That would be an incendiary claim, wouldn’t it? But let’s be honest. If a different industry (say the motion picture industry) were opposing the anti-trafficking bill called SESTA, then the EFF, Fight for the Future, PublicKnowledge, Techdirt, and about 30 other Google-backed organizations would surely not hesitate to righteously declare from their laptops that “Hollywood Loves Child Sex Slaves.”  There ...

Suppose you invent something.  A box that makes bitter vegetables taste like candy so kids will eat them. You call it KandyKale.  Then, along comes an imposter, who steals your tech and infringes your intellectual property, and then sets up a bunch of websites that hijack the customers looking for your product in order to sell them the KandeeKale knock-off, ...

As debate over renegotiating NAFTA heats up, the copyright interests will be duking it out with the internet industry over the inclusion, or not, of “safe harbor” provisions akin to Section 512 of the DMCA and Section 230 of the CDA.  In a letter dated August 31 to USTR Ambassador Robert Lighthizer, the Internet Association sang its standard refrain on ...

Well, here we go. The internet industry, with its cortege of hyperventilating helpers, is shouting censorship at the prospect of passing Senate Bill 1693, known as the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA). With its usual flair for nuance, the Electronic Frontier Foundation declares that the measure would SPELL DISASTER FOR SPEECH AND INNOVATION. Again. There is, of course, nothing ...

Last week, after antitrust scholar Barry Lynn praised the European Commission’s decision to fine Google for anti-competitive practices, his Open Markets program at the Google-backed New America Foundation was terminated.  Robert Levine offers a nuanced perspective on the relevance of Google-scale money in policy think tanks, suggesting that what isn’t said may be at least as significant as what is ...

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