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It's 2016 all over again. The FBI can't get everything it wants from a dead person's phone, so it has decided to start revving up its anti-encryption engine. The DOJ took Apple to court in hopes of securing precedent compelling tech companies to crack encrypted devices for it after it recovered the San Bernardino shooter's [...]

Go from absolute zero to GIMP pro with this comprehensive 9 course bundle. Jump into the Complete Master GIMP Design Bundle, and you'll go all the way from installing the GIMP software and configuring it to run on Windows, to producing banners, book covers and even memes that you'll display using Facebook and other social [...]

The 2024 Paris Olympics is drawing the eyes of the world as thousands of athletes and support personnel and hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe converge in France. It's not just the eyes of the world that will be watching. Artificial intelligence systems will be watching, too. Government and private companies will [...]

We've noted repeatedly that in the wake of the Sprint T-Mobile merger, wireless carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (exactly what deal critics had warned the Trump administration would happen when you reduce sector competition). Recently, T-Mobile imposed another $3-$5 per month price hike on most of its plans - including customers who [...]

The asset forfeiture playing field is still far from level, but it at least got a little bit better in Virginia, thanks to a recent state appeals court decision. Here's Graham Moomaw with more details for the Virginia Mercury: A Virginia court erroneously ruled authorities could keep $35,293 seized from a Chesterfield County auto repair [...]

One of the central ideas of Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) is that there is a fundamental difference between analog and digital, and that copyright fails to recognize that. Instead, it seeks to impose what is an inherently analog approach based on scarcity to the online world where abundance is the norm. The [...]

Apparently, Congress only listens to the children" when they agree with what the kids are saying. As soon as some kids oppose something like KOSA, their views no longer count. It's no surprise given the way things were going, but the Senate today overwhelmingly passed KOSA by a 91 to 3 vote. The three no [...]

Good news for free speech enthusiasts. And that should be everyone in this nation, especially those living in Florida. And that goes for everyone who supports Governor Ron DeSantis and dumbass legislation like the Stop WOKE Act." Whether you like it or not, the First Amendment protects speech you disagree with, not just the stuff [...]

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Please. I beg of people: stop it. Stop it with the conspiracy theories. Stop it with the nonsense. If you can't find something you want on social media, it's not because a billionaire is trying to influence an election. It might just be because some antifraud system went haywire or something. Last week we wrote [...]

Automakers are among the worst tech" companies in America when it comes to your privacy. They hoover up an ocean of contact, location and behavior data from your car and phone, don't really clearly tell you they're doing it, then sell access to that data to a rotating crop of super dodgy and largely unregulated [...]

You will likely have noticed that we have begun talking more frequently over the past couple of years about the importance both of video game preservation efforts as well as the idea that people should either be better informed of the terms of buying a digital version of a game, or should have more rights [...]

Low-key vigilantism is the new Crime Stoppers. I'm pretty ambivalent about this new law enforcement effort (with the emphasis on lack of effort"), but this is how things are going in one part of Australia right now. Here's Lewin Day writing for The Autopian with more details: As covered byThe Canberra Times,Australian Capital Territory police [...]

Even though parents insist that it is good and right to share things, the copyright world has succeeded in establishing the contrary as the norm. Now, sharing is deemed a bad, possibly illegal thing. But it was not always thus, as a fascinating speech by Ryan Cordell, Associate Professor in the School of Information Sciences [...]

Before the news had broken that NSO Group's clients were utilizing its powerful spyware to target journalists, dissidents, activists, religious leaders, opposition party members, and anyone else that might have irritated the autocrats and human rights abusers that made up a disproportionate percentage of its customer list, NSO was sued by Meta and WhatsApp. That [...]

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If you've been paying any attention to the political news in the last week, you may have seen stories about couch fucking, or dolphin porn, or burnt monkey testicles, or even cat ladies. Or really just about any of the comments coming out of the Harris campaign, or from other Democratic supporters, calling out the [...]

The FCC has long run an $8 billion federal subsidy program to help bring phone and broadband services to lower income homes and schools called the Universal Service Fund. The bipartisan program has historically been funded by a fee on traditional phone lines. But with traditional phone lines dying, there's been a long, ongoing discussion [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous reply in a discussion about how to deal with trolls: This kind of condescension mixed with vague references that assume everyone else is an idiot is completely useless because not only are you expecting people to read your mind, but you're assuming [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at how the FTC's settlement with YouTube pissed everyone off and how its settlement with Facebook got everything backwards. Oakland was on its way to becoming the third city to ban facial recognition tech while Orlando police ended their facial recognition deal with Amazon and a [...]

I don't know what the legislative intent of Massachusetts wiretapping law was, but I can't possibly imagine it was erected solely to allow public employees to get people arrested for filming them performing their public duties in public places. I mean, maybe it was. Maybe that's the reason the law was enacted. But certainly no [...]

There is some confusion about whether the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) regulates content or design on digital platforms like Instagram or TikTok. It's easy to see why that is, because the bill's authors claim they are attempting to make the bill about design. This is a good move on their part, as regulations on [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations 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 the first ever live recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, Mike and [...]

There are some decent uses of AI. And then there's everything else. While those with horses in the AI race continue to proclaim the miracles their horses will soon be performing at some indefinite point in the future, a whole lot of entities just see AI as a way to shed human capital and replace [...]

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On Thursday, as expected, the Senate voted for cloture" on the extremely problematic Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). The cloture vote is a procedural vote necessary to bring a full vote to the floor. Previously, attempts to move KOSA forward by unanimous consent" could be (and were) blocked by objections from at least one Senator [...]

With a unanimous 5-0 vote, the FCC says it is moving forward with plans that should make unlocking your mobile phone easier than ever. According to a new FCC announcement, the agency say it will begin crafting new rules that will require that wireless carriers unlock customers' mobile phones within 60days of activation. At various [...]

For the non-sports loving crowd out there, here is something of a necessary primer. Lamar Jackson is the reigning MVP of the National Football League. He plays for the Baltimore Ravens and wears number eight. Troy Aikman is a hall of fame former NFL quarterback that played for the Dallas Cowboys and wore, you guessed [...]

In 2023, Tennessee enacted a new law - one that rewrote part of its existing adult entertainment statutes for the sole purpose of making it easier to prosecute drag performers. Sure, legislators took care to talk around the issue when debating it on the floor, but the bill's language added male or female impersonators" to [...]

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's okay to go beyond what the law allows even in pursuit of good" intentions. It is consistently frustrating how this FTC continues to push the boundaries of its own authority, even when the underlying intentions may be good. The latest example is in its order against a [...]

The recent Supreme Court case, Moody v. NetChoice & CCIA, confronted a pivotal question: Do websites have the First Amendment right to curate content they present to their global audiences? While the opinion has been dissected by many, this post peeks behind the Silicon curtain to address the practical aftermath of tech litigation. Well before [...]

Italy continues to push its way towards shitshow as it's overtaken by far-right, fascism-adjacent politicians. There's nothing here that signals the country will try to move back towards the center. Having apparently learned nothing from history, the government continues to move further right while still (somehow!) dealing with a woke" court. Here's a brief recap [...]

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Does anyone actually trust Elon to be honest about, well, anything? Last week he claimed that ExTwitter hit a new all-time high" on engagement, with 417 billion user-seconds globally" and that in the US it was 93 billion user-seconds." First off, what the fuck are user-seconds"? This is not a typical measure in the internet [...]

The utterly pointless, decade-long madness that was the Time Warner Discovery series of mergers has come to its pathetic conclusion. Basically announcing that the whole mess was a waste of time, company executives last week quietly announced they'd be untangling much of the partnership and try to pretend the whole thing never happened: The theoretical [...]

Huh. Here's something you definitely don't see every day. But before we get to the ruling, let's do a brief exploration of the ultra-weird legal landscape that has made it clear cop dogs and cops should be held to way different standards than regular dogs and regular people. And it's the regular dogs and regular [...]

As we've said before, it's quite easy to understand why there would be frustration, or even anger, when leaks over entertainment media occur despite every attempt to keep that content under lock and key. This happens with movies all the time. What continues to amaze me are two things, however. First, that movie studios' response [...]

It is extraordinary that within the copyright world it is accepted dogma that legal protections for this intellectual monopoly should always get stronger - creating a kind ofcopyright ratchet. One of the manifestations of this belief was theWIPO Copyright Treaty, signed in 1996, which extended copyright in important ways. A key element was the prohibition [...]

If nothing else, it appears the FBI has decided it's not worth fighting the compelled assistance" battle again. Several years ago, the DOJ went to court in hopes of forcing Apple to decrypt a phone belonging to the (dead) San Bernardino shooter. It didn't go well for the DOJ or the FBI, no matter how [...]

For years we've talked about the growing threat of SIM hijacking, which involves a criminal covertly porting out your phone number from right underneath your nose (quite often with the help of bribed or connedwireless carrier employees). Once they have your phone identity, they have access to most of your personal accounts secured by two-factor [...]

You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let's focus on the app. Right off the bat, let's be clear about one thing: When we say app" we don't mean that you're limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across [...]

Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you a tale of rate limiting, misinterpreted screenshots, and how half the internet lost its mind over a pretty standard Twitter error. This error was then interpreted through an extremely partisan political prism, leading previous arguments to flip political sides based on who was involved. The desire to [...]

Apparently the only time Congress can get together to agree to something, it's to give whoever is President the power to censor speech online. That's the only conclusion I can come to regarding the widespread support for KOSA (the Kids Online Safety Act), which Senator Chuck Schumer has announced will be coming to the floor [...]

It's always frustrating to watch a trademark dispute occur when the marks in question are non-distinctive or generic in nature. Now, I want to be careful here, because the trademark in question here is one that has been applied in a way slightly different than the generic use of the term is typically used. An [...]

Augmented reality is on its way. The ability to layer media over top of the real world is, for the moment, a hardware problem. Our phones can do it - think Pokemon Go, or Snapchat's dancing hotdog - but a real-time heads-up display remains out of reach, for the moment. When such technology arrives, it [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations 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 sponsored Spotlight episode of Ctrl-Alt-Speech, host Ben Whitelaw [...]

It sounds absolutely batty that there is a strong, bipartisan push to lock up aspects of our law behind copyright. But it's happening. Even worse, the push is on to include this effort to lock up the law in the must pass" National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This is the bill that Congress lights up [...]

Good news for phone owners. Perhaps a little less great for law enforcement, which presumably still doesn't have the capability to crack the latest cell phones. Not that it's all bad news for law enforcement. Whether or not compelled password production is a constitutional violation is still an open question. Those whose phones are secured [...]

In a stunning display of technocratic incompetence, the EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) has effectively outlawed the very tool that online platforms have relied on for years to combat trolls: shadowbanning. Recent court decisions suggest that the DSA's (possibly?) well-intentioned but misguided Article 17 has created a troll's paradise, leaving websites in an impossible position [...]

The leading candidate to head the FCC should Trump win re-election is facing calls for an investigation into Hatch Act violations after he helped co-author the controversial Project 2025. Sixteen House Democrats have sent a letter to government officials arguing that Carr's involvement in the openly political Project 2025 is a clear violation of the [...]