Look, I’m getting exhausted trying to follow every attempt around the country (coming from both Democrats and Republicans) to pass obviously, blatantly, unconstitutional bills to “protect the children on social media,” that make it clear that their authors have no idea (1) how the 1st Amendment works, (2) how social media works, or (3) how […]
The beginning of the year is a great time for the public domain, since it sees thousands of copyrighted works released from the intellectual monopoly that prevents their free creative use. Which works enter the public domain depends on the details of local copyright law, which varies around the world. But there’s a liberation that […]
States keep trying to make the Internet a teenager-free zone. Which means that lawsuits keep needing to be filed because these laws are ridiculously unconstitutional. And courts are noticing: just this week a court enjoined the law in Ohio, and a different court had already enjoined the California AB 2273 AADC law a few months […]
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Last summer Elon Musk sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) over its report about a rise in hate speech on ExTwitter. A few months ago, he sued Media Matters for their report about how ads can appear next to neoNazi content on the site. If he thought those two SLAPP suits would intimidate […]
Last week Amazon began charging Amazon Prime Video customers (who already pay $140 per year) an extra $3 extra per month to avoid ads that didn’t previously exist. One added wrinkle: apparently Amazon also pulled Dolby Vision and Atmos audio support from Prime Video unless users pay the additional toll to avoid ads, a change […]
Late last year, we discussed how the FTC had appealed the court’s decision to allow Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard to move forward. I said at the time that I don’t think this appeal is going anywhere, and I still don’t thanks to the general toothless nature of regulators in America, but the FTC has […]
Can’t say we didn’t warn everyone. Last summer we pointed out that Sarah Silverman and a bunch of other authors suing AI companies for copyright infringement seemed to only demonstrate that they didn’t understand how copyright works. And, now Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, has dismissed most of the claims in three related cases from authors against […]
As lots of folks are reporting, Senator Richard Blumenthal, this morning, released an updated version of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). He and co-author Senator Marsha Blackburn are also crowing how they’ve now increased the list of co-sponsors to 62 Senators, including Senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Cruz among others. Blumenthal, as he always […]
Cops shouldn’t be able to arrest you for saying things to them, even if they’re things they don’t like. But it still happens with alarming frequency. This is unconstitutional retaliation. But even if courts admit that much, if this retaliation doesn’t match up with the facts of a previous case they’ve handled, they’ll acknowledge the […]
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What is going on at Wired Magazine? A few years ago, the magazine went on a bit of a binge with some articles that completely misrepresented Section 230. While I felt those articles were extraordinarily misleading, at least they seemed to mostly live in the world of facts. Its latest piece goes so far beyond […]
Every few weeks for the last 20 years there’s been a massive scandal involving some company, telecom, data broker, or app maker over-collecting your detailed personal location data, failing to secure it, then selling access to that information to any nitwit with a nickel. And despite the added risks this creates in the post-Roe authoritarian era, Congress refuses to pass […]
And here we go again. I have spent some time pointing out that the Xbox team has demonstrated an unfortunate inability to properly communicate both internally and externally about its various plans. Whether it comes to how it’s going to handle exclusives, game ports, or just the overall direction of the division’s plans, what comes […]
The colossal catastrophe that is the Marion County PD’s raid of a small town newspaper’s offices (along with a raid of the home of its 98-year-old co-owner [who died shortly thereafter]) continues to generate national (and international!) headlines. The PD claimed this was all above-board. Supposedly computer crime laws were broken by local journalists when […]
Makers of new “smart” technologies keen on reinventing the wheel keep inadvertently sending the same message: sometimes dumber technology is smarter. The latest case in point: a company named Livall makes “smart” bike helmets for skiers and cyclists that includes features like auto-fall detection, GPS location monitoring, and integrated braking lights. The problem: the company […]
As you may recall, almost two years ago, Elon Musk announced, somewhat out of the blue, that he had accumulated somewhere close to 10% of Twitter’s equity, making him the single largest shareholder, and kicking off a chain of bizarre events that eventually put him in charge of the platform that he has rapidly driven […]
London is covered with cameras. They’re everywhere people are. That includes the London Underground, the city’s massive subway system. But these days, it’s not enough to have thousands of unblinking, passive eyes watching Londoners go about their days. AI is the special sauce. Facial recognition is pretty much a given in London. Added to the […]
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It never ends. We just wrote about Ohio having its “parental consent/age verification” bill tossed out as unconstitutional, and pointed out that it is the latest in a long series of similar bills being declared unconstitutional. The internet/kid bills are a bipartisan mess, as legislatures dominated by both parties have passed similar bills, and all […]
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