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Five Years Ago
This week in 2020, we published our popular reference post on all the ways people are wrong about Section 230. It was needed because, as we covered in that week’s episode of the podcast, there were a whole lot of attacks on the law, most notably from some of the provisions of the overall-terrible EARN IT Act (which the Senate quickly followed up with another bill declaring all-out...
When you’re a huge country, and a communist one to boot, the Streisand Effect is a thing that’s just going to inevitably happen to you at times. China has definitely lived this experience. The government is the unfortunate combination of incredibly authoritarian and completely devoid of a sense of humor. The result is the serious belief that it can control everything through sheer force of will,...
This series of posts explores how we can rethink the intersection of AI, creativity, and policy. From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle. Together, they advocate for a more balanced, forward-thinking approach that acknowledges the potential of technological...
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others.
ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how a 2024 Tennessee law that...
Much of what we’ve written about regarding the Trump regime’s nonsensical and ridiculous immigration policies have focused on how they’re grabbing people off the streets, or disappearing them to random foreign gulags without due process. But we’ve also talked about the absolute insanity of US immigration policy as it pertains to foreigners traveling to the US on visas. And the most telling thing...
Just because a constitutional violation is easy to ignore doesn’t make it any less of a constitutional violation. And yet, that was the first defense of Louisiana’s Ten Commandments mandate offered by the governor of the state, Jeff Landry.
When asked what he would say to parents who are upset about the Ten Commandments being displayed in their child’s classroom, the governor replied: “If those...
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The Supreme Court this morning took a chainsaw to the First Amendment on the internet, and the impact is going to be felt for decades going forward. In the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier Supreme Court rulings that said the opposite.
Justice Thomas wrote the...
In a day full of terrible Supreme Court rulings there was one bit of good news: in their FCC v. Consumers’ Research ruling, the court rejected a bid by radical right wing Republicans to destroy a popular $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural schools and communities to the internet.
The plaintiff in this case, Consumers’ Research, isn’t really a consumers’ group. It’s a right wing...
Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It’s basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service.
A cornerstone of the supposed company was a new $500 Trump T1 phone. To pitch the phone, the...