Notices by James Grimmelmann (jtlg@mastodon.lawprofs.org)

“I fear that if we do not universally and swiftly condemn the practice of turning everyday gadgets into bombs, we risk legitimizing a military technology that can literally bring the front line of every conflict into your pocket, purse or home”

https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/2024/turning-everyday-gadgets-into-bombs-is-a-bad-idea/

I shed a tear every time a math term I love becomes the name of an AI company or a hedge fund.

By way of perspective, someone set off a literal bomb in the law school during exams my 1L spring. I would say it generated less than a tenth of the police response, a hundredth of the disruption, and a thousandth of the media attention that the Columbia administration's mishandling of campus protests has.

@foone “One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." – Robert Firth

Something exceptionally grim is happening on the Internet.

In the last few months, the constant flood of algorithmically generated junk content has kicked into an AI-powered overdrive, and it is cutting a swath of destruction as it overwhelms search engines, filters, and moderation systems

Call it Gresham's Law 2.0: bad content drives out good.

I'm starting this thread to document it, because there is a *lot* happening all at once.

#greshamslaw20

What do people who think January 6 wasn't an "insurrection" because it was too too brief think an insurrection IS? In July 1830 and February 1848, three days were enough to bring down the French government. The Bolshevik coup in October 1917 was completed in a day. Robespierre's fall on 9 Thermidor 1794 triggered a failed one-day attempt to overthrow the government. It is in the nature of insurrections that they often succeed or fail with shocking speed. It makes them more dangerous, not less.

Jackson: Doesn't speak to a business decision not to offer services in Texas. But once you offer service there, you can't discriminate against Texans.

A: Yes.

Clement up for rebuttal:

(1) Common carriage are (a) transmitted message from A to B, but dissemination is the expressive enterprise business, and (b) essential facilities, if you were kicked off Ma Bell you're out of luck.

(2) No other law discriminate on the basis of viewpoint and applies exclusively to speakers.

(3) Protecting kids. If you're concerned about it, vote for us. If we can't viewpoint discriminate we can't downrank and remove suicide promotion.

(4) There is a proud tradition of facial challenges to vindiate 1A rights and getting PIs against laws chilling speech. The party presentation laws have to be foundational. They could have objected to our facial challenge by pointing to Gmail. We could have litigated it. It's not the P's burden to come up with every theory the government could imagine on appeal.

My immediate takeaway is that the court is likely to look for a narrow ruling that rejects both sides' categorial rules. I think core antidiscrimination provisions of the FL and TX laws will fail under that narrow ruling, possibly immediately, possibly on remand. There may be dueling opinions taking issue on the procedural questions.

As content moderation strategies go, “We didn’t realize until now that the Nazis on our platform were inciting violence” perhaps raises more questions than it answers.

The final version of Content Moderation on End-to-End Encrypted Systems: A Legal Analysis (with Charles Duan) is now published at the Georgetown Law Technology Review.

https://james.grimmelmann.net/files/articles/content-moderation-e2ee.pdf

The Copyright Office has rejected registration of the Midjourney-generated image that won first place at the Colorado State Fair.

https://www.copyright.gov/rulings-filings/review-board/docs/Theatre-Dopera-Spatial.pdf

In the latest issue of Communications of the ACM, @kendraserra and I wrote about how the computing profession resisted CFAA overreach — both in the courts and through straight-up disobedience. It’s a lesson that’s unfortunately all too relevant in this age of state attempts to control people’s bodies by censoring the Internet.

https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/5/272283-do-the-right-thing/abstract