Новости за 13.09.2021

I've never understood why so many doctors sue over bad reviews, but it just keeps happening. Dr. Muhammad Mirza has built up something of a reputation for suing people who leave bad reviews on Yelp -- and has been successful in stifling speech:

The new hotness for law enforcement is trying to end the careers of police accountability activists. When approached by people filming them, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies have begun playing the zero-accountability hits, hoping that notoriously litigious artists like Taylor Swift and the Beatles will join forces to keep these recordings from being uploaded to social media sites.

Now that Texas has signed its unconstitutional social media content moderation bill into law, the action shifts back to Florida's similar law that was already declared unconstitutional in an easy decision by the district court. Florida has filed its opening brief in its appeal before the 11th Circuit and... it's bad. I mean, really, really bad. Embarrassingly bad. I mean, this isn't a huge surprise since their arguments in the district court were also bad. But now that they've had a judge smack them down fairly completely... Читать дальше...

A few years ago, Professor Eric Goldman wrote an important paper, explaining how Section 230 is better than the 1st Amendment. The key part of the argument is that if you treat Section 230 as a rule of civil procedure that kicks out frivolous and wasteful cases quickly, you realize how important it is.

For twenty-five years now, U.S. broadband has been painfully mediocre in nearly every metric that matters thanks to regulatory capture (read: corruption) and limited competition. With the occasional exception, the U.S. policy solution to this problem has been to kiss the ass of regional telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast, throw billions of dollars at these companies for networks that they repeatedly fail to complete, then stand around with a dumb look on our collective faces wondering why we still don't have affordable... Читать дальше...

A couple of months ago, the Government Accountability Office completed the first pass of its review of federal use of facial recognition technology. It found a lot to be concerned about, including the fact that agencies were using unproven tech (like Clearview's ethical nightmare of a product) and doing very little to ensure the tech was used responsibly.