(republished by permission) The biggest story of 2017? To my mind, there is no contest — the broad emergence of an awareness that the irresponsibility masquerading as Internet freedom represented a threat to global societies and to cherished aspects of our humanity, and that a course correction was badly needed. While recognition of the fact that rewarding lack of accountability would likely ...
Just in time for Christmas, it seems Google is up to its Grinchy tricks in the House of Representatives, allegedly the big gun behind an effort to undermine the anti-child-sex-trafficking bill FOSTA, which is the House version of the Senate’s SESTA. Because these bills propose to amend the liability shield in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (1996), the ...
On Wednesday this week, the Democratic Caucus will vote to choose the new ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee in order to fill the vacancy left by the departure of Rep. Conyers. For those who don’t know, the House Judiciary Committee is where copyright law is made, specifically the IP subcommittee. The senior Member, currently holding the ranking position ...
G’Day! Since there’s so much gloomy news here in the States, I thought I’d take a moment to note that Australia did a couple of pretty cool things recently. They legalized same-sex marriage, so good on them for that. And on the 6th of this month, they introduced a safe harbors provision to their copyright law that would exclude platform ...
Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a.k.a. “the wedding cake case.” In 2012, baker and cake designer Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, CO informed David Mullins and Charlie Craig, that he would not make a new cake for their wedding due to his Christian belief that ...
