May the Fourth (Amendment) Be With You, Congress
Seems like old bills never die, they just get reintroduced.
EARN-IT: Ari wrote a letter on the latest version of the ill-conceived EARN-IT Act. As we note, any legislator truly concerned about government and foreign adversary intrusion on private communications should be worried about undermining encryption. We signed onto the Center for Democracy and Technology’s coalition letter as well.
KOSA: This week, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Marsha Blackburn also reintroduced the dangerously misguided “Kids Online Safety Act,” (KOSA). Ari explained how sponsors seem determined to ignore repeated warnings on how the bill violates the First Amendment and will in fact harm minors.
Ari was also quoted in CNBC, Broadband Breakfast, Techdirt, Deseret News, Law360 (paywall), Reason, MediaPost (paywall) and syndicated in KSL.com and Globe Echo.
COPPA: The third piece of recycled legislation we addressed this week was the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0); our most recent letter on this subject explains why extending the bill to teens is unworkable.
Axon: In an essay for Law & Liberty, Corbin offered a mock dissent to the unanimous decision in this recent case. He also made his case in a companion piece on our newly expanded Substack. That’s right, it’s not just for these newsletters anymore!
Law in Space: The video is now available featuring our resident space lawyer Jim anchoring the panel of Humanity in Deep Space’s “Space and Interplanetary Law” at the University of Kentucky Lewis Honors College last week.
TikTok: Techdirt noted that Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte’s proposed revisions to the state’s TikTok ban bill would actually ban all social media as we know it—a minor detail that Ari first pointed out.
Utah Age Verification: Ari was quoted in KSL News Radio on Utah’s age verification system, which isn’t even in effect yet, but is already causing headaches for the state’s Internet users.
Staying Connected: Supporters can now follow us on Bluesky, the latest social media platform that we’ve been exploring.
Save the Date! We’re excited to share that we’ll be hosting a happy hour in Washington, D.C., during the week of May 15. Tune back in for more details.
I have a bad feeling about this.