Walled Culture has been following closely Italy’s poorly designed Piracy Shield system. Back in December we reported how copyright companies used their access to the Piracy Shield system to order Italian Internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to all of Google Drive for the entire country, and how malicious actors could similarly use that unchecked power […]
Will the third time be the charm? Let’s hope so. This charmless act of hatred masquerading as “for the children” legislating has been struck down again by the same federal court that tried to kill it off the first time. In late December 2023, an Iowa federal court told the state there was little chance […]
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There’s a fundamental problem with Donald Trump’s new trade policy: it fails a test that actual 5th graders can pass. I know this because I tried explaining his “Liberation Day” trade plan to one last night. Here’s how that conversation went: “Imagine you want to buy a toy at a store which costs $50. You […]
Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr isn’t really interested in doing his actual job as head of the FCC. He’s not interested in protecting consumers or markets from notoriously shitty telecom monopolies. He’s not interested in protecting consumers or markets from harmful consolidation. He’s not interested in addressing the fact the telecom industry just saw the […]
Rockstar Games and its parent company, Take-Two Interactive, have been telling us who they are for years. And who they are, for our purposes, amounts to a game developer that both absolutely hates any leaked information about its games and one that has been perfectly willing to go to war with its own modding community. […]
Moral panics come and go, but stupid legislation is forever. At least until the Supreme Court steps in. This week on Otherwise Objectionable, my podcast series about Section 230, we talk about how the moral panic over “porn” online, including Senator James Exon’s infamous blue binder of internet porn, caused the Senate to pass a […]
We’ve noted more times than I can’t count that the push to ban TikTok was never really about protecting American privacy. If that were true, we would pass a real privacy law and craft serious penalties for companies and executives that play fast and loose with sensitive American data. It was never really about propaganda. […]
Once again, several Senators appear poised to gut one of the most important laws protecting internet users – Section 230 (47 U.S.C. § 230). Don’t be fooled – many of Section 230’s detractors claim that this critical law only protects big tech. The reality is that Section 230 provides limited protection for all platforms, though the […]
Donald Trump has decided he can’t do immigration enforcement without doing war crimes. That’s where we’re at now as a country: under the thumb of someone exercising executive war powers to remove anyone looking faintly Mexican from the country under the extremely dubious theory that the people rounded up by ICE are all members of […]
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Remember Mike Waltz? The National Security Advisor who’s spent the last few weeks demonstrating his profound inability to handle basic security? First, there was the illegal Signal chat where he accidentally added a journalist while discussing potential war crimes. Then we learned about his completely exposed Venmo contacts and leaked passwords. And now, in a […]
Last October, Trump sued CBS claiming (falsely) that a 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris had been “deceitfully edited” to her benefit (they simply shortened some of her answers for brevity, as news outlets often do). As Mike explored in a post at the time, the lawsuit was utterly baseless, and tramples the First Amendment, editorial discretion, and […]
The measles outbreak is not going away and RFK Jr. is making it worse. There is no need for equivocation in that statement. The facts are plain for all to see. Through a combination of half-hearted statements on getting the MMR vaccine followed up first by a pivot to nutrition, then another pivot to purposeful […]
The White House Correspondents Association has just capitulated to pressure from the Trump administration by removing comedian Amber Ruffin from its annual dinner. Their stated reason? “To ensure the focus is not on the politics of division.” This seemingly minor capitulation reveals something profound about how democracy dies—not through dramatic confrontation, but through a thousand small surrenders […]
Support us on Patreon » If you’re a Techdirt reader, you’re probably familiar with Senator Ron Wyden. In January, he released his new book It Takes Chutzpah, offering up a call for political boldness that feels even more relevant with every day that passes. This week, Senator Wyden joins Mike on the podcast to talk about […]
Remember when government officials discussing sensitive information over unsecured channels was treated as a national crisis worthy of endless investigations? Apparently, those days are over. While Hillary Clinton’s email server spawned years of investigations and Attorney General Pam Bondi is still trying to rehash it, the White House wants us to simply forget about top […]
Anything that doesn’t jibe with Donald Trump’s white male-centric worldview must go. Whatever is deemed “woke” — no matter its basis in factual history — must be excised. If tossing aside DEI means pretending blacks, women, and other non-white, non-male people never contributed anything to this country, so be it. If stroking off the far […]
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The U.S. government just demonstrated exactly why due process matters. In what should be a shocking admission, the Trump administration revealed in court that it had made a bit of an oopsie (they call it an “administrative error”) — one that resulted in trafficking a Maryland father with protected legal status to a Salvadoran prison. […]
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