One of the reasons that today’s copyright is such a bad fit for the modern digital world is that its roots lie deep in 18th-century law and analogue objects like books. This fact has created a kind of legislative drag that means copyright is always decades behind the latest technological developments. A case in point […]
In my time covering internet speech issues, I’ve seen some truly ridiculous arguments regarding Section 230. I even created my ever-handy “Hello! You’ve Been Referred Here Because You’re Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act” article four years ago, which still gets a ton of traffic to this day. But I’m not sure […]
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Well, it worked. We’ll have to see how this plays out in the lawsuit WhatsApp brought against NSO Group, but it has managed to shed one litigant thanks to intervention from the home team: the Israeli government. In July, documents obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) revealed the desperate measures NSO Group deployed to […]
Back in 2017, the Trump administration signed new rules banning Russian-based Kaspersky software on all government computers. Last June, the Biden administration took things further and banned distribution and sale of the software, stating that the company’s ties to the Russian government made its intimacy with U.S. consumer devices and data a national security threat. […]
I don’t know why the press feels the need to provide cover for law enforcement officers who screw up so badly they injure innocent people and their own coworkers. But they do. It’s not even the “view from nowhere.” It’s the “view mostly likely to exonerate cops by the end of the headline.” And since […]
Agree with them or not, the folks behind Cards Against Humanity certainly do have a penchant for flair. As you may recall, back during the Trump presidency, when we were still hearing about how a border wall would be built and then billed back to a sovereign nation that was absolutely never going to pay […]
Elon Musk’s superpower does not appear to be rocket science or electric cars—it’s an uncanny ability to misunderstand why ExTwitter’s features exist. The clear takeaway from the book “Character Limit” about his Twitter takeover was that he only views the platform’s features through the lens of whether or not he, the richest man in the […]
Tennessee’s government cranks out a lot of stupid laws. It’s been doing it for years, but things have accelerated recently as the state’s legislators seek to curtail rights for, well, pretty much everyone but white men. It has enacted book bans, anti-trans laws, and the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision triggered its long-dormant anti-abortion law. But […]
The Ultimate Learn Unity Game Development Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn how to create your own games. Unity allows you to easily make cross-platform 2D, 3D, VR, AR, and mobile games. It powers indie and AAA games, films, job training apps, and much more – making it a versatile program that’s used […]
I do not understand why California Governor Gavin Newsom thinks he has to be the Democratic equivalent of Texas Governor Greg Abbott or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, signing obviously unconstitutional laws for the sake of winning culture war arguments. It’s really shameful. It’s cheap political pandering, while disrespecting the rights of everyone he’s supposed to […]
Last July the FCC announced it was moving forward with plans that should make unlocking your mobile phone easier than ever. According to the FCC announcement, the agency, with broad and bipartisan public support, has been working on new rules requiring that wireless carriers unlock customers’ mobile phones within 60 days of activation. Wireless carriers, trying […]
It happened again and it has to stop. Back in 2014, we talked about how a UK woman had trouble getting her passport approved because her middle name was “Skywalker” and the UK’s passport office for some reason thought that Disney would have to give its permission to have the passport approved. There is nothing […]
The writing was on the wall, or rather, on the City of Chicago’s Inspector General’s report: The CPD data examined by OIG does not support a conclusion that ShotSpotter is an effective tool in developing evidence of gun-related crime. Kind of a big problem when the tech was acquired specifically to address Chicago’s years-long acceleration […]
Back in March, Walled Culture wrote about the terrible job that academic publishers are doing in terms of creating backups of the articles they publish. We also mentioned there two large-scale archives that are trying to help, Sci-Hub and Anna’s Archive. Legal action by publishers against the former seems to have led to a halt to new items being added […]
If it can be accessed via the internet, it will be. That’s a fact too many entities learn far too late. Amazingly, this wholly expected outcome often comes as a surprise to entities with lots power, money, or expertise — the sort of people you’d think would have considered all possible outcomes before giving a […]
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I’ve covered telecom giants like AT&T for most of an adult life. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that the company all but owns most state legislatures, who are happy to pass no limit of terrible, anti-consumer, anti-competitive legislation in exchange for a nice vacation trip or campaign contribution. AT&T lawyers and executives […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous response to a comment arguing that Cloudflare isn’t very important to the internet: I would like to hear your argument as to why DDoS mitigation is not an essential part of hosting a website in 2024. In second place, it’s an anonymous […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, some investors were getting sick of AT&T’s obsession with mergers, leading the company to think about dumping DirecTV. Nintendo was ramping up its war on ROM websites, while Congress was moving forward with plans to massively increase copyright trolling. The DOJ helped boost Ed Snowden’s memoir by suing […]
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