MEDIA, COMMUNICATIONS & NET NEUTRALITY
- Trump’s threats amount to a First Amendment violation
- Trump May Not Be Serious About His NBC Threats… But He May Have Violated The First Amendment
- FCC Chair Ajit Pai’s Silence On Trump Tweets Speaks Volumes
- Tom Wheeler to Ajit Pai: “Why the silence” about Trump’s media threats? – Meanwhile, Trump continued attacks on NBC, media: “Sadly, they and others are Fake News.”
- FCC chair “refused” to rebuke Trump over threat to take NBC off the air: Lawmakers want Pai to “publicly disavow President Trump’s repeated threats.”
- Six days later, FCC chair says Trump can’t order FCC to revoke TV licenses: Pai response is “better than nothing,” but critics want stronger rebuke of Trump.
- FCC Republican says Trump is “rightfully venting” anger at the press: O’Rielly sympathizes with Trump but says “politics” shouldn’t affect TV licenses.
- Republican fight against municipal broadband heats up in Michigan; Michigan bill says no “federal, state, or local funds” can pay for broadband.
- FCC’s DDoS claims will be investigated by government: GAO will investigate after Democrats asked for evidence that attacks happened.
- ISPs don’t want to tell the FCC exactly where they offer Internet service: Better data collection could tell us which homes have broadband and which don’t
- Big ISPs Lobby To Kill Attempts At More Accurate Broadband Mapping
- Groups Battle Trump FCC’s Claim That One ISP In A Market Means There’s Effective Competition
- Charter accuses its employees of cutting cables 125 times during strike – Lawsuit: Tens of thousands of New Yorkers lost service because of vandalism.
- Comment Dates Set on FCC Proposal to Abolish Requirement for Paper Copies of FCC Rules
- DOJ Staffers: The T-Mobile Sprint Merger Will Reduce Competition And Should Be Blocked
- T-Mobile Dials Back Major ‘Un-carrier’ Perk
- AT&T Spent Hundreds Of Billions On Mergers And All It Got Was A Big Pile Of Cord Cutters
- Comcast found a way to raise other cable companies’ prices, rivals say: Comcast/NBC contract demands allegedly make it hard to sell basic TV package.
- Google Fiber Gives Up On Traditional TV, And Won’t Be The Last Company To Do So
- Weather Forecast Title Not Significantly Inaccurate, Says Canadian Broadcast Standards Council
- Ah Statism, how we love thee! (Timothy Denton)
DIGITAL
- It’s 11 p.m., do you know where your ads are?:
- B.C. businesses and schools hurry to distance themselves from controversial media organizations after activists raise alarm over advertising with Breitbart and others
- An open letter to Mr Bezos, Mr Pichai and Mr Zuckerberg to tear down Breitbart News
- New Whistleblowers Highlight How Russia’s Information War On U.S. Was Larger Than Initially Reported
- The mysterious group that wants to kill Breitbart’s ad revenue, one tweet at a time
- Amazon isn’t one of the 2,575 companies to pull ads from Breitbart
- Amazon Suspends Video Head Roy Price Over Sexual Harassment Claims
- Due to legal settlement, Amazon customers now get a few extra bucks: Ars staffers got as little as $0.76 and as much as $12.02. How much did you get?
- Memo To Facebook: How To Tell If You’re A Media Company
- Sheryl Sandberg’s Russia talk was an insult to our intelligence
- Did Facebook delete Russian bought ads because of a bug?
- Facebook apologizes for allowing Russian ads to interfere with 2016 campaign – COO: Company must “prevent everything we can from this happening on our platforms.”
- What Facebook Did to American Democracy: And why it was so hard to see it coming
- Facebook is testing a resume feature to take on LinkedIn
- How Facebook’s Ad System Works
- Man acquitted of felony charge over Facebook police parody page sues: Fake account said police would offer abortions and anybody could become a recruit.
- Court To Guy Who Sued News Stations Over His Facebook Live Video: Pay Their Legal Fees… And Maybe Sue Your Lawyers
- U.S. Supreme Court Rejects CFAA Appeal by Power Ventures against Facebook
- The Problem With #MeToo And Viral Outrage
- Nova Scotia introduces new Cyber-bullying Legislation
- Incentivizing Better Speech, Rather Than Censoring ‘Bad’ Speech
- Cheap Speech and What It Has Done (To American Democracy) (Richard Hasen)
- Ninth Circuit Upholds Enforceability of Arbitration Agreements in Click-Through Agreements
- Age of consent in the GDPR: updated mapping
- Ex-workers: Supervisors at Tesla factory routinely called us the n-word – Tesla slams such abuse but expresses doubts regarding the men’s claims.
- There’s Blood In The Water In Silicon Valley: The bad new politics of big tech.
- African rulers’ weapon against web-based dissent: the off switch
- Saskatchewan Court of Appeal confirms that emails can extend limitation periods under the Limitations Act
- China congress: How authorities censor your thoughts
- DOJ indicts Chinese fentanyl distributors selling to Americans online: “They use multiple identities to disguise their activities and their shipments.”
- Reddit’s unlikely first edit partner: Time magazine
- Supreme Court refuses to hear case questioning Google’s trademark: Lawsuit claimed “google” had become synonymous with “search the Internet.”
- Google Bombs Are Our New Normal
- Google Offers Help To Industries It Helps To Destroy
- Google’s Learning Software Learns To Write Learning Software
- Twitter Says It Will Finally Do Something About Those Hordes of Nazis
- Harvey Weinstein Is Hollywood’s Silicon Valley Moment
- Eight takes on sexual harassment and Harvey Weinstein
- Twitter Says Rose McGowan Account Was Suspended Over Phone Number in Tweet
- Twitter’s suspension of Rose McGowan epitomizes the site’s most infuriating problem: It’s a double standard at its most divisive.
- Women Are Boycotting Twitter Today in Solidarity with Rose McGowan
- Twitter CEO after Rose McGowan account suspension: ‘We need to be a lot more transparent’
- Rose McGowan back on Twitter
- @jeffbezos I told the head of your studio that HW raped me. Over & over I said it. He said it hadn’t been proven. I said I was the proof. (rose mcgowan)
- Rose McGowan says Amazon knew Weinstein had raped her
- Silicon Valley Can’t Handle Its Own Toxic Culture. Is It Really Ready to Tackle Hollywood’s, Too?
- Black members of Congress push for more diversity in Silicon Valley hires – Rep. Barbara Lee: “Coding jobs will become the blue collar jobs of the future.”
- We should stop tech firms from screening extremist videos: Internet giants have a duty to help counter-terrorism efforts
- Another Ridiculous Lawsuit Hopes To Hold Social Media Companies Responsible For Terrorist Attacks
- The ‘Gawker Effect’ Is Chilling Investigative Reporting Across The US
- Inside The Weird World Of Social Media Marathon Cheating
- Dutch privacy regulator says Windows 10 breaks the law: Regulator says Microsoft doesn’t offer enough information to enable informed consent.
- Judge Agrees – YouTube Mockery Protected by Fair Use
- AT&T Researchers Share Map Depicting Top YouTube Channels In Each State
- Blame The Cord-Cutters For AT&T’s Sudden Drop In Share Price
- YouTube Revamps Website For Creators, Rolls Out ‘Master Class’ Video Advice Series
- Here’s Why YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Started Her Very Own Channel
- Casey Neistat: YouTube Doesn’t Do Enough To Take Care Of Creator Community
- Advertising Practices Land Tinder in Hot Water
- Snapchat Stories Usage Among Top Influencers Has Dipped 33% In 6 Months
- Influencers Sound Off on Why They Do Not Want to Disclose Sponsored Posts
- Vice Media To Launch Sub-Saharan African Operation In 2018
- Major Studios, Streamers Declare Legal War on TickBox: “What TickBox actually sells is nothing less than illegal access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted content,” a lawyer for the studios and streamers says.
- Netflix, Amazon, movie studios sue over TickBox streaming device: TickBox TV says it’s a “100% legal” directory of everything ever made.
- Netflix Now Says It Will Spend Up To $8 Billion On Original Content Next Year
- Two months after Disney split, Netflix pledges $8B for original content: What’s cooler than spending $6 billion (in 2017) on original content?
- Another German decision questions reasonableness of GS Media presumption if generally applied
- Revealed: How copyright law is being misused to remove material from the internet – When Annabelle Narey posted a negative review of a building firm on Mumsnet, the last thing on her mind was copyright infringement
- Copyright Isn’t a Tool for Removing Negative Reviews
- Sorry, You Can’t Abuse Copyright Law To Make A Negative Review Disappear
- New Copyright Trolling Operation Lowers The Settlement Demands And Calls Them Fines To Improve Conversion Rate
- Native American tribe sues Amazon and Microsoft over patents: Can “patent trolls” advance their cause using Native American legal rights?
- Vladimir Putin: Russia Will Issue its Own Cryptocurrency
- Sweden’s Tax Authority Accepts Bitcoin As Settlement: The Swedish government agency responsible for the collection of taxes has, for the first time, accepted bitcoin from a debtor.
- The Difference between Blockchain and Bitcoin
- Waymo’s staggering settlement demand for Uber: $1 billion: Holding fast on massive cash demand suggests Waymo wants to cripple its competitor.
- Uber And Lyft Haven’t Revolutionized The American City—Yet
- The Crowdsourced Maps Guiding Puerto Rico’s Recovery
- New neural network teaches itself Go, spanks the pros: This time, the Go-playing algorithm didn’t need any human players to help it.
- Artificial Intelligence – With Very Real Biases: According to AI Now co-founder Kate Crawford, digital brains can be just as error-prone and biased as ours
- Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence
- Stunning AI Breakthrough Takes Us One Step Closer to the Singularity
- The Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions: Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.
- AI Experts Want To End ‘Black Box’ Algorithms In Government
- Can we teach robots ethics?
- You Aren’t Ready For The Weirdness Of Working With Robots
- Love in the Time of Robots: Hiroshi Ishiguro builds androids. Beautiful, realistic, uncannily convincing human replicas. Academically, he is using them to understand the mechanics of person-to-person interaction. But his true quest is to untangle the ineffable nature of connection itself.
- Apple’s Tim Cook On iPhones, Augmented Reality, And How He Plans To Change Your World: In a wide-ranging interview, the CEO of the biggest tech company in the world explains how AR will change our lives, and why he thinks the world is actually getting better
- First iPhone X batch reportedly only contains 46,500 units: Apple’s TrueDepth camera may be holding things up.
- Apple and GE partner to make industrial analytics iOS-accessible: GE thinks the software will result in $12 billion in revenue by 2020.
- Udacity to focus on individual student projects
- Many patent-holders stop looking to East Texas following Supreme Court ruling: Can Delaware handle the incoming caseload?
- The Case for CASL: My Appearance Before the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology (Michael Geist)
- First Circuit Rejects Copyright Workaround to Section 230–Small Justice v. Ripoff Report (Eric Goldman)
- Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?: More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis.
CREATIVITY
- Statute Of Limitations Has Run Out On Trump’s Bogus Promise To Sue The NY Times
- At Core of 5Pointz Trial: Is Graffiti Art Protected by Law?
- Will Recent Court Rulings Endanger the Future of Biopics and Documentaries?: A Lynyrd Skynyrd movie ban and Olivia de Havilland’s recent legal victory are causing Hollywood studios, press organizations and others to speak up, lest they lose that right.
- Disney: The Only Fun Allowed At Children’s Birthday Parties Is Properly Licensed Fun
- Internet Archives Liberates Old Books Using Never Used Before Provision Of Copyright Law
- Freedom of panorama: would it hurt architects? Survey among Italian-based architects says NO
- “Haters Gonna Hate, Hate . . . .” Can Taylor Swift “Shake it Off”?
- CEIPI Opinion on copyright limitations’ reform in the European Digital Single Market
- (The cult of) personality rights in Canada
- Guide to Doing Business in Canada: Intellectual property
- Prioritizing the Public Interest: My Submission on Copyright Board of Canada Reform (Michael Geist)
- NDAs: A Logistical and Legal Nightmare
SURVEILLANCE & PRIVACY
- Details Emerge Of World’s Biggest Facial Recognition Surveillance System, Aiming To Identify Any Chinese Citizen In Three Seconds
- Supreme Court to decide if US has right to data on world’s servers: Feds claim legal right to reach into the world’s servers with a valid US warrant.
- Supreme Court Agrees To Hear Case Involving US Demands For Emails Stored Overseas
- Justices to Hear DOJ Appeal on Microsoft Ruling: Is Email Stored Abroad Subject to a U.S. Warrant?
- Microsoft never disclosed 2013 hack of secret vulnerability database: Database contained details required to carry out highly advanced software attacks.
- Attack of the Hack Back: The worst idea in cybersecurity is back again.
- “OK, Google. Send a Letter to the CPSC.”: Privacy Groups Request Recall of Google Home Mini
- Judge shocked to learn NYPD’s evidence database has no backup: City says cash forfeitures not in flagship PETS system; police say PETS backed up.
- DreamHost Wins Challenge Against DOJ’s Overbroad Data Demands
- DOJ Continues Its Push For Encryption Backdoors With Even Worse Arguments
- There’s No Good Decision in the Next Big Data Privacy Case
- Could a child sue their parents for sharenting?
- Viral video of man being dragged from United flight gets officers fired: “Our cell phones are the best deterrent to ensure mistreatment becomes a rarity.”
- It Takes Just $1,000 To Track Someone’s Location With Mobile Ads
- Millions of high-security crypto keys crippled by newly discovered flaw: Factorization weakness lets attackers impersonate key holders and decrypt their data.
- Details around controversial surveillance unknown
- Equifax website borked again, this time to redirect to fake Flash update: Malware researcher encounters bogus download links during multiple visits.
- After second bungle, IRS suspends Equifax’s “taxpayer identity” contract
- Federal watchdog tells Equifax – no $7.25 million IRS contract for you: Equifax-IRS ordeal exposes the strangeness of the government contracting system.
- There’s No Good Decision in the Next Big Data Privacy Case
- Equifax rival TransUnion also sends site visitors to malicious pages: People visiting TransUnion’s Central American site redirected to potpourri of badness.
- Accenture The Latest To Leave Sensitive Customer Data Sitting Unprotected In The Amazon Cloud
- Don’t Panic, But Wi-Fi’s Main Security Protocol Has Been Broken
- How the KRACK attack destroys nearly all Wi-Fi security: Android 6.0 hit especially hard, but all devices are vulnerable.
- Serious flaw in WPA2 protocol lets attackers intercept passwords and much more: KRACK attack is especially bad news for Android and Linux users.
- The Flawed System Behind The Krack Wi-Fi Meltdown
- Why The Krack Wi-Fi Mess Will Take Decades To Clean Up
- Australian defense firm was hacked and F-35 data stolen, DOD confirms
- Australian Police Ran A Dark Web Child Porn Site For Eleven Months
- Australian Government Claims That Facial Recognition Systems Increase Privacy…
- Google’s ‘Advanced Protection’ Locks Down Accounts Like Never Before
- Google now offers special security program for high-risk users: The new opt-in program requires authentication with a physical security key.
- The search for painless Internet privacy gets another boost with InvizBox 2: Successor to Tor “travel router” focuses on protecting traffic from “harvesting” by ISPs.
- In 3-1 vote, LA Police Commission approves drones for LAPD – ACLU: new policy “fails to take into account public mistrust” of police surveillance.
- Would the United States Be Responsible for Private Hacking? (Kristen Eichensehr)
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