I don’t know what the legislative intent of Massachusetts wiretapping law was, but I can’t possibly imagine it was erected solely to allow public employees to get people arrested for filming them performing their public duties in public places. I mean, maybe it was. Maybe that’s the reason the law was enacted. But certainly no […]
There is some confusion about whether the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) regulates content or design on digital platforms like Instagram or TikTok. It’s easy to see why that is, because the bill’s authors claim they are attempting to make the bill about design. This is a good move on their part, as regulations on […]
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 the first ever live recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and […]
There are some decent uses of AI. And then there’s everything else. While those with horses in the AI race continue to proclaim the miracles their horses will soon be performing at some indefinite point in the future, a whole lot of entities just see AI as a way to shed human capital and replace […]
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On Thursday, as expected, the Senate voted for “cloture” on the extremely problematic Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). The cloture vote is a procedural vote necessary to bring a full vote to the floor. Previously, attempts to move KOSA forward “by unanimous consent” could be (and were) blocked by objections from at least one Senator […]
With a unanimous 5-0 vote, the FCC says it is moving forward with plans that should make unlocking your mobile phone easier than ever. According to a new FCC announcement, the agency say it will begin crafting new rules that will require that wireless carriers unlock customers’ mobile phones within 60days of activation. At various […]
For the non-sports loving crowd out there, here is something of a necessary primer. Lamar Jackson is the reigning MVP of the National Football League. He plays for the Baltimore Ravens and wears number eight. Troy Aikman is a hall of fame former NFL quarterback that played for the Dallas Cowboys and wore, you guessed […]
In 2023, Tennessee enacted a new law — one that rewrote part of its existing adult entertainment statutes for the sole purpose of making it easier to prosecute drag performers. Sure, legislators took care to talk around the issue when debating it on the floor, but the bill’s language added “male or female impersonators” to […]
Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s okay to go beyond what the law allows even in pursuit of “good” intentions. It is consistently frustrating how this FTC continues to push the boundaries of its own authority, even when the underlying intentions may be good. The latest example is in its order against a […]
The recent Supreme Court case, Moody v. NetChoice & CCIA, confronted a pivotal question: Do websites have the First Amendment right to curate content they present to their global audiences? While the opinion has been dissected by many, this post peeks behind the Silicon curtain to address the practical aftermath of tech litigation. Well before […]
Italy continues to push its way towards shitshow as it’s overtaken by far-right, fascism-adjacent politicians. There’s nothing here that signals the country will try to move back towards the center. Having apparently learned nothing from history, the government continues to move further right while still (somehow!) dealing with a “woke” court. Here’s a brief recap […]
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Does anyone actually trust Elon to be honest about, well, anything? Last week he claimed that ExTwitter hit a new “all-time high” on engagement, with “417 billion user-seconds globally” and that in the US it was 93 billion “user-seconds.” First off, what the fuck are “user-seconds”? This is not a typical measure in the internet […]
The utterly pointless, decade-long madness that was the Time Warner Discovery series of mergers has come to its pathetic conclusion. Basically announcing that the whole mess was a waste of time, company executives last week quietly announced they’d be untangling much of the partnership and try to pretend the whole thing never happened: “The theoretical […]
Huh. Here’s something you definitely don’t see every day. But before we get to the ruling, let’s do a brief exploration of the ultra-weird legal landscape that has made it clear cop dogs and cops should be held to way different standards than regular dogs and regular people. And it’s the regular dogs and regular […]
As we’ve said before, it’s quite easy to understand why there would be frustration, or even anger, when leaks over entertainment media occur despite every attempt to keep that content under lock and key. This happens with movies all the time. What continues to amaze me are two things, however. First, that movie studios’ response […]
It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger – creating a kind of copyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was the WIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition […]
If nothing else, it appears the FBI has decided it’s not worth fighting the “compelled assistance” battle again. Several years ago, the DOJ went to court in hopes of forcing Apple to decrypt a phone belonging to the (dead) San Bernardino shooter. It didn’t go well for the DOJ or the FBI, no matter how […]
For years we’ve talked about the growing threat of SIM hijacking, which involves a criminal covertly porting out your phone number from right underneath your nose (quite often with the help of bribed or conned wireless carrier employees). Once they have your phone identity, they have access to most of your personal accounts secured by two-factor […]
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