companies to charge exorbitant […]
I’ve spent many years trying to explain to people the impossibility of doing content moderation well at scale. I’ve created dozens of case studies on impossible decisions. I’ve made two separate video games about content moderation and trust & safety. I’ve written so so so many articles. But I think I’ve now found just a […]
It’s 2016 all over again. The FBI can’t get everything it wants from a dead person’s phone, so it has decided to start revving up its anti-encryption engine. The DOJ took Apple to court in hopes of securing precedent compelling tech companies to crack encrypted devices for it after it recovered the San Bernardino shooter’s […]
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The 2024 Paris Olympics is drawing the eyes of the world as thousands of athletes and support personnel and hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe converge in France. It’s not just the eyes of the world that will be watching. Artificial intelligence systems will be watching, too. Government and private companies will […]
We’ve noted repeatedly that in the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition). Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans — including customers who […]
The asset forfeiture playing field is still far from level, but it at least got a little bit better in Virginia, thanks to a recent state appeals court decision. Here’s Graham Moomaw with more details for the Virginia Mercury: A Virginia court erroneously ruled authorities could keep $35,293 seized from a Chesterfield County auto repair […]
One of the central ideas of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) is that there is a fundamental difference between analog and digital, and that copyright fails to recognize that. Instead, it seeks to impose what is an inherently analog approach based on scarcity to the online world where abundance is the norm. The […]
Apparently, Congress only “listens to the children” when they agree with what the kids are saying. As soon as some kids oppose something like KOSA, their views no longer count. It’s no surprise given the way things were going, but the Senate today overwhelmingly passed KOSA by a 91 to 3 vote. The three no […]
Good news for free speech enthusiasts. And that should be everyone in this nation, especially those living in Florida. And that goes for everyone who supports Governor Ron DeSantis and dumbass legislation like the “Stop WOKE Act.” Whether you like it or not, the First Amendment protects speech you disagree with, not just the stuff […]
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Please. I beg of people: stop it. Stop it with the conspiracy theories. Stop it with the nonsense. If you can’t find something you want on social media, it’s not because a billionaire is trying to influence an election. It might just be because some antifraud system went haywire or something. Last week we wrote […]
Automakers are among the worst “tech” companies in America when it comes to your privacy. They hoover up an ocean of contact, location and behavior data from your car and phone, don’t really clearly tell you they’re doing it, then sell access to that data to a rotating crop of super dodgy and largely unregulated […]
You will likely have noticed that we have begun talking more frequently over the past couple of years about the importance both of video game preservation efforts as well as the idea that people should either be better informed of the terms of buying a digital version of a game, or should have more rights […]
Low-key vigilantism is the new Crime Stoppers. I’m pretty ambivalent about this new law enforcement effort (with the emphasis on “lack of effort”), but this is how things are going in one part of Australia right now. Here’s Lewin Day writing for The Autopian with more details: As covered by The Canberra Times, Australian Capital Territory police […]
Even though parents insist that it is good and right to share things, the copyright world has succeeded in establishing the contrary as the norm. Now, sharing is deemed a bad, possibly illegal thing. But it was not always thus, as a fascinating speech by Ryan Cordell, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences […]
Before the news had broken that NSO Group’s clients were utilizing its powerful spyware to target journalists, dissidents, activists, religious leaders, opposition party members, and anyone else that might have irritated the autocrats and human rights abusers that made up a disproportionate percentage of its customer list, NSO was sued by Meta and WhatsApp. That […]
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