The World’s Most Popular Porn Site Is a Government Agent Now. Does It Matter?
On Monday, I published a two-part blog post about the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settlement with Aylo, parent company of Pornhub. The FTC’s complaint allege…
Publications
Promote the Progress, Legalize Learning
Learning—by brains or machines—is not a copyright-relevant act. This essay argues that treating training as presumptively infringing (rescued, sometimes, by fai…
The Evolution of Trust and Safety
This Article tells the inside story of the rise, spread, and evolution of trust and safety. We bring unique perspectives to this story. One of us (Citron) was o…
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Smart is Not Enough
Abstract Despite increasing concern from the information security community, it is far from clear that even the smartest of U.S. cities are in a position to de…
A Consumer DNA Testing Company’s Alarming New Marketing Pivot
Sometimes a marketing pivot serves a truth-telling function. A new television ad for the consumer DNA database FamilyTreeDNA asks the public to share their DNA…
President Trump and the Myth of American AI
On February 11, 2019, the President of the United States signed an Executive Order (EO) directing the federal government to promote artificial intelligence (AI)…
Europe just hit Google with a 10-figure fine. Again.
The European Commission has just fined Google nearly $1.7 billion for abusing its dominance of search ads to make life difficult for its competitors. This is th…
The Christchurch shooting suspect comes from an extreme online culture
Details are still emerging about the attack in Christchurch, New Zealand, in which at least 49 people were killed at two mosques. However, it appears that one p…
‘Deepfakes’: A New Challenge for Trial Courts
The following was excerpted from an article that will appear in a future issue of NWLawyer. The author was also recently interviewed for the “What’s Next” newsl…
US takes tentative steps toward opening up government data
At the beginning of this year, President Trump signed into law the Open, Public, Electronic and Necessary Government Data Act, requiring that nonsensitive gover…
Zuckerberg’s announcement changes everything for Facebook
In a post on Facebook’s website, Mark Zuckerberg has announced profound changes to Facebook’s approach to privacy and, by implication, its business model. Faceb…
Theranos: How a broken patent system sustained its decade-long deception
When Patent Office Director Michelle Lee gave that speech, Theranos appeared to be one of the most impressive companies in Silicon Valley. But later that year,…
How Trump speaks like a mob boss
In Michael Cohen’s testimony Wednesday, he said President Trump “doesn’t give orders. He speaks in code. And I understand that code.” James Gagliano, a former m…
Your Speech, Their Rules: Meet the People Who Guard the Internet
When Facebook started 15 years ago, it didn’t set out to adjudicate the speech rights of 2.2 billion people. Twitter never asked to decide which of the 500 mill…
Trump may be about to call Europe’s bluff on Iran. Europe isn’t bluffing.
Last Friday, the editorial board of Bloomberg Opinion condemned Europe’s new INSTEX arrangement, a so-called Special Purpose Vehicle set up to allow European co…