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 ...
Photo by porpeller Empirical evidence tells us that all human existence is a sand castle. At best, if no other cataclysm comes first (and one probably will), the inexorable expansion of our sun will wash away the Earth and any evidence that we were ever here. One possible exception may be the two records affixed to the Voyager spacecraft, still traveling ...
“I hate Illinois Nazis.” – Jake Blues, The Blues Brothers (1980) I think my first introduction to the complexities of living in a nation with a constitutional right like the First Amendment was in the 7th Grade. Our teacher had the class watch and discuss the film Skokie (1981), a dramatization of the circumstances surrounding the 1977 legal case National ...
When it comes to enterprise-scale piracy, it would be great if those who advocate its existence would just make simple declarations like, “I want free media and don’t care how I get it.” Sure, that would be a childish thing to say, but still less offensive than all the pretense to rationale that accompanies piracy—the absurd legal arguments, the mystical ...
