A recent ruling by the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has reopened the possibility that using ad blocking software could violate copyright law in Germany. In a decision last month, the BGH – the final court of appeals on civil and criminal matters – partially overturned an appeals court decision in an 11-year copyright Read more about German court revives case that could threaten ad blockers[…]
[…] when politicians are demanding that technologists NERD HARDER! to realize their cherished impossibilities. That’s just happened, and in relation to one of the scariest, most destructive NERD HARDER! tech policies ever to be assayed (a stiff competition). I’m talking about the UK Online Safety Act, which imposes a duty on websites to verify the Read more about Pluralistic: “Privacy preserving age verification” is bullshit[…]
Privacy groups report a surge in UK police facial recognition scans of databases secretly stocked with passport photos lacking parliamentary oversight. Big Brother Watch says the UK government has allowed images from the country’s passport and immigration databases to be made available to facial recognition systems, without informing the public or parliament. The group claims Read more about UK passport database images used in facial recognition scans[…]
Age verification has officially arrived in the UK thanks to the Online Safety Act (OSA), a UK law requiring online platforms to check that all UK-based users are at least eighteen years old before allowing them to access broad categories of “harmful” content that go far beyond graphic sexual content. EFF has extensively criticized the Read more about Be Warned: Lessons From Reddit’s Chaotic UK Age Verification Rollout[…]
[…] we’re used to hearing about subscriptions for improved performance and creature comforts on luxury cars, but VW’s trialing BMW and Mercedes-Benz’s greatest hits of consumer-hostile policies and gating an additional 27 horsepower behind a $22.30 monthly payment on the ID.3. Alternatively, owners can shell out $878 to unlock that power permanently, for the life Read more about Even Volkswagen Is Doing Horsepower Subscriptions Now[…]
A controversial European Union proposal dubbed “Chat Control” is regaining momentum, with 19 out of 27 EU member states reportedly backing the measure. The plan would mandate that messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram, must scan every message, photo and video sent by users starting in October, even if end-to-end encryption is in place, Read more about EU Chat Control Plan Gains Support Again, Threatens Encryption, mass surveillance, age verification[…]
Meta lost a major privacy trial on Friday, with a jury in San Francisco ruling that the Menlo Park giant had eavesdropped on the users of the popular period-tracking app Flo. The plaintiff’s lawyers who sued Meta are calling this a “landmark” victory — the tech company contends that the jury got it all wrong. The case Read more about Meta eavesdropped on period-tracker app’s users, SF jury rules[…]
[…]the real kicker is what content is now being gatekept behind invasive age verification systems. Users in the UK now need to submit a selfie or government ID to access: Reddit communities about stopping drinking and smoking, periods, craft beers, and sexual assault support, not to mention documentation of war Spotify for music videos tagged Read more about Didn’t Take Long To Reveal The UK’s Online Safety Act Is Exactly The Privacy-Crushing Failure Everyone Warned About[…]
The Business Court in Brussels, Belgium, has issued a broad site-blocking order that aims to restrict access to shadow libraries including Anna’s Archive, Libgen, OceanofPDF, Z-Library, and the Internet Archive’s Open Library. In addition to ISP blocks, the order also directs search engines, DNS resolvers, advertisers, domain name services, CDNs and hosting companies to take Read more about Belgium Targets Internet Archive’s ‘Open Library’ in Sweeping Site Blocking Order[…]
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: It’s a strange glimpse into the human mind: If you filter search results on Google, Bing, and other search engines to only include URLs from the domain “https://chatgpt.com/share,” you can find strangers’ conversations with ChatGPT. Sometimes, these shared conversation links are pretty dull — people ask for Read more about Public ChatGPT Queries Are Getting Indexed By Google and Other Search Engines (update: fixed!)[…]
Britain’s most tattooed man has a lot more time on his hands and not a lot else thanks to new porn laws. The King of Ink says facial recognition tech has made it harder to chat to webcam girls, after sites started mistaking his tattooed face for a mask. The new rules came into force Read more about UK’s most tattooed man blocked from accessing porn online by new rules[…]
[…]Why you shouldn’t trust Gemini with your data Gemini promises to simplify how you interact with your Android — fetching emails, summarizing meetings, pulling up files. But behind that helpful facade is an unprecedented level of centralized data collection, powered by a company known for privacy washing, (new window)misleadin(new window)g users(new window) about how their Read more about Google AI is watching — how to turn off Gemini on Android[…]
A week or so ago, Karl Bode wrote about Vice Media’s idiotic decision to disappear several articles that had been written by its Waypoint property concerning Collective Shout. Collective Shout is an Australian group that pretends to be a feminist organization, when, in reality, it operates much more like any number of largely evangelical groups Read more about Visa and Mastercard Fielding A Ton Of Complaints Over “NSFW” Games Disappearing On Platforms, acting as censors[…]
Yesterday, I wrote about how YouTube is now using AI to guess your age. The idea is this: Rather than rely on the age attached to your account, YouTube analyzes your activity on its platform, and makes a determination based on how your activity corresponds to others users. If the AI thinks you’re an adult, Read more about Google Is Rolling Out Its AI Age Verification to More Services, and I’m Skeptical[…]
Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, and Italy are the first to test the technical solution unveiled by the European Commission on July 14, 2025. The announcement came less than two weeks before the UK enforced mandatory age verification checks on July 25. These have so far sparked concerns about the privacy and security of British users, Read more about After the UK, online age verification is landing in the EU[…]
[…] Martinez is part of a growing backlash to Steam and Itch.io purging thousands of games from their databases at the behest of payment processing companies. Australia-based anti-porn group Collective Shout claimed credit for the new wave of censorship after inciting a write-in campaign against Visa and Mastercard, which it accused of profiting off “rape, Read more about Gamers Flood Credit Card Hotlines Demanding End To Censorship in games – this won’t just blow over[…]
[…] It seems like a simple concept that everyone should be able to agree to: if I buy a product from you that does x, y, and z, you don’t get to remove x, y, or z remotely after I’ve made that purchase. How we’ve gotten to a place where companies can simply remove, or Read more about Echolon Exercise Bikes Lose Features, must phone home to work at all after Firmware Update[…]
In the wake of storefronts like Steam and itch.io curbing the sale of adult games, irate fans have started an organized campaign against the payment processors that they believe are responsible for the crackdown. While the movement is still in its early stages, people are mobilizing with an eye toward overwhelming communication lines at companies Read more about Visa and Mastercard are getting overwhelmed by censorship gamer fury[…]
As a fight with credit card companies over adult games leads to renewed concerns about censorship on Steam and even on indie platforms like itch.io, a recent warning by Nier: Automata director Yoko Taro calling censorship a “security hole that endangers democracy itself” has become relevant again. The comments came last November when the Manga Read more about Automata Dev Warns That Letting Credit Card Companies Censor Internet is an attack on Democracy[…]
TL;DR – use a VPN or take a picture of yourself in Death Stranding Earlier this week, the United Kingdom’s age assurance requirement for sites that publish pornographic material went into effect, which has resulted in everything from Pornhub to Reddit and Discord displaying an age verification panel when users attempt to visit. There’s just Read more about UK’s Stupid and Dangerous New Age Verification Requirement Thwarted in the Simplest Ways Imaginable[…]
The US Senate has granted the Internet Archive federal depository status, making it officially part of an 1,100-library network that gives the public access to government documents, KQED reported. The designation was made official in a letter from California Senator Alex Padilla to the Government Publishing Office that oversees the network. “The Archive’s digital-first approach Read more about Internet Archive is now an official US government document library[…]
[…] Copilot Vision is an extension of Microsoft’s divisive Recall, a feature initially sort of exclusive to the Copilot+ systems with a neural co-processor of sufficient computational power. Like Recall, which was pulled due to serious security failings and subject to a lengthy delay before its eventual relaunch, Copilot Vision is designed to analyze everything Read more about Copilot Vision on Windows 11 next MS spy but now sends data to Microsoft servers[…]
Researchers in Italy have developed a way to create a biometric identifier for people based on the way the human body interferes with Wi-Fi signal propagation. The scientists claim this identifier, a pattern derived from Wi-Fi Channel State Information, can re-identify a person in other locations most of the time when a Wi-Fi signal can Read more about WhoFi: Unique ‘fingerprint’ based on Wi-Fi interactions allows reidentification of people being observed[…]
As numerous Walled Culture posts attest, site blocking is in the vanguard of the actions by copyright companies against sites engaged in the unauthorised sharing of material. Over the past few months, this approach has become even more pervasive, and even more intrusive. For example, in France, the Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare was forced to Read more about As site blocks pile up, European Commission issues subtle slapdown to Italy’s Piracy Shield[…]
Google has been ordered by a court in the U.S. state of California to pay $314 million over charges that it misused Android device users’ cellular data when they were idle to passively send information to the company. The verdict marks an end to a legal class-action complaint that was originally filed in August 2019. Read more about Google Ordered to Pay $314M for Misusing Android Users’ Cellular Data Without Permission – calling home 389 times per day even when completely idle and all google apps closed![…]