On the one hand, content moderation at the scale modern social media companies operate at is an impossible nightmare. Companies are always going to lack the staff and resources to do it well (raising questions about the dangers of automation at scale), and they’re always going to screw things up for reasons well discussed. At […]
Donald Trump promised to take the social media world by storm with his Truth Social Twitter-clone for the MAGA world. “Free speech!” he claimed as he banned anyone who criticized him. Of course, from the beginning, many suspected that this was all a very sketchy grift, using a SPAC to try to cash in on […]
Late last year we discussed a plainly stupid trademark lawsuit brought by Dairy Queen, which makes tasty frozen snacks, and W.B. Mason which is a strange combination of furniture and grocery store. At issue was the latter’s attempt to trademark some bottled water it sells under the brand “Blizzard Water”. Notably, W.B. Mason had sold […]
Ever since it came into effect, we’ve been calling out how the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was an obviously problematic bit of legislation. In the four years since it’s gone into effect, we’ve seen nothing to change that opinion. For users, it’s been a total nuisance. Rather than take the big US internet […]
The Internet of things — aka the tendency to bring Internet connectivity to devices whether they need them or not — has provided no shortage of both tragedy and comedy. “Smart” locks that are easy to bypass, “smart” fridges that leak your email credentials, or even “smart” barbies that spy on toddlers are all pretty […]
As we see more and more western countries looking to regulate the internet in order to stifle speech they dislike, we’ve noted how much these efforts seem to be almost directly modeled on how China censors the internet. You might think that would be a reason to run in the other direction, but too many […]
I had to rewrite this post before it got published. I originally began it with some whimsy in response to the absurdity that copyright cases like these always engender. The idea that people could ever use their rights in previous expression to forbid someone else’s subsequent expression is almost too absurd to take seriously as […]
Law enforcement agencies have access to very powerful digital tools. Thanks to companies with eyes on market expansion but very little consideration of moral or ethical issues, cops have the power to completely compromise phones, turning them into unwitting informants… or worse. This blockbuster report — written by Andy Greenberg for Wired and based on […]
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Over the last few weeks, we’ve written quite a bit about the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA), which has become the central push by a bunch of folks in Congress to create a special antitrust bill for “big tech.” There are some good ideas in the bill, but, as we’ve been highlighting, a […]
In response to the Supreme Court’s recent assault on female bodily autonomy, numerous U.S. corporations have issued statements stating they’ll be paying for employee abortion travel. You’re to ignore, apparently, that many of these same companies continue to throw millions of dollars at the politicians responsible for turning the Supreme Court into a dangerous, cruel, […]
An interesting development in the digital world has been the continuing rise of gaming as a hugely popular activity, and a hugely profitable industry. Flowing from that rise and popularity, there is yet another fascinating aspect: streaming games for entertainment. The best-known example of this phenomenon is Twitch, now owned by Amazon. A new paper by […]
Ten states are currently home to a version of California’s “Marsy’s Law.” This law is a “victim’s rights” law, named after a California murder victim. It was written with the intent of involving crime victims in the criminal justice process, giving them a “right” to be heard during court proceedings, choose their own representation (rather […]
For at least three years now, we have been discussing the goings on concerning a trademark application submitted by Ohio State University for using the word “the” on apparel. If your brain just came to a screeching halt, it may be because you’re not a college sports fan. See, Ohio State University absolutely loves referring […]
Last month, we noted that there was a new “protect the children” bill that was proposed in the EU that would effectively outlaw encryption, while simultaneously require full internet scanning of basically all activity. As we noted in our post, it was still early in the process, and now the German government has stepped up […]
The “Miranda rights” established by the Supreme Court in 1966 are a little less guaranteed going forward. The Supreme Court has issued an opinion [PDF] that limits what citizens whose rights have been violated can do — limiting them to exercising these rights during criminal trials as a component of their Fifth Amendment rights. The […]
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If you accidentally leave your Google Drive accessible to anyone with the URL, and someone goes there and deletes stuff, is that “unauthorized access” and a violation of the CFAA? To me, the answer should be absolutely not. But in this recent ruling the judge went the other direction (first noted by Evan Brown). So, […]
Late last year, we noted how the FAA and the FCC (the agency that actually knows how spectrum works) had gotten into a bit of an ugly tussle over the FAA’s claim that 5G could harm air travel safety. The FAA claimed that deploying 5G in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz “C-Band” would cause interference […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous response to some bargain-basement transphobic bigotry: I could point you at a trans discussing what its like to be a trans, but you are so aggressive towards trans people that i will not set an rabid dog on their case. Suffice to […]
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