The Wild West we all imagine contains two forms of law: the brave people who’ve decided to be sheriffs. And the vigilantes who perform frontier justice when not cashing in bounties while ignoring the enshrined civil rights (the Constitution came out ahead of the Wild West, non-American folks) of the people they beat, tortured, threatened, […]
Depending on just how often you use Google News, you may have noticed that Google News was down recently. Down hard. No, it wasn’t just you; Google News suffered a pretty sizable outage this morning, impacting the service on desktop and mobile. Impacted users took to Downdetector and social media to note the issues and that no stories were […]
At the latest committee hearing about its repeal bill, Congress finally deigned to bring in one witness who spoke in defense of Section 230. Engine Executive Director Kate Tummarello got a little bit of time to explain how Section 230 isn’t about protecting big tech, it’s about protecting the hosts and users of all kinds […]
This was entirely predictable, but it’s still worth calling out. Donald Trump, who started the whole “we should ban TikTok” idea before changing his mind as soon as Joe Biden decided it was a good idea (and a billionaire Trump backer who also was heavily invested in TikTok gave Trump a call), is now joining […]
Here’s yet more unsurprising news about Israeli malware developer NSO Group and its preferred customers. More phones infected by NSO’s flagship Pegasus malware have been discovered by Citizen Lab researchers. And yet again those targeted are journalists, critics, dissidents, and opposition leaders. The latest investigation identifies seven additional Russian and Belarusian-speaking members of civil society […]
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ProPublica has quite a scoop of a story, highlighting how various witnesses and potential witnesses in the long list of lawsuits Donald Trump is facing, suddenly, coincidentally, seem to be getting large payouts from Trump, his companies, and his campaign. The benefits have flowed from Trump’s businesses and campaign committees, according to a ProPublica analysis […]
The FCC’s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), part of the 2021 infrastructure bill, provided 23+ million low-income households a $30 broadband discount every month. But the roughly 60 million Americans benefiting from the program are now facing much higher broadband bills because key Republicans — who routinely dole out billions of dollars on far dumber fare — refused to fund a $4-$7 billion […]
In my basement at home, I have a handful of old gaming consoles that were left to our family after other family members either got too old to want them any longer or after they passed away. Coming along with them are a handful of games for those consoles. As a result of the physical […]
Kind of an odd bit of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence here, given all the factors. (h/t FourthAmendment.com) Obviously, some conversations have an expectation of privacy, even when they’re held in police interrogation rooms. Those would be ones between the suspect and their legal representation. But that’s not really a Fourth Amendment issue as it is about […]
In recent years, there have been concerns about social media and disinformation. The narrative has three dominant threads: (1) foreign troll farms pushing disinfo, (2) grifter “influencers” pushing disinfo, and (3) the poor kids these days suckered in by disinformation. A new study in Science suggests that instead of the kids or the trolls, perhaps […]
It appears Chicago’s city leaders (well… excluding the mayor, Brandon Johnson) aren’t afraid of spending nothing on do-nothing tech that even the city’s watchdog says is a waste of money. They’re not afraid to blow money on stuff that’s doing nothing to make residents safer, even as residents continue to complain about the level of […]
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. This version is designed for PCs that need a new license for Windows […]
In an indictment against Defend the Atlanta Forest activists in Georgia, state prosecutors are citing use of encrypted communications to fearmonger. Alleging the defendants—which include journalists and lawyers, in addition to activists—in the indictment were responsible for a number of crimes related to the Stop Cop City campaign, the state Attorney General’s prosecutors cast suspicion on the defendants’ use […]
Back in 2013, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos noted that his company’s goal was to “become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” His point, at the time, was that Netflix wanted to become synonymous with quality and creative artistry in the same way HBO had after decades of hard work. 11 years later, and everything […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous reply to a complaint that Techdirt has become more politically biased: Perhaps it isn’t really Techdirt that has changed, have you ever considered that? In second place, it’s an anonymous comment about the UK moral panic about kids having phones: Yeah, […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, a report showed how EU ISPs were happily ignoring net neutrality rules. We wondered why Congress was moving forward with its plan to encourage more copyright trolling, and then Congress also started pushing a bill to bring back patent trolls. China was, once again, using the US’s obsession […]
This nonsense is somehow still going. To catch you up if you’re not familiar with this story, the Ravinia Festival Association operates the Ravinia Festival venue in the north suburbs of Chicago. When a small brewery opened its doors in Highland Park, calling itself Ravinia Brewing Company, the RFA objected to its name and convinced […]
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 response to a number of copyright lawsuits about AI training datasets, we are starting to see efforts to build ‘non-infringing’ collections of media for training AI. While I continue to believe that most AI training is covered by fair use in the US and therefore inherently ‘non-infringing’, I think these efforts to build ‘safe’ or […]
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