In this episode, Nick Weaver and I discuss new Internet regulations proposed in the UK. He’s mostly okay with its anti-nudge code for kids, but not with requiring proof of age to access adult material. I don’t see the problem; after all, who wouldn’t want to store their passport information with Pornhub?…
Continue Reading Episode 260: Sending our passports to Pornhub
Our News Roundup leads with the long, slow death of Section 230 immunity. Nick Weaver explains why he thinks social media’s pursuit of engagement has led to a poisonous online environment, and Matthew Heiman replays the astonishing international consensus that Silicon Valley deserves the blame – and the regulation – for all that ails the Internet. The UK is considering holding social media execs liable for “harmful” content on their platforms. Australia has already passed a law to punish social media companies for failure to remove “abhorrent violent material.” And Singapore is happily drafting behind the West, avoiding for once the criticism that its press controls are out of step with the international community. Even Mark Zuckerberg is reading the writing on the wall and asking for regulation. I note that lost in the one-minute hate directed at social media is any notion that other countries shouldn’t be able to tell Americans what they can and can’t read. I also wonder whether the consensus that platforms should be editors will add to conservative doubts about maintaining Section 230 at all – and in the process endanger the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement that would enshrine Section 230 in US treaty obligations.…
Our interview is with two men who overcame careers as lawyers and journalists to become serial entrepreneurs now trying to solve the “fake news” problem. Gordon Crovitz and Steve Brill co-founded NewsGuard to rate news sites on nine journalistic criteria. Using, of all things, real people instead of algorithms. By the end of the interview, I’ve confessed myself a reluctant convert to the effort. This is despite NewsGuard’s treatment of Instapundit, which Gordon Crovitz and I both read regularly but which has not received a green check.…
Continue Reading Episode 253: Where angels fear to tread: NewsGuard takes on fake news
Brazen Russian intrusions into the US electricity grid lead our episode. I ask Matthew Heiman and Nick Weaver whether Russia intended for us to know about their intrusions (duh, yes!) and how we should respond to the implicit threat to leave Americans freezing in the dark. Their answers and mine show creativity if not exactly sobriety.…
Continue Reading Episode 246: Russia’s Successful Search for Deterrence on the Cheap
Our interview is with Megan Stifel, whose paper for Public Knowledge offers a new way of thinking about cybersecurity measures, drawing by analogy on the relative success of sustainability initiatives in spurring environmental consciousness. She holds up pretty well under my skeptical questioning.
In this week’s news, Congress and the Executive branch continue to fight over the bleeding body of ZTE, which has already lost nearly 40% of its market value. The Commerce Department has extracted a demanding compliance and penalty package from the Chinese telecom equipment manufacturer. The Senate, meanwhile, has amended the NDAA to overturn the package and re-impose what amounts to a death penalty (see section 1727). Brian Egan and I dig into the Senate’s language and conclude that it may do a lot less than the Senators think it does, and that may be the best news ZTE is going to get from Washington this year.
Judge Leon has approved the AT&T-Time Warner merger. Gus Hurwitz puts the ruling in context. His lesson: next time, the Justice Department needs better evidence.…
Continue Reading The Cyberlaw Podcast — Interview with Megan Stifel
GDPR has finally arrived, Maury Shenk reminds us, bringing both expected and unexpected consequences. Among the expected: New Schrems lawsuits for more money from the same old defendants; and the wasting away of the cybersecurity resource that is WHOIS, as German courts ride to…
The Cyberlaw Podcast – Interview with Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O’Neill
Episode 211: Senators Markey and Blumenthal bury the lede
Our interview is with Chris Bing and Patrick Howell O’Neill of Cyberscoop. They’ve broken two cyberscoops in the last week or so. First, an in-depth look at Kaspersky’s outing of a US cyberespionage program…
