In my recent post about Gonzalez v. Google—the Section 230 case granted cert by the Supreme Court—I expressed the view that the word “recommendation” is too charming to describe the interaction between social media algorithms and many users’ experiences. Systems capable of reinforcing suicidal ideations in a teenager or stoking violent instincts in a potential terrorist cannot sensibly be described ...
A few months ago, I attended a local event, where photographer Doug Menuez spoke about his project “Wild Place: The People of Kingston, NY.” The description on his website begins . . . Wild Place is the English translation of Wiltwyck, the original name given to Kingston, New York, in 1661 by Peter Stuyvesant and the Dutch who were facing ...
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) was dealt a significant (possibly fatal) blow in its longstanding endeavor to have the courts abolish the entirety of DMCA Section 1201 as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The case Matthew D. Green, et al. v. United States Department of Justice was filed in July of 2016, and on December 6, the DC ...
As part of its commitment under the USMCA Trade Agreement, Canada has now extended its copyright term of protection from life-of-the-author plus fifty years to life-of -author plus seventy years, thereby harmonizing this aspect of its copyright law with the United States, the EU nations, the UK, and others. Canadian trade and IP expert Hugh Stephens writes on his blog, ...
One of my first mantras when I started this blog was I hate Twitter, but that was shorthand for the broader view that social media is a trainwreck. Of course, the existential difficulty presented by these platforms is that while they can be highly toxic, as long as the market remains, one must have a presence if one has a ...
