Qualified immunity rulings are an unqualified mess. The question doesn’t revolve around whether or not rights were violated. In most cases, they were. Instead, the question revolves around whether or not the rights violation was “clearly established.” The Supreme Court created this doctrine decades ago. And ever since then, it has been making it more […]
Half a decade ago we documented how the U.S. wireless industry was caught over-collecting sensitive user location and vast troves of behavioral data, then selling access to that data to pretty much anybody with a couple of nickels to rub together. It resulted in no limit of abuse from everybody from stalkers to law enforcement […]
In 2023, the extreme ideology of “human extinction from AI” became one of the most prominent trends. It was followed by extreme regulation proposals. As we enter 2024, let’s take a moment to reflect: How did we get here? 2022: Public release of LLMs The first big news story on LLMs (Large Language Models) can […]
Back in April we noted that the EU had designated 17 sites as “VLOPs” (Very Large Online Platforms), the “ROUSs” (Rodents of Unusual Size) of the internet. Some of those sites are still contesting the designation, but in the meantime, the EU Commission has dug deep into its porn viewing habits and designated three more […]
In the rapidly evolving world of digital learning, having access to the right resources can make all the difference. Enter Headway, the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it […]
Governments know the difference between right and wrong. It’s just that they often don’t seem to care. This is a small-ish wrong, but it’s a wrong nonetheless. Like far too many other state bodies charged with policing vanity plate messages, the South Dakota Motor Vehicle Division has a problem giving its tacit blessing to other […]
By now we’ve well established that this particular series of media mergers — which began with AT&T’s doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner’s subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery — were some of the dumbest, most pointless “business” exercises ever conceived by man. The idiotic saga burned through hundreds of billions in […]
The saga of former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton has come to a close. We began talking about Nikola, a company that bill itself as “decarbonizing” the trucking industry by selling electric long-haul trucks, back in 2020 when it was revealed that a very slick demo of its products had been totally staged. Like, hilariously staged. […]
Last week in the Error 402 series on the past, present, and future of web monetization, we talked about the whole “information wants to be expensive, information wants to be free” dilemma, that partially explained why early paywalls failed, and why display and search ads seemed to be the primary way in which internet content […]
Copyright has always been about money. That’s why the copyright industry fights so hard to strengthen legal protections, in order to boost its profits. However, getting detailed information about how much money is involved, and who receives it, is hard, because there are so many small pieces to the overall copyright ecosystem. That makes a […]
People keep accusing me of criticizing Elon Musk because I “hate” him. But I don’t hate him, nor do I criticize him out of any personal feelings at all, beyond thinking that he often is hypocritical in his decision making, and makes decisions that defy common sense and logic. But when he does the right […]
Earlier this month the Biden FCC announced that it was exploring banning early termination fees, which ISPs use to punish you for switching to competitors. It was a long overdue action in a country where cable and broadband giants routinely rip off consumers with a rotating bevy of fees, all designed to let them falsely […]
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular enterprise cloud computing solutions, used by businesses around the world to manage data, promote effective communication, secure proprietary information, and more. The Amazon Web Services Training course aims to make you completely proficient in navigating the Management Console. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The […]
There have been all sorts of overblown fears and moral panics raised by the availability of new generative AI tools. And one that I keep hearing about, which many people have accepted as obviously true, is that it will damage school education, as kids will just use ChatGPT to do their work. This has always […]
Back in July, Reuters released a bombshell report showing that not only has Tesla aggressively lied about its EV ranges for the better part of the last decade, it created teams whose entire purpose was to lie to customers about it when they called up to complain. The story lasted all of two days in […]
Earlier this year we discussed a trademark fight between rapper Eminem and two stars of The Real Houswives of Potomac, Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon. At issue was the trademark application for Bryant and Dixon’s podcast, which is entitled “Reasonably Shady.” Em’s legal team opposed that application, arguing essentially that all things “shady” belong to […]
As you likely know, a few weeks back former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor passed away. There have been lots of discussions about her rulings and her legacy, but the one that caught my eye was from the Disruptive Competition Project, which has a post by Jonathan Band exploring her immense impact on copyright […]
The attacks on generative AI started out claiming that it was all about protecting the creators whose works were being “stolen” in some mysterious way by virtue of software analyzing them. In some cases, that high-minded stance has already degenerated into yet another scheme to pay collecting societies even more for doing next to nothing. But beyond all this […]
One of the big, usually misleading, complaints about content moderation is that it’s done out of personal animus or whims, rather than a focus on actually making it so people stop being jackasses on platforms. Indeed over and over again you hear stories about some content moderation decision that people assert way too much thought […]
There’s been plenty of courtroom discussion about Fifth Amendment rights surrounding compelled decryption in recent years. Encryption is on by default on most devices these days. Law enforcement seems to believe all it needs is a warrant to compel decryption. Courts aren’t so sure. A lot of judicial discussion revolves around the “foregone conclusion” doctrine. […]
stLouIST