News

Saturday 2026-05-16

10:00 AM

09:00 AM

Why The US Can’t Adopt Ukraine’s Innovative Approach To Unmanned Warfare Systems [Techdirt]

It is widely accepted that drones have changed the conduct of modern war dramatically. The war in Ukraine, in particular, is driving the rapid evolution of drone technology. Evidence of how far things have come was provided recently by the following claim from Ukraine, reported here on The Next Web (TNW):

In April, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that his forces had, for the first time in the history of warfare, seized an enemy position using only unmanned systems. No infantry. No human soldiers entering the contested ground. Drones and ground robots identified the target, suppressed defensive fire, and captured the position without a single Ukrainian casualty. The claim has not been independently verified in detail, and Ukraine’s military has declined to provide specifics.

The TNW article goes on to give some details about the company that apparently played a major role in that unmanned assault:

a Ukrainian-British defence technology startup called UFORCE, has conducted more than 150,000 combat missions since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, achieved unicorn status with a valuation exceeding one billion dollars, and is now scaling production from a discreet London headquarters designed, the company says, to protect it from Russian sabotage. The age of unmanned warfare is no longer a conference-circuit prediction. It is a line item on a defence contractor’s balance sheet.

Politico interviewed the Ukrainian commander in charge of the Third Assault Brigade’s ground robotic systems unit, the one which carried out the attack. Mykola Zinkevych provided some interesting indications of what robotic systems were already doing today, and what Ukraine’s future plans were for unmanned warfare systems. For example, Zinkevych said:

Delivery of important cargo, evacuation of the wounded, conducting surveillance in open areas, destruction of enemy fortifications, sabotage operations behind enemy lines, laying minefields — all this is now performed by ground robotic systems

In the short term:

Infantrymen can and should be taken out of direct fire. Our goal for 2026 is to replace up to 30 percent of personnel in the most difficult areas of the front with technology

In a post on Facebook (in Ukrainian), Zinkevych gave details of the ambitious longer-term goals (via Google Translate), which will involve the wider deployment of unmanned ground vehicles (UGV):

In March alone, 9,000+ missions were completed by the military. Our goal is for 100% of front-line logistics to be performed by robotic systems.

In the first half of 2026, due to increased demand, we will contract 25,000 UGVs, which will be gradually delivered to the front. This is twice as much as in the entire year 2025.

A new paper from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, written by the former defense minister of Ukraine, Andriy Zagorodnyuk, explores what he calls “The New Revolution in Military Affairs”, which is being brought about by “rapid innovation and adaptation, introducing new types of unmanned systems, countermeasures, and operating methods at unprecedented speed.” A key element of this is “affordable precise mass” — the highly effective deployment of cheap, long-range drones on a massive scale. He calls this transformation:

a structural shift in warfare in which new technologies drive the development of novel operational concepts and doctrines, fundamentally altering how military power is generated and employed, and forcing enduring changes in military organizations. These trends include the emergence of affordable precise mass, the fragmentation of the air domain, the growing difficulty of maneuver, the centrality of networked warfare, and the elevation of rapid adaptation as a core military capability. This transformation is still in its early stages, but countries that fail to recognize and adapt to it risk preparing for a form of war that has lost its decisiveness.

One important aspect of this shift touches on an area that will be familiar to Techdirt readers. As noted in the quotation above, Zagorodnyuk underlines the importance of rapid adaptation for this new kind of warfare:

The decisive advantage lies with those who can shorten the loop between combat experience, technical adaptation, and redeployment. As a result, ultra-fast adaptation becomes a paramount requirement for survival—and directly shapes force organization.

In Ukraine, this has led to drone operators being deeply involved in the technology’s evolution:

Units maintain their own repair facilities, component stocks, and small-scale production capabilities. Some operate informal research-and-development cells. Successful adaptations spread laterally through personal networks, messaging platforms, and volunteer communities rather than through centralized bureaucratic channels.

But Zagorodnyuk points out a key reason why the important lessons emerging from the wars in Ukraine and Iran are unlikely to be learned in many Western countries, including the US:

legal, contractual, and technical restrictions often prevent units from modifying or repairing their own equipment. In the United States, for example, defense contractors frequently retain control over maintenance data, software, and diagnostics, limiting what military personnel can do independently. The debate around the “right to repair” reflects this tension. While intended to protect intellectual property and safety standards, such restrictions can slow adaptation cycles and reduce operational flexibility—precisely the opposite of what high-intensity, technology-driven warfare now demands.

In other words, today’s obsession with protecting intellectual monopolies above all else could one day prove a major obstacle to fighting — and winning — future wars.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. 

07:00 AM

Let’s Help Children, Not Trial Lawyers [Techdirt]

The recent “internet addiction” verdicts against Apple, Meta, and YouTube drew applause from those eager to see big tech take a hit. But look behind the headlines and the result is something else entirely. These cases won’t help children. They will fuel a litigation plague that raises costs, chills innovation and hits smaller companies the hardest. 

The legal theory behind these cases tries to work around Section 230 by shifting the focus from user content to product design. Plaintiffs argue that features like infinite scroll or “like” buttons create harm independent of users’ personal content. It is a creative argument. It is also a slippery slope with no clear limiting principle.  

Once product design becomes the hook for liability, any widely used product becomes a target. Newspapers, magazines and even packaged goods design headlines with catchy taglines to capture attention. Platforms do the same with feeds, to deliver value to their users. Labeling these as “addictive” design shouldn’t be seen as a viable path to sidestepping Section 230. 

This shift also has broader economic consequences. 

Trial lawyer lawsuits do not stay in the courtroom, they are priced into everything. Companies pay more for insurance, more for compliance, and more for legal defense. Those costs flow through to consumers in the form of higher prices and fewer options. At a moment when affordability dominates national conversations, this is a factor we cannot ignore. 

These cases are shaped by a litigation system that rewards scale and escalation. They are enormously expensive and often backed by third-party funders, which drives plaintiffs’ lawyers to seek the highest possible damages. In last month’s Los Angeles trial, plaintiffs asked for billions but secured just $6 million, about 0.5% of what was requested. Even that figure is diminished when measured against the cost of bringing the case. And when outcomes fall short, the incentive is to pursue more cases or larger awards to justify the investment. 

This burden is uniquely American. U.S. companies face a level of litigation exposure that most global competitors simply do not. That gap acts as an innovation tax on American firms, particularly small and early-stage companies that drive job creation and new ideas. We should be asking how to reduce that burden, not expand it. 

Roughly 80% of CTA’s members are small or early-stage companies. They do not have the budgets or legal teams to absorb years of litigation risk. For them, the threat of open-ended lawsuits is not theoretical. It shapes what they build, how they build it, and whether they can exist it at all.  

This is how an innovation economy slows without a single vote in Congress. Startups pull back, new features go unbuilt, and investment shifts away from risk. Over time, innovation slows, and momentum shifts from startups to incumbents. 

None of this means concerns about children’s online experiences should be dismissed. They should be taken seriously. But lawsuits are blunt instruments that do little to address the underlying issues. 

There are better and more effective paths. 

Platforms have already invested heavily in tools that give parents real control over how their children use technology. Supervised accounts, screen time limits, content filters, and transparency into usage patterns are improving quickly and becoming easier to use. Industry efforts like NetChoice’s Digital Safety Shield build on that progress by putting parents in charge rather than outsourcing decisions to courts. 

Congress also has a clear role. A national privacy law that protects personal data, including children’s information, would provide real safeguards while giving companies a consistent set of rules. What Congress should avoid is layering on vague obligations that invite more litigation. It’s delayed action for years. It should not delay further. 

And parents remain central. Technology has changed, but the need for engagement has not. Knowing what children are doing online, setting boundaries and staying involved matters more than any verdict. 

Social media is a powerful tool with real benefits and real risks. The right response is to manage those tradeoffs in a practical way that protects children without undermining innovation. 

Recent verdicts move us in the opposite direction. They reward litigation, raise costs and make it harder for the next generation of companies to succeed. 

We should focus on solutions that help children, not expand a system that is already very good at benefiting trial lawyers.

Michael Petricone is the Senior VP of Government Affairs at the Consumer Technology Association.

05:00 AM

Keeping the doors open [Tor Project blog]

This guest post is part of a spotlight series on the organizations defending the free internet.

A user in China once said this about our work:

"You have helped many many people to overcome the great firewall. Without your help, I would be in the totally darkness trap and being brain-washed."

We don't hear from the people who use our services very often. Most of them can't or don't feel that they can safely send a message. When one comes through, it's a reminder of what's actually at stake.

We're Unredacted, a US-based 501(c)(3) non-profit. We build and operate Internet infrastructure that helps people reach the open Internet and protect their right to privacy. We do this by operating a network of over 300 servers around the world. We're a way through when the front door is locked, and a place to communicate when the public square isn't safe. Most of the work is invisible: datacenter work, hardware, automation, open source software, bandwidth, abuse queues, monitoring alerts, and the late nights spent keeping all of it online.

What we do falls into three areas. Censorship Evasion is where Unredacted Door lives, our umbrella for the services designed to route around blocking. Secure Infrastructure is where we run things like XMPP.is and our Matrix homeserver, and other free services built with security and privacy in mind. Unredacted Education is the writing and documentation side: guides and explainers for the people who want to understand the work and replicate it. Alongside those, Unredacted Labs is where we experiment with infrastructure ideas that aren't quite production-ready. GreenWare is one of those, our effort to run real network capacity on hardware that doesn't burn a lot of power.

Unredacted Door

The name is literal. When the entrance to the open Internet gets walled off, people need another way in.

Unredacted Door brings together several of our circumvention services: FreeSocks, messaging proxies for Signal and Telegram, Tor bridges, and Snowflake proxies. In a recent 30-day window, these services carried nearly 300 TiB of traffic for tens of thousands of people routing around censorship in their countries. That's roughly the equivalent of bandwidth to stream tens of thousands of hours of 4K video. Demand isn't slowing, and we need to continue building more. Every new filter, every new law, every "for your safety" rollout sends more people looking for a route the censors haven't found yet.

The largest piece of Unredacted Door is FreeSocks: free proxies for people in places where censorship is severe. If you've never run into one, a proxy is a relay point. Your app doesn't talk directly to the blocked service. It talks to a server that carries the connection past whatever filters are sitting between you and the wider Internet. FreeSocks is built to make that relay quietly unremarkable, which is exactly the trait a standard VPN tends to lack. A VPN advertises itself. There's a known endpoint, a known handshake, an obvious shape on the wire. Censors are very good at blocking things they can recognize.

No single tool covers every situation. Tor Browser gives you strong privacy and anonymity for browsing. Snowflake helps people reach Tor when access to the network itself is blocked. FreeSocks proxies push specific traffic through a route that's harder to spot. People living under censorship usually need a few of these on hand, because no single door stays open forever.

That's why we're putting serious work into the next version of FreeSocks (v2). It uses Xray - a powerful and versatile traffic-routing engine, which can make proxy traffic look more like ordinary web traffic bundled with our open source control plane that allows us to rotate endpoints automatically when censors find and block a server. The less a user has to fiddle with their setup while they're already under pressure, the better.

GreenWare: sustainable infrastructure, literally

Tor relays, bridges, proxies, and more. They run on hardware in datacenters, and that hardware has a real footprint: financial, operational, and environmental. If we want privacy infrastructure to last, we have to ask what's actually sustainable to operate.

GreenWare is our attempt to shrink that footprint without shrinking what we can carry on it. The premise is straightforward: most Tor relay traffic doesn't need a server that draws power like a space heater. A relay needs a steady network, predictable CPU, and enough memory to hold its state. That's a workload a single-board computer can handle, if the chassis around it is built to take it seriously.

We started with Raspberry Pi 5 boards powered over PoE, fed entirely through their network cables. The idea worked. A typical server in a datacenter draws as much power as a small space heater. A Pi draws less than a lightbulb. But the first generation had ceilings. Density wasn't where we wanted it, and a few of the supporting components weren't built for the hours we were putting on them.

So we run two deployments in parallel now. The first is a 1U chassis with 20 ComputeBlade modules stacked into it. We deployed all 20 in our datacenter and moved a chunk of our Tor exit relays onto them. That chassis pulls a little over 100W under load, roughly what an old incandescent bulb burns. The second is a custom Raspberry Pi chassis we designed after the ComputeBlade work taught us what we actually wanted in the field. Both are live, and as of writing all 123 of our Tor exit relays run on this combined infrastructure, drawing roughly 400W in total. As time goes on, we'll have more to say about the chassis design and the project as it matures.

The Tor network runs on people and organizations willing to operate infrastructure for it. Exits are the hardest part of that job. They need bandwidth, maintenance, abuse handling, legal nerve, and money. If we can drop the cost and the power required to run real exit capacity, more people can take on a piece of the work and diversify and grow the network.

Our longer-term ambition is to keep pushing on efficient hardware, carbon tracking, and eventually renewable-powered micro points of presence. We'd be more than glad to partner with organizations and companies that want to see this grow.

The open Internet is kept open by many people and organizations investing energy, time, and effort: The researchers measuring censorship, the relay operators providing bandwidth, and the communities that refuse to leave one another behind. At Unredacted, our part is building and maintaining the routes people may need when the obvious ones disappear.

Appeals Court Upholds Block Of ICE’s BS ‘Seven Day Notice’ Detention Center Inspection Policy [Techdirt]

Something that never was a problem for years suddenly became a thing after Trump’s return to office. As his administration ramped up its cruelty towards non-white people, Democratic leaders suddenly became much more interested in seeing how ICE was handling this influx of detainees.

Not that they were wrong to do so. The history of ICE detention is extremely ugly, with detainees regularly treated like the subhumans ICE (and their subcontractors) seem to believe these human beings are. But with ICE and the DHS making all the wrong kinds of headlines as the administration carried out its racial cleansing programs, DHS started to pretend congressional members were no longer allowed to perform inspections of ICE detention facilities.

In some cases, this refusal to comply with the law resulted in the arrest of politicians trying to engage in their legally ordained oversight duties. When that intimidation failed to stem the flow of congressional reps to ICE facilities, DHS started issuing its own limitations on inspections — exactly zero of which were supported by current law.

Kristi Noem issued “guidance” last year pretending that Trump’s budget bill freed ICE from having to open their facilities to congressional inspection. Noem’s theory was that while normally DHS couldn’t make congressional reps give ICE 72 hours to seven days advance notice of inspections, the “Big Beautiful Bill” concocted by the GOP created pathways for pretending existing law didn’t exist.

That guidance specifically noted the DC Appeals Court had already ruled against the DHS by stating its current demands for advance notice were “inconsistent” with existing law. No doubt we’ll see similar misleading “guidance” issued by the DHS again in the near future as the DC Appeals Court has (again) rejected the government’s attempts to violate the law while litigation over these new policies continues.

A federal appeals court on Friday required the Trump administration to continue allowing lawmakers to inspect immigration detention facilities without advance notice, ruling unanimously that the impromptu visits posed minimal problems for the government.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit preserved, for now, the ability of Democrats in Congress to make unannounced visits to detention centers and check on the conditions inside.

The one-page order [PDF] (and its 10-page explanation by Judge Rao) is inexplicably absent from the New York Times reporting. But it’s embedded below (and linked above).

Judge Rao says the government does have some interest in controlling access to its facilities for several, mostly credible reasons. But its belief that these concerns override existing law allowing congressional inspections is misplaced.

The government is entitled to deference on how it maintains the security of detention facilities, but the current record does not substantiate the government’s claim that oversight visits without advance notice impose harms beyond administrative inconvenience. While a close call, particularly because of the strong likelihood of success on the merits, I concur in denying a stay.

As Noem pointed out in her memo, the Big Beautiful Act created a flow of funding that was (theoretically) outside of the purview of existing appropriations laws governing ICE facility inspection. This order points out that this is no longer the case as that particular rider attached to the Act lapsed along with the rest of the DHS’s funding during the shutdown. The dead rider has not been re-attached, so the DHS’s insistence this means this particular funding can be used to thwart congressional oversight isn’t exactly a foregone conclusion.

That’s not to say this decision will ultimately lead to the DHS abandoning its demands for advance notice before inspections. While the government has failed to show it will suffer irreparable harm if congressional reps are allowed on-demand access to detention facilities, the plaintiffs here are legislators — people who aren’t generally allowed to sue the same government that employs them to obtain relief.

Judge Rao says the administration is likely to emerge victorious because the Democratic congressional reps don’t have standing. But that doesn’t mean the government has presented solid arguments about its own interests in denying access to detention facilities.

The government has credibly alleged inconvenience and disruption caused by congressional visits. But the government has not shown that these harms arise from congressional visits undertaken without seven days’ advance notice, as opposed to congressional visits generally. The government cites a single security incident involving the unauthorized presence of the Mayor of Newark in the secured area of an ICE facility and the alleged obstruction of the Mayor’s arrest by Representative McIver. But the government does not explain how this incident resulted from a lack of prior notice of the Representative’s oversight visit.

To be sure, the mayor of Newark is not allowed to access ICE facilities without advance notice or explicit permission. But that doesn’t extend to everyone else ICE wishes to keep out of its facilities — a list that seems to include every congressional rep that actually might want to perform an inspection.

In addition, this never used to be a problem. The Appeals Court isn’t convinced that it’s suddenly a problem now, just because this version of the DHS wants to pretend it is.

By contrast, the Members have provided numerous declarations attesting to congressional visits made with less than seven days’ notice that were conducted without incident since 2019. The government does not meaningfully dispute these accounts and responds only that the pending litigation incentivizes the Members to conduct their visits in a nondisruptive manner. Even if that is true, this pending appeal will continue to provide the same incentives for good behavior.

For now, congressional reps don’t need to give ICE a heads up before engaging in an inspection. That may change (at least temporarily) if the administration can show these congressional reps don’t have standing to pursue this litigation. But we can hope that any final dispensation of this case only grants the administration its argument about standing. The law is still the law, no matter how the DHS might feel about the law. When this all wraps up, the status should be reset to quo: Congressional reps have a legal right to inspect facilities without advance notice. Everything else is just mud in the water.

Daily Deal: Babbel Language Learning (All Languages) [Techdirt]

Become a language expert with a Babbel Language Learning subscription. With the app, you can use Babbel on desktop and mobile, and your progress is synchronized across devices. Want to practice where you won’t have Wi-Fi? Download lessons before you head out, and you’ll be good to go. However you choose to access your 10K+ hours of online language education, you’ll be able to choose from 14 languages. And you can tackle one or all in 10-to-15-minute bite-sized lessons, so there’s no need to clear hours of your weekend to gain real-life conversation skills. Babbel was developed by over 100 expert linguists to help users speak and understand languages quickly. With Babbel, it’s easy to find the right level for you — beginner, intermediate, or advanced — so that you can make progress while avoiding tedious drills. Within as little as a month, you could be holding down conversations with native speakers about transportation, dining, shopping, directions, and more, making any trip you take so much easier. It’s on sale for $159 when you use the code LEARN at checkout.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

03:00 AM

Trump’s $10 Billion IRS Lawsuit May Become a $1.7 Billion Slush Fund for MAGA’s Self-Proclaimed Victims [Techdirt]

The saga of Trump suing his own IRS for $10 billion just got weirder. What started as a brazenly corrupt attempt to personally pocket $10 billion in taxpayer money has now morphed into something arguably worse: a $1.7 billion patronage slush fund — unappropriated by Congress — that Trump could dole out to loyal MAGA allies who claim they were “victimized” by the Biden administration.

As you’ll recall, Trump sued his own IRS over something that a contractor (who has already been convicted and is currently serving in prison) did: leaking some tax returns Trump had promised to release, but never did. He asked for $10 billion, in a situation where he, himself, would decide if he got paid or not. When his own DOJ told the court that it was negotiating a settlement, the judge pointed out that she was concerned that it looked an awful lot like a single party negotiating with itself over how much of the Treasury it should receive.

The judge — Kathleen Williams — asked for further briefing from “both” parties on this, and the deadline is coming up quickly, which is why various purported “settlements” are leaking to the press. A few days ago it was going to be that Trump and all of his family and all of his related businesses would magically have all IRS audits dropped, which would be an astoundingly brazen level of corruption.

But now ABC is reporting about another potential “settlement” (again, “settlement” is the wrong word — it’s Trump’s legal team negotiating with Trump’s DOJ, which is run by his former legal team. It’s one team negotiating with itself) which is just as egregious and corrupt: Trump would apparently agree to drop his case against the IRS in exchange for… a $1.7 billion slush fund of taxpayer money that he could dole out to his friends who whine to the government that they were “targeted” for retribution by a “weaponized” Biden administration.

President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.

The commission overseeing the compensation fund would have the total authority to hand out approximately $1.7 billion in taxpayer funds to settle claims brought by anyone who alleges they were harmed by the Biden administration’s “weaponization” of the legal system, including the nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the Jan. 6 Capitol attack as well as potentially entities associated with President Trump himself.

So, yeah, a $1.7 billion slush fund for Trump supporters who (in some cases) literally engaged in insurrection to overturn the results of a free and fair election, or for various hangers-on who play the victim every chance they get and pretend the Biden administration “weaponized” the government against them.

It’s not worth getting into the possibility of using this slush fund to pay off the ~1,600 Trump supporters who were duly convicted in a court of law for various crimes, all of whom were later pardoned by Trump (even as dozens of them have been re-arrested for other crimes, which should put to rest any remaining notion that Trump is the “law and order” president — but of course it won’t).

But we can talk about the various claims of “weaponization” because we covered many of them. Remember, Jim Jordan got himself appointed as the anti-weaponization czar in Congress, and used that to actually weaponize the government to investigate and attack individuals and organizations who were not the government, but who Jordan felt unfairly pointed out disinformation and lies from those MAGA supported.

The supposed investigations into the “weaponization” of the government to suppress speech served only to suppress the First Amendment protected speech of academic researchers and organizations. And now all those who falsely insisted that the Biden administration “censored” them, even as all the evidence showed that social media companies removed content because they found that the content violated their own rules, will get to line up at the trough to get free money from American taxpayers.

This is Donald Trump handing out American taxpayer money that has never been appropriated by Congress for this purpose — shoveling it to anyone who claims victimhood under his banner, whether convicted insurrectionists, Trump allies who want their legal bills paid, or propagandists who got called out for spreading disinformation. We’re already seeing this play out. This week, Trump’s DOJ “settled” with the pandemic’s wrongest man, Alex Berenson, who got suspended from Twitter not because of any government action, but because Twitter felt that he violated their rules against spreading health misinformation.

Berenson has been suing over this for years (and mostly losing), but this week Trump agreed to pay him $150,000 and “admit” that the Biden administration tried to censor him. While some are trying to present this as some sort of big victory, getting Donald Trump to blame Joe Biden for something that didn’t happen — while shoveling taxpayer money to a man who publicly supports Trump — is not exactly a landmark legal victory. It’s almost expected in the Trump era.

The Berenson payout is a preview. Once the $1.7 billion fund is running, expect a line out the door of Trump’s groveling fans making false claims about Biden “weaponizing” the government — all of it paid for by taxpayers, none of it appropriated by Congress.

Universal Wins Indian Court Order Against IMDb-Themed Pirate Streaming Sites [TorrentFreak]

imdb logoFor more than two decades, pirates have used the Internet Movie Database, better known as IMDb, in ways its operators never intended.

Back in 2005, for example, there was already a popular Greasemonkey browser script called “IMDb torrent linker,” which added links to torrents directly on the site.

Similar scripts still exist today and, with streaming sites being far more popular now, the IMDb connections have evolved as well. Instead of linking to torrents, IMDb URLs can now be tweaked to stream pirated content directly in the browser.

Add ‘Play’ to the URL

One of the sites that openly uses the IMDb connection is Playimdb. This site can be used by simply adding the IMDb link to a search box, which then redirects users to a pirate stream.

PlayIMDb

playimb

In addition, people can also use the official IMDb site as their main navigation tool. Then, they can simply “add” play to the URL, which will then trigger the redirect.

Add Play

add play to imdb

“Just modify the URL and start watching instantly,” PlayIMDb’s operator explains.

And indeed, at the time of writing, Playimdb points visitors to pirated movies that are streamed through streamimdb.ru, which loads the video from vidapi.ru.

Aside from the usual malware concerns that always come with untrusted sites, movie studios and other rightsholders are not happy with this ‘playful’ use of IMDb, which infringes the copyrights of their movies.

Indian Block, Suspend, and Expose Order

This prompted Universal City Studios to take action against the site and similar pirate portals. At the High Court of Delhi, the movie studio requested an injunction that targets PlayIMDb, StreamIMDb, and a cluster of associated embed and streaming domains from several angles.

Universal complained that, through these sites, pirated copies of its films, including “Fast X,” “F9: The Fast Saga,” and “The Secret Life of Pets 2” were widely shared.

Justice Tushar Rao Gedela granted the interim injunction against the sites’ operators last week. In addition to copyright infringement, the order notes that these sites exploit the goodwill of IMDb.

“The material on record demonstrates that the defendants have devised a mechanism whereby users are redirected from legitimate IMDb title pages to unauthorized streaming interfaces merely by altering the domain structure while retaining the same IMDb Title ID.”

“Such conduct, coupled with the use of domain names incorporating the expression “IMDb”, prima facie reflects dishonest adoption intended to exploit the goodwill and recognition associated with IMDb and to induce users into accessing infringing streams under the guise of legitimacy,” the order adds.

The order targets 17 unique domain names, and it directs Indian ISPs to block access to all of them within 72 hours. This also applies to several popular embed services, including VIDSRC and MoviesAPI.

Def No. Domains Registrar
1 vidsrc.icu NameSilo
2 vidsrc.vip, godriveplayer.com, and moviesapi.club Namecheap
3 vidsrc.me and streamimdb.me Immaterialism
4 playimdb.com, www.playimdb.com, vidsrc.stream, vidsrc.xyz and vidsrc.net Tucows Domains
5 vidsrc.to and moviesapi.to Tonic Registry
6 streamimdb.ru, vidsrcme.ru, vsembed.ru, vidrock.ru, and vidapi.ru R01-RU

As we have seen before with these types of broad court orders, the injunction also expanded to domain name registrars, including American companies such as NameSilo, Namecheap, and Tucows, which are instructed to suspend the associated domains.

At the time of writing, Namecheap has indeed suspended the listed domain names by placing them on Clienthold. The other domain names remain active.

Clienthold

clienthold

The Indian court order also requires all the named registrars and registries to share the available personal details of the associated account holders, including credit card information and mobile numbers, within 72 hours.

Dynamic Injunction Extends to Mirrors

As with previous blocking orders from the Delhi High Court, the injunction is dynamic. If Universal identifies additional domains while the lawsuit is ongoing, it can request additional blocks through the Department of Telecommunications without going back to court.

Among others, it covers any “mirror/redirect/alphanumeric website which appears to be associated with any of the rogue defendants, either based on its name, branding, the identity of its operator, or source of the content..,” the order explains.

From the Court Order

order

Through this dynamic extension process, the Indian Government quietly approves hundreds, if not thousands, of new domain blockades every month.

For now, the effect of the IMDb-themed order is limited. While local ISPs in India are blocking the site, most foreign domain registrars have not taken action, likely because they fall outside the jurisdiction of the Delhi High Court. This means that these domains remain operational.

—

A copy of the Delhi High Court’s order in Universal City Studios Productions LLLP v. Playimdb.com & Ors., CS(COMM) 492/2026, is available here (pdf). Thanks to Bar and Bench for sharing the order.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

12:00 AM

Personally [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Professionals take their work seriously.

Hobbyists can take it personally.

We arrive and make a promise. We do it on behalf of the client, and that promise has little to do with what we might want to do–it’s what they need us to do.

And so we make our promises carefully, and keep them with effort. That’s serious.

But it’s not personal.

      

Pluralistic: No one wants a permanent gerontocracy (15 May 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->->-> Top Sources: None -->

Today's links


The Supreme Court building, with the justices seated before it. The justices float, disembodied, their skins tinted green, their skulls shining through their faces. The court is titled at a spooky angle. Behind it loom dark clouds and a glowing moon.

No one wants a permanent gerontocracy (permalink)

Perhaps the most demoralizing part of Trumpismo is the fear that the people around you are so cruel and senseless that they approve of the violence, the racism, the pig-ignorant lies and rampant theft:

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/07/08/who-goes-maga/

One of the things keeping me going in these dark days is the pollster G Elliot Morris, whose "Strength in Numbers" newsletter is a reliable, robust and nuanced source of information about the way other people – including Trump's base – feel about him from moment to moment. Reading items like "A reminder: Very few people support Donald Trump's presidency" make it easier to get through the day:

https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/a-reminder-very-few-people-support

It's a very good piece, breaking down the collapse in support for Trumpismo and confidence in Trump's mental health, even among the people who have historically stood by him, even though – incredibly! – about a third of Americans still support him and believe in his fitness to rule.

But the most interesting part of this post is the eye-popping poll result on a question that is only incidentally about Trump: the extremely broad, bipartisan support for both age limits and term limits for the House, the Senate, the Presidency and the Supreme Court.

How broad and bipartisan are these results?

  • 80% of Americans want age limits in the House and Senate (D78%, R83%; I79%);

  • Most Americans want age limits for the presidency (R73%, I61%) (the most popular age limit is 79);

  • Most Americans (65%) want an 18-year term limit for Supreme Court justices;

  • Most Americans (79%) want age limits for Supreme Court justices.

As Morris writes, this represents "a level of cross-partisan agreement that’s almost unheard of on a high-salience issue."

There are different ways to parse this out. The past decade has shown that, in the absence of a hard rule to the contrary, incumbents will stay in office long after it's obvious they should step down. That was true of Biden, who continued to campaign for a presidential term long after it was obvious that he was no longer physically and mentally capable of doing the job.

It was true of Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, whose commitment to the symbolic value of having her successor appointed by the first woman president allowed Trump to appoint the monstrous Amy Coney Barrett to a lifetime on the Supreme Court, which could well last another 30 years. It was true of Antonin Scalia, who would have handed a Supreme Court pick to the Obama administration if it wasn't for Mitch McConnell's willingness to steal a seat for Neal Gorsuch.

It's true of Kay Granger, a sitting congresswoman whose staff hid the fact that her dementia had progressed to the point that she had to be moved to an assisted living facility – while still holding office:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/03/14/kay-granger-dementia-dc-media-00210317

It was true of Gerry Connolly, who insisted that he – not AOC – should be the head of the Oversight Committee, despite the fact that he was dying of cancer:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/rep-gerry-connolly-announces-return-of-cancer-steps-down-as-top-oversight-democrat

It was true of Dianne Feinstein, who continued to serve in the Senate despite having advanced dementia:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/sen-dianne-feinsteins-saga-is-a-very-public-example-of-a-national-crisis/

These politicians are wed to a system of seniority and patronage that insists that everyone who "pays their dues" should get a turn. It's a system that relies on politicians banking favors from their peers and then paying them back by anointing successors, thus requiring politicians to serve until they are ready to choose that successor.

We have created a system in which no one dares to hand over power, because to do so is to unilaterally disarm, while the other side keeps their permanent gerontocrats in positions of authority. Not only does this system starve the pipeline of young politicians who can progress to fill those new roles, it also exposes each party to significant risk. If your majority rests on a handful of seats and your caucus includes a dozen people who are actuarially certain to die soon, then the whole system could be upended by a couple of highly likely blood-clots:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/01/designated-survivors/

It's not that every politician over the age of 70 (or 80, or 85) is incapable of doing the job: it's that a system that runs on a mix of incumbency advantage, seniority, patronage and hubris is a bad system and the only fix for it is to put hard limits on terms – both based on how many years you hold office, and how many years you walk the earth.

The system where everyone who pays their dues gets a turn was never going to work, and that should have been especially obvious to the system's longest-tenured participants, who've had decades to notice how long-lived their colleagues are, and to compare those lifespans to the number of committee chairs, senate seats and other treasures there are to be had in the halls of power.

There are lots of good ideas – like abolishing the Electoral College or limiting political spending – that are popular with a majority of Americans, but these ideas are often very unpopular with conservatives:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

But this is a realm in which – as Morris says – there is "almost unheard-of…cross-partisan agreement." It's the one idea that all Americans – including older Americans (at least the ones who aren't in the House, Senate or Oval Office; or on the Supreme Court) agree on: rule by permanent gerontocracy is bad, and should end.

In not so many months, both parties are going to have to pick their next presidential candidates (in the case of Republicans, it may be sooner, depending on Trump's cheeseburger intake). Those primary contests are going to implicitly raise the issue of whether we should be ruled according to the principle of "everyone who pays their dues gets a turn." But a shrewd politician could win a lot of favor among voters (and fury among their colleagues) by campaigning on age- and term-limits for high office.

(Image: Pacamah, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

Hey look at this (permalink)


A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

Object permanence (permalink)

#25yrsago The life of a celeb PA https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/may/14/highereducation.comment

#20yrsago DOJ moves in dark of night to quash EFF wiretapping lawsuit https://web.archive.org/web/20060524092447/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004659.php

#20yrsago WolfenGitmo: Guantanamo Bay mod for Castle Wolfenstein https://web.archive.org/web/20060520203517/https://a.parsons.edu/~evan/school/?q=node/29

#20yrsago Where does booing come from? https://web.archive.org/web/20181215223044/https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2006/05/where-do-hecklers-come-from.html

#15yrsago Steven Levy on Facebook’s ironic privacy charge against Google https://web.archive.org/web/20110514121727/https://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/05/facebook-privacy-problems/

#15yrsago Michael Moore’s “Some Final Thoughts on the Death of Osama bin Laden” https://web.archive.org/web/20110513181408/https://www.michaelmoore.com/words/mike-friends-blog/some-final-thoughts-on-death-of-osama-bin-laden

#15yrsago DHS’s “Secure Communities” program will deport battered woman for calling 9-1-1 on her abuser https://web.archive.org/web/20110514142235/https://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2011/05/isaura_garcia_battered_secure.php

#15yrsago TSA: we’ll search your baby and it will make the country safer https://www.loweringthebar.net/2011/05/tsa-says-baby-frisking-justified.html

#10yrsago Telcoms companies try to rescue TV by imposing Internet usage caps on cord-cutters https://www.techdirt.com/2016/05/13/isps-are-now-forcing-cord-cutters-to-subscribe-to-tv-if-they-want-to-avoid-usage-caps/

#10yrsago The weird, humiliating nicknames George W Bush gave to everyone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nicknames_used_by_George_W._Bush

#10yrsago “Tendril perversion”: when one loop of a coil goes the other way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendril_perversion

#10yrsago Clicking “Buy now” doesn’t “buy” anything, but people think it does https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2778072

#5yrsago Uber (Ch)eats https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/13/uber-cheats/#50-companies

#5yrsago The Democratic establishment https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/13/uber-cheats/#party-bosses

#1yrago Who Broke the Internet? Part II https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/13/ctrl-ctrl-ctrl/#free-dmitry

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

Recent appearances (permalink)


A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

Latest books (permalink)


A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

Upcoming books (permalink)

  • "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

  • "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

  • "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

  • "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

  • "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

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Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Friday 2026-05-15

11:00 PM

Bari Weiss Let Benjamin Netanyahu Pick His Own Softball Interviewer [Techdirt]

What’s left of CBS News recently landed an interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It’s a bit of a doozy (transcript, video). There’s a part where Netanyahu tries to blame foreign social media bot farms for the rise in people disgusted by his government’s carpet bombing of children. There’s a part where he pretends to not actually want billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars.

And there’s this part where he likens himself to Churchill and makes some strange comments about Hitler:

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: They implant themselves among civilians, you know, so that they have civilian casualties and they can put it on the tube or in your cell phone. So, yes, I mean, I don’t know how to fight it. I mean, Churchill, without cell phones and without digital campaigns and farm bots was labeled a warmonger in the 1930s because he said, “You have to stand up to Hitler.”

MAJOR GARRETT: Hitler, right.

PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: And they accused him of being a warmonger. And Hitler didn’t even say “death to America, death to Britain,” you know. I– I think he might have planned it, but he didn’t say it. And still they accused him of that.

The interviewer, Major Garrett, spends absolutely no serious time pushing back against the claims Netanyahu makes. Or meaningfully addressing indisputable evidence that the Israeli government has engaged in widespread genocidal war crimes on the U.S. taxpayer dime. When Netanyahu tries to dismiss the massive civilian casualties in Gaza, Iran, and Lebanon as minor and innocent mistakes, Garrett has no response.

Garrett doesn’t normally work for 60 Minutes. He was brought on board from elsewhere within CBS because Netanyahu specifically asked for him. According to Oliver Darcy’s excellent media newsletter Status, 60 Minutes correspondent Leslie Stahl was trying to land the interview with Netanyahu when Weiss intervened and shuffled the interview over to Garrett, causing (more) internal anger:

“But behind the scenes, Status has learned that famed “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl had also been gunning for the interview but was upstaged by CBS News boss Bari Weiss, who booked Netanyahu herself and handed the interview to Garrett, who is notably not a “60 Minutes” correspondent. The move sparked hostility and amplified the already strained relationship between Weissand the reporting team at the iconic newsmagazine.”

Not so iconic anymore.

The New York Post (for what it’s worth) also indicates that Netanyahu got to select his interviewer as a condition of CBS landing the interview. Weiss, a self-described “Zionist fanatic,” was hired by right wing billionaire Larry Ellison specifically for this sort of softball treatment of global autocrats, and had already been under fire for censoring stories that displeased the Trump administration.

There’s been a mass exodus at CBS for months as actual journalists bristle at the obvious shift toward soggy corporatist agitprop under Weiss. While Weiss was hired on to modernize CBS and make autocratic billionaire ass kissing exciting, viral, and good for ratings; the whole experiment has been a monumental failure so far, with CBS News recently seeing its lowest ratings in a quarter century.

Weiss rose to prominence at her weird little troll blog Free Press, which obviously hasn’t translated well to running a television network. Case in point: Weiss’ preferred new CBS News anchor, Tony Dokoupil, is having to broadcast the network’s coverage on Trump’s China visit from Taiwan because Weiss and friends failed to secure his visa on time for the trip. This mirrors other similar competency issues like Weiss making last-minute unapproved changes to teleprompter text that screws up broadcasts.

Beyond the clownish nature of it all, it remains an open question who this sort of stuff is actually for (beyond the extremely rich people endlessly trying to control information flow). Despite having a massive fortune, Ellison seems incapable of creating propaganda people actually want to watch, and even their target audience — center-right bigots with impaired critical thinking faculties — aren’t tuning in because they have a universe of other terrible (but far more entertaining) choices.

Like Jeff Bezos’ sad and desperate effort to repurpose the Washington Post into what now feels like a satirical billionaire-coddling rag, all the money in the world can’t seem to produce class warfare agitprop actual human beings want to consume. Almost as if the behaviors of the global authoritarian extraction class are starting to reach a point where they’re simply too heinous and ham-handed to spin.

08:00 PM

How Retail Book Distribution Actually Works [The Business of Printing Books]

How Retail Book Distribution Actually Works

Do you dream of seeing your book on a shelf in your favorite indie bookstore? Can you picture it displayed next to other bestsellers on Bookshop.org? Have you already started working on your pitch for why your local library should add your book to their catalog? 

Whether you’re independently published or traditionally published, there are ways to make these dreams a reality. But many authors focus on convincing bookstores and libraries to carry their book, while overlooking the most essential part of the process.

Before you pitch your book to bookstores, retailers, and libraries, you have to make sure that your book is available to those outlets. To do that, you need to understand how book distribution works, and how to ensure your book is eligible for retail distribution. 

Don’t feel like reading today? Listen to Matt & Lauren break down book distribution in Episode #114 of Publish & Prosper!

Book Distribution 101

If you’re confused about how distribution works, or confused about why your book doesn’t seem to be eligible or available for distribution, you’re not alone: distribution is confusing. Distribution is especially confusing if you’re new to the publishing industry, unfamiliar with the terminology, and/or trying to understand the different stages and players involved. 

It definitely doesn’t help that some of the language used to describe distribution is interchangeable and overlapping with other industry terms. We’re only a few paragraphs deep into this blog post, and I’ve already used two different phrases, book distribution and retail distribution, to describe the same process.

So before we break down the steps of the distribution cycle, there are a few key phrases and players to know:

Retail Distribution vs. Global Distribution

In the Lulu ecosystem, retail distribution is the primary phrase used when referring to the distribution of books to third-party retailers and libraries. In the past, we’ve also used the phrase global distribution, which you may still see in some older educational resources and knowledge base articles.   

Publisher vs. Distributor vs. Wholesaler vs. Retailer

Throughout the five stages (described below) of distribution, books will pass through several different outlets, including:

  • Publisher → The original source responsible for publishing the book, whether that’s a traditional publisher like Penguin Random House, a small or indie press like Limelight Publishing, or a publishing platform like Lulu.
  • Distributor → Works on behalf of publishers as the middleman between the publisher and the retailer. Distributors can manage warehousing, inventory, and fulfillment for publishers, but don’t usually own the inventory themselves. 
  • Wholesaler → The retailer for retailers. Wholesalers buy bulk inventory of books from publishers and retailers and resell them. 
  • Retailer → Online and brick-and-mortar purveyors of books, including Amazon, Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Waterstones, and your favorite local indie bookstore. 

Distributors and wholesalers do serve different purposes, but in reality, they often overlap. Many of the major worldwide book distributors like Ingram, Gardners, and formerly Baker & Taylor, are also wholesalers… And yes, that does add to the confusion. For the purpose of this blog post, we’ll stick to just saying distributor. 

Ingram vs. Ingram

Ingram Content Group is the largest book distributor and wholesaler in the United States, and one of the largest worldwide distributors. Any book, whether traditionally or self-published, being distributed through the US is likely being handled by Ingram Content Group, known colloquially through the industry as Ingram. 

However, indie authors in particular might confuse Ingram with IngramSpark, the self-publishing company. In the context of retail distribution specifically, IngramSpark is the publisher, Ingram is the distributor. 


Breaking Down the Distribution Cycle Into 5 Steps

Many different resources online cover the book distribution cycle, breaking it down into a nuanced step-by-step process that often reaches double digits. If you’re really curious about the minutiae of the process, go forth and dig deep into that content! 

But for most indie authors just trying to understand how it all works—and where you fit into the cycle—we can boil it down to a high-level 5 steps. You’re welcome.

Step 1: Publisher Creates the Book Metadata

In the publishing industry, a book officially exists once it has been assigned an ISBN. In traditional publishing houses, that record is usually created well before the publication date. For self-published titles, that record is usually created at the time of publication. 

Once a book has its ISBN, and the subsequent metadata attached to that ISBN, it is officially discoverable. A book that does not have an ISBN is virtually invisible to the entire distribution system, and will be ineligible for retail distribution.

Step 2: Book is Listed with Distributors

Now that the metadata exists, the book can be listed with a distributor, making it discoverable to retailers. However, just because a book is assigned an ISBN and metadata does not mean it will automatically be added to distributor catalogs. The publisher needs to submit the book and metadata to the distributor. 

It’s important to complete Step 1 and Step 2, and to confirm they’ve been done correctly and successfully, before making any efforts towards Step 3.

Step 3: Retailer is Made Aware of the Book

After a book has been successfully listed with a distributor, it is discoverable by retailers, but that discovery comes in many different ways. 

For online retailers, this is automatic; they will systematically scrape their distributors’ catalogs for new titles and add the metadata to their online stores. While this step is automatic, it is not instantaneous; many indie authors have found themselves stagnating here while waiting for approval.

For brick-and-mortar retailers (and libraries), it’s a much more manual discovery process. This is where the pitch and promo efforts come into play. Traditional publishers often rely on sales reps to promote new and upcoming titles to bookstores; indie authors are responsible for pitching their own books directly. Booksellers will also pay attention to buzz on social media, write-ups in trade publications, unexpected bestsellers, and frequently requested titles. 

Step 4: Retailer Orders the Book From the Distributor [Brick-and-Mortar Only]

Whether they’re interested in ordering inventory for the store or fulfilling a customer order, the retailer will search their distributor’s database for the title of interest and check for three things: availability, returnability, and wholesale discount.

If the book meets all three requirements per the retailer’s standards, they can now place an order through the distributor. Requirements may vary from retailer to retailer, but they are often that the book must be: available (obviously), returnable, and offered at a 40% (may be 30-50%) wholesale discount. 

Step 5: Order is Fulfilled

The order is placed with the distributor and/or online retailer, who in turn passes it on to the necessary fulfillment channel. 

Recently released and bestselling traditionally published books are often warehoused by distributors, in which case they (not the publisher) will handle order fulfillment. Print-on-demand titles will be fulfilled by the publisher and shipped directly to the bookstore or customer. 

What Indie Authors Need to Know

On the surface, the distribution cycle is the same for traditionally published and independently published books, but how each step is managed—and who is responsible for it—can vary. 

In general, retail distribution is baked into the overall publishing process for every single title released by a traditional publisher; all books are assigned ISBNs and appropriate metadata, meet standard distribution requirements, and are listed with distributors. The first two steps are always handled in-house. Step 3 may be partially the author’s responsibility, but with support from the publisher’s sales reps. 

Indie authors, on the other hand, are responsible for managing their own book distribution. Here’s a checklist of what you’ll need to do if you’re publishing your book through Lulu and are interested in retail distribution: 

Lulu Retail Distribution Checklist 

  1. Before you publish, make sure that your book is eligible for retail distribution
    Use our pricing calculator to make sure your binding type, trim size, and other design details are approved for retail distribution. Refer to this help article for other eligibility requirements, including interior content.
  2. Secure an ISBN for your book
    Either purchase your own from Bowker or use one of the free ISBNs Lulu provides during the publishing process. 
  3. Carefully fill out all metadata details
    Make sure that your book’s metadata is thorough, accurate, and meets industry standards to maximize your discoverability and avoid potential distribution rejection.
  4. Opt into Retail Distribution
    When publishing your book, choose Global Distribution in the Select a Goal step.
  5. Set a competitive and acceptable list price
    Use our retail pricing calculator to ensure that your book is priced to have at least a 40% retail profit margin over the minimum print cost.
  6. Confirm that your book’s distribution was approved
    Search your ISBN in online databases like Ingram and online retailers like Bookshop.org to confirm your book’s availability (before pitching stores and libraries!).
  7. Let the world know!
    Pitch your book to booksellers and librarians! Ask your friends, family, and fans to request your book from their local stores! Get the word out there and watch the buzz grow! 
How Retail Book Distribution Actually Works

Your Free Lulu Account

Create a Lulu Account today to print and publish your book for readers all around the world

Create a Free Account

Retail distribution isn’t for every author. If your book doesn’t meet eligibility requirements, or you want more control over your sales, Lulu offers plenty of other ecommerce options, including our Lulu Direct and API solutions and our very own Lulu Bookstore. 

But if your publishing dreams include your book on bookstore shelves, retail distribution is a must. Hopefully, now it makes a little more sense! 

Kanji of the Day: 住 [Kanji of the Day]

住

✍7

小3

dwell, reside, live, inhabit

ジュウ　ヂュウ　チュウ

す.む　す.まう　-ず.まい

住民   (じゅうみん)   —   inhabitant
住宅   (じゅうたく)   —   residence
住む   (すむ)   —   to live (of humans)
在住   (ざいじゅう)   —   residing
住所   (じゅうしょ)   —   address
住まい   (すまい)   —   dwelling
住宅ローン   (じゅうたくローン)   —   housing loan
移住   (いじゅう)   —   migration
住居   (じゅうきょ)   —   dwelling
住宅街   (じゅうたくがい)   —   residential area

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 督 [Kanji of the Day]

督

✍13

中学

coach, command, urge, lead, supervise

トク

監督   (かんとく)   —   supervision
映画監督   (えいがかんとく)   —   movie director
総監督   (そうかんとく)   —   general manager
美術監督   (びじゅつかんとく)   —   art director
音楽監督   (おんがくかんとく)   —   music director
監督官   (かんとくかん)   —   inspector
督促   (とくそく)   —   urge
助監督   (じょかんとく)   —   assistant director (in taking professional movies)
提督   (ていとく)   —   admiral
監督者   (かんとくしゃ)   —   superintendent

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

OsmAnd Web 1.03 [OsmAnd Blog]

OsmAnd Web 1.03 — Now Available!

We're excited to announce the release of OsmAnd Web 1.03. This update introduces Garmin Connect integration for automatic activity sync, a redesigned navigation interface, improved management of personal data with Smart Folders and pinned Favorites, and enhanced track customization with adjustable color and width. It also improves POI information with opening hours displayed directly in the context menu, along with multiple usability improvements and bug fixes across the web map.

Enjoy a smoother and more intuitive OsmAnd Web experience.

Overview

What's new​

Garmin Connect Integration​

You can now connect your Garmin Connect account in the Web Planner and automatically sync your activities with OsmAnd.

Once connected, activities are imported as tracks and stored in a dedicated Garmin Connect folder in the Tracks section. New activities are added automatically after they are recorded in your Garmin account. Imported activities are converted into tracks, and their types are preserved when possible. You can also sync recent activity history during the initial connection.

Read more about it in our blog article.

Garmin Connect

Smart Folders Support​

Smart Folders are now supported in the web version, allowing you to view and manage track collections created on mobile devices. Smart Folders are synced via OsmAnd Cloud when Settings synchronization is enabled.

On the web, Smart Folders are displayed in the track list with a distinct star icon for easy identification. The folder content depends on its configuration on the device, and only supported parameters are applied when displaying tracks.

Track Tools​

Several improvements were introduced to make working with tracks easier and more flexible.

Track Panel Redesign​

Redesigned track panel and context menu with a new top action bar, quick access controls, and tab-based navigation between Overview, Track, and Points.

Web Track Context Menu

Export GPX as Simplified Track​

A new export option allows downloading GPX tracks in a simplified format. This helps reduce file size and improves compatibility when sharing tracks with other applications or services.

Web Navigation

Public Transport Stops​

Public transport stops can now be displayed directly on the map. Stop markers indicate locations where public transport routes operate. Selecting a stop opens a context panel with key information and quick actions.

The Routes section lists all routes serving the selected stop, including the transport type and route number. Selecting a route opens a detailed view showing the full sequence of stops, with the currently selected stop highlighted on the map.

Public Transport Stops

POI Context Menu Improvements​

The POI context menu has been enhanced to display more useful information about locations directly on the map.

Opening Hours​

Opening hours are now shown directly in the POI context menu when this information is available. The menu also indicates whether a place is currently open or closed.

POI Context Menu

Wikimedia Metadata​

Photos from Wikimedia sources now display additional information in the POI photo gallery. When opening a photo, users can view details such as the date, author, license information, and a description of the image.

Photo Gallery

Pinned Favorite Folders​

Favorite folders can now be pinned so that frequently used folders appear at the top of the list for quicker access. Pinned folders are displayed in a separate section above the rest of the Favorites.

Favorite Folders

Favorites and Waypoint Editing​

The Favorites and waypoint editing workflow has been redesigned with a new unified Edit panel. Favorites and track waypoints can now be edited more conveniently, including name, address, description, folder, icon, color, and shape settings.

The updated interface also adds improved appearance preview both in the editor and on the map, categorized icon selection, custom color palettes, dedicated description editing, and easier folder management with support for creating new folders directly from the editor.

Favorites Improvements

Selected Object​

When an object on the map (such as a POI, favorite, or navigation point) is selected, it is now highlighted with a distinct pin marker. Only one object can be selected at a time, and the map scrolls to it only if it is not currently visible on screen.

Selected Object

Bug fixes​

If you have suggestions for improving the Web version, please get in touch with us. We appreciate and welcome your contribution to the further development of OsmAnd.

02:00 PM

HHS Is A Chaos Engine: Marty Makary Out At FDA [Techdirt]

We’ve complained a great deal about RFK Jr.’s stint running HHS and its effects on the health of Americans in the short and long term because, well, there’s a lot to complain about. His anti-vaxxer stances have begun infecting national vaccine policy, of course, and his stance of essentially ignoring an ongoing 17 month measles outbreak have generated national headlines. Regarding measles cases, by the way, the official case count in America is at roughly 80% of the total of last year already, which was itself the highest case count in several decades. I’ll take this moment to remind you that it’s May, not even half way through the year.

But there has also been an insane amount of chaos at HHS and its child agencies under Kennedy. And that chaos isn’t slowing down, it seems, with the announcement that FDA chief Marty Makary will be resigning his post. And, because this is the dumbest of timelines in which we live, the reason behind it appears to be Trump’s push to allow for flavored e-cigarettes to entice the nation’s youth.

Makary’s insiders said the former Johns Hopkins University cancer surgeon resigned after Trump forced his hand on authorizing fruit-flavored e-cigarettes. Makary had reportedly been resisting the sign-offs out of concern that the kid-friendly flavors could again entice youth use and addiction—something public health officials and experts have for years worked to combat. But Makary’s stance was in conflict with Trump’s “save vaping” campaign promise—and with the tobacco industry’s interests.

Earlier this month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had called Makary over a weekend to scold him for not moving fast enough to authorize flavored vapes, particularly menthol, mango, and blueberry flavors from the Los Angeles manufacturer Glas. The FDA authorized those flavored products days later and issued a new policy that would make it easier to market flavored vapes.

The ArsTechnica post goes on to note that Makary had pissed off a bunch of lobbyists for tobacco, pharma, and biotech firms, all while health professionals have been complaining about his participation in Kennedy’s anti-vaxxer nonsense at the FDA as well. He essentially managed to piss off everyone, courting zero allies, which is a remarkable achievement itself.

But the larger story here is that HHS is suffering from a rather damning lack of leadership. Not by performance, but through vacancies of Senate-confirmed people to actually run things.

The firing or resignation of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary is more intra-MAHA chaos at a beleaguered and battered Department of Health and Human Services. 

When you don’t have a CDC Director, an FDA Commissioner, or a Surgeon General, the obvious question is: Why do you have this HHS Secretary? Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is the cause of much of the chaos that has resulted in these job vacancies. HHS is rotting from the head. 

It really is incredible to realize that those three positions, important as they are, are currently being helmed by acting leadership members at best. There’s a reason those positions exist. They’re not unimportant. But currently, we have essentially temp employees filling them.

Does anyone really believe that American health is a ship that can be successfully steered without a rudder? That’s what’s happening right now, because Trump and Kennedy can’t seem to get anyone across the finish line in the Senate for these roles. And if the ship crashes, we’re all going to pay for it.

11:00 AM

Are You Sick Of This Crap? Here Are Two Who Will Push Back! [The Status Kuo]

Over the past 16 months, we’ve seen a wholesale attack on diversity and representation. Trump’s DOGE goons went after anything with the word “diversity” in it, from research programs to arts funding. Pete Hegseth summarily fired career minority and women military leaders, and then kicked out honorable trans service members from our armed forces. Now the Supreme Court has given the green light to Southern state legislatures to redraw their districts this year to create all-white congressional delegations.

We need to fight back. One way we do is to elect diverse, minority candidates from congressional to local races. We need to work extra hard to ensure our political leaders actually come from and represent our communities and understand our needs and aspirations.

May is AANHPI Heritage month. In recognition of the special importance that has this year, as immigrants and racial minorities come under direct attack from the Trump regime, the Human Rights Campaign has endorsed two AANHPI candidates for office, who are also from our LGBTQ+ community: Eric Chung and Bentley Hudgins.

Donate to Eric and Bentley

Eric is running to flip a U.S. House seat from red to blue in Michigan’s 10th Congressional district. He is a child of Vietnamese immigrants who began his career as a teacher before going to law school and serving as a staffer on the Senate Judiciary Committee. President Biden then appointed him to a senior position at the Commerce Department. This race is an opportunity to flip a U.S. House seat and win back a pro-equality majority.

Bentley is a longtime community organizer and advocate running to represent Georgia’s 90th State House district. Throughout their career, including as HRC’s Georgia State Director, Hudgins organized to build people power, from registering thousands of voters to helping over 20,000 Georgians access COVID vaccines, while fighting for the rights of Georgia’s LGBTQ+ community. If elected, Bentley will be the first Japanese American and first openly nonbinary legislator in Georgia.

This may be the first time you’ve heard of these young leaders. But they are our future, and through their election, they can help us push back against the tides of white supremacy and Christian Nationalist ideology. Our diversity is our strength, and we need more of it. That doesn’t happen by wishful or magical thinking. It takes resources and hard work.

If you’re feeling frustrated and angry, give the middle finger today to the racists and transphobes. Fight back against the ones who are trying to erase whole communities and leave them with no political representation. I hope you’ll join me in supporting Eric and Bentley in their races with a contribution of any size.

Yes! I’m In for Eric and Bentley

Even a small donation would mean so much to our community. We absolutely need to continue to see faces like ours in the halls of power. We can’t, and we won’t, go back.

Thank you for considering a donation today. I promise you’ll feel really good for having done a small part in pushing back against the new Jim Crow and standing up for diversity in representation.

Jay

Boondoggles, Bourbon and Ballrooms [The Status Kuo]

Image courtesy of Spectrum News

Events this week captured the essential character of the Trump regime: extravagant self-interest, contempt for accountability and a stunning indifference to how any of it lands with ordinary citizens.

Four stories stood out, not just because they’re objectively embarrassing, but because they carry real political consequences heading into the midterms.

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“Not even a little bit”

Tuesday morning, before boarding a plane to the Beijing summit with his new best friend Xi Jinping, Donald Trump took questions on the White House lawn about the Iran war. It’s now in its eleventh week, and it’s costing ordinary Americans at the pump.

A reporter asked how much Americans’ financial situation was motivating him to make a deal with Iran. His answer was blunt to the point of brutality: “Not even a little bit. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.”

ABC’s Karen Travers pressed him on this stunning response, typical of an increasingly unfiltered Trump. He doubled down and added, for good measure, that when the war ends, “oil is gonna drop, the stock market’s gonna go through the roof.”

This is the same man who floated a gas tax holiday the day before as a gesture toward the very economic pain he now says he doesn’t think about.

The political damage was immediate. Trump’s usual escape hatch—dismissing a bad gaffe as a joke—was unavailable. It was on tape and delivered with emphatic intent.

A PBS/NPR/Marist poll last week found 63 percent of Americans already blame Trump for high gas prices. Now he’s handed Democrats an ad clip for the ages, which they’re sure to use in the upcoming midterms.

Road Rules Redux

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy—former MTV The Real World cast member and current top regulator of America’s airline and automotive industries—just spent seven months crisscrossing the country with his wife, Fox and Friends co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their nine children. He was filming a five-part YouTube docuseries called “The Great American Road Trip.” Duffy described it “wholesome,” “patriotic” and a “civic experience,” while Fox News put its best gloss on the boondoggle.

We’re all old enough to remember the right-wing media machine blasting former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for taking paternity leave to be with his premature infant twins.

The hypocrisy wasn’t the worst of it. There’s also the headspinning corporate sponsorship. The trip was funded by Toyota, United Airlines, Boeing and Shell—all regulated by Duffy’s own department. The nonprofit behind the production is run by a former lobbyist for the US Travel Association who previously worked in government relations at General Motors. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed a complaint with the DOT Inspector General this week, alleging the arrangement may have violated federal gift and travel rules, which bar executive branch officers from accepting anything of value from entities their agency oversees.

Then there’s the tone deaf timing. While Duffy filmed his family filling up their car’s gas tank on the public dime, TSA agents went without paychecks. United Airlines, one of the sponsors, has since raised checked baggage fees and warned of a 20 percent spike in summer fares. Duffy dismissed his critics as “the radical, miserable left.” But really, it’s everyone who isn’t in the MAGA cult.

Patel crashes out on the Hill

I’ve covered Kash Patel’s bourbon saga in a previous piece, so I’ll spare you the rerun. What happened Tuesday at the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee was icing on a rum cake.

Patel had ostensibly come to Capitol Hill to defend the FBI’s $12 billion budget request. What he delivered instead was a two-and-a-half-hour demonstration of why he shouldn’t be running the bureau, or any organization.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) pressed him on The Atlantic’s reporting about his drinking—reporting that described him as “conspicuously inebriated” with “unexplained absences.” Patel called it “unequivocally, categorically false” and launched a counterattack. He yelled that “the only person that was slinging margaritas in El Salvador on the taxpayer dollar with a convicted gangbanging rapist was you”—a reference to Van Hollen’s April 2025 trip to perform a safety check on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man DHS had illegally deported to a brutal Salvadoran mega-prison.

Let’s set the record straight. Nearly every word of Patel’s claim is false. Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of any crime or proven to be a gang member. He is not a convicted rapist. He is currently under home confinement while fighting dubious “human smuggling” charges to which he has pleaded not guilty. The “margaritas” in the famous photo were placed on the table by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s staff as a propaganda prop. Van Hollen said at the time that neither of them touched the drinks, with the salt rim visibly undisturbed. Patel then posted what he claimed was a $7,128 bar tab run up by Van Hollen on the taxpayer’s dime—which turned out to be a catering bill for a staff holiday party.

This wasn’t a heat of the moment punch. It was planned. CNN noted that Patel repeated the same false claim later in his testimony, saying Van Hollen had been “drinking margaritas with felons.”

When Van Hollen asked him directly whether he knew lying to Congress was a crime, Patel replied: “I do not lie to Congress.” That, ironically, is itself a lie.

Patel also brandished a large black placard of FBI statistics at the hearing, claiming the bureau had nearly doubled its arrests under his tenure. MS NOW published reporting, however, from a half-dozen law enforcement sources explaining why those numbers are cooked. Under Patel’s direction, FBI field offices were instructed to count as “FBI arrests” any suspects detained when agents were simply present or assisting, even when another agency led the investigation and made the actual arrest. That double-counting inflated numbers dramatically during ICE surge operations in cities like Minneapolis. “Kash is definitely engineering things to pad his stats,” a former FBI official said flatly. An MS NOW review also found that Patel’s celebrated Ten Most Wanted capture numbers were juiced by placing fugitives on the list hours or even minutes before their arrest.

Meanwhile, the FBI has lost 2,800 agents under Patel’s tenure and is struggling to recruit replacements. He fired agents with Iranian expertise just as the U.S. entered a war with Iran. He is polygraphing his own staff over a missing bourbon bottle. He is in the middle of a $250 million defamation suit against the journalist and the outlet covering all of it.

Van Hollen’s verdict afterwards was measured but spot on: “He’s a disgrace to the office he holds.”

Dancing around Trump’s ballroom

Then there’s the ballroom. We know the basic facts: Trump has torn down the East Wing and is replacing it with a 90,000-square-foot gilded event space. The cost has ballooned, the design is gaudy and the scale is grossly mismatched.

But it’s the symbolism, at a moment when families are canceling vacations and rationing groceries, that is becoming Trump-sized liability for the GOP.

CNN called the ballroom “a political albatross for the GOP” that has been hanging around the party’s neck for six months. In a normal midterm year, with a president whose approval has sunk into the mid-30s, you’d see lawmakers scrambling to create distance. Instead, Republicans this week did the opposite: they embraced it.

Congress is now being asked to authorize up to $1 billion for ballroom construction and security as part of a broader immigration enforcement bill. This follows Trump’s convenient reframing of the project as a security necessity following a shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

But GOP strategists are worried. Brian Darling urged Republicans to “pump the brakes,” telling The Hill, “The fact that it’s linked to the ballroom makes it controversial.” He added, “If you’re spending all this money to fortify the White House, nobody bats an eye. If it’s a billion-dollar ballroom, that creates huge problems.”

Some Republicans are trying to waltz around the issue, arguing they’re voting for security upgrades, not Trump’s decorating choices. But ever-concerned Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she’s not sold, wanting to hear the case for why the funding is “necessary.” Rep. Rob Wittman of Virginia said he’d look at it “very carefully.”

The rebranding to “security” faces a practical problem: the ballroom is already in the bill, and Democrats have already written the ad. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was succinct: “Ballroom Republicans are fighting for Trump. Democrats are fighting for you.”

The political trap is now clear. Republicans who vote yes on the funding will hand Democrats a perfect symbol of misplaced priorities. Republicans who vote no face Trump’s wrath—and he has already demonstrated this cycle that he will come after members of his own party who cross him, including the Indiana state senators he successfully targeted for rejecting his redistricting maps.

More than a dozen GOP strategists and lawmakers told MS NOW they remain cautiously optimistic about the midterms, but only if the Iran war ends soon and its economic aftershocks fade quickly. Good luck with either. As put by one House Republican in a swing district, who apparently declined to give their name, Trump’s habit of naming things after himself and picking fights with the pope fires up “the people that want to put a check on his power, instead of taking his energy and focusing on stuff that makes their lives better at home.”

09:00 AM

Congress Narrowed The GUARD Act, But Serious Problems Remain [Techdirt]

Following criticism, lawmakers have narrowed the GUARD Act, a bill aimed at restricting minors’ access to certain AI systems. The earlier version could have applied broadly to nearly every AI-powered chatbot or search tool. The amended bill focuses more narrowly on so-called “AI companions”—conversational systems designed to simulate emotional or interpersonal interactions with users. 

That change does address some of the broadest concerns raised about the original proposal, though some questions about the bill’s reach remain. Bottom line: the revised bill still creates serious problems for privacy, online speech, and parental choice.

The new GUARD Act still requires companies offering AI companions to implement burdensome age-verification systems tied to users’ real-world identities. Even parents who specifically want their teenagers to use these systems would still face significant hurdles. A family might decide that a conversational AI tool helps an isolated teenager practice social interaction, or engage in harmless creative roleplay. A parent deployed in the military might set up a persistent AI storyteller for a younger child. Under the revised bill, those users could still face mandatory age checks tied to sensitive personal or financial information before they or their children can use these services.

The revised bill also leaves important definitions unclear while sharply increasing penalties for developers and companies that get those judgments wrong. Congress narrowed the GUARD Act. But it is still trying to solve a complicated social problem with vague legal standards, heavy liability, and privacy-invasive verification systems.

Intrusive Age-Verification Remains In The Bill

The revised GUARD Act still requires companies offering AI companions to verify that users are adults through a “reasonable age verification” system. The bill allows a broader set of verification methods than the earlier version, but they are still tied to a user’s real-world identity—such as financial records, or age-verified accounts for a mobile operating system or app store. 

That approach still raises serious privacy and access concerns. Millions of Americans do not have current government ID, accounts at major banks, or stable access to the kinds of digital identity systems the bill contemplates. Even for those who do, requiring identity-linked verification to access online speech tools creates real risks for privacy, anonymity, and data security. Many people are rightly creeped out by age-verification systems, and may simply forgo using these services rather than compromise their privacy and security.

The revised definition of “AI companion” is also narrower than before, but it’s unclear at the margins. The bill now focuses on systems that “engage in interactions involving emotional disclosures” from the user, or present a “persistent identity, persona or character.” 

EFF appreciates that the authors recognized that the prior definition could reach a variety of AI systems that are not chatbots, including internet search engines. But the narrowed definition could be read to also apply to a variety of chat tools that are not AI companions. For example, many modern online conversational systems increasingly recognize and respond to users’ emotions. Customer service systems, including completely human-powered ones that existed long before AI chatbots, have long been designed to recognize frustration and respond empathetically. As conversational AI becomes more emotionally responsive, a customer service chatbot’s efforts to empathize may sweep it within the bill’s definition. 

Bigger Penalties, Bigger Incentives To Restrict Access

The revised bill also sharply increases penalties. Instead of $100,000 per violation, companies—including small developers—can face fines of up to $250,000 per violation, enforced by both federal and state officials.

That kind of liability creates incentives to over-restrict access, especially for minors. Smaller developers, in particular, may decide it is safer to block younger users entirely, disable conversational features, or avoid developing certain tools at all, rather than risk severe penalties under vague standards.

The concerns driving this bill are real. Some AI systems have engaged in troubling interactions with vulnerable users, including minors. But the right answer to that is targeted enforcement against bad actors, and privacy laws that protect us all. The revised GUARD Act instead responds with a privacy-invasive system that burdens the right to speak, read, and interact online.

Congress did improve this bill, but EFF’s core speech, privacy, and security issues remain.

Reposted from the EFF’s Deeplinks blog.

07:00 AM

OpenAI’s KOSA Endorsement Is Regulatory Capture With A Smiley Face [Techdirt]

Earlier this week, OpenAI became the latest tech company to publicly endorse KOSA, the Kids Online Safety Act. The company, conveniently, tries to frame this as being about its support of child safety. It’s not. It’s about political horse trading, desperation for good publicity, and building a regulatory moat.

KOSA would help create stronger online protections for young social media users through safer default settings, expanded parental controls, and greater accountability for online harms.

The path forward on kids safety, however, also requires AI-specific rules. And we believe KOSA is complementary to the work we’re doing at the federal and state level. Young people should be able to benefit from AI in ways that are safe, age-appropriate, and grounded in real-world support, including referrals to crisis resources and parental notifications in serious safety situations. That means building safeguards from the start, giving families better tools, and taking responsibility for reducing risks before they become harms.

The broader point is an important one: AI companies still have the opportunity to build protections early, before these technologies become fully embedded in everyday life. As OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane has put it, “We can’t repeat the mistakes made during the rise of social media, when stronger safeguards for teens weren’t put in place until the platforms were already deeply embedded in young people’s lives.”

All of this is, of course, nonsense. As we’ve explained repeatedly, the underlying mechanisms of KOSA are deeply problematic and will do real damage. It will, inherently, make the internet worse for everyone. At its heart, KOSA is a surveillance and censorship bill, and it’s the last thing that we need for the internet today.

While it’s positioned as being about something no one can be against (“kid safety!”), that is all too often the facade with which terrible rights-killing laws are passed. And KOSA is no exception.

But a bunch of tech companies have endorsed it anyway. Why? Because they know it makes life way more difficult for smaller upstart competitors. The additional compliance costs it will add for companies will be ruinous to smaller, less well-resourced companies. For big companies with big bank accounts, however, it gives them a leg up.

OpenAI, perhaps more than most others in the space, needs that kind of government-backed protection against growing competition.

Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote a piece about Sam Altman going to Congress and asking for the federal government to regulate the AI space, calling it Sam Altman Wants The Government To Build Him A Moat. As I pointed out at the time, AI researchers were coming to the conclusion that there was little to no real competitive advantage that any frontier AI model could really have for any extended period of time. That situation has only gotten worse since then. The jockeying between the various leading AI models has meant that they’re all effectively comparable, and more and more builders are realizing that since you can separate out the context, the computer, and the agentic tools from the underlying LLM, that technology is quickly turning into a commodity where any one will do (and this situation is becoming even more tenuous as open weight/local models are getting better and better).

While OpenAI has a huge number of users (one of the fastest growing tech companies in history), it’s unclear if those users are particularly loyal. Indeed, there are a few indications that when OpenAI does something stupid, a large segment of users will quickly leave.

Given that, all of the large AI companies keep looking for ways to create some sort of lock-in for users. Most of them haven’t gone down the fully siloed path (knowing at this stage that would probably drive away their most valuable users). For the most part, the focus between the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and others is to build in more features to make it more convenient to stay than to swap out an underlying LLM. That and the continued leapfrogging, combined with various experiments regarding how much they’re willing to subsidize with their subscription plans.

But having the government wipe out competitors, or create “mandatory” tools that create lock-in, might be another path towards such a result. And that’s exactly what KOSA would lead to. It certainly wouldn’t protect kids. Indeed, all evidence suggests it would put plenty of marginalized kids at much greater risk.

However, it would create something of a regulatory moat for those larger companies.

On top of that, is there any company more desperate for a headline talking about how it’s “helping” protect children than OpenAI? The company has been accused of being “responsible” for suicide and other harmful behavior. And, even if those claims and lawsuits are misleading (they are!), culturally that message has been sticking. I’ve heard multiple people refer to ChatGPT as a suicide machine.

So, if you need a good headline to claim that you’re “protecting children” and doing so in a way where the law will have little direct impact on your business, but will damage some of your competitors in the space (not to mention the wider open internet), why not? It’s hard not to be cynical about OpenAI’s reasoning here.

Separately, it’s likely that the AI companies see this as a bit of political horse trading. While KOSA would have some impact on AI tools, it’s much more directed at social media platforms than AI. And it’s likely that the bet being made by OpenAI here is “hey, we’ll back KOSA for you, and you get rid of the AI-specific bills.” OpenAI’s Chris Lehane, who announced the endorsement and is featured in every press release about it, is infamous as a political trickster. He’s a political operator, not a tech or policy expert. You roll him out to cut a deal, not to advance a principled position on child safety. And that’s exactly what’s happening here.

You can see the KOSA authors gleefully using the OpenAI endorsement to falsely claim that only Mark Zuckerberg now opposes the law:

Yeah, that’s Senator Richard Blumenthal choosing to spend time on X, a site run by a guy who has made it clear he thinks Blumenthal’s political party is evil and needs to be wiped out, using that platform to lie and claim that the only people opposed to KOSA are “Mark Zuckerberg & his lobbyists.” That ignores the long list of civil society and public interest groups who have made it clear just how dangerous the law would be.

Marsha Blackburn (who has been vocal about how she wants KOSA to silence LGBTQ voices) put out a silly press release about this endorsement, saying:

“Lip service won’t save lives – Congress must take action to establish guardrails in the virtual space. I look forward to chairing a hearing on why the verdicts in California and New Mexico should spur Congress to hold Big Tech accountable for exploiting children to turn a profit.”

What? As bad as the rulings in California and New Mexico are, they seem to suggest that the courts already think they have the authority to order companies to do the impossible and magically stop anything bad from ever happening to kids who also (incidentally) use the internet.

All of this is for show. No one is being honest. Blackburn wants to censor LGBTQ speech she considers “dangerous to kids” because it terrifies her. Blumenthal wants to end encryption and the ability of tech companies to keep information, because he’s always been a cop and wants the ability to spy on your kids. And OpenAI wants Congress to direct their bad policies at social media companies rather than AI companies.

And all of us internet users are simply collateral damage for the mad power dreams of those in charge.

05:00 AM

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eBay To GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen: Um, No [Techdirt]

It might be time to do a wellness check on GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen. We had just discussed Cohen’s announced bid to have GameStop buy eBay as part of an absolutely bizarre interview he did on CNBC’s Squawk Box. In that interview, Cohen attempted to explain how GameStop would buy the much more highly valued company, valued at $56 billion, through $20 billion in stock and another $20 billion in private investment with banking partners. If you’re still staring at those numbers trying to figure out where the typo is, don’t bother, there isn’t one. The typo exists only in Cohen’s head, since those numbers don’t match up to eBay’s valuation. Nobody but Cohen appeared to understand how any of this made any sense.

It appears that eBay’s board felt likewise. eBay has now issued a response to Cohen’s bid, which essentially amounts to, “Um, no.”

CNBC reports that eBay’s board wrote to Ryan Cohen on Tuesday, May 12, to make clear its categorical rejection of the silly man’s ridiculous attempt to buy a company five times larger than his own with borrowed money and bad math. A letter signed by eBay’s chairman of the board of directors, Paul S. Pressler, calls his offer “neither credible nor attractive.”

“We have taken into account such factors as 1) eBay’s standalone prospects, 2) the uncertainty regarding your financial proposal, 3) the impact of your proposal on eBay’s long-term growth and profitability, 4) the leverage, operational risks, and leadership structure of a combined entity, 5) the resulting implications of these factors on valuation, and 6) GameStop’s governance and executive incentives.”

That’s the corporate equivalent of a professional UFC fighter explaining to an 11 year old why they won’t agree to a televised fight. I have no idea what Cohen is doing in any of this, but I can’t possibly believe that this proposed purchase was in any way serious. As we said in the previous post, the math simply doesn’t math in this case.

But in follow up comments from journalists after the CNBC interview, things only get more strange. Imagine having a serious shareholder position in GameStop and coming across this portion of a Cohen interview with Business Insider.

“I did not want to be the CEO of GameStop. I want to be the CEO of eBay,” he said. “I’m passionate about eBay. I believe in eBay’s business. I wasn’t passionate about GameStop. That’s the difference.”

Honestly, it’s hard to understand both what Cohen is actually after here and why the board at GameStop even wants him around anymore. He doesn’t want to be there. The company is not doing well. The headlines about buying eBay are the most tangible thing about the story, with everything else being vapor and criticism.

But what’s abundantly clear is that GameStop will not be buying eBay any time soon, no matter how much Game Informer vault merchandise Cohen manages to sell online.

03:00 AM

Trump Administration: Anti-Fascists, Drug Dealers, And Trans People Are Terrorists [Techdirt]

As was covered here last week, ProPublica’s Hannah Allam reached out to Trump’s “terrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka to ask him about the wreckage he’s caused since being elevated to a position of power he clearly has no expertise to handle.

Gorka’s no expert in domestic security. While his resume may include occasional work for government agencies here in the US as well as in Hungary, he’s mostly known for being a useful font of propaganda in service of the MAGA worldview.

Allam asked him to comment on the apparent dismantling of the government’s counter-terrorism apparatus as Trump reshuffled pretty much every US law enforcement agency to provide manpower for his anti-migrant surges. No comment was given but Gorka decided to attack Allam personally via social media.

Another question that went unanswered?

As of writing, exactly two months into the Iran war, Gorka’s counterterrorism strategy has yet to appear.

Well, we have an answer now. And it’s just as awful as you expect it to be.

Wednesday’s document, masterminded by White House “counterterrorism czar” Sebastian Gorka, does not mention far-right violence at all. It identifies “Violent Left-Wing Extremists, including Anarchists and Anti-Fascists” as a security threat of equal severity to “Legacy Islamist Terrorists” and “Narcoterrorists and Transnational Gangs.” The administration will now apparently “prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist.”

In a bizarre but familiar turn, the document also blames transgender people for the shooting of Charlie Kirk. “Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.”

The full “strategy” [PDF] can be read below. Brace yourself. It’s horrible and horrific. It contains nods towards “God-given rights” while simultaneously making it clear a lot of people aren’t allowed to access these rights. It’s written by people who truly love their own brand of domestic terrorism — MAGA in-crowd fuckwits who, if given the chance, would rather be John Wilkes Booth than Abraham Lincoln.

It’s stupid and hurtful and harmful and shitty. And it boldly makes the assertion that to oppose this administration and its goals is to attack America and Americans themselves, which is the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from this self-absorbed administration and the death cult that supports it.

It contains lie after lie, beginning with its opening paragraphs:

Our counterterrorism operations will be executed apolitically and founded upon reality-based threat assessments. Our counterterrorism powers will not be used to target our fellow Americans who simply disagree with us.

[…]

The fact pattern under the Biden Administration was clear: individuals at the highest level of the U.S. Government used their significant powers to politically target individuals in the interests of those they favored, wanted to keep in power, or to help win elections.

This is coming from an administration that has turned the DOJ in the Department of Vindictive Prosecutions and continues to blame Biden for things that happened while Trump was still serving his first term as president.

The “CT Strategy” has been written to justify extrajudicial murders committed in international waters by the Department of Defense and its administration partners in this latest bastardization of the “war on drugs.” It’s been written to justify any violence/killings going forward that involve US residents and citizens.

The document claims “mass migration” is a threat to the Western World in general. It also claims religious oppression is a latent threat to world peace… but only if it’s African nations targeting “Christians.” It also baldly states that the US is the center of the universe as far as the world is concerned, so any counterterrorism efforts it puts forth will focus on this nation’s well-being first.

In between all the stuff that might look semi-plausible with GOP-tinted glasses, there’s this:

Our nation has not been well served by its Intelligence Community (IC), which has been mired in old ways of looking at threats, or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a political tool. Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings, Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this Administration will continue to prohibit the IC from being used politically against innocent Americans. As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.

In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. We will do the same with the state sponsors of such groups and those governments undertaking lethal plots on U.S. soil or against Americans anywhere.

No other administration would say these things out loud, much less deliver them to the public as a policy statement. This administration simply does not care how this looks to normal Americans. It has no qualms delivering a counterterrorism strategy that sees no difference between international terrorist groups, drug cartels, and people who just want to see transgender people’s rights respected. And, after turning a bunch of people with ideological disagreements into terrorists, it moves on to pretend “Antifa” is an violent, organized, multi-national terrorist organization rather than just the loose collection of people opposed to fascism that it has always been and continues to be.

The biggest threat to this nation is the party running it. And allowing Seb Gorka to oversee this vile interpretation of “existential threats” is worse than simply allowing the foxes to guard the hen house. This is a document that makes it clear the hens brought this violence on themselves by daring to exist in places they’re not wanted.

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