As pranksters target skeezy t-shirt sellers that mine Twitter for replies containing "I want that on a t-shirt" and then put the original Tweet on a t-shirt and shame online… Read the rest of the article: Teespring removes Techdirt's "Copying is Not Theft" tees for copyright infringement, and won't discuss the matter any further
Just in time for the holidays, the China Law Blog (previously) rounds up the three most common scams in China that target foreign firms: "Come to China and celebrate our… Read the rest of the article: The three biggest Chinese business scams that target foreign firms
The Chinese Supreme People's Court has just released a report on a "mobile court" pilot program that's been running since March to manage procedures in civil legal disputes through the… Read the rest of the article: A Wechat-based "mobile court" presided over by a chatbot has handled 3m legal procedures since March
Social Science One is an academic consortium that was created to conduct "independent scientific research into potentially consequential phenomena such as online disinformation, polarization, and echo chambers" after the Big… Read the rest of the article: Facebook promised to provide academics data to study disinformation, but their foot-dragging has endangered the whole project
We love DJ Rijo's annual Merry Mixmas albums, and for the 18th consecutive year, the legendary mashup DJ has released an album-length mashup of Christmas rarities (MP3), just in time… Read the rest of the article: DJ Riko is back with the 18th annual Merry Mixmas mashup album!
A family in DeSoto County, Mississippi, bought a Ring security camera so they could keep an eye on their three young girls in their bedroom. Four days later, they learned… Read the rest of the article: Family puts Ring camera in children's room, discovers that hacker is watching their kids 24/7, taunting them through the speaker
2019 was the "I Told You So" year for privacy advocates and voice assistants: the year in which every company that wanted you to trust them to put an always-on… Read the rest of the article: 2019 was the year of voice assistant privacy dumpster fires
Twitter is advertising for "a small independent team of up to five open source architects, engineers, and designers to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media" with the… Read the rest of the article: Twitter wants to develop an open, decentralized, federated social media standard…and then join it
Alex from Copy Me (previously) writes, "Copying is one of the most essential steps to creativity. And if we don't understand how it works, copyright can easily become detrimental to… Read the rest of the article: The true nature of creativity: pilfering and recombining the work of your forebears (who, in turn, pilfered and recombined)
Propublica's blockbuster report on the magistrate judges in South Carolina revealed a system of patronage, cronies, and gross miscarriages of justice, with judges appointed on the say-so of a single… Read the rest of the article: South Carolina's feudal magistrate system may take a modest step toward modernization
Andy Moore writes, "My friend the marvelous Ms. Truelove Waits made a song containing election advice for anyone in the UK confused about who to vote for this Thursday." (I… Read the rest of the article: A song about the Tories, for anyone confused about this Thursday's election
Chris Knight recorded a video of the bees in his backyard and wanted to accompany it with a rendition of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's 1899 composition "The Flight of the Bumblebee."
Heather sends us a notice of "a screening of Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece The Gold Rush, with live musical accompaniment at Hollywood's stunning new venue: The American Legion Theater on Highland… Read the rest of the article: To do in LA, Jan 18: a special screening of Charlie Chaplain's "The Gold Rush" with live, improvised piano accompaniment
Balazs Sarkadi from the Hungarian band Bankrupt ("a refreshingly energetic blend of 90s indie, hip hop and punk rock") writes, "President Trump mocked Greta Thunberg in a recent tweet, which… Read the rest of the article: Minor Problem: a punk anthem about Donald Trump's mockery of Greta Thunberg
Consulting giant McKinsey — notorious price-gougers and architects of ICE's gulags — took on a contract to help reduce violence at Riker's Island, and, $27.5m later, produced nothing but a… Read the rest of the article: NYC paid McKinsey $27.5m to reduce violence at Riker's, producing useless recommendations backed by junk evidence
Lao Dongyan is a professor specializing in Criminal Law at Tsinghua University; on Oct 31, she posted a long, thoughtful piece to their public Wechat account about the announcement that… Read the rest of the article: Chinese law professor's social media denunciation of facial recognition in the Beijing subway system
There's a lot of political will to regulate the Big Tech companies in both the US and the EU at the moment, which is a very welcome juncture to have… Read the rest of the article: Distinguishing between "platforms" and "aggregators" in competition law
In 2000, Mayor Pete won the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum's Profiles in Courage Essay Contest with an excellent essay praising Bernie Sanders as a unique American politician,… Read the rest of the article: Pete Buttigieg's prizewinning high-school essay praising Bernie Sanders: "the power to win back the faith of a voting public weary and wary of political opportunism"
Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "A new investigation from Gizmodo just revealed that anyone, anywhere can get geographic coordinates of Ring devices from Amazon's Neighbors App. Not only… Read the rest of the article: Amazon's Ring surveillance doorbell leaks its customers' home addresses, linked to their doorbell videos
Today is International Human Rights Day, and Storylab has arranged for a special free online screening of "The Crossing: Your Impact on Modern Day Slavery," via the interactive Hubhub platform,… Read the rest of the article: Today: Take part in an interactive online screening of "The Crossing" for Human Rights Day
