Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Comcast sued Vermont to try to get out of having to expand its broadband network, while it was also continuing to insist its sneaky, misleading fees were a form of transparency. Charles Harder lost a defamation lawsuit against The Deal, while the infamous Monkey Selfie case reached a […]
Racism is a human problem. When that problem wears badges, carries guns, and has the power to deprive people of life and liberty, it’s a much more serious problem. Many US law enforcement agencies have racist roots, agencies formed for the purpose of catching escaped slaves to return them to their white owners. Not every […]
As far as I can tell, in the area the 5th Circuit appeals court has jurisdiction, websites no longer have any 1st Amendment editorial rights. That’s the result of what appears to me to be the single dumbest court ruling I’ve seen in a long, long time, and I know we’ve seen some crazy rulings […]
At some point in the last five years, people in positions of media influence and power unilaterally decided that NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway was supposed to be everywhere, constantly, pontificating about absolutely everything, constantly. As a result, you now can’t go fifteen minutes without Galloway, who makes an estimated $5 million annually in speaking […]
Tuesday, former Twitter cybersecurity executive Pieter “Mudge” Zatko testified in front of a congressional committee regarding his whistleblower complaint[1][2][3] against Twitter. Though I’m a techie, I thought I’d write up some comments from the business angle. It’s difficult getting an unbiased viewpoint of the actual issues. The press sides with whistleblowers. The cybersecurity community sides […]
On Thursday, the White House hosted the United We Stand summit, to bring together people to take action against what they refer to as “hate-fueled violence.” This seems like a good idea for a summit, at a time when so much of politics is focused on grievances and culture wars that seem to inevitably lead […]
codeSpark’s mission is to help all kids learn to code by igniting their curiosity in computer science and turning programming into play. The app is designed to teach kids 4 to 9 the foundations of computer science through puzzles, coding challenges, and creative tools. It’s a great way for your kid to learn how to […]
When a proposed new law is sold as “protecting kids online,” regulators and commenters often accept the sponsors’ claims uncritically (because… kids). This is unfortunate because those bills can harbor ill-advised policy ideas. The California Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC / AB2273, just signed by Gov. Newsom) is an example of such a bill. Despite its purported […]
We’ve already noted how Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a dumb cash grab. The company already cordons users off into pay tiers based on a number of different criteria, including how many simultaneous streams a single account can already use at one time. And it just got done imposing a major price hike on most […]
One of the cornerstones of trademark law in most countries is that you cannot trademark descriptive terms or words. The reason for this should be obvious. If I start a search engine and want to trademark my company name, calling it “Google” differentiates me from the rest of the market. But if I named my […]
Well, this is unfortunate. We’ve already highlighted the many, many problems with the Online Safety Bill in the UK, which will be a massive attack on free speech, in that (among many other problems) it seeks to force websites to remove content even if it’s “lawful,” meaning that they will massively overcensor. As I’ve pointed […]
This isn’t a surprise, but it’s still frustrating. Gavin Newsom, who wants to be President some day, and thus couldn’t risk misleading headlines that he didn’t “protect the children,” has now signed AB 2273 into law (this follows on yesterday’s decision to sign the bad, but slightly less destructive, AB 587 into law). At this […]
Just a somewhat periodic reminder: publicly-funded colleges are government entities. Almost every public university is. Sometimes, they seem to forget what they are and act in ways governments can’t — not without violating rights. That inability to remember constraints imposed on it by inalienable rights is causing problems for Texas A&M University. And its arguments […]
For many years, we’ve written about the myth — that is still believed by many, including many policymakers and journalists — that big companies always win out by simply copying smaller more innovative companies, and just grabbing the market from them. While there are a few examples of this happening, it is much, much more […]
The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle will help you develop your own dream video game, and publish it on multiple platforms with thousands of royalty-free, 2D and 3D assets. You get AppGameKit Studio, a fully featured game development toolset with two asset packs. The bundle also has GameGuru, a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an […]
Between COVID relief and the new infrastructure bill there’s a massive, historic, $50+ billion taxpayer subsidy headed for the broadband industry that should do a lot of good in shoring up access in underserved locations. But we’ve also noted how the government still doesn’t have a great idea of where that money should be spent, […]
It should not be this hard to stamp out a bad idea, but here we are, with the JCPA continuing to haunt the country like a zombie that simply refuses to die. The JCPA, for those just tuning in, is a bill designed to create a link tax. Its supporters sometimes blanch at that description, […]
Normally when we talk about trademark disputes, they tend to look fairly similar. Some entity is upset and/or sues over a trademark they have and we spend some time analyzing whether the trademark itself ever should have been granted, whether there is true customer confusion to worry about, whether the plaintiff is simply bullying, etc. […]
We’re still waiting to see if California Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the California Age Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273) into law, though all indications are that he will. However, he has now signed a different bad bill into law. He has happily signed what he calls the “nation-leading social media transparency measure” AB 587 […]
Government officials may say acceptable things when pressed for comment by journalists, oversight, and members of the public. But if you really want to know what an agency thinks, just keep your eye on the rank-and-file. So, when the West Texas branch of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) started retweeting one of the Trump […]
stLouIST