Few things seem to push government officials to become officious faster than the mild irritation of people making a slight mockery of government machinery. In the grand scheme of things, the scofflawishness is almost imperceptible. But it’s the scoffing part that bothers these officious entities the most. And that is almost always greeted with a […]
I’ve noted for years how the U.S. is simply too corrupt to pass a modern internet-era privacy law or regulate dodgy data brokers. So we are subjected to a parade of privacy and security scandals thanks to numerous industries that over-collect your data, fail to properly secure it, then sell access to any random asshole […]
Funny enough, it was only a few weeks back that we last discussed Dr. Keith Bell and the slew of lawsuits he has filed over depictions and/or retweets on social media of a passage he wrote, referred to as “The Winning Isn’t Normal” passage. These suits, which largely are over retweets of the passage, are […]
Copyright is built on a lie that most people seem to accept: artists can make a decent living from the current system of rewards that copyright provides. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) explores, all the data about artist remuneration shows that isn’t true. Alongside such dry statistics, it’s good to hear […]
There’s usually only one reason government officials use personal email accounts: to dodge FOIA requests. The excuses offered by those caught doing it are never credible. And those who do opt for personal email — especially at the federal level — are putting themselves in peril. There are also practical security reasons for using government […]
While Congress still can’t get its act together to pass an anti-SLAPP law, the Ohio legislature has stepped up and done so in the Buckeye state. Most of the reporting on this has noted that it passed unanimously, and the expectation was that Governor Mike DeWine would sign it, though his big list of bills […]
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WhatsApp has scored a limited win in its lawsuit against NSO Group. The allegations were that NSO used WhatsApp’s servers — located in California — to deliver its malware to targeted devices. NSO argued several things and failed in almost every case, including the deployment of diametrically-opposed assertions. First, it argued it couldn’t be held […]
During peak COVID in 2021, when everybody was freaking out about how shitty and expensive U.S. broadband was for telecommuting and home education, NY state officials had an idea: what if we pass a law demanding that ISPs try to provide cheap broadband (a piddly 25 Mbps for $15) to low income families. Some particulars […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side That One Guy with a comment about Congress ignoring bills to protect the press: Gee, I wonder why they’d fear honest reporting so much… When the head of your party is a convicted felon and a core pillar of said party is that any criticism […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the biggest copyright trolls were facing some issues in court and trying new strategies, while the Sons of Confederate Veterans were sued over a bogus DMCA takedown and we analyzed the choice of venue. We also saw some particularly insane copyright damages against Cox. Avast was downplaying its […]
We’re still waiting for the lawsuit in Japan between Nintendo, The Pokémon Co., and Pocketpair to get rolling, but that doesn’t keep the dispute out of the news. The patent lawsuit, itself a surprise as everyone thought it would be a copyright gambit that Nintendo would try, centers around several patents that all relate to […]
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 this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
At some point, I’ll have time to write more thoroughly about how the wonderful and supportive Bluesky community effectively willed One Billion Users over the funding threshold, but it’s quite amazing. We were around 50% of the funding threshold just a few days before the campaign was set to close (which generally means the campaign […]
A second appeals court has now said that Section 230 doesn’t protect Salesforce, the online software giant, from being held liable for sex trafficking, because Backpage… used Salesforce’s software. If all of this sounds a bit crazy, buckle up. First, you need to understand the background here, before we can get into the details of […]
It often seems that when people have no good ideas or, indeed, any ideas at all, the next thing out of their mouths is “maybe some AI?” It’s not that AI can’t be useful. It’s that so many use cases are less than ideal. Enter Axon, formerly Taser, which has moved from selling modified cattle […]
The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, […]
We’ve been warning for years that the UK’s Online Safety Act would be a disaster for the open internet. Its supporters accused us of exaggerating, or “shilling” for Big Tech. But as we’ve long argued, while tech giants like Facebook and Google might be able to shoulder the law’s immense regulatory burdens, smaller sites would […]
For many many years, experts have warned about massive longstanding flaws in Signaling System 7 (SS7, or Common Channel Signaling System 7), a series of protocols hackers can exploit to track user location, dodge encryption, and even record private conversations. Governments and various bad actors routinely exploit the flaw to covertly spy on wireless users around the planet without them […]
I’ll preface this post by saying a part of me hates writing posts like this. We recently talked about a trademark lawsuit brought by KFC against Church’s Chicken centered on Church’s advertisements of a return to its “original recipe” for some of its chicken. Powering the suit was the trademark KFC has on the term […]
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