News

Tuesday 2026-10-06

05:00 AM

Pluralistic: Scrutinized (05 Oct 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

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

Today's links

  • Scrutinized: Pervert glasses vs the authentic self.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: DRM-free in the UK; Maple-leaf roses; Italian Wikipedia shuts down; Vancouver's property speculator tax works; Ex-Soviet leftists launch "September"; "The Every"; Nielsen x Chinese internet; Get-a-cluevog; Cat EULA; Heart carafe; Millennials screwed; Apple's unlawful evil.
  • Upcoming appearances: Virtual, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, OVancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Oxford, Montreal.
  • Recent appearances: Where I've been.
  • Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
  • Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
  • Colophon: All the rest.


Medieval peasants working the fields in front of a walled city. Their overseer rides a horse; his head has been replaced with a robotic camera. From all sides, gory, anatomical eyeballs intrude upon the scene, each one with a different colored iris.

Scrutinized (permalink)

We're repeatedly told that the killer app for pervert glasses – Meta's AI-enabled camera glasses and their imitators – is that they will remind you of someone's name and spare you the social awkwardness of not recognizing them.

I admit to finding this proposition very seductive. I'm mildly face-blind (I had two aunts I wasn't able to reliably tell apart until I was 12 or 13 and one of them changed her hair), and I meet a lot of people and often find myself incredibly embarrassed when I can't place someone that I know I'm acquainted with.

Actually, the emotion I feel when I don't recognize someone or can't place their name is worse than embarrassment: it's shame. I worry that my chronic inability to remember people's names/faces will make them feel like they're unimportant to me. And shame is such a shitty, gross emotion: it's the invasive thief of joy that shows up whenever things are bad for the purpose of making them worse.

If there were some way to confine pervert glasses to helping people remember names, I'd be all over them. But when it comes to actual, existing pervert-glasses, the main purpose is to covertly capture strangers and shame them. And when (not if) these pervert glasses get hooked up to facial recognition, they will become high-volume doxing factories that will reward the attention-hungry with viral fame.

We've built a society that offers infinite rewards to anyone who can put a name – and thus an identity – to anyone caught in public having an argument, picking their nose, slipping on ice, or eating with their mouth open. We're on the verge of democratizing only the worst part of celebrity: the pervasive hovering cameras that are always there to preserve and distribute your failures.

Last week on the 404 Media podcast, Joseph Cox spoke with Kashmir Hill about this, in an episode appropriately entitled "Meta's Pervert Glasses Are Going to End Privacy":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUFnQPtxJ9o

Hill wrote the definitive book on the modern history of facial recognition, Your Face Belongs To Us, which tells the story of Hoan Ton That, whose Clearview AI offers cops, millionaires and elites the power to instantly dox people based on billions of pictures:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/20/steal-your-face/#hoan-ton-that

In the podcast, Cox and Hill discuss the surveillance nightmare this represents. ICE and cops are already using facial recognition at scale, though it should be noted that these dragnets are incredibly poor value for money, as the British Transport Police discovered after subjecting millions of travelers to facial recognition in train stations, without catching a single suspect:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/29/trial-live-facial-recognition-cameras-london-stations-false-positive

But partway through the discussion, Cox and Hill switch from discussing "traditional" surveillance *of the sort that has metastasized in the 25 years since 9/11) to a form of surveillance that's very different: the "content-creator" surveillance that mixes always-on cameras with facial recognition to dox and shame strangers for everyday transgressions, mistakes and embarrassments.

While this is certainly a kind of surveillance, I think it's better to call it scrutiny. It's something worse than the sense of being watched: it's the sense of being judged. Inducing this feeling of being judged has long been a (sociopathic) desire of wealthy and powerful people. It's the foundation of Bentham's "panopticon," a prison where prisoners can never tell if they're being watched, which is meant to induce a continuous performance of virtue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Today, Bentham's heir is the odious Larry Ellison, the famously secretive billionaire, Trump crony and Oracle founder who goes to enormous lengths to prevent the public from finding out about his personal life. Ellison is also one of the most vocal proponents of mass surveillance. Larry Ellison has repeatedly called for the installation of ubiquitous, AI-backstopped surveillance for every (non-billionaire) person in the world, calling this "supervision":

Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we are constantly recording and reporting everything that’s going on.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/billionaire-constant-ai-surveillance

What Ellison's saying here is that most of us are fundamentally bad, so we need continuous scrutiny so that we are always haunted by the specter of judgment, which will keep us from yielding to our base selves.

In other words, for Ellison, our authentic selves are a problem to be solved. We refuse to behave in ways that make the world optimal for Ellison, so he will create a world of continuous scrutiny, judgment and punishment, and in that world, we will be so worried about being shamed that we will all suppress our authentic selves and don masks that are designed to Ellison's specifications.

Ellison is hardly unique in both treasuring his privacy while insisting that any private domain carved out by normal people will turn into a place where we indulge our most sinful impulses. Mark Zuckerberg long defended Facebook's "Real Names" policy by saying that anyone who presents different facets of themselves to different groups is "two-faced":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/15/three-wise-zucks-in-a-trenchcoat/

This is the same Mark Zuckerberg who bought two houses to either side of his place in San Francisco and expropriated vast tracts of land from their indigenous Hawai'an owners in order to create a privacy-preserving buffer zone around his own homes:

https://www.wired.com/story/mark-zuckerberg-secretive-hawaii-compound-burial-ground/

And it's the same Zuckerberg who expects the ex-Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams to pay him $111m for revealing damning facts about how he runs his company:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/27/zuckerstreisand-2/#autodisparagement

It's the same Zuckerberg who flipped out when his sister accidentally posted a family photo to her public Facebook feed and it spread around the internet:

https://abc7news.com/archive/8933289/

And it's the same Zuckerberg who gave us pervert glasses (to opt out, just don't have a face).

Silicon Valley's most ardent privacy invaders are also the most ardent defenders of their own privacy. Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt liked to say, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place":

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/12/google-ceo-eric-schmidt-dismisses-privacy

But when Cnet ran an article summarizing details of Schmidt's personal life that could be discovered by searching Google, he ordered a company-wide blacklist of Cnet reporters, which lasted for years:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/eric-schmidt-who-led-googles-transformation-into-a-tech-giant-has-left-the-company/

But Schmidt is an amateur at the game of "privacy for me, never for thee." The true master of the game is Peter Thiel, who secretly bankrolled a lawsuit against Gawker in order to destroy the news outlet in retaliation for outing him as gay (Thiel cofounded Palantir, one of the world's most prolific, shameless surveillance companies):

https://www.wired.com/story/ryan-holiday-conspiracy-peter-thiel-gawker-hulk-hogan/

It's tempting to see this all as mere hypocrisy, but I think it's something far weirder and more disturbing. These men understand completely that scrutiny is antithetical to living as your authentic self. They want to live as their authentic selves, and they want to stop us from living as our authentic selves.

A dive into the Epstein Files reveals the oligarchy's panic over #MeToo and the possibility that the private sins of the wealthy and powerful could become a matter of public knowledge. As Steve Bannon wrote to Epstein concerning #MeToo, "Make sure Woody sees this. Nobody safe":

https://www.theverge.com/tech/874721/epstein-thiel-musk-trump-metoo

Bannon promised Epstein that his culture war would set back #MeToo for a decade, and he is on the vanguard of the movement to silence rape and genocide survivors, and, of course, to force trans people out of public life. For the fascist international to live as their authentic self, it is necessary that we do not.

Scrutiny and shame are antithetical to authenticity, growth and happiness. That's true even when it's people we love subjecting us to a supervisory gaze. Ever notice how a roaring great time at a social gathering can go ice-cold in an instant the minute someone decides to record the moment with their phone?

My worst moments as a parent – the ones that haunt me and shame me – are those moments when my young daughter was doing something that was right at the edge of her abilities, ferociously concentrating as she drew or played or read, and rather than give her the space to be vulnerable, to err in private and grow, I couldn't help but watch her. When she saw me watching her, the moment died and she moved on to something else.

Each of us needs a zone of imaginative and exertive autonomy, a place where we can screw up without being scrutinized and judged – let alone captured and publicized. Pervert glasses will supercharge the banal and destructive post-9/11 surveillance, sure – but more than that, they will be combined with facial recognition to dox and shame anyone and everyone who makes a public mistake.

Far from Larry Ellison's utopia of people on their "best behavior," this will be a world of inauthentic, stunted selves, a society of people who will never know the joy of finding out who we are and being those people.

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 Nielsen will measure Chinese web-traffic https://web.archive.org/web/20011107063612/http://www.bday.net/oct05/p05-051.htm

#25yrsago Fluevog's crowdsourced "open source" design competition assigns all rights in perpetuity to the company https://memex.craphound.com/2001/10/06/a-little-knowledge-is-a/

#20yrsago Cat with a EULA https://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2006/10/06/coming_soon_kitten_with_a_eula.html

#20yrsago HOWTO fight DRM in the UK https://www.openrightsgroup.org/blog/30-things-we-can-do-about-drm/

#20yrsago HOWTO fold roses from maple-leaves https://web.archive.org/web/20061010121159/http://haha.nu/creative/how-to-make-roses-from-maple-leaves/

#15yrsago Italy’s insane Internet law prompts removal of Italian Wikipedia https://cdt.org/insights/case-in-point-why-wikipedia-italy-would-rather-perish-than-publish/

#15yrsago Wine carafe shaped like human heart https://web.archive.org/web/20111008062759/https://www.livianaosti.com/index.php?/prodotto/cuore/

#10yrsago Millennials are legit screwed https://eig.org/millennial/#1473667707197-bfde262a-83c9

#10yrsago Would-be Ukip leader hospitalised following “altercation” (“punched by a colleague”) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-37572377

#10yrsago Merciless reporting on the Chicago Police Department’s extortion racket, & the senior officials who covered it up https://web.archive.org/web/20161006133720/https://theintercept.com/2016/10/06/in-the-chicago-police-department-if-the-bosses-say-it-didnt-happen-it-didnt-happen/

#10yrsago Canadian government has turned “consultation” on warrantless mass surveillance into a sales-job https://citizenlab.ca/research/digital-anonymity-subscriber-identification-revisited-yet-again/

#10yrsago Think like a computer scientist: free, interactive textbook https://web.archive.org/web/20130813233552/http://interactivepython.org/runestone/static/thinkcspy/index.html

#10yrago July: Vancouver imposes a 15% tax on foreign real estate speculators; September: home sales drop by a third https://web.archive.org/web/20161004200501/https://mishtalk.com/2016/10/04/vancouver-bubble-burst/

#10yrsago Left-wing activists across the former USSR launch “September,” to rally opposition to far-right movements https://globalvoices.org/2016/10/05/september-a-new-platform-for-leftists-across-the-former-soviet-union/

#5yrsago Dave Eggers' "The Every" https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/05/masha-rides-again/#everywhere

#5yrsago We paid to develop Merck's covid pill https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/06/merck-cenary/#businesslike

#1yrago Apple's unlawful evil https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.
https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/


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 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

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 574 (7730 total).

  • "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. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • 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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04:00 AM

Warner/Chappell Sinks Lindsay Ellis’ Two-Hour Cruise Video Over A Few Seconds Of Karaoke [Techdirt]

Techdirt has been around for almost 30 years now, and the one internet law issue that never seems to change is the bullshit use of copyright to take down speech. It’s run through basically our entire history. Back in 2020 we wrote about a copyright dispute involving an author of, well, “wolf-kink erotica” using the DMCA to remove works by a competitor writing books in the same genre. The YouTuber Lindsay Ellis did a (very good) explainer video about it all and then… faced a ridiculous copyright legal threat herself.

About a week or so ago, Ellis published a video on a very different topic: cruise lines. It was something like two and a half hours long. Ellis — who I would say is a skeptic of the entire concept of cruises — decided to go all in, taking a bunch of different cruises in a row to see what all the fuss was about and how the various lines compare. After seeing the video mentioned on Bluesky, I clicked on it and… ended up watching the whole thing (albeit at 2.5x speed). I’m not that interested in cruises, but Ellis is a great sardonic storyteller and the video is really well done, mixing details about the individual cruise lines and how they treat their workers (mostly not well) and the environment (potentially even worse) with her own experiences on those trips.

But, apparently that video is currently gone from YouTube (she has kept it up on the subscription service Nebula)… because of copyright, as Ellis explained in a YouTube short.

Yeah. In the middle of a two-plus hour video about cruise lines, there’s a clip — just a few seconds long — of a friend who joined Ellis on one of the trips singing karaoke. And that caused the entire video to come down while the “dispute” was adjudicated.

And, as Ellis notes, YouTube by default sides with the copyright holder, because the nature of copyright law is that it very, very, very strongly encourages intermediaries to side with the copyright claimant, even if that claim is obvious bullshit and clearly fair use (as is the case here). YouTube’s ContentID system is basically built with that in mind. Even as YouTube spent years fighting back against copyright maximalism and winning the massive DMCA case Viacom filed against it, in the end, to keep the big copyright holders happy, ContentID is really designed to strongly favor copyright claimants, even when their claims are bullshit.

The culprit in this case? Apparently our old friends at Warner/Chappell, which, let’s just say, have a history of this sort of absolute bullshit. Warner/Chappell is a music publisher, and publishers tend to be even more copyright maximalist than the labels themselves. It’s likely that Warner/Chappell holds the copyright on the underlying composition that is playing in the background, and which can barely be heard for the few seconds while Ellis’ friend is singing karaoke. That’s clearly fair use and similar to the dancing baby case from over a decade ago, where some music playing incidentally in the background shouldn’t lead to a video being taken down (the difference here being that it looks like this is a ContentID claim, rather than a full DMCA takedown which would require Warner/Chappell to take fair use into consideration).

On Bluesky, Ellis points out that this wasn’t an automated takedown. Her lawyers asked people at Warner/Chappell to pull the claim and they refused, claiming (incredibly) that because the song “was not the topic of the video” they wouldn’t pull the claim.

That is… not how any of this is supposed to work.

Ellis also notes that she uploaded the video weeks before publishing it (as YouTube encourages creators to do) precisely so ContentID could flag any potential issues — and nothing came up until the video passed a million views. Then suddenly Warner/Chappell put in a claim, as Ellis says, just “to be an asshole.”

This sort of nonsense happens all the time, but it’s pretty incredible that we’re now nearly three decades into the DMCA itself and we’re still dealing with this kind of blatant abuse of copyright, which is mostly just a shakedown from companies like Warner/Chappell which will then run to Congress and claim they need more copyright expansion to protect them from “piracy.”

Maybe what we actually need are laws that protect the people doing the creative work from parasites like Warner/Chappell.

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 StackSocial. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Court Permanently Dismisses Reflecting Pool Vandalism Case Against David Hearn [Techdirt]

Finally. Now, it doesn’t matter what Trump wants his DOJ minions to do. If he’s going to try to pin a botched repair job on people who just happened to stick a hand into his algae-infested, liner chunk-filled Reflecting Pool/metaphor for his entire presidency, he’s going to have to stick it to someone other than former Olympian David Hearn.

The DOJ went about as honest as it possibly could under these Trumpian circumstances when US Attorney Jeanine Pirro moved to dismiss the vandalism case against David Hearn after discovering the Department of Interior had withheld information on the source of the pool’s many, many problems. The true source of the damage was Atlantic Industrial Coating’s rushed refurbishing, which not only led to plenty of liner separation, but also to some truly spectacular algae growth acceleration.

One of the government’s own witnesses made this clear during the grand jury proceedings. Somehow, the grand jury still decided the DOJ could move forward with Trump’s petty revenge plan — one that sought to hold regular citizens responsible for his own failures.

What the DOJ didn’t do, however, was dismiss the case with prejudice. It certainly had every reason to do so, but it chose not to. And that only encouraged Trump to suggest he’d just find a better loyalist to re-open the case.

Well, that’s not going to happen now. The court handling the case has done what the Trump loyalists in the DOJ refused to do: shut it down permanently. (h/t Kyle Cheney)

The dismissal [PDF] swiftly (and pointedly) discusses the background of the case, which necessarily recounts the president’s refusal to take the L. (Emphasis in the original.)

In July 2026, the United States secured an indictment against Defendant David C. Hearn for felony destruction of property based upon allegations that he had damaged the lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Within a month, the government recognized that its prosecution lacked merit. It reached this conclusion not because it had misidentified Mr. Hearn as the perpetrator of the alleged act, but because no crime had occurred: the observed damage to the Reflecting Pool was due to a contractor’s “rushed and botched” installation of the lining while conducting renovations, and Mr. Hearn’s actions had no effect on the value of the Pool.

While the DOJ more often than not dismisses cases without prejudice, it had no reason to believe it could actually bring a credible case at some point in the future — not with what it had stated in court during its motion to dismiss. That it chose not to accept Hearn’s motion to dismiss with prejudice was similarly stupid, prompting the court to demand an explanation in person from DOJ lawyers.

The court isn’t going to let the DOJ keep Hearn dangling until Trump leaves office/the statute of limitations expires. There’s no case here now, says the court. And there’s no case waiting further up the road, either.

While the government wishes to hold open the possibility of the development of evidence that would support a future prosecution, its own representations make plain that such a possibility is theoretical at best, and more likely, is simply fanciful.

What makes this different from dozens of other dismissals without prejudice by the DOJ is that this isn’t the DOJ just hedging its bets. There’s the real and persistent threat that Trump’s DOJ will try again, no matter how “theoretical” or “fanciful” the case will be. That’s because Trump has been applying pressure since the first dismissal and openly stated he’s going to try again as soon as he can find someone willing to do this particularly dirty work.

These unique facts mean the court can’t stand idly by and hope Trump and/or his DOJ find something better to do with their time. Hearn was absolved by the DOJ’s own admissions. There’s no reason he needs to spend the next six years living under the threat of possible prosecution.

The Court respects the authority of the Office of the United States Attorney to decide which cases to prosecute and which to dismiss. However, in the exceptional circumstances posed by this case, the government has no right to retain the ability to compound the errors it has already made, or even to threaten to do so, at Mr. Hearn’s expense.

That’s it. This case is permanently closed. And everything admitted to by the DOJ and the pool contractor itself should hopefully result in dismissals of charges against the other handful of people rounded up by the DOJ to satisfy Trump’s braying bloodlust.

Kanji of the Day: 台 [Kanji of the Day]

台

✍5

小2

pedestal, a stand, counter for machines and vehicles

ダイ　タイ

うてな　われ　つかさ

舞台   (ぶたい)   —   stage (of a theater, concert hall, etc.)
仙台   (せんだい)   —   Sendai (city in Miyagi)
台湾   (たいわん)   —   Taiwan
台数   (だいすう)   —   number of large objects such as cars, computers, etc.
台風   (たいふう)   —   typhoon
表彰台   (ひょうしょうだい)   —   victory stand
台詞   (せりふ)   —   line (in a play, film, comic, etc.)
台場   (だいば)   —   fort
台所   (だいどこ)   —   kitchen
土台   (どだい)   —   foundation

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 墳 [Kanji of the Day]

墳

✍15

中学

tomb, mound

フン

古墳   (こふん)   —   ancient burial mound
古墳時代   (こふんじだい)   —   Kofun period (of Japanese history, 250-538 CE)
前方後円墳   (ぜんぽうこうえんふん)   —   keyhole-shaped tumulus (form of ancient Imperial grave)
墳丘   (ふんきゅう)   —   tumulus
円墳   (えんふん)   —   round burial mound
墳墓   (ふんぼ)   —   grave
方墳   (ほうふん)   —   flat-topped burial mound

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

12:00 AM

Brendan Carr Is Making It Easier For Republicans To Harass You With Midterm AI Robocalls [Techdirt]

Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr loves to insist he’s being tough on robocalls, which have increasingly rendered U.S. voice communications networks less and less usable. Except whenever you actually dig into his plans, it usually involves making it easier for big companies and Republicans — who often use the same tactics as outright scammers — to hammer you with spam calls you don’t want.

One recent case in point: the Trump FCC is calling for public comment on a petition by the advocacy group Club for Growth that would allow political robocalls — including those using an AI-generated voice — to reach out to cellphones without prior consent.

According to the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), FCC approval of the new scheme would subject people to more unwanted, automated calls and could spread misinformation and “deepfakes” mimicking recognizable voices ahead of the midterm elections:

“A federal law, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), requires robocallers to obtain consent before making automated calls to cellphone numbers. Callers who ignore the law can face expensive private lawsuits or government enforcement actions. 

But the Club for Growth wants to scrap that protection. The petition proposes, instead, that callers be allowed to make AI-generated political calls to cellphones as long as they are limited to three calls per 30-day period and stop within 10 days of being asked to stop – a limitation advocates warn is meaningless due to the multitude of political action committees, campaigns, and non-profits that could make unsolicited, AI-voice robocalls. Allowing calls to continue for 10 days after a stop request will let political callers of any party bombard voters in the run-up to the election.”

Folks interested in providing Brendan Carr some feedback can head to the FCC comment website, type 02-278 on the “Proceeding(s)” line; enter your name and address, type your brief comments sharing your concerns with AI-voiced political robocalls; agree to the privacy terms; review; and submit your comment.

The NCLC has been pointing out for years that letting your voice communications networks get taken over by corporations, debt collectors, and scammers isn’t normal. It’s the direct result of captured politicians like Carr endlessly creating new loopholes that benefit big companies and politicians — which in turn weakens oversight of all offenders and makes the robocall problem endlessly worse.

According to the YouMail Robocall Index, Americans were bombarded with 3.9 billion unwanted robocalls during the month of August alone. Or the equivalent of 5.2 million robocalls every single hour. And those are summertime numbers that generally climb once the fall arrives.

In late April, the Trump FCC also announced it was also considering the development of new “Know Your Customer” rules requiring that the buyer of any new phone present a government ID, a physical address, a full legal name, and an existing phone number at the point of sale. This has raised eyebrows among activists who say there are numerous good reasons to protect cell phone anonymity, and the effort is less about stopping scams and fraud and more about ramping up surveillance in coordination with ICE.

Monday 2026-10-05

10:00 PM

Create a handoff doc [Seth Godin's Blog on marketing, tribes and respect]

Imagine if your job required you to maintain an updated handoff doc, something the boss could give to a new hire that would let them immediately get caught up on the work. All the file names, locations, assumptions, choices, dilemmas and contacts, organized and ready to go.

Creating something like this would be annoying and time consuming, and eventually we’d get very little done. In addition, we like leaving our intuition a bit unexamined and our choices somewhat undocumented.

But…

This is something your AI should be very good at. Clarity, documentation, commented analysis, all there, every day, an ongoing roadmap that makes it easier to unwind activities or transfer them to a different platform. Here’s a prompt you can cut and paste into the AI you use the most:


Maintain a handoff doc for this work. Its reader is a smart stranger
who has to take over tomorrow with no access to me or to our chats.
At the end of any session where something changed, update the doc before
you finish, without being asked. If nothing changed, say so in one line.
The doc has these sections, always in this order:
1. WHAT THIS IS — two or three sentences: the project, who it's for,
   what "done" looks like.
2. CURRENT STATE — what works, what's half-built, what's broken. Dated.
3. WHERE THINGS LIVE — every file, folder, account, URL, and tool, with
   the exact name and location. No "the spreadsheet." Name it.
4. DECISIONS — each choice we made, the alternatives we rejected, and why.
   Never delete a decision; if we reverse one, mark it superseded and
   note the date and reason.
5. ASSUMPTIONS — things we're treating as true but haven't verified.
   Flag which ones would hurt most if wrong.
6. OPEN QUESTIONS & DILEMMAS — unresolved tensions, stated plainly,
   with the leading options.
7. PEOPLE — who's involved, their role, how to reach them, what they're
   waiting on.
8. NEXT STEPS — the first three things a newcomer should do.
9. HOW TO UNWIND — what it would take to stop, hand off, or move this
   to another platform.
Rules:
- Distinguish what I told you from what you inferred. Mark inferences.
- Record the reasoning, not just the outcome. The "why" is the valuable part.
- Be specific enough that someone could act without asking a question.
- If something I say contradicts the doc, point it out instead of
  silently changing it.
- Keep it tight. Cut stale detail into a dated one-line summary rather
  than letting the doc bloat.
- If you're unsure whether something belongs, include it under
  Open Questions.

The prompt needs a permanent home: put it in stored instructions (along with the doc itself), so it loads every time instead of depending on you to paste it.

Over time, the document will get larger, but that’s okay, it’s better than not having it.

      

04:00 PM

DNS Resolver Quad9 Rejects French Piracy Blocks, Weighs Exit as beIN Seeks Up to €580K a Day [TorrentFreak]

quad9Since 2024, French courts have repeatedly ordered public DNS resolvers to block access to pirate sports streaming sites.

Not every provider accepted this. For example, OpenDNS suspended its service in France in response to the first blocking order.

Quad9 stayed in France. The Swiss non-profit foundation said that it had to block the targeted sites for all users worldwide to remain in compliance, and announced that it would appeal. Meanwhile, the blocking orders kept coming.

In May, the Paris Judicial Court required Google, DNS4EU operator Whalebone and Quad9 to block pirate streams of WTA tennis matches for users in France. This order was requested by beIN Sports and initially listed six domains. According to Quad9, 52 more were added in two later updates, bringing the total to 58.

Now, Quad9 is not blocking any of the domains. In fact, the foundation informed TorrentFreak that it never has. That is a conscious decision, and one that may come at a price.

beIN Returns for Penalties

beIN wanted financial penalties from the start. When it requested the blocking order, the broadcaster asked the court to add a penalty of €2,000 per day for every domain Quad9 failed to block. Quad9 was singled out specifically and the other DNS resolvers didn’t face the same request.

The court declined beIN’s penalty request, explaining that nothing indicated at that point that the foundation intends to resist (“entende résister”) the order. If problems arose later, the parties could return, the court wrote.

Penalty denied

Penalty denied

That is what beIN has done indeed. Quad9 informed TorrentFreak that the broadcaster went back to the Paris court to request penalties. According to Quad9, beIN now seeks €10,000 per domain, per day, which adds up to €580,000 per day for the 58 domains on the list.

The case was heard before the Paris court last Thursday and a decision is expected to follow in three weeks. The potential penalties would apply from the moment the order comes in and run in the millions of euros per week.

There are no public notes of the hearing that we know of, but Quad9 explained in detail why it is not blocking any of the domain names, despite facing the potentially bankrupting fines.

The DNS Blocking Problem

Technically Quad9 can block the domain names and avoid further pressure. However, the foundation says that it can’t limit the pirate site blocks to users in France, which is what the court order requires.

The DNS resolver doesn’t collect user data. This means that it would have to rely on third-party databases that link IP addresses to locations to pinpoint users. That’s a problem, Quad9 argues, because these databases are incomplete or inaccurate.

“There is no legally useful way for us to define a French user,” Quad9 tells us.

The foundation has learned this the hard way. In Germany, where Sony Music took the DNS resolver to court and, according to Quad9, judges found that its attempt to limit a block to German users was not good enough. Quad9 eventually won the case on appeal, but that finding was never overturned.

Convincing the Paris court will not be straightforward either. In the May order, the court noted that the defendants failed to show that limiting the blocks to French territory would be costly or technically impossible.

Alternatively, Quad9 can block the domain names globally, as it said it would in 2024. It also did so in Germany in 2023, under the threat of penalties. When asked why it isn’t doing the same now, the foundation explained that the German block was a temporary measure while the case played out. It added that conditions in Germany were different, and that it approaches each case on its own terms.

“We remain entirely confident in our core argument: DNS recursive resolvers are the wrong place to counter the problem of online piracy, and will result in significantly worse outcomes for the citizens of France,” Quad9 says.

Quad9 is not the only party that raises these concerns. Earlier this year, a report published by the Internet Society warned that smaller DNS operators pay the highest price for blocking orders.

“Large, well-resourced operators may be able to absorb the compliance costs, but smaller and non-profit operators risk being excluded from the market if they cannot afford the staffing and compliance infrastructure demanded by jurisdiction-specific blocking orders,” the report reads.

Excluded from the market

Excluded from the market

Leaving France?

If the court grants beIN’s request, Quad9 will have to take action to avoid millions of euros in fines per week. The foundation told us that it essentially has three options left then.

Quad9 can implement a block for French users only, which it says would be inaccurate and still leave it open to fines. Alternatively, it can block the domains globally which, according to Quad9, would essentially extend French jurisdiction across the world.

The final option is to stop serving users it believes are in France altogether, as OpenDNS did in 2024. How accurate that measure is remains to be seen as well.

Quad9 says it has yet to discuss these options with its Foundation Council, noting that it must remain law-abiding without putting its own existence at risk.

“Additionally, we are required by Swiss law to abide by our founding principles of privacy, security, and stability of the internet and how those principles are applied to our user community in a consistent and predictable manner in all areas,” Quad9 notes.

‘Recklessly Dangerous’

The decision isn’t getting any easier now that France prepares to expand its blocking measures. In July, the French Parliament adopted a law that allows new domains to be added automatically during live broadcasts, with regulator ARCOM reviewing them after the fact.

Quad9 sees this as a dangerous development, on top of an already quite concerning blocking requirement.

“An unfettered, unencumbered and delegated power given to an unspecified list of commercial parties to block any content they desire seems to us recklessly dangerous, un-necessary, and counter-productive,” it tells us.

The foundation believes that this will drive people to use less secure systems in unknown jurisdictions. At the same time, the costs associated with continued real-time updates would likely rule out any meaningful vetting, Quad9 adds.

“Dynamic injection of false answers weaponizes the DNS against end users,” the foundation says. “This blocking method will be proven to be ineffective, wasteful, and will not achieve the goal of removing the content which remains as reachable as ever.”

For now, the next step in this blocking saga is up to the Paris court. A decision on the penalties is expected to come in later this month and Quad9 will likely announce its response shortly after.

—

A copy of the May 13 order (RG 26/02207) is available here (pdf). We reached out to beIN Sports for a comment, but the company informed us that it will not comment on the ongoing procedure.

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

09:00 AM

06:00 AM

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt [Techdirt]

This week, our first place winner is danderbandit with a comment about the California ruling against a rogue sheriff who seized 650,000 ballots:

So a sheriff broke the law, was confirmed by the state’s top court on two counts. But he is still working as the county sheriff. When is he going to be held to account and what will be the consequences?

Don’t bother looking it up, I have it here. He will be allowed to ride out his current term of office and ride off into the sunset. Or he will be allowed to resign his position and retire with his pension.

Very rough consequences!

In second place, it’s Rocky with a comment about AI-generated mathematical proofs that no human understands well enough to explain:

If we don’t understand it and can’t explain it, is the proof then really complete?

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment about the sheriff, this time from an anonymous commenter:

we live in a country where you can be fined millions of dollars for downloading music but stealing ballots gets you a “hey, cut that out”

Next, it’s Stephen T. Stone spelling out the difference between Trump’s and Obama’s attacks on the press:

Yes. Yes, it is. Also: Obama tried to ban Fox News from a single press pool interview of a low-level cabinet official, whereas Trump tried to ban three major news outlets from the White House entirely (including CNN, which is one of the five networks that share press pool duties). Also also: Obama voluntarily backed off the attempted ban soon after trying, whereas Trump needed a court order to tell him “lmao no stop your shit” and he’s still trying to see how far he can go without potentially involving the Supreme Court. Funny how context changes things, huh?

Over on the funny side, we’re back to the sheriff post again for our first place winner Thad, who responded the question of whether said sheriff would end up in Trump’s FBI:

I dunno, how much bestiality does he do?

In second place it’s Immortan Joe with a little quip about the overuse of the word “addiction”:

Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!

For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with one last anonymous comment about the California sheriff:

“… and therefore we find Mr. Bianco to be guilty of an aggravated felony under color of law and thus order him imprisoned for the term of one day per seized ballot, to be served consecutively, with the possibility of parole or early release no sooner than halfway through his sentence, and to pay a fine of $100 per ballot…”

“beep beep beep beep WHUMP”. Sorry, that was my alarm clock going off. Maybe I can dream a little longer…

Finally, it’s an anonymous comment about Trump’s push to rename AI:

Super Intelligence is to Trump what Super Bowl is to bowls.

That’s all for this week, folks!

03:00 AM

Kanji of the Day: 同 [Kanji of the Day]

同

✍6

小2

same, agree, equal

ドウ

おな.じ

同じ   (おなじ)   —   same
同社   (どうしゃ)   —   the same company
同市   (どうし)   —   same city
同時に   (どうじに)   —   coincident with
同士   (どうし)   —   fellow
同日   (どうじつ)   —   the same day
共同   (きょうどう)   —   cooperation
同様   (どうよう)   —   same
同じよう   (おなじよう)   —   similar
同僚   (どうりょう)   —   coworker

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 宜 [Kanji of the Day]

宜

✍8

中学

best regards, good

ギ

よろ.しい　よろ.しく

適宜   (てきぎ)   —   suitable
便宜   (びんぎ)   —   convenience
宜しく   (よろしく)   —   well
宜しい   (よろしい)   —   good
宜しければ   (よろしければ)   —   if you please
方が宜しい   (ほうがよろしい)   —   had better
時宜   (じぎ)   —   right time
便宜を図る   (べんぎをはかる)   —   to suit the convenience of
便宜上   (べんぎじょう)   —   for convenience
便宜的   (べんぎてき)   —   convenient

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

地理系ブックカフェ空想地図 OSM タグ付け何でも相談室 [OpenStreetMap Japan]

東京の駒沢で写真を基に OSM のタグ付けを議論するイベントを開催します。 日程: 2026/10/18 15:00-17:00 場所: 地理系ブックカフェ空想地図 関東で OSM 周りのイベントが少ないので、オフラインで交流を図ると良いのかなぁと思って企画しました。 写真をプロジェクターで投影して、わいわい議論するようなイメージです。 議論のための写真のネタ提供は大歓迎です。 初の試みで、どういうイベントになるか分からないですが、 関東の OSM コミュニティを盛り上げるためにも、 参加検討していただけると幸いです。 詳細: https://osm.connpass.com/event/404040/

Sunday 2026-10-04

09:00 PM

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

I’d heard a lot about critical theory but didn’t really understand what was being talked about. The Frankfurt School of the 1930s wasn’t really a school. It was philosophers and academics who were arguing with each other about how the world actually works — and about why people keep accepting arrangements that hurt them. And like many things called ‘theories’, it’s easy to be confused about what’s actually being said.

Their core insight: most of what we call “normal” was designed by someone, for a reason, and that reason might not be your reason.

Traditional science tries to describe the world as it is. Critical theory asks: “who benefits from the world being described that way?”

When an economist says “the market determines wages,” that sounds neutral. But it isn’t. It’s a choice about what to measure and what to ignore. It’s a story. And stories can be told differently.

Pioneers like Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse (followed and reworked by Habermas)— looked at modern industrial society and noticed that Reason, with a capital R, which was supposed to liberate us, had turned into a tool of control. The Enlightenment promised freedom. What we got instead was efficiency.

They called it instrumental reason: the habit of thinking about how to do things without ever asking whether we should.

Reification: when the made-up becomes the inevitable

The word that unlocks the concept is reification. Human social relations and systems appear as natural, thing-like and outside our control because we end up treating them as if they were rocks. Permanent. Objective. Not up for discussion.

“That’s just how business works.”
“That’s just how things are.”
“You can’t fight human nature.”

Each of those sentences is a reification. Someone built a thing. Now they’re insisting it can’t be unbuilt.

Critical theory’s job is to thaw what has been frozen. To remind us that the rules we’re following were written by someone, and can be rewritten.

Systems are often invisible, and they hide behind normal. When in doubt, consider the system that we’ve assumed is the only way.

The Frankfurt School wasn’t just academic. They were trying to explain how otherwise reasonable people went along with war, consumerism and conformity.

Their answer: the system shapes what feels obvious. What feels like common sense. What feels like “just being realistic.”

Which means the most important thing a marketer, a leader, a maker can do is ask: am I solving a real problem, or am I reinforcing a convenient story about what people are supposed to want?

When someone points at a system and describes the interests of those who supported it, two things can happen.

The first: curiosity. Who built it? Why? What would a different version look like?

The second: discomfort.

If you’ve organized your identity around the map being true — if your status, your choices, your self-image all depend on the current arrangement being natural and inevitable — then someone questioning the map isn’t being philosophical.

They’re threatening you.

The fact that your status feels threatened is a self-reflective tell. Of course it feels threatened. That’s what the system wants you to feel.

“The market rewards hard work” isn’t just an economic claim for a lot of people. It’s a story about why they deserve what they have. Poke that story and you’re not critiquing capitalism. You’re telling them their success was partly luck, partly structural, partly the result of systems that excluded others.

Most of the fury isn’t intellectual. It’s tribal.

Critical theory became associated with universities and with certain political movements. So defending against it became a marker of identity for the other tribe. You’re not critiquing the argument — you’re signaling which team you’re on.

That’s ironic, right? Because “this belief is really about status and belonging, not truth” is exactly the kind of thing critical theory would say about the people attacking critical theory.

It’s tempting to announce that some questions aren’t allowed.

Those are usually the most important questions.

      

08:00 AM

Just for Skeets and Giggles (10.3.26) [The Status Kuo]

As we head into the election that will define our nation’s future, let us reflect upon the wisdom of our dearly departed Dolly Parton.

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The rest of the world sees him for what he is. Will our voters?

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If the polls are correct, all he’s got left are the die-hard MAGAs.

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Some of what happens these days you really can’t make up. Like this moment.

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Or this one, when the oligarchs and Trump signed the so-called “Super Intelligence” agreement.

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SNL sent up our addled president’s constant companion, Natalie Harpie. I mean, Harp.

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The White House keeps sending JD Vance to explain and sanewash, but it’s not going well.

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Former GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger has been lighting up the internet, and Vance, lately.

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Meanwhile, Pete Hegseth has a new line about whom he doesn’t want in the military.

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This was almost too easy.

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I spit up my mushroom chai latte when I saw this.

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Still, nothing could prepare us for the self-own that Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) handed us this week.

If you’ve been under a rock, Schmitt came charging for former special counsel Jack Smith and tried to land a gotcha and a perjury charge, but he threw an air ball instead.

Or more concisely,

Well, pretty much everyone does.

Acceptable use of AI here.

Another acceptable use:

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He was so sure he had grabbed Smith by the pressie.

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But it took Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Smith mere minutes to debunk this and show where Smith had really been.

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But it wasn’t that bad a whiff, right?

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Fani Willis got in on the action.

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If you missed my piece on when the Schmitt hit the Fani, you can read it here.

The takes on Schmitt’s epic fail were amazing. The senator be all like,

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Internet, do your thing.

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And this one:

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Jack Smith grinning (actually grinning!) when he realized Schmitt was about to crash and hard has become its own meme.

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See?

As has the face of Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) when she realized how bad this was going to be for the prosecution. For the “My Cousin Vinny” fans out there—

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Or for you Elle Woods fans…

IMG_2696.heic

This classic Edvard Munch painting has become a go-to in this dark era of our democracy, but I particularly appreciate it here.

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The guys in the back though.

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This is *chef’s kiss*.

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In times like these, it’s important to lift up competent, even joyful governance. The crowd in Los Angeles goes wild for the NYC mayor!

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I mean, New York City is such a dangerous, extreme place now.

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Take a moment to support my work! We’ve got just over 30 days to the midterms, and I’ll keep bringing sanity, clarity and a touch of humor to get us through this together. It means long hours and time away from my kids and extra help at home, so if you’ve been meaning to support my efforts, please consider doing so today!

Subscribe now

Dogs are a blessing in so many ways, and my own fits this description well.

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Your awww moment of the day.

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This pupper is famous for his squeals, and I can see why. Sound up, but not too high!

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I think this one believes he is still a small dog.

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A sign I can really appreciate as I sit typing this by my own window.

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On the other hand, there’s the cat.

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They say it’s a vibe economy.

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Puss pancake face is my new favorite look.

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Okay, I can’t unsee this now.

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My cat would just stare at the window cleaners in NYC with a face asking, “What took you so long?”

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Some privacy, please!

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It’s a hard rock life.

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I have watched this many times and still crack up. You’ll see why.

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On the subject of owls,

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I have no idea what my kids will be capable of with the computing power available to them, but it’s already like this and I feel it deeply.

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This is me and my garage right now.

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The algorithm has figured out I love Aussie humor, so it’s been serving it up to me. Which means you get to enjoy some, too! Here is a compilation of Aaron Chen from Down Under. I aspire to this level of fast funny!

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The algo also knows I love me some UK humor, so I’ve been watching and fans have been sending in clips.

I think it’s the properness of it all, combined with the bawdiness, that gets me. And I learned a new term!

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They say things we don’t really ever say in the U.S. Still, you really don’t come back from this very easily.

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This was the hilarious sequel to the box game from an earlier newsletter:

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I’ll never hear these lyrics the same way after this.

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As I’ve mentioned before, I tried to date a guy with a very strong Scottish accent, and I had to end it because I couldn’t understand a word he said. Apparently, neither can elevators?

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This is an oldie forwarded by a reader featuring Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert. Still funny all these years later!

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I was fascinated by the musicality of this.

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And the dexterity of this!

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And the trickery of this:

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One of my favorite dad joke champs is back to close things out!

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Have a great weekend!

Jay

07:00 AM

Two U.S. Site-Blocking Bills Compete Over VPN Rules and ISP Liability [TorrentFreak]

congressFor more than a decade after the SOPA protests, pirate site blocking was a subject U.S. lawmakers preferred to avoid.

That changed last month, when two site blocking bills were introduced in Congress within ten days of each other.

The first, introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, is the American Copyright Protection Act (ACPA) which would allow courts to order ISPs, DNS resolvers, and VPNs to block foreign pirate sites.

The second is the DEFEND IP Act, introduced by Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Ben Cline in the House, with Senators Thom Tillis, Chris Coons, Marsha Blackburn, and Adam Schiff leading in the Senate. It merges Lofgren’s FADPA and the Senate’s Block BEARD proposal into the unified bill TorrentFreak reported on in April.

At first glance, both bills look fairly similar. They use federal courts to target foreign pirate sites only, and both leave the technical blocking measures up to the providers. The differences are in the details, however, starting with which intermediaries can be ordered to block.

ACPA (H.R. 10364) DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575)
VPNs Covered Excluded (if exclusively a VPN)
ISP threshold 100,000 monthly users or subscribers 50,000 subscribers
DNS resolvers Covered Only public resolvers with over $100 million in revenue
Pirate site test “Only limited” commercially significant purpose beyond infringement “No” commercially significant purpose beyond infringement
ISP damages shield Yes, for all providers, from day one No
Cost reimbursement Must be ordered, may be reduced; covers staff time At the court’s discretion; no overhead
Rightsholder bond Yes No
Overblocking compensation Up to $250,000 (rightsholder’s error only) None
Courts Designated judge roster Any district court

Who Has to Block?

Under the ACPA, any broadband provider, DNS resolver, or VPN with 100,000 or more monthly users or subscribers in the United States can be named in a blocking order. Smaller services are exempt, as well as root nameservers and top-level domain registries.

The DEFEND IP Act takes a different approach. It covers broadband providers with at least 50,000 subscribers, which effectively means that more smaller ISPs are covered. DNS resolvers, however, only qualify if they are public and have more than $100 million in annual revenue.

VPNs are left out altogether. The DEFEND IP Act explicitly excludes services that exclusively provide VPN connections or similar encrypted routing, as well as DNS services that only work through encrypted protocols, such as DoH.

That makes VPNs the clearest difference between the two U.S. blocking bills. A VPN provider with 100,000 American users could be ordered to block pirate sites under Issa’s bill, while it would not be targeted by Lofgren’s version.

Who has to block

ACPA (H.R. 10364)§1601(6)(B) and (C)

(B) INCLUSIONS.—The term ‘service provider’ includes providers of broadband internet access services, providers of domain name resolution services, and virtual private networks, but excludes root nameserver operators and top level domain registries.

(C) EXCLUSIONS.—The term ‘service provider’ excludes—

(i) any entity that provides services to fewer than 100,000 monthly users or subscribers in the United States; […]

DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575)§502A(a)(1) and (6)

(1) BROADBAND PROVIDER.—The term ‘broadband provider’ means a provider of broadband internet access service, […] that provides such service to not fewer than 50,000 subscribers.

(6) SERVICE PROVIDER.—The term ‘service provider’—

(A) means—

(i) a broadband provider; or

(ii) a provider of public domain name resolution services that has an annual revenue of more than $100,000,000; and

(B) does not include—

(i) an entity that provides domain name system resolution functions or services exclusively through encrypted DNS protocols;

(ii) an entity that exclusively provides virtual private network services or similar service that encrypt and route user traffic through intermediary servers; […]

Highlights added by TorrentFreak

The ACPA wasn’t always this broad in scope. The discussion draft that we covered last year exempted any ISP with 1% or less of the U.S. broadband market. That excluded pretty much every provider with fewer than 1.2 million customers. The introduced bill dropped that exemption, adding smaller ISPs and VPNs as blocking intermediaries.

What is a Pirate Site?

Both bills rely on a three factor test to decide if a foreign site can be blocked. A site qualifies if it is primarily designed for infringement, if it is marketed to promote infringement, or if it has little legitimate use. The bills describe that requirement differently.

The DEFEND IP Act requires that a site has “no commercially significant purpose or use” beyond copyright infringement. The ACPA, on the other hand, settles for a site that has only limited commercially significant purpose beyond providing access to infringing material. That is a lower bar.

Pirate site test

ACPA (H.R. 10364)§1602(b)(5)

(5) the accused online service—

(A) is primarily designed or provided for the purpose of providing access to material that violates an exclusive right or protection afforded under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than providing access to material that violates an exclusive right or protection afforded under this title; or

(C) is marketed by or at the direction of the operator of the accused online service to promote the use of the foreign online service in committing a violation of an exclusive right or protection afforded under this title.

DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575)§502A(b)(2)(B)

(B) upon a showing by the petitioner that the foreign online location described in subparagraph (A)—

(i) is primarily designed or primarily provided for the purpose of violating an exclusive right or protection afforded under this title;

(ii) has no commercially significant purpose or use other than committing a violation described in clause (i); or

(iii) is intentionally marketed by or at the direction of the operator of the foreign online location to promote the use of the foreign online location in committing a violation described in clause (i).

Highlights added by TorrentFreak

There is a second difference that’s more subtle. The ACPA targets sites that provide access to pirated material, which covers linking and indexing sites as well as hosts. The DEFEND IP Act refers to sites designed for the purpose of infringing, which is less explicit about sites that only link to content hosted elsewhere.

Both bills also let rightsholders act before any infringement takes place. The ACPA covers operators who will violate a right, not only those already doing so. DEFEND IP does something similar for live events, allowing a site to be targeted when a transmission will likely infringe, and it lets courts issue designations ex parte, without hearing the site operator first.

The Liability Shield

The largest difference between the two bills has little to do with blocking itself. It relates to what happens to the piracy liability of ISPs and other providers after a site has been declared a pirate site.

The ACPA includes a broad liability shield, which covers every service provider the bill applies to, whether it was ordered to block anything or not.

“A service provider, whether or not named in an order issued under section 1604(d), shall not be liable for monetary relief for any claim of direct or secondary infringement of copyright arising from the service provider having provided or enabled, or continuing to provide or enable, access to a foreign piracy site, unless the service provider acted or is acting in active concert with the foreign piracy site to infringe the exclusive rights of any copyright owner,” the bill reads.

This means that, once a court has declared a site a pirate site, no copyright holder can win damages from a provider for carrying traffic to it, unless that provider is actively working with the site. This provision takes effect on the day the bill is signed, which is six months before the rest of the law.

The shield has expanded quite a bit since last year. Issa’s early discussion draft only protected providers that were named in an order, only against the rightsholder that obtained the order, and only for activity after the order was issued. The introduced bill dropped these limits.

The DEFEND IP Act takes a different approach. It protects providers that implement an order in good faith, and it shields them from claims by the blocked site. There’s no piracy liability shield. In fact, the text specifies that nothing in the bill affects the DMCA’s safe harbors or the principles of secondary liability.

Liability

ACPA (H.R. 10364)§1610(b)

A service provider, whether or not named in an order issued under section 1604(d), shall not be liable for monetary relief for any claim of direct or secondary infringement of copyright arising from the service provider having provided or enabled, or continuing to provide or enable, access to a foreign piracy site, unless the service provider acted or is acting in active concert with the foreign piracy site to infringe the exclusive rights of any copyright owner.

DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575)§502A(i)

(i) Rules of construction.—Nothing in this section may be construed to affect—

(1) the applicability or interpretation of any other provision of law or principle of equity, including—

(A) the requirements of section 512 or any other provision of this title;

(B) principles of secondary liability; or

(C) section 1651 of title 28; or

(2) the limitation on the liability of a service provider under section 512.

Highlights added by TorrentFreak

Liability was a key point of contention in site-blocking discussions last year. In May 2025, Senator Chris Coons told a Senate hearing that progress was finally being made, but that Internet providers wanted something in return.

“It finally feels like we’re making some real progress here on site blocking after years. One of the key roadblocks to getting a final deal is whether ISPs should benefit from immunity, both prospectively and retrospectively,” Senator Coons said.

The MPA’s Karyn Temple responded that site blocking laws elsewhere had not led to lawsuits against ISPs, so there was little to protect them from.

“ISPs have not routinely been sued for enforcing site blocking regimes. So, you know, I think in our experience, we don’t think that this is a provision that is necessary at all,” Temple replied.

Sixteen months later, the bill Coons co-sponsors has no piracy-damages shield, while Issa’s has a broad one.

Who Pays?

Site blocking costs money, and both bills allow providers to recover some expenses from rightsholders. How much differs between the two proposals.

Under the DEFEND IP Act, reimbursement is at the court’s discretion and only direct compliance costs can be claimed. Capital expenditures, infrastructure, overhead, and attorneys’ fees are excluded.

“Upon motion by a service provider subject to an order issued under this subsection, the court may order the petitioner that sought the order to pay reasonable costs directly incurred by the service provider to comply with the order,” the bill reads.

The ACPA is more generous. If a provider documents its costs, the court must order reimbursement. It can’t deny it, but the amount can be reduced. These costs can also include overhead that’s linked directly to the order, such as the salary costs of specialized staff for the time they spend on it.

Costs

ACPA (H.R. 10364)§1609(c)(1) and (d)

(1) The reimbursement awarded may include any commercially reasonable cost actually and directly incurred by the named service provider to implement the order, including portions of overhead costs directly incurred specifically to implement the order, such as portions of salary costs for specialized personnel directly attributable to time spent on implementing the specific order at issue and not other orders or other tasks.

(d) […] the court shall issue an order requiring the copyright owner to provide the reimbursement to the named service provider within a time period set by the court, except that the court may reduce the reimbursement to prevent imposing an undue burden on the copyright owner considering the resources of the copyright owner.

DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575)§502A(c)(10)

(A) IN GENERAL.—Upon motion by a service provider subject to an order issued under this subsection, the court may order the petitioner that sought the order to pay reasonable costs directly incurred by the service provider to comply with the order.

(B) CONTENTS.—A motion made under subparagraph (A)—

(i) shall include a detailed list of each cost described in that subparagraph;

(ii) may not include costs for capital expenditures, infrastructure, overhead, or attorneys’ fees; and

(iii) shall be filed not later than 60 days after the date on which the costs sought to be recovered were incurred.

Highlights added by TorrentFreak

The ACPA requires rightsholders to post a bond for each site blocking order, to cover any provider that is wrongfully enjoined. DEFEND IP doesn’t have this requirement.

Overblocking is treated differently too. Under the ACPA, the operator of a legitimate site that gets blocked by mistake can claim up to $250,000 in compensation, provided the rightsholder caused the error. DEFEND IP allows site operators to ask the court to fix an order, without offering compensation.

A Public Blocklist?

Transparency is a key element to inform the public on site-blocking, but it is often lacking. In most countries, the public has no official way to find out what is blocked. The U.S. bills do offer transparency, at least on paper.

The ACPA requires the Copyright Office to keep a public registry of all active blocking orders. In addition, rightsholders must also file a notice of each case at the Copyright Office, which is then published in the Federal Register.

The DEFEND IP Act requires courts to notify the Register of Copyrights whenever an order is issued, amended, or rescinded, and those notifications are published on the Copyright Office website. Since courts can amend orders when a site moves to a new domain, those updates should be added to the public record as well.

How useful either registry will be depends on what the orders contain. The bills don’t require domain names and IP addresses to appear in the published version. As TorrentFreak noted last year, publishing orders without those details creates a transparency illusion. The public sees that something is blocked but without further detail, which makes it hard to check for overblocking.

The two bills also differ on who handles the blocking requests. The ACPA sends everything to a roster of district judges picked by the Judicial Conference. DEFEND IP leaves cases with any appropriate district court.

Finally, it’s worth noting that two of the sponsors have limited time. Issa retires at the end of the year and Tillis’s term ends in January, so their bills have to move before the session closes. Whether the two will be merged, or one will simply overtake the other, has yet to be seen.

—

The full text of the ACPA (H.R. 10364) is available on Congress.gov, as is the DEFEND IP Act (H.R. 10575).

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

06:00 AM

02:00 AM

Taking F-Droid to IndiaFOSS [F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository]

This was the first time F-Droid had an official presence at IndiaFOSS, and I honestly did not know what to expect.

We actually had quite a lot of people coming by. Most were students, and many had never heard of F-Droid before. That made it a different experience.

A lot of the conversations started with the basics. What is F-Droid? Why would someone use it? How does it work? Can I put my app on it? Are there any subscription charges like apps on Play store?

Some people stayed and talked for a while. Some came back later with friends. Quite a few came up just to say that they were glad F-Droid was there. That last part was probably the nicest surprise.

People were also asking how they could help. We need that. F-Droid needs developers, but we also need testers and people willing to spend time using things, finding problems and reporting them properly.

There was a lot of discussion about AI too: People were tired of AI being pushed into every app and every product. There was quite a bit of frustration about AI-generated code and what everyone calls “AI slop”. Some people asked whether F-Droid would have an AI policy and how applications or contributions that make heavy use of AI should be handled. Those are not simple questions. There is a difference between using AI as a tool and simply generating something that nobody has properly understood, tested or taken responsibility for.

It was interesting to hear people asking these questions already. There seems to be a desire to get back to something a little more normal: build something, read the code, test it, fix it, talk to people and ship it.

The Android conversations were interesting too: People asked about Google’s Android Developer Verification system, certified devices and what these changes could mean for developers distributing outside Google Play. We talked about LineageOS, GrapheneOS and /e/OS, and the different choices people are making around Android.

Along came the Digital Markets Act. People wanted to know what the DMA and the European Commission’s work around Android might mean for alternative app stores, and whether all of these changes would make it harder for developers to distribute software independently.

These were not really abstract policy discussions. People wanted to know what would happen to their apps, their devices and their ability to distribute software.

F-Droid 2.0 was a regular topic. Several people came with issues and the missing download button on website, sometimes simply showing us what was happening on their phones.

We also met a lot of people from other projects. Our booth was next to the XMPP folks, with Badri, Divya, Perry and the rest of the group. It was really nice being alongside them for the two days.

I already knew quite a few people at IndiaFOSS, so the booth also became a place for old conversations to continue and new ones to start.

There was a recurring reaction from people who discovered us: “Wow, F-Droid is here!”

We even got invited to UbuntuCon to give a talk and several people told us that we should set up at MumbaiFOSS in October.

There was also quite a bit of interest in F-Droid’s presence in India and Asia. Many people were happy to hear that someone from India is on the F-Droid Board, and that there are possibilities for F-Droid to do more in this part of the world.

That was particularly nice for me. F-Droid is a global project, but there is a lot happening in India and across Asia that we can connect with.

The first floor was probably the one thing that worked against us. Plenty of people simply did not come upstairs, so I am sure we missed a lot of potential visitors.

The venue itself was big, but it was also hot. We were near one of the dome-like areas, and after standing there for two days, the heat certainly added to the tiredness.

Bengaluru was another story. The food nearby was good, but the hotel room was very small and the local transport was not quite as friendly to our wallets. Some of the auto drivers seemed to realise very quickly that we were from another city, and the prices almost always reflected that.

For my spouse, though, the whole experience seemed to be quite fun.

She went to IndiaFOSS knowing little about F-Droid and ended up spending two days talking about it to complete strangers. She found the whole thing interesting, full of enthusiasm and fun. She even sold more merchandise than I did. 😀

She also watched me being interviewed by some college students. Apparently, I was quite good and honest in the interview.

Her other observation was rather amusing. She said that my side of the FOSS and FLOSS world, if it were recorded properly and shown to our family members, would probably amaze them. It is apparently a very different world from the one they normally see.

She also called me a “mini celebrity”. Very mini, I should point out.

We came back tired, with fewer stickers, less merchandise and a lot more conversations.

And apparently, my spouse is now better at running an F-Droid booth than I am. I suppose I will have to remember that for the next one. 😉

Kanji of the Day: 帰 [Kanji of the Day]

帰

✍10

小2

homecoming, arrive at, lead to, result in

キ

かえ.る　かえ.す　おく.る　とつ.ぐ

帰国   (きこく)   —   return to one's country
復帰   (ふっき)   —   return
帰り   (かえり)   —   return
帰宅   (きたく)   —   returning home
帰る   (かえる)   —   to return
帰省   (きせい)   —   homecoming
帰れ   (かえれ)   —   go home
里帰り   (さとがえり)   —   returning home to one's parents (of a married person)
帰ってくる   (かえってくる)   —   to return
持ち帰り   (もちかえり)   —   takeout (food)

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

Kanji of the Day: 偏 [Kanji of the Day]

偏

✍11

中学

partial, side, left-side radical, inclining, biased

ヘン

かたよ.る

偏見   (へんけん)   —   prejudice
偏り   (かたより)   —   deviation
偏頭痛   (へんずつう)   —   migraine
偏重   (へんじゅう)   —   attaching too much importance to
偏食   (へんしょく)   —   unbalanced diet
偏在   (へんざい)   —   uneven distribution
偏る   (かたよる)   —   to lean (to one side)
偏屈   (へんくつ)   —   narrow-minded
偏愛   (へんあい)   —   favoritism
偏向   (へんこう)   —   propensity

Generated with kanjioftheday by Douglas Perkins.

12:00 AM

Pluralistic: Economic probabilities for our grandchildren (03 Oct 2026) [Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow]

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

Today's links

  • Economic probabilities for our grandchildren: If only data centers would stop hogging all the copper.
  • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
  • Object permanence: RIAA v P2P; Infoseek's anti-terror brain-scanner; Copyrighting every phone number; Carving pumpkins with cookie-cutters; Polish women go on strike; Latent labor in material world; Hitler's meth; "Flying Saucers Are Real!"; Hope, not optimism; Broadcast Flag talk; David Suzuki's free research; "Inquisitor's Apprentice"; California's tax ban made the rich MUCH richer; Union organizers caught Wells Fargo; Power poses aren't real; "Ghosts"; Criticizing tech; "Savage Love A-Z."
  • Upcoming appearances: Brighton, Virtual, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Paris, OVancouver, Victoria, Ottawa, Kilkenny, Montreal.
  • Recent appearances: Where I've been.
  • Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
  • Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
  • Colophon: All the rest.


The Earth from space; it is covered in scaffolding that is crawling with little rude mechanicals ganked from 17th century engravings of people operating machines.

Economic probabilities for our grandchildren (permalink)

The post-war "peace dividend" owed its existence to three factors: industrial capacity, political freedom and pent-up demand.

  • Industrial capacity: freed up by the war's end and the collapse of demand for munitions and materiel;

  • Political freedom: the war's orgy of capital destruction of the majority of the wealth (and thus the power) of the world's oligarchs;

  • Demand: Making up for years of neglect and privation during the war required new production of infrastructure and consumption goods.

In Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty and his students analyzed painstakingly assembled records of 300 years' worth of capital flows, showing that wealth tends to pool in the hands of the already-wealthy. This creates mounting instability, thanks to the misrule of a shrinking class of increasingly powerful hereditary, unaccountable oligarchs whose whims and follies trump the material and political needs of the vast majority:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/06/24/thomas-pikettys-capital-in-the-21st-century/

That instability eventually reaches a breaking point in which the old order collapses in spectacular fashion, and that collapse destroys vast amounts of capital stock. Since this breaking point arrives as a result of oligarchy, in which nearly all the world's wealth has been hoarded by a tiny number of people, those aristocrats are disproportionately impoverished by the conflagration. If 90% of the wealth is in the hands of 1% of the people, a war or disaster that wipes out most capital will mostly destroy the wealth of the 1%. The poor suffer terribly, but they start with nothing – and end with nothing.

We are clearly steaming into one of these situations. The wealthy squandered two generations preventing the world from taking the climate emergency, and now the inevitable has arrived. California is on track to see a 12 inch sea-level rise in the next month:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/30/california-kelvin-wave-sea-level-rise

That's just the overture to the American run of this year's "Super El Nino," a blockbuster whose out-of-town previews have been slaying massive crowds all over the world:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/03/bangkok-thailand-floods-breaking-point-stagnant-lakes

Also right on schedule: the misrule of oligarchs has elevated a con-man to the presidency, who trumps every other president for both corruption and incompetence. From oil to dollars, telecoms infrastructure to the internet itself, Donald Trump is doing everything in his power to end the American empire:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/16/technopoly/#trumpismo-is-praxis-question-mark-exclamation-point

A post-American world is on the horizon. What that world will look like is undecided. The US was always a wildly defective trusted third party, but it retained its status as the world's platform for generations thanks to the absence of credible alternatives. Now – as Mark Carney told the Davos crowd last year – the old system has "ruptured":

https://www.weforum.org/stories/forum-institutional/davos-2026-special-address-by-mark-carney-prime-minister-of-canada/

What will replace the dollar?

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/11/post-dollar-world/#de-dollarization

What will replace oil?

https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/11/cyber-rights-now/#better-late-than-never

What will replace the internet?

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition

No one knows. No one can know, because this is all up for grabs. The future isn't something that happens to us. The future is something that we make. And despite the horrible death toll that's locked in by waves of climate shocks – presided over by the dying, fumbling "drink bleach" guy – it's conceivable that the future we get will be a good one, if not an easy one.

A post-oligarch, post-American world could be a post-austerity world, one where we recognize that the limiting factor on public investment isn't money, but resources: energy, material, labor, expertise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FATQ0Yf0Fhc

Just as the post-war world led to the "30 glorious years" by mobilizing people and material to rebuild a shattered world and shattered lives, a post-American world might be one in which we find full, meaningful employment for all of us, all of our children, and all of their children:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trente_Glorieuses

As seas rise, we're going to have jobs for every person who is willing, building sea defenses and moving whole coastal cities inland. Two generations of neoliberalism has left us with massive shortages of housing stock, crumbling highways, inadequate schools and hospitals. That means we need to build lots more of these, and they can be built with state-of-the-art climate hardening, including geothermal heat, "passive home" designs, modern insulation, and heat-pumps. The rights-of-way for the interstate system would make dandy railbeds for arrow-straight, all electric high-speed rail powered by solar, wind and tides.

All of this has the potential to yield a second peace-dividend prosperity. A post-oligarch world can recover industrial capacity by diverting it away from destructive activity (data centers, luxury housing) to essential functions (climate defenses, decent housing for everyday people). A post-oligarch world can recover democratic excellence by removing the malign influence that morbid wealth exerts on our policy choices: for example, if we don't like the quality of public schools, we can fix them by giving schools more resources, not by letting billionaire dilettantes privatize and starve them in the name of "school choice":

https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/09/autocrats-of-trade-2/#witness-the-firepower-of-this-fully-armed-and-operational-battle-station

Finally, a post-oligarch society can provide us with an even more inclusive version of post-war prosperity: we can use the wages we earn by building a better world to acquire new homes, induction tops, EVs and ebikes, and beautiful heirloom computers that are built to last for generations, upgraded and maintained by their users:

https://www.edn.com/as-moores-law-slows-open-hardware-rises/

This is a world of material abundance and prosperity. Just as the post-war world made millions of people comfortable, educated and happy by putting them to work clearing the rubble and building something better, a post-oligarch, post-American world can offer us all all the hard, rewarding work we want, performing the essential work of care and rebuilding. We'll find that work by helping hundreds of millions of climate refugees, who will find work helping each other. This is all economically valuable, environmentally sustaining work that we have labor, energy and expertise for. It's just that all that labor, energy and expertise is being misallocated by the ultra-wealthy who don't even believe that the majority of us exist, and who want to bet the planet and our species on a bizarre scheme to feed so many words to the world-guessing machines that they wake up and become gods:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/05/13/vibe-governance/#k-hole

Nearly a century ago, John Maynard Keynes published "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren," where he extrapolated from rising productivity to predict a fifteen-hour work-week within two generations:

http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

That dream was destroyed by war and greed. Today, we are submerged in an ocean of debt. I'm not talking about the (fictional) "national debt" that is just a measure of all the dollars the government has spent into existence without taxing out of existence:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

I'm talking about fiscal debt: the solar we didn't build, the carbon we emitted instead; the rail we didn't build, the wildly inefficient aviation we substituted; the walkable, livable, transit-oriented cities we didn't build, the car-choked disasters we built instead. Oligarchic opposition to universal healthcare left us sick, with un- or undertreated illnesses and missed opportunities for prevention that left us with overlapping, population-scale health crises. All of this is debt that must be repaid: we can't walk away from it through bankruptcy. We must build the transit, cities, and systems of care – the infrastructure – our species needs to carry on human civilization. We can't keep hitting snooze on this, lest we are finally awoken by seawater lapping at our pillows.

The world we're in today is awful and terrifying. It's awful because of the climate ruptures we're living through. It's terrifying because we didn't just fail to avert this crisis – we did nothing to prepare for it, either.

As Piketty foretold, the misrule of oligarchs has led to an orgy of destruction, and while poor people will get the worst of it, oligarchs will pay the most, because they own nearly everything, which means they own everything that will be destroyed, too. None of that is good, and it would be better if we hadn't gotten into this situation in the first place.

But after a forest fire, the canopy opens; and when it does, the seedlings that were overshadowed for centuries by the old growth can sprout in the ashes and the sun. We can't afford to continue living under oligarchy, and as oligarchs' greed and folly drives the old system beyond its breaking point, we must seize the opportunity to build a better successor.

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)

#25yrago Leak: RIAA's anti-P2P strategy https://web.archive.org/web/20011019060035/https://www.dotcomscoop.com/riaa1003.html

#25yrsago Infoseek founder: my brain-scanner can find all the terrorists https://web.archive.org/web/20011009025805/http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/22020.html

#25yrsago Copyrighting every possible phone number as a touch-tone tune https://web.archive.org/web/20011007073546/http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/2001/10/04/FFX0PGT0CSC.html

#20yrsago What happens to password-locked data when you die? https://web.archive.org/web/20061106235805/http://news.com.com/Taking+passwords+to+the+grave/2100-1025_3-6118314.html

#20yrsago Audio of activist lawyer talk on Broadcast Flag and Chilling Effects https://web.archive.org/web/20061005074245/http://uscpublicdiplomacy.com/index.php/events/events_detail/1859/

#20yrsago David Suzuki: Steal my research – that’s what it’s for! https://web.archive.org/web/20061020144546/http://www.davidsuzuki.org/about_us/Dr_David_Suzuki/Article_Archives/weekly09290601.asp

#20yrsago Interdisciplinary DRM blog from my USC students https://uscpubd510.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2006-08-24T14:59:00-07:00&max-results=7&start=91&by-date=false

#15yrsag Inquisitor’s Apprentice: tenement sorcerers versus the robber barons in an alternate Gilded Age New York https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/04/inquisitors-apprentice-tenement-sorcerers-versus-the-robber-barons-in-an-alternate-gilded-age-new-york/

#15yrsago Context: Further Selected Essays on Productivity, Creativity, Parenting, and Politics in the 21st Century https://memex.craphound.com/2011/10/03/context-further-selected-essays-on-productivity-creativity-parenting-and-politics-in-the-21st-century/

#15yrsago Unicode’s “right-to-left” override obfuscates malware’s filenames https://krebsonsecurity.com/2011/09/right-to-left-override-aids-email-attacks/

#15yrsago HOWTO carve a pumpkin by hammering cookie-cutters into it https://web.archive.org/web/20200916004345/https://www.foodnetwork.com/fn-dish/shopping/cookie-cutter-pumpkin-carving

#15yrsago Shell funded warring militias in the Niger Delta https://web.archive.org/web/20111006003453/http://blog.platformlondon.org/2011/10/03/counting-the-cost-corporations-and-human-rights-abuses-in-the-niger-delta/

#10yrsago Sen Mitch McConnell blames Obama for bill that Obama vetoed and McConnell repeatedly voted for https://www.loweringthebar.net/2016/10/congress-blames-veto.html

#10yrsago Polish women go on strike over extreme anti-abortion law https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37540139

#10yrsago Survivors of CIA torture describe homebrew electric chair used at Afghan black site https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/10/03/interview-new-cia-torture-claims

#10yrsago Visualizing the latent emotional and bureaucratic labor in our material world https://xkcd.com/1741/

#10yrsago Meth, Hitler and the Reich: the true, untold story of the Nazis’ dependence on coke, meth and oxy https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/sep/25/blitzed-norman-ohler-adolf-hitler-nazi-drug-abuse-interview

#10yrsago Flying Saucers are Real! Anthology of the lost saucer-craze https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/03/flying-saucers-are-real-anthology-of-the-lost-saucer-craze/

#10yrsago The malware that’s pwning the Internet of Things is terrifyingly amateurish https://web.archive.org/web/20161004061621/http://motherboard.vice.com/read/internet-of-things-malware-mirai-ddos

#10yrsago California’s 40-year-old ban on property tax raises has made the rich a lot richer https://web.archive.org/web/20161001034224/https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-prop-13–20160929-snap-story.html

#10yrsago The Wells Fargo fraud came to light because of union organizers https://web.archive.org/web/20161005123132/https://prospect.org/article/first-and-foremost-wells-fargo-scandal-about-workers

#10yrsago “Power Poses” are bullshit https://web.archive.org/web/20161007215414/https://www.wbur.org/npr/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

#10yrsago Martin Shkreli offers a bailout to ailing 4chan https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/4chan-cashflow-problem-martin-shkreli-wants-to-join-board/

#10yrsago Ghosts: Raina Telgemeier’s upbeat tale of death, assimilation and cystic fibrosis https://memex.craphound.com/2016/10/04/ghosts-raina-telgemeiers-upbeat-tale-of-death-assimilation-and-cystic-fibrosis/

#10yrsago Yahoo secretly built a tool to scan all email in realtime for US spies https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1241YT/

#10yrsago How to: Criticize technology https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/constructive_technology_criticism.php

#10yrsago Johnson & Johnson says people with diabetes don’t need to worry about potentially lethal wireless attacks on insulin pumps https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-cyber-insulin-pumps-e-idUSKCN12411L/

#5yrsago USPS pilots postal banking https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#check-cashing

#5yrsago The Pandora Papers https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#transparency

#5yrsago Savage Love A-Z https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/04/avoidance-is-evasion/#ggg

#5yrsago Hope, Not Optimism https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/03/hope-not-optimism/

#1yrago When your ISP pays you https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/03/we-dont-care-we-dont-have-to/#were-the-phone-company

#1yrago Blue Bonds https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/04/fiscal-antifa/#post-trump

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.
https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/


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 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

  • "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027

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


Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

  • “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 504 (21882 total).

  • "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. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

  • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

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

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ISSN: 3066-764X

Saturday 2026-10-03

07:00 PM

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

Consistency costs extra.

If you want to buy machine screws or widgets that are exactly the same to five decimal points, you’ll pay a premium for that. In exchange, you’ll get parts that are precisely as expected, making assembly more reliable.

Mechanization’s productivity and our fear of fear have driven us to do this with just about everything. Bananas, fast food and student performance are all pushed toward consistency, often at the expense of the possibility of extraordinary performance.

We do this to humans at our own peril.

Do we really want the artist to produce a carbon copy each time? For every Dead show to be the same? For customer service to be measured with a stopwatch, not our hearts?

Uniformity pays when the best definition of “excellent” is that it “meets spec.” This includes day-to-day freelance work, business hotel rooms and the way our phones work.

For everything else, perhaps we ought to pay a bit more for awe, insight and surprise.

      

06:00 PM

03:00 PM

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for September 27 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
Gladiolus dalenii (parrot gladiolus) flower in the rain. About 4–5 cm (1.6–2.0 in) across. Garden plant in Ooty, The Nilgiris, south India. Focus-stack of 38 images.

Wikimedia Commons picture of the day for September 28 [Wikimedia Commons picture of the day feed]

Picture of the day
View of the Basilica Cistern, Istanbul, Turkey. The Basilica Cistern, or Cisterna Basilica is the largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city. This subterranean cistern was called Basilica because it was located under a large public square, the Stoa Basilica, on the First Hill of Constantinople. The cistern, built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine emperor Justinian I, provided a water filtration system for the Great Palace of Constantinople and other buildings on the First Hill, and continued to provide water to the Topkapı Palace after the Ottoman conquest in 1453 and into modern times. Today it is kept with little water, for public access inside the space.
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