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  • Venezuela earthquakes LIVE: UN rapidly deploys aid and rescue teams

    Two deadly earthquakes struck Venezuela less than a minute apart on Wednesday, with magnitudes of 7.2 and 7.5, causing at least 164 deaths and widespread destruction in and around the capital, Caracas as international assistance begins to arrive early Thursday, with UN agencies rapidly deploying aid, support and rescue teams. UN News app users can follow here.

  • Venezuela quake disaster: UN urges collective effort to help victims

    UN teams scrambled on Thursday in support of the international response to the devastating double earthquake disaster in Venezuela, where buildings lie flattened and people are likely still trapped in the capital, Caracas, and beyond. 

  • Affordability Politics Needs a Power Analysis

    Affordability is the watchword of the moment. From progressive mayors, like Zohran Mamdani and Katie Wilson, to more moderate governors, like Mikie Sherill and Abigail Spanberger, figures from across the political left are embracing the need to respond to the cost of living crisis that has long plagued American life. There are good reasons for this. The affordability narrative—exemplified by…

    Source

  • ACE, UEFA, and Mexico Chase PirloTV’s 950-Million-Visit Piracy Network

    ACE, UEFA, and Mexico Chase PirloTV’s 950-Million-Visit Piracy Network

    PirloTV and Rojadirecta are popular piracy brands with a loyal audience across Latin America, offering free, ad-supported sports streams

    For millions of sports fans in the region, these are the go-to sites to enjoy live sports, including the FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Champions League matches.

    Rightsholders have been well-aware of the operations and have tried to counter them on several occasions. Earlier this year, for example, UEFA obtained a site blocking order in India that ordered ISPs to block pirlotv2.pl, rojadirectaenvivo.pl, and many others.

    This order also required domain registrars disable the domain names. While some complied with this order, several domains remained available. However, following a recent enforcement operation, some of these gaps were addressed.

    44 ‘PirloTV’ Domains Targeted

    Some domain names that initially stayed online have now been targeted in a new enforcement action. This includes pirlotv3.pl, rojadirectaenvivo.pl, and elitegoltv.pl. These are now under control of the MPA, pointing to the following ACE banner.

    Redirect banner on PirloTV3.pl

    pirlotv

    Yesterday, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, together with UEFA and the Mexican Institute of Industrial Property (IMPI), took credit for a major ‘disruption’ action targeting the Mexican ‘PirloTV’ piracy ring.

    According to the announcement, the 44 targeted domains attracted more than 950 million visits per year, including approximately 230 million from Mexico alone. The network’s strongest audiences were in Mexico and Colombia, with significant traffic also coming from Spain and the United States.

    The press release mentions no domain names, but it does reference PirloTV, which likely means that the aforementioned domain names were part of this sweep.

    Mexico’s First ACE Operation

    The action is the first enforcement operation carried out under a memorandum of understanding between ACE and Mexico’s IMPI, which was signed in December 2025.

    Under the agreement, IMPI and ACE committed to exchange intelligence on pirate streaming operations and coordinate enforcement actions across the region. The PirloTV operation is its first public output.

    “This operation demonstrates the power of collaboration between ACE, UEFA, key industry stakeholders and government partners to protect the creative economy and combat large-scale digital piracy,” said Larissa Knapp, MPA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer.

    UEFA joined ACE as a member in October 2025, and the two organizations have since worked closely on enforcement, including the Indian domain blocking operation we referenced earlier.

    New Domains Surfaced Quickly

    This action already took place last month, before the UEFA Champions League final. The press release doesn’t explain why it was made public weeks after, but it is possible that some domain names still had to be properly secured.

    It’s also worth noting that ACE’s press release doesn’t mention any enforcement actions against the operators. Instead, it refers to the action as a domain name “disruption”. However, disruption rarely means the end on the story.

    This type of wordage suggests that the operators have not necessarily been stopped. That could also explain why several new PirloTV and RojaDirecta domain names emerged recently.

    For example, in May a new pirlotvplay.pl surfaced, which later started to redirect to pirlotvplay.dev, which is live and fully operational at the time of writing.

    PirloTVplay

    pirlotvplay

    The site carries standard PirloTV branding and is serving today’s sports schedule, including World Cup matches. Interestingly, the canonical URL points to rojadirectahd.vip, which points to a broader piracy network structure.

    Whether these new domains are directly linked to the operation ACE targeted is unknown. In any case, there are dozens of copycat sites operating under the PirloTV and RojaDirecta brand names. Most of these are opportunistic clones, trying to capture search traffic, rather than the same operation.

    While the recent enforcement action has not taken the operators out of action, it likely cost them significant traffic and revenue. Whether ACE and IMPI will pursue the people behind the network, besides these domains, remains to be seen.

    From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

  • Pluralistic: Jailbreaking isn’t theft (25 Jun 2026)

    Today’s links

    • Jailbreaking isn’t theft: It wasn’t progress when they did it, it’s not piracy when we do it back to them.
    • Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
    • Object permanence: Major AI breakthrough; Disney v Pooh tombstone; Vancouver riot kiss; Farage admits Brexit lies; Protecting the web from its founders; Sanders x Hillary; Surveillance pricing v your dollars.
    • Upcoming appearances: Philadelphia, Chicago, London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Brighton, London, South Bend.
    • Recent appearances: Where I’ve been.
    • Latest books: You keep readin’ em, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.
    • Upcoming books: Like I said, I’ll keep writin’ ’em.
    • Colophon: All the rest.


    Steve Jobs holding an iPhone at the product launch. It has been modified. He wears a thief's balaclava. Behind him is the Apple wordmark, 'Think Different.'

    Jailbreaking isn’t theft (permalink)

    It’s not often that someone on a panel says something that makes my jaw drop, but that’s what happened earlier this week when the moderator of a panel I was on in Toronto described jailbreaking an iPhone as “rampant theft of IP.”

    Some context: the panel was in Toronto, and the nominal subject was “digital sovereignty,” though all the panelists (except me) interpreted that to mean “sovereign AI.” All of their interventions were focused on how Canada could build and operate its own AI, which I found very weird, since there is no AI-related threat to Canadian sovereignty. If Donald Trump ordered OpenAI and Anthropic to turn off all of Canada’s chatbots tomorrow, nothing would change: every firm, ministry and household would operate as per normal:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/

    Now, that’s not to say that Canada doesn’t have a digital sovereignty problem – it really does! Donald Trump and US Big Tech have fused into a single entity and Trump now orders US tech giants to terminate the online accounts of foreign officials who displease him. When Microsoft turns off your Office365 account, you lose your working files, your calendar, your address book, your email archives, and the Outlook email address you use to log in to every online service:

    https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/01/minilateralism/#own-goal

    So while turning off Canada’s chatbots would not inflict any real harm on Canada, M365 terminations could paralyse any federal or provincial ministry, any structurally important firm, and most Canadian households.

    The threat doesn’t stop there: Trump can also order Apple and Google to brick any of Canada’s iPhones or Android devices – terminating individual officials’ mobile access, or terminating whole provinces. It’s not just iPhones either – Trump can also brick any tractor in Canada:

    https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/

    This is the real digital sovereignty risk, and Canada needs to address it now. But Canada can’t – our hands are tied…by us. In 2012, we passed a law, The Copyright Modernization Act, that criminalizes “jailbreaking,” meaning that Canadian companies can’t go into business figuring out how to install different app stores on phones and consoles, or change the firmware in tractors to enable independent repair, or reliably export their cloud data to rival Canadian services:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/05/26/babyish-radical-extremists/#cancon

    Why did we pass this law? Because the Americans promised us free trade and no tariffs on our exports if we agreed to it. That’s a promise Trump tore up, but we’re still holding up our end of the bargain. That’s crazy. It means that American companies can use Canada’s courts to destroy Canadian businesses that offer the Canadian people tools to help them escape Big Tech’s sleazy ripoffs of their data and cash.

    And boy do those US tech companies take in a lot of cash. The US ad-tech duopoly of Google/Meta rig the advertising market, taking 51% out of every ad dollar through an illegal, collusive arrangement called “Jedi Blue”:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

    The US mobile tech duopoly takes 30 cents out of every dollar spent via an app, by forcing every app vendor to use their payment processors, which charge 1,000% more than any other payment processor in Canada. That means that every time a subscriber to a Canadian news site signs up through an app, 30% of the lifetime subscription revenue for that Canadian subscriber is funneled to one of two California companies.

    The corollary, of course, is that if Canadian businesses were free to compete with US companies – if Canada stopped foolishly holding up its end of the bargain that Trump has dishonoured – then it would be as though every Canadian news outlet increased its subscriber base by 25% overnight! What’s more, the Canadian companies that sell those jailbreaking tools would make billions out of US Big Tech’s billions.

    And that’s where the moderator of this week’s panel comes in. When I finished making this pitch, they turned to the rest of the panel and said something like, “Well, apart from rampant theft of IP, what else could Canada do to secure its digital sovereignty?”

    That’s when my jaw dropped. Making it possible for, say, a Canadian company to sell its own Canadian game to a Canadian customer, in Canada, without giving Apple or Xbox 30% of the purchase price, is not “theft of IP.” It’s not “theft of IP” for a rightsholder to sell their own products to their customers. It’s not “theft of IP” for a Canadian owner of a device to decide for themselves which software they want to run on it. If buying software from the company that made it and installing it on a device you own is “theft of IP,” then so is putting non-Nike shoelaces in your Air Jordans.

    It’s not “theft of IP.” It’s just good business. Moreover, it’s the kind of good business that created America’s tech giants in the first place. As Jeff Bezos tells his suppliers: “Your margin is my opportunity.” US tech giants make whopping margins around the world, thanks to the anticircumvention laws that the US Trade Rep crammed down every US trading partner’s throats, laws that allow US companies to use other countries’ legal system to destroy their competitors.

    I’ve been mulling this “rampant theft of IP” remark for a couple of days now, but it wasn’t until a reader wrote to me to remind me about Apple’s origin story that I realised what the punchline is. Apple founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak financed their first product launch by selling “Blue Boxes” (devices that let you make free long distance calls by cheating the phone company) door to door in the UC Berkeley dorms:

    https://macdailynews.com/2024/06/19/steve-jobs-felt-certain-apple-would-never-have-existed-without-woz-and-him-making-blue-boxes/

    Now, I’m not going to weep for the lost revenues that Jobs and Woz denied to AT&T. After all, AT&T was stealing that money from its customers, which is why, just a few years later, a federal court convicted AT&T of monopolistic practices and broke the company up:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakup_of_the_Bell_System

    But the legal term for what a Blue Box does is “toll theft,” which is to say, Apple – a company literally founded on theft – now makes the majority of its profits by convincing people that making a competing product is literally stealing. A company whose founders got their seed capital by marketing illegal circumvention devices now markets products designed to make it a crime for a rightsholder to sell their own work to you.

    I’ve long said that “every pirate wants to be an admiral”:

    https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/04/object-permanence/#picks-and-shovels

    But this is just a little too on the nose. When Apple went into business selling products to rip off the phone company, that wasn’t progress. When Canadians go into business selling devices that let iPhone owners use their own property to do legal things – like buying copyrighted works directly from their creators – that is not piracy.

    Canada has a real digital sovereignty problem, and it’s not AI. Canada will not mitigate its digital sovereignty risk by successfully launching a Made in Canada version of the money-losingest venture in the history of the human species:

    https://www.wheresyoured.at/brokenomics/

    Canada’s real digital sovereignty problem is its reliance on the apps, cloud services and devices that are tethered to the American cloud, access to which Donald Trump could – and does – terminate whenever he feels grumpy. Trump has repeatedly threatened to annex Canada and turn us into “the 51st state.” He’s trying to steal Alberta right now. Our digital sovereignty risk is the risk of Trump paralysing our country in order to steal Alberta – or the entire shop.

    We can address that digital sovereignty risk – and make billions at the same time – by legalising jailbreaking and becoming the world’s “disenshittification nation.” Unlike a program to build Canadian AI, this will make billions, not lose them – and unlike Canadian AI, this will make our country more resilient and safer, by delivering products that Canadians – and the world – want to buy and will pay us a fortune for.

    Big Tech’s margins are our opportunity.

    (Image: Matthew Yohe, CC BY-SA 3.0; SABYST, CC BY-SA 4.0, modified)

    Hey look at this (permalink)


    A shelf of leatherbound history books with a gilt-stamped series title, 'The World's Famous Events.'

    Object permanence (permalink)

    #25yrsago Major AI breakthrough is imminent https://web.archive.org/web/20010625114014/https://www.latimes.com/business/cutting/lat_cyc010621.htm

    #25yrsago Webcomic reply to Scott McCloud on microtransactions https://web.archive.org/web/20010708225439/https://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-06-22&res=l

    #25yrsago School censorware blocks LBGTQ sites https://web.archive.org/web/20010803114449/https://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/14/net_filtering/print.html

    #25yrsago SCOTUS backs freelance writers https://edition.cnn.com/2001/LAW/06/25/scotus.copyright/index.html

    #20yrsago Canadian Gov’t Pays Copyright Lobby to Lobby https://web.archive.org/web/20060720230403/http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1151273413030&call_pageid=971794782442&col=971886476975

    #20yrsago How can we keep the Bells from committing net-neutricide? https://web.archive.org/web/20060714044219/http://informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=189600971

    #20yrsago Disney: We [will|won’t] sue if you put Pooh on a baby’s headstone https://web.archive.org/web/20060711194928/http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?StoryID=20060623-093710-8391r

    #15yrsago Comic Book Legal Defense Fund backs traveller arrested at Canadian border for “pornographic” manga on his hard drive https://cbldf.org/2011/06/cbldf-forms-coalition-to-defend-american-comics-reader-facing-criminal-charges-in-canada/

    #15yrsago Rochester police use selective enforcement of parking laws to harass attendees at a meeting in support of Emily Good https://rochester.indymedia.org/node/7516

    #15yrsago What happened before the Vancouver riot kiss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mtURc7mkUg

    #15yrsago Mexican Congress votes to reject ACTA https://www.techdirt.com/2011/06/22/mexican-congress-says-no-to-acta/

    #15yrsago “Hot News” doctrine gets a body-blow https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/06/hot-news-doctrine-surviving-life-support

    #15yrsago Solar-powered 3D sand-printer https://web.archive.org/web/20110627035221/https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2011/06/markus-kayser-builds-a-solar-powered-3d-printer-that-prints-glass-from-sand-and-a-sun-powered-laser-cutter/

    #10yrsago Australian educational contractor warns of wifi, vaccination danger to “gifted” kids’ “extra neurological connections” https://web.archive.org/web/20180211151730/https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/antivaccination-program-offered-to-gifted-children-in-primary-schools-20160621-gpnzzp.html#ixzz4CYBYf4Bl#ixzz4CYBYf4Bl

    #10yrsago US Customs and Border Protection wants to ask for your “online presence” at the border https://www.theverge.com/2016/6/24/12026364/us-customs-border-patrol-online-account-twitter-facebook-instagram?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

    #10yrsago Stasi radio monitoring department, hard at work, 1980s https://web.archive.org/web/20160625190241/https://visualhistory.livejournal.com/1039990.html

    #10yrsago Apps help women bypass states’ barriers to contraception https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/health/birth-control-options-websites.html

    #10yrsago The blacker a city is, the more it fines its residents (especially black ones) https://priceonomics.com/the-fining-of-black-america/

    #10yrsago The demographics of Brexit https://web.archive.org/web/20160626130820/http://www.perc.org.uk/project_posts/thoughts-on-the-sociology-of-brexit/

    #10yrsago The morning after the Brexit vote, Nigel Farage admits money for the NHS was a lie https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/24/the-morning-after-the-brexit-vote-nigel-farage-admits-money-for-the-nhs-was-a-lie/

    #10yrsago How to protect the future web from its founders’ own frailty https://memex.craphound.com/2016/06/24/how-to-protect-the-future-web-from-its-founders-own-frailty/

    #10yrsago More than 30 people burned during Tony Robbins “motivational” firewalk https://web.archive.org/web/20160627054938/https://bigstory.ap.org/c7872f6db09e4656a612ee13aab74d50

    #10yrsago Google’s version of the W3C’s video DRM has been cracked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CkWjOvpZJw

    #10yrsago Undercover reporter spent four months as a prison guard in a Louisiana pen run by CCA https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/06/cca-private-prisons-corrections-corporation-inmates-investigation-bauer/

    #10yrsago Sanders will vote Hillary https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/bernie-sanders-says-he-will-vote-hillary-clinton-n598251

    #10yrsago Brexit: a timeline of the coming slow-motion car-crash http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/06/tomorrow-belongs-to-me.html

    #5yrsago The pandemic showed remote proctoring to be worse than useless https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/24/proctor-ology/#miseducation

    #1yrago Surveillance pricing lets corporations decide what your dollar is worth https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/24/price-discrimination/

    #1yrago What’s a “public internet?” https://pluralistic.net/2025/06/25/eurostack/#viktor-orbans-isp

    Upcoming appearances (permalink)

    A photo of me onstage, giving a speech, pounding the podium.


    A screenshot of me at my desk, doing a livecast.

    Recent appearances (permalink)


    A grid of my books with Will Stahle covers..

    Latest books (permalink)


    A cardboard book box with the Macmillan logo.

    Upcoming books (permalink)

    • “The Reverse-Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/)

    • “Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It” (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

    • “Unauthorized Bread”: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027

    • “The Memex Method,” Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027


    Colophon (permalink)

    Today’s top sources:

    Currently writing: “The Post-American Internet,” a sequel to “Enshittification,” about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.

    • “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to AI,” a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

    • “The Post-American Internet,” a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

    • A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

    This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

    https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

    Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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    “When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla” -Joey “Accordion Guy” DeVilla

    READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies (“BOGUS AGREEMENTS”) that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

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  • The KIDS Act Would Require Age Checks To Get Online

    Within the next week, Congress is preparing to vote on the KIDS Act, a sprawling package of legislation that seeks to control Americans’ web browsing and private messaging. The package includes a revised version of the Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, combined with a collection of other internet bills, study bills, reporting requirements, and new regulations. Instead of debating any of these proposals on their merits, lawmakers are attempting to move them all at once under an ultra-expedited process. 

    The package of cobbled-together bills is a mess, with different age-gating schemes for different services, using different standards. It’s a lot of complexity, and a lot of legal risk. Faced with that, many companies will conclude that the safest option is restrictive age-checking practices across their entire platforms.

    Buried inside the KIDS Act are provisions that will push online services to verify all users’ ages, require government-directed moderation policies for online speech, and even create new rules about private and encrypted communications. While supporters continue to claim this bill protects minors online, its requirements come at the expense of privacy, free expression, and the ability of people of all ages to use the internet without revealing sensitive data. 

    Take action

    Tell Congress to reject this age-gating bill

    The KIDS Act Pressures Platforms to Check Everyone’s Age

    Supporters of KOSA have said the bill doesn’t require age verification. And technically, the KOSA section of the bill does say that KOSA shouldn’t be read to require age verification. 

    But if you read the rest of the bill, that disclaimer starts to look hollow. 

    Throughout the KOSA section of the legislation, special protections, controls, messaging settings, and parental tools are required whenever a website or app “knows or should have known” a user is a child (defined in the bill as anyone under 13) or a teen (defined as anyone between 13 and 16 years old). 

    The problem is a website operator doesn’t need actual knowledge that a user is a minor to get in legal trouble. It applies when a platform “knows or should have known” a user’s age—a low, negligence-style standard of knowledge. If an online service gets it wrong, it’s going to be up to courts and regulators to decide, after the fact, if an online service “should” have known a user was 16. 

    To try to avoid liability, services will have to determine which users are teenagers and which are not. Most won’t be able to simply trust their users. They’ll have to collect more information about age, before any lawsuit or government action arises. Some companies may respond by requesting driver’s licenses or passports. Others will rely on age-estimation systems that attempt to guess users’ ages by looking at existing activity or doing facial scans. Existing estimation systems make mistakes when estimating children’s ages correctly, which is a big problem when that is the population KOSA is trying to protect. And the systems fail more frequently for people of color, people with disabilities, and trans and nonbinary people.

    The bill’s authors seem to know this is a problem. On the one hand, the new KOSA section says age verification is not required. On the other, it repeatedly imposes obligations that depend on knowing whether a user is under 17. But a disclaimer doesn’t magically eliminate legal risk, especially for smaller services and startups that can’t afford to defend lawsuits or fight regulators.  

    Take action

    The “KIDS Act” Is an Age Surveillance Bill

    KOSA is not the only part of this package that creates age-verification pressure. The SAFE BOTS Act, like KOSA, goes back to the standard that if a service “knows or should have known” that a user is a minor it can’t offer certain chatbot features. 

    The SCREEN Act requires services that host sexually explicit content to determine whether users are “more likely than not” under the relevant age limit, before allowing access to certain content. 

    The consequences of this liability will not be limited to minors. If websites and apps are expected to reliably identify teenagers, adults will be asked to prove they are adults. The result is a less private internet for everyone.

    The KIDS Act Pressures Platforms To Police Lawful Speech 

    The new version of KOSA removes the bill’s infamous “duty of care” provision, a significant change. The revised KOSA requires covered platforms to “establish, implement, maintain, and enforce” policies and procedures addressing several categories of content and conduct. 

    Some categories, such as true threats and sexual exploitation, involve unlawful activity. Others are much broader. The bill specifically requires policies addressing the “sale or use” of narcotic drugs, tobacco products, cannabis products, gambling, and alcohol. It also restricts discussions around financial fraud.

    Sounds straightforward enough. Then you remember how people actually talk—online and off. Can teens discuss addiction and recovery? Can a 15-year-old post that she’s worried she has a friend who is drinking too much? Can they seek advice about a parent’s gambling problem, or get help if they or a family member have been scammed? Can they participate in harm-reduction communities or discuss substance abuse treatment? All of these young people would be engaging in lawful speech when discussing topics covered by KOSA’s enumerated harms. 

    The bill does not directly ban those conversations. But it places platforms under huge pressure to create and enforce moderation policies around broad categories of lawful speech. Faced with legal risk, many services will inevitably choose to remove that speech or restrict those discussions to spaces where they know only adults can participate. We’ve seen this movie before. When legal risk goes up, platforms will take down more speech. 

    The KIDS Act Regulates Private Messages, Too 

    Several provisions of the bill create new rules around direct messages, disappearing or “ephemeral” messages, and AI chat services. 

    The bill includes language stating that certain KOSA requirements should not be construed to override strong encryption. But the protection is incomplete. The carve-out applies to certain features and messaging controls, but doesn’t apply to KOSA’s separate requirement that platforms “address” a list of harms to minors. 

    The KIDS Act never answers an obvious question: how exactly is a platform supposed to address those activities if they’re inside encrypted communications that it can’t read? That will create pressure for providers to weaken private communications or limit features on encrypted private services. 

    That approach is especially troubling when it comes to ephemeral messaging. Disappearing messages are not a “loophole” or a dangerous design trick. They are a useful privacy feature that allows online conversations to function more like ordinary real-world conversations, which are not preserved forever in a permanent database.

    Like many other parts of the KIDS Act, these private messaging provisions also depend on websites and apps knowing who is a minor and who is not. The result is more age checks, more restrictions, and less privacy online.

    Take action

    Tell congress: no online age checkpoints

  • Obesity cases rising fastest in young adults

    Experts say the cost of living, pandemic and boom in unhealthy food are behind the rise in cases.

  • NHS to offer new immunotherapy for hundreds of women with aggressive cervical cancer

    Hundreds of women with aggressive cervical cancer are to be offered a new immunotherapy on the NHS, which could help more women survive and stay cancer-free in the long-term. Pembrolizumab – which experts describe as being able to ‘take the handbrake off the body’s immune system’ to target cancer – will now offer a new […]
  • Top Hats, Tails, and Timeless Cinema: Celebrating Marlene Dietrich’s “Morocco”

    Top Hats, Tails, and Timeless Cinema: Celebrating Marlene Dietrich’s “Morocco”

    On June 9, the Internet Archive welcomed film lovers, public domain enthusiasts, and fashionably dressed guests for an evening celebrating one of cinema’s enduring classics: Morocco (1930).

    Our “Top Hat & Tails” screening marked the film’s first year in the public domain, bringing nearly a century-old story to a new generation of viewers. Guests embraced the spirit of the evening by arriving in everything from classic tuxedos and evening gowns to playful reinterpretations of Marlene Dietrich’s legendary look.

    Browse event photos:

    The evening began with an introduction from filmmaker, writer, and curator Denah Johnston, placing the film in the context of Pre-Code Hollywood and exploring why Morocco remains such an enduring work. Johnston highlighted the film’s artistic legacy, its groundbreaking approach to gender expression, and the cultural significance of Dietrich’s iconic tuxedo performance, culminating in one of the earliest same-gender kisses in mainstream cinema.

    Watch Denah’s intro:

    Following the screening, Johnston joined attendees for a Q&A that explored the film’s production, Dietrich’s career, the evolution of queer representation on screen, and the importance of preserving and providing access to public domain films.

    Watch the Q&A:

    Missed the event? You can still watch Morocco for free on the Internet Archive and experience one of the defining films of the Pre-Code era for yourself. As long as we preserve our cultural heritage—and keep it accessible—these remarkable works will continue finding new audiences for generations to come.

    Watch Morocco (1930):

  • Ex-Cyprus President Slams Anti-Graft Report, Calls for Independent Probe

    Former Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades fiercely pushed back against sweeping corruption allegations on Wednesday, declaring himself the victim of “kangaroo courts” and challenging the public to decide whether the country is governed by the “rule of law or the rule of the internet.”

    In a comprehensive rebuttal delivered at a press conference Tuesday, Anastasiades addressed the anti-graft probe that recently forwarded its findings to the attorney general for potential criminal charges. Denouncing the report, he demanded the immediate appointment of an independent criminal investigator to clear his name.

    The former president’s fiery defense directly targets the conclusions of the country’s Anti-Corruption Authority, which OCCRP and other international outlets reported on last week. While the watchdog identified potential “abuse of power” and influence-trading involving Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, Anastasiades argued the inquiry’s findings were arbitrary and legally flawed.

    In a direct challenge to the premise of the probe, Anastasiades accused the authority of unfairly basing its findings on a civil standard—the “balance of probabilities”—rather than the strict criminal standard of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt.” Furthermore, he asserted that the core claims originating from the bombshell book Mafia State, which initially sparked the investigation, had “collapsed as unfounded.”

    Anastasiades maintained that investigators wrongfully denied him the chance to formally respond to the specific allegations before issuing their report. Rejecting any illicit connection to Rybolovlev, he pointed out that legislation favorable to the billionaire was overwhelmingly approved by the Cypriot parliament, rather than enacted through corrupt presidential fiat.

    The path to potential prosecution shifted Tuesday when the Prosecutorial Council transmitted the findings directly to the police and Cabinet, bypassing top prosecutors. The move followed the recusal of Attorney General George Savvides and Deputy Attorney General Savvas Angelides—both appointed to their current roles by Anastasiades after serving in his cabinet.

    The Cabinet has already indicated it will appoint independent criminal investigators to oversee the case.