Face it: we could talk about tacos all day. We could eat tacos most of the day. It wouldn't be a bad day. In fact, it'd probably be the best day ever. We do need to take a break from talking about food, for there are other Mexican subjects we need to talk about.
"Do you speak Mexican?" Regrettably, only a litte. But it is a real language! Náhuatl or mexicanois Mexico’s principal autochthonous language. About 3 million people speak mexicano, with a majority of them also speaking Castilian Spanish. The language has been around since the 5th century. The Mexican government recognizes Náhuatl along with 67(!) other national languages. Dear reader, speak mexicano, eat tacos, be well! On with the update:
Online Speech. Last week, Laurence Silberman, a respected jurist on the D.C. Circuit, wrote a . . . flamboyant dissent railing against the “shocking” bias and “un-American” behavior of news outlets and social-media companies. Corbin analyzed the dissent, and explained what it gets wrong about the modern media and tech landscape, in a piece at The Bulwark. Corbin’s piece grew out of an earlier Twitter thread, which itself received coverage on the Federalist Society website.
In an op-ed (tweet) appearing in today’s Miami Herald, Corbin and Berin explain the unconstitutionality of a bill (moving rapidly through the Florida legislature) that would limit the ability of websites to moderate content and users they find objectionable. It’s a more concise version of their Lawfare essay from two weeks ago. But it’s a special honor to be published in the very newspaper that, in 1974, fought all the way to the Supreme Court to defend its right to editorial control under the First Amendment — and won. We’ve long considered Miami Herald v. Tornillo to be the most important First Amendment decision of all time.
On a new Tech Policy Podcast, Corbin and Berin continued to highlight the First Amendment trainwreck that is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s proposed social-media speech regulation. Corbin also critiqued the bill in an op-ed published by The Daily Caller.
Ari Cohn, our adjunct fellow and a veteran litigator of Section 230, defamation and speech cases, appeared on the Salt Lake Tribune’s Utah Politics podcast to explain why a bill just vetoed by Utah’s governor is so profoundly unconstitutional, no amount of tweaking will fix it. Ari explained that, even without Section 230’s preemption, the First Amendment would still protect social media companies’ right to moderate content and doom laws like Utah’s. He also briefly discussed the unconstitutional and performative nature of the porn filtering bill that Utah’s governor signed into law.
Big Tech Regulation. Yesterday, CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter spent nearly six hours testifying before two subcommittees of the House Energy & Commerce Committee. Berin covered the entire ordeal in this thread (unrolled here). It's like the quesarito of threads: it packs a lot and may leave you feeling a little uncomfortable, but satisfied. The thread opens by summarizing the unconstitutionality of what Republicans and Democrats are proposing, then discusses Facebook’s proposals to amend Section 230, then live-tweets the hearing from there on.
Competition. Asheesh live-tweeted during last week’s House hearing on competition and the press. Among other points, he noted that any statutory changes to the antitrust laws would extend to the entire economy, rather than just tech, and that existing antitrust laws are flexible enough to address digital markets.
Asheesh spoke on a panel at the ABA Spring Antitrust Meeting entitled, “High Technology Deals: Are New Standards Warranted?” Moderated by Ian Simmons, the panel featured Commissioner Noah Philips, Diana Moss, and Scott Hemphill (pinch-hitting for Tim Wu). In general, the panel discussed whether current antitrust laws and guidelines are sufficient to address digital markets. As noted in a recent paper and op ed, “nascent” acquisitions have occurred in many industries over time, so we don’t need to change the antitrust laws to address them.
Broadband. Jim was quoted several times in a piece discussing the viability of using a “reverse auction” of $40 billion to close the digital divide of broadband access: “The money is always going to go to the next least-rural area because that's the cheapest to build," and “when you start talking about reaching that last five percent of customers, you're talking about topography that's really tough. The price doesn't go up linearly to get broadband to those areas. It goes up exponentially.”
Space Law. As he has for more than two decades, Jim served as a senior judge for the North American finals of the Manfred Lachs International Space Moot Court competition. The issues presented by this year’s problem that law students had to argue revolve around the legal consequences (and applicability of the “fault” provisions of the treaty regime) of incorporating ‘fully’ autonomous / AI technology into operational space activities.
Timo-itazque (catch you later)!