Back in October last year, Walled Culture wrote about a proposed law in France that would see a tax imposed on AI companies, with the proceeds being paid to a collecting society. Now that the EU’s AI Act has been adopted, it is being invoked as another reason why just such a system should be set up. The French collecting society SPEDIDAM (which translates as “Society for the collection and distribution of performers rights”) has issued a press release on the idea, including the following (translation via DeepL): SPEDIDAM advocates a right to remuneration for performers for AI-g ..read more

As case law continues to be developed, it continues to look as though the best way to hold onto your Fifth Amendment rights is to secure your devices with a passcode. There’s no solid consensus at this point, and the Supreme Court has yet to set precedent, but unless law enforcement really screws up while linking an arrestee to a seized device, most courts appear to feel that producing a fingerprint to unlock a phone is pretty much the same thing as producing a fingerprint when being booked. It’s “non-testimonial” — a biometric marker that not only can be used to identify you, but used against ..read more

The failures of the NCMEC CyberTipline to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM) as well as it could are extremely frustrating. But as you look at the details, you realize there just aren’t any particularly easy fixes. While there are a few areas that could improve things at the margin, the deeper you look, the more challenging the whole setup is. There aren’t any easy answers. And that sucks, because Congress and the media often expect easy answers to complex problems. And that might not be possible. This is the second post about the Stanford Internet Observatory’s report on the NCMEC Cybe ..read more

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The system meant to stop online child exploitation is failing — and misaligned incentives are to blame. Unfortunately, today’s political solutions, like KOSA and STOP CSAM, don’t even begin to grapple with any of this. Instead, they prefer to put in place solutions that could make the incentives even worse. The Stanford Internet Observatory has spent the last few months doing a very deep dive on how the CyberTipline works (and where it struggles). It has released a big and important report detailing its findings. In writing up this post about it, I kept adding more and more, to the point that ..read more

When the Apple Vision Pro launched back in February, the press had a sustained, two-month straight orgasm over the product’s potential to transform VR and the world of spatial computing. Downplayed were little sticking points like the lack of app support; the short battery life (despite a bulky external battery pack Steve Jobs would have never approved of); the need for expensive additional prescription lenses for glasses wearers (more complex issues like astigmatism weren’t supported); or the fact that VR makes about 40 to 70 percent of the target audience for these products want to puke. Muc ..read more

There seems to be something rather specific when it comes to the current Italian government when it comes to strong-arming commerce over a protective stance on Italian cultural touchstones. This has traditionally expressed itself mostly in the food and drinks categories of commerce. Wines are particularly of note here, with several recent examples of Italy and companies within it taking a very draconian view of what trademark laws allow it to do. But so too has the government been very protective when it comes to other products, such as cheeses and the like. But I’ll admit that I wasn’t expect ..read more

This week, we’ve got another cross-post episode for you. Mike recently appeared on the Sidebar podcast from Courthouse News as part of an episode taking an in-depth look at why copyright is actually the biggest free speech restriction in the US, and the various questions, implications, and problems that arise from this. You can listen to the whole thing here on this week’s episode. Follow the Techdirt Podcast on Soundcloud, subscribe via Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or grab the RSS feed. You can also keep up with all the latest episodes right here on Techdirt ..read more

Get your dance moves on now, as TikTok may be going away. Okay, it’s not going away that quickly and quite possibly isn’t going away at all, but President Biden signed the bill this morning that requires ByteDance to divest itself from TikTok, or have the app banned from the Apple and Google app stores. The law gives ByteDance 12 months to divest, but in all likelihood sometime today or tomorrow, TikTok will file a well-prepared lawsuit with high-priced lawyers challenging the law on a variety of different grounds, including the First Amendment. As you’ve probably heard, the bill was tacked on ..read more

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