JCPA Doesn't Get Much Better at the State Level
Plus digital discrimination, data collection, content moderation and more…
Illinois JPA: Ari sent a letter to the Illinois State Senate and also testified at a hearing about that state’s Journalism Preservation Act, a bill modeled on the similar federal JCPA that didn’t pass. Both would use public funds to subsidize “legitimate” journalism—with the government as the judge. By the end of the hearing, this bill seemed to be in trouble too.
Digital Discrimination: Jim filed comments about the FCC’s proposal to stand up an Office of Civil Rights—without any evidence of intentional discrimination and based on a statute that clearly doesn’t authorize regulation based on disparate impact.
Privacy: On the latest Tech Policy Podcast, Corbin talked with Byron Tau of NOTUS about how data brokers sell your information to governments, and how the surveillance state has grown in the absence of federal privacy protections.
Content Moderation: The Supreme Court oral arguments for NetChoice v. Paxton and Moody v. NetChoice are complete, but we’re still working hard to explain every legal angle of these cases. Here’s what we’ve been up to this week:
Corbin was on the Law and Chaos podcast with Liz Dye to talk about SB7072’s and HB20’s biggest flaws, the First Amendment’s proper scope, and much more.
Corbin also wrote a piece on Substack recapping last week’s whirlwind of developments and his work relating to these cases.
Andy was a guest on the Mandy Connell Show to promote his previous article in The Hill and break down the First Amendment concerns with the government controlling content moderation decisions.
At the argument there was a lot of talk on whether the Court can cleanly rule on a "facial" challenge to Florida's SB 7072. Corbin’s thread explains why that was just an epic distraction.
The Moderated Content podcast referenced Corbin’s piece in The Daily Beast, where he discussed Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s skepticism of these challenges (starting at 30:32). And Mike Masnick referenced Corbin’s work in his write-up of the argument at Techdirt.
AI and the FTC: We’ve now got video of Andy’s lightning talk at the State of the Net Conference, where he explained the FTC’s ongoing efforts to apply its authority to AI.
Age Verification: Reason mentioned the September 2023 amicus brief we signed onto urging the Fifth Circuit to affirm the district court’s finding that H.B.1181, a Texas law that requires age verification, violates the First Amendment.
Welcome, but only if we find you “legitimate.”