Open access publishing, which allows people to read academic papers without a subscription, seems such a good idea. It means that anyone, anywhere in the world, can read the latest research without needing to pay. Academic institutions can spend less to keep their scholars up-to-date with work in their field. It also helps disseminate research, which means that academics receive more recognition for their achievements, boosting their career paths. And yet despite these manifest benefits, open access continues to struggle. As Walled Culture has noted several times, one reason is ..read more

Is the US government allowed to step in to deal with foreign influence on social media or not? According to at least some members of Congress, the answer appears to be “yes, when we dislike what they’re saying, and no when we like what they’re saying.” When the original House bill to “ban TikTok” passed, David Greene and Karen Gullo at EFF noted the odd contrast of dozens of Congressional Reps who both signed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Murthy case, saying that the US government should simply never be allowed to interfere with speech, including to counter election misinformat ..read more

Jonathan Haidt’s new book, “The Anxious Generation,” has become a NY Times bestseller, and he’s making media appearances basically everywhere you look, telling people that social media has “rewired children’s minds” and that it is uniquely harmful. We’ve talked about Haidt in the past, and especially his ability to consistently cherry-pick and misread the actual data on such things. Haidt is telling a story a lot of people want to hear. The world has some very real problems happening these days, and it’s clear, simple, and ultimately wrong to be able to blame them on social media. It’s just th ..read more

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The government had a few years to sort this out, but as usual, the final call came down to the last minute. Shortly after Section 702 expired at midnight, April 19, the Senate pushed through a two-year reauthorization — one pretty much free of any reforms. This happened despite there being a large and vocal portion of the Republican party seeking to curb the FBI’s access to these collections because some of their own had been subjected to the sort of abuse that has become synonymous with the FBI’s interaction with this particular surveillance program. The reauthorization passed to the Senate f ..read more

I’ve mentioned more than a few times how the singular hyperventilation about TikTok is kind of silly distraction from the fact that the United States is too corrupt to pass a modern privacy law, resulting in no limit of dodgy behavior, abuse, and scandal. We have no real standards thanks to corruption, and most people have no real idea of the scale of the dysfunction. Case in point: a new study out of the University of Pennsylvania (hat tip to The Register) analyzed a nationally representative sample of 100 U.S. hospitals, and found that 96 percent of them were doling out sensitive user visito ..read more

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Starz was going after tweets about a TorrentFreak article, then issuing a laughably unbelievable excuse and apology. The EU nations, as expected, rubber stamped the copyright directive, while the Parliament moved on to the terrorist content regulations and quickly pushed those through too. We learned some more about ICE’s fake university sting operation, while Motel 6 was set to pay out another $12 million for handing guest info to ICE. And Facebook and a very, very bad week on the privacy front, while the Sixth Circuit dumped a lawsuit attempting to hold Twit ..read more

The Fourth Amendment exists for a reason. It’s supposed to protect our private possessions and data from government snooping, unless they have a warrant. It doesn’t entirely prevent the government from getting access to data, they just need to show probable cause of a crime. But, of course, the government doesn’t like to make the effort. And these days, many government agencies (especially law enforcement) have decided to take the shortcut that money can buy: they’re just buying private data on the open market from data brokers and avoiding the whole issue of a warrant altogether. This could b ..read more

We’ve had plenty of posts discussing all manner of behavior from the Los Angeles Police Dept. and/or the LAPD union here at Techdirt. As you might imagine if you’re a regular reader here, the majority of those posts haven’t exactly involved fawning praise for these supposed crimefighters. In fact, if you went on a reading blitz of those posts, you might even come away thinking, “You know what? Fuck the LAPD!” Well, if you wanted to display your sentiments while you went about your day, you might go over to the Cola Corporation’s website to buy one particular shirt it had on offer there before ..read more

I think we could witness one of the most important First Amendment legal showdowns ever. The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to rule on the constitutionality of mandatory age verification for porn websites. If the high court takes up the case, it would queue up a landmark debate pertaining to the First Amendment and privacy rights of millions of people. Free Speech Coalition and the parent companies of the largest adult entertainment websites on the web filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas with the intention to block House Bill (HB) 1181. HB 1181 requires m ..read more