Way back in Trump’s first term, back when he was still claiming he was going to build some enormous border wall and get Mexico to pay for it (neither happened), the lovely people over at Cards Against Humanity bought a parcel of land along the boarder with the intention of taking every possible action to prevent a wall being built upon it. It was part of a marketing campaign where a percentage of sales of the game would go to buying the land, which eventually happened in 2017. And that’s where things stood for the rest of Trump’s term and all the way up to 2024. No wall was built on the land, Mexico paid for nothing, and the land remained empty.
Until, that is, SpaceX decided to dump a bunch of trash on it. The Elon Musk-owned company has a fabrication plant nearby and apparently just decided to use someone else’s property to dump a bunch of construction materials and trash. The irony that a parcel of land that was bought to keep a border wall from being built to keep out foreign trespassers that was instead trespassed upon domestically is not lost on me.
Well, CAH sued for $15 million and seemed like it had a very good case. SpaceX must have eventually agreed, as they have now settled the case days before the trial was set to begin.
A court document shows that SpaceX admitted it did not ask for or receive permission to use the property. SpaceX admitted that its “contractors cleared the lot and put down gravel,” parked vehicles on the property, and stored construction materials. An Associated Press article yesterday said that “Texas court records show a settlement was reached in the case last month, just weeks before a jury trial was scheduled to begin on Nov. 3.”
The game company said a victory at trial wouldn’t have resulted in a better outcome. “A trial would have cost more than what we were likely to win from SpaceX,” the company’s statement to Ars said. “Under Texas law, even if we had won at trial (and we would have, given their admission to trespassing), we likely wouldn’t have been able to recoup our legal fees. And SpaceX certainly seemed ready to dramatically outspend us on lawyers.”
Given that the details of the settlement are annoyingly confidential, we can’t really suss out just how just this outcome is. But the folks over at CAH seem to be satisfied, so I have to imagine at least a decent amount of money changed hands here. Still, part of the idea here was supposed to be sending money won from Musk to all the donors to the campaign, but it appears the settlement money won’t be enough to do so in an update CAH provided publicly.
Dear Horrible Friends,
Remember last year, when we sued Elon Musk for dumping space garbage all over your land, and then you signed up to collect your share of the proceeds? Also, remember how we warned you that we’d “probably only be able to get you like two dollars or most likely nothing”?
Well, Elon Musk’s team admitted on the record that they illegally trespassed on your land, and then they packed up the space garbage and fucked off. But when it comes to paying you all, he did the legal equivalent of throwing dust in our eyes and kicking us in the balls.
So while we can’t give you what you really wanted––cash money from Elon Musk––we’re going to make it up to you, our best, sexiest customers…with comedy! We’re sending you each a brand new mini-pack of exclusive cards all about Elon Musk, which you can sign up to receive for free right here.
You’ve got to give it to these folks: they’re never not on brand.
Donald Trump just cut off all trade negotiations with Canada because an Ontario ad campaign quoted Ronald Reagan accurately. The quotes are real. The context is accurate. But Trump called them “fake” and “fraudulent,” and the Reagan Foundation—the institution literally tasked with preserving Reagan’s legacy—backed him up by lying about what their own guy said and even threatening frivolous litigation in support of Trump’s temper tantrum.
Now, thanks to Trump’s meltdown, millions more people are watching Reagan’s actual words. And learning that Trump’s entire tariff philosophy directly contradicts what Reagan believed and said.
The ad that triggered all this is pretty straightforward. A few weeks ago, Ontario Premier Doug Ford launched a $75 million campaign using clips from a 1987 Ronald Reagan radio address about the evils of tariffs and the benefits of free trade. You can see it here:
Ford’s politics are often Trumpian, but he’s not backing down from a stupid trade war. So he pulled Reagan’s own words and ran them as a 60-second spot.
The ad campaign is definitely targeting Republicans and business execs. It first ran on the very MAGA Newsmax and the very business-focused Bloomberg, but has been expanding to Fox News (of course), CNBC, CBS, ABC, ESPN and others.
Apparently, somewhere this week, Donald Trump saw it, and it made him sad. And when Donald Trump gets sad, he lashes out like a six-year-old. He claimed that the ad was “fake” and because of that he was cutting off all trade negotiations with Canada.
If you can’t see that image, it’s Trump spewing on social media:
The Ronald Reagan Foundation has just announced that Canada has fraudulently used an advertisement, which is FAKE, featuring Ronald Reagan speaking negatively about Tariffs. The ad was for $75,000. They only did this to interfere with the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, and other courts. TARIFFS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO THE NATIONAL SECURITY, AND ECONOMY, OF THE U.S.A. Based on their egregious behavior, ALL TRADE NEGOTIATIONS WITH CANADA ARE HEREBY TERMINATED. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT
So, first off, it’s a bit weird to cut off all negotiations with Canada based on an ad from one province, Ontario, which is run by a politician from a different party than the Prime Minister. But, okay.
But the bigger issue is the claim that the Reagan quotes are “fake” or “fraudulent.” They’re not. The Reagan Foundation put out this statement, and the only “misrepresentation” is in the Foundation’s own statement:
That one says:
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute learned that the Government of Ontario, Canada, created an ad campaign using selective audio and video of President Ronald Reagan delivering his “Radio Address to the Nation on Free and Fair Trade,” dated April 25, 1987. The ad misrepresents the Presidential Radio Address, and the Government of Ontario did not seek nor receive permission to use and edit the remarks.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute is reviewing its legal options in this matter. We encourage you to watch President Reagan’s unedited video on our YouTube channel.
So, first off, note the difference between what the Foundation said and what Trump said. The Foundation claims that the ad is “using selective audio” in a way that “misrepresents” Reagan. Trump took that claim (which was already bullshit) and said it means the ad is “fake” and “fraudulent.” It is neither.
The Foundation also suggests it might sue, which is laughable. They have no claim here and any attempt to go to court would fail, and fail in an embarrassing manner.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation has gone fully Trumpy—their website is packed with MAGA interviews—and now they’re lying about what Reagan actually said and believed. The institution designed to preserve his legacy is rewriting it to please Donald Trump.
It’s pathetic.
But, of course, the Streisand Effect kicks in, and now everyone can watch what Ronald Reagan actually said in that address:
It’s only five minutes long. Every quote in the Ontario ad is in there, accurate both in text and in context. The speech was framed around Reagan’s decision to impose tariffs on certain Japanese products in response to Japan dumping below-market semiconductors, which Reagan argued violated an earlier agreement.
However, he was quite clear throughout that he was a strong believer in free trade and against tariffs, and he was only doing this, regretfully, in response to Japan violating an earlier trade agreement.
Reagan explicitly contradicted Trump’s claim that tariffs are “very important to the national security and economy of the US.” Reagan said the opposite.
Incredibly, Trump freaking out and lying about this ad is making many more people watch it and learn what Reagan actually said about tariffs and free trade. Even CNN, which pretty typically just repeats whatever Trump says, is pointing out that Trump’s claims here are nonsense and Reagan very clearly spoke out against tariffs.
On top of all this, Canada is now cutting trade deals with China and other countries in Asia. This is effectively pushing our closest ally into the waiting arms of our biggest economic rival.
This is stunningly bad policy: a foreseeable disaster stemming from a stupid approach to trade, kicked into overdrive by a presidential temper tantrum over accurate quotes from a politician many in the MAGA world pretend to idolize. Trump lied. The Reagan Foundation lied to back him up. And now Canada is cutting deals with China while the world learns that Reagan explicitly opposed everything Trump claims tariffs accomplish.
Congratulations to everyone involved. You’ve Streisanded the world into a history lesson, and handed China a trade partner in the process.
When Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers stormed through Santa Ana, California, in June, panicked calls flooded into the city’s emergency response system.
Recordings of those calls, obtained by ProPublica, captured some of the terror residents felt as they watched masked men ambush people and force them into unmarked cars. In some cases, the men wore plain clothes and refused to identify themselves. There was no way to confirm whether they were immigration agents or imposters. In six of the calls to Santa Ana police, residents described what they were seeing as kidnappings.
“He’s bleeding,” one caller said about a person he saw yanked from a car wash lot and beaten. “They dumped him into a white van. It doesn’t say ICE.”
One woman’s voice shook as she asked, “What kind of police go around without license plates?”
And then this from another: “Should we just run from them?”
During a tense public meeting days later, Mayor Valerie Amezcua and the City Council asked their police chief whether there was anything they could do to rein in the federal agents — even if only to ban the use of masks. The answer was a resounding no. Plus, filing complaints with the Department of Homeland Security was likely to go nowhere because the office that once handled them had been dismantled. There was little chance of holding individual agents accountable for alleged abuses because, among other hurdles, there was no way to reliably learn their identities.
Since then, Amezcua, 58, said she has reluctantly accepted the reality: There are virtually no limits on what federal agents can do to achieve President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations. Santa Ana has proven to be a template for much larger raids and even more violent arrests in Chicago and elsewhere. “It’s almost like he tries it out in this county and says, ‘It worked there, so now let me send them there,’” Amezcua said.
Current and former national security officials share the mayor’s concerns. They describe the legions of masked immigration officers operating in near-total anonymity on the orders of the president as the crossing of a line that had long set the United States apart from the world’s most repressive regimes. ICE, in their view, has become an unfettered and unaccountable national police force. The transformation, the officials say, unfolded rapidly and in plain sight. Trump’s DHS appointees swiftly dismantled civil rights guardrails, encouraged agents to wear masks, threatened groups and state governments that stood in their way, and then made so many arrests that the influx overwhelmed lawyers trying to defend immigrants taken out of state or out of the country.
And although they are reluctant to predict the future, the current and former officials worry that this force assembled from federal agents across the country could eventually be turned against any groups the administration labels a threat.
One former senior DHS official who was involved in oversight said that what is happening on American streets today “gives me goosebumps.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the official rattled off scenes that once would’ve triggered investigations: “Accosting people outside of their immigration court hearings where they’re showing up and trying to do the right thing and then hauling them off to an immigration jail in the middle of the country where they can’t access loved ones or speak to counsel. Bands of masked men apprehending people in broad daylight in the streets and hauling them off. Disappearing people to a third country, to a prison where there’s a documented record of serious torture and human rights abuse.”
The former official paused. “We’re at an inflection point in history right now and it’s frightening.”
Although ICE is conducting itself out in the open, even inviting conservative social media influencers to accompany its agents on high-profile raids, the agency operates in darkness. The identities of DHS officers, their salaries and their operations have long been withheld for security reasons and generally exempted from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. However, there were offices within DHS created to hold agents and their supervisors accountable for their actions on the job. The Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, created by Congress and led largely by lawyers, investigated allegations of rape and unlawful searches from both the public and within DHS ranks, for instance. Egregious conduct was referred to the Justice Department.
The CRCL office had limited powers; former staffers say their job was to protect DHS by ensuring personnel followed the law and addressed civil rights concerns. Still, it was effective in stalling rushed deportations or ensuring detainees had access to phones and lawyers. And even when its investigations didn’t fix problems, CRCL provided an accounting of allegations and a measure of transparency for Congress and the public.
The office processed thousands of complaints — 3,000 in fiscal year 2023 alone — ranging from allegations of lack of access to medical treatment to reports of sexual assault at detention centers. Former staffers said around 600 complaints were open when work was suspended.
The administration has gutted most of the office. What’s left of it was led, at least for a while, by a 29-year-old White House appointee who helped craft Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint that broadly calls for the curtailment of civil rights enforcement.
Meanwhile, ICE is enjoying a windfall in resources. On top of its annual operating budget of $10 billion a year, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill included an added $7.5 billion a year for the next four years for recruiting and retention alone. As part of its hiring blitz, the agency has dropped age, training and education standards and has offered recruits signing bonuses as high as $50,000.
“Supercharging this law enforcement agency and at the same time you have oversight being eliminated?” said the former DHS official. “This is very scary.”
Michelle Brané, a longtime human rights attorney who directed DHS’ ombudsman office during the Biden administration, said Trump’s adherence to “the authoritarian playbook is not even subtle.”
“ICE, their secret police, is their tool,” Brané said. “Once they have that power, which they have now, there’s nothing stopping them from using it against citizens.”
Tricia McLaughlin, the DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, refuted descriptions of ICE as a secret police force. She called such comparisons the kind of “smears and demonization” that led to the recent attack on an ICE facility in Texas, in which a gunman targeted an ICE transport van and shot three detained migrants, two of them fatally, before killing himself.
In a written response to ProPublica, McLaughlin dismissed the current and former national security officials and scholars interviewed by ProPublica as “far-left champagne socialists” who haven’t seen ICE enforcement up close.
“If they had,” she wrote, “they would know when our heroic law enforcement officers conduct operations, they clearly identify themselves as law enforcement while wearing masks to protect themselves from being targeted by highly sophisticated gangs” and other criminals.
McLaughlin said the recruiting blitz is not compromising standards. She wrote that the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center is ready for 11,000 new hires by the beginning of next year and that training has been streamlined and boosted by technology. “Our workforce never stops learning,” McLaughlin wrote.
White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson also praised ICE conduct and accused Democrats of making “dangerous, untrue smears.”
“ICE officers act heroically to enforce the law, arrest criminal illegal aliens and protect American communities with the utmost professionalism,” Jackson said. “Anyone pointing the finger at law enforcement officers instead of the criminals are simply doing the bidding of criminal illegal aliens and fueling false narratives that lead to violence.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Trump pick who fired nearly the entire civil rights oversight staff, said the move was in response to CRCL functioning “as internal adversaries that slow down operations,” according to a DHS spokesperson.
Trump also eliminated the department’s Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, which was charged with flagging inhumane conditions at ICE detention facilities where many of the apprehended immigrants are held. The office was resurrected after a lawsuit and court order, though it’s sparsely staffed.
The hobbling of the office comes as the White House embarks on an aggressive expansion of detention sites with an eye toward repurposing old jails or building new ones with names that telegraph harsh conditions: “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades, built by the state and operated in partnership with DHS, or the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska.
“It is a shocking situation to be in that I don’t think anybody anticipated a year ago,” said Erica Frantz, a political scientist at Michigan State University who studies authoritarianism. “We might’ve thought that we were going to see a slide, but I don’t think anybody anticipated how quickly it would transpire, and now people at all levels are scrambling to figure out how to push back.”
“Authoritarian Playbook”
Frantz and other scholars who study anti-democratic political systems in other countries said there are numerous examples in which ICE’s activities appear cut from an authoritarian playbook. Among them was the detention of Tufts University doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk, who was apprehended after co-writing an op-ed for the campus paper that criticized the school’s response to the war in Gaza. ICE held her incommunicado for 24 hours and then shuffled her through three states before jailing her in Louisiana.
“The thing that got me into the topic of ‘maybe ICE is a secret police force’?” said Lee Morgenbesser, an Australian political science professor who studies authoritarianism. “It was that daylight snatching of the Tufts student.”
Morgenbesser was also struck by the high-profile instances of ICE detaining elected officials who attempted to stand in their way. Among them, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander was detained for demanding a judicial warrant from ICE, and U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla was forcibly removed from a DHS press conference.
And David Sklansky, a Stanford Law School professor who researches policing and democracy, said it appears that ICE’s agents are allowed to operate with complete anonymity. “It’s not just that people can’t see faces of the officers,” Sklansky said. “The officers aren’t wearing shoulder insignia or name tags.”
U.S. District Judge William G. Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee, recently pointed out that use of masked law enforcement officers had long been considered anathema to American ideals. In a blistering ruling against the administration’s arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters, he wrote, “To us, masks are associated with cowardly desperados and the despised Ku Klux Klan. In all our history we have never tolerated an armed masked secret police.” The Trump administration has said it will appeal that ruling.
Where the Fallout is Felt
The fallout is being felt in places like Hays County, Texas, not far from Austin, where ICE apprehended 47 people, including nine children, during a birthday celebration in the early morning of April 1.
The agency’s only disclosure about the raid in Dripping Springs describes the operation as part of a yearlong investigation targeting “members and associates believed to be part of the Venezuelan transnational gang, Tren de Aragua.”
Six months later, the county’s top elected official told ProPublica the federal government has ignored his attempts to get answers.
“We’re not told why they took them, and we’re not told where they took them,” said County Judge Ruben Becerra, a Democrat. “By definition, that’s a kidnapping.”
In the raid, a Texas trooper secured a search warrant that allowed law enforcement officers to breach the home, an Airbnb rental on a vast stretch of land in the Hill Country. Becerra told ProPublica he believes the suspicion of drugs at the party was a pretense to pull people out of the house so ICE officers who lacked a warrant could take them into custody. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not respond to a request for comment.
The Trump administration has yet to produce evidence supporting claims of gang involvement, said Karen Muñoz, a civil rights attorney helping families track down their relatives who were jailed or deported. While some court documents are sealed, nothing in the public record verifies the gang affiliation DHS cited as the cause for the birthday party raid.
“There’s no evidence released at all that any person kidnapped at that party was a member of any organized criminal group,” Muñoz said.
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, did not respond to questions about Hays County and other raids where families and attorneys allege a lack of transparency and due process.
In Plain Sight
Months after ICE’s widely publicized raids, fear continues to envelop Santa Ana, a majority-Hispanic city with a large immigrant population. Amezcua, the mayor, said the raids have complicated local policing and rendered parents afraid to pick up their children from school. The city manager, a California-born citizen and Latino, carries with him three government IDs, including a passport.
Raids of car washes and apartment buildings continue, but the community has started to “push back,” Amezcua said. “Like many other communities, the neighbors come out. People stop in the middle of traffic.”
With so few institutional checks on ICE’s powers, citizens are increasingly relying on themselves. On at least one occasion in nearby Downey, a citizen’s intervention had some effect.
On June 12, Melyssa Rivas had just started her workday when a colleague burst into her office with urgent news: “ICE is here.”
The commotion was around the corner in Rivas’ hometown, a Los Angeles suburb locals call “Mexican Beverly Hills” for its stately houses and affluent Hispanic families. Rivas, 31, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, belongs to Facebook groups where residents share updates about cultural festivals, church programs and, these days, the presence of Trump’s deportation foot soldiers.
Rivas had seen posts about ICE officers sweeping through LA and figured Downey’s turn had come. She and her co-worker rushed toward the sound of screaming at a nearby intersection. Rivas hit “record” on her phone as a semicircle of trucks and vans came into view. She filmed at least half a dozen masked men in camouflage vests encircling a Hispanic man on his knees.
Her unease deepened as she registered details that “didn’t seem right,” Rivas recalled in an interview. She said the parked vans had out-of-state plates or no tags. The armed men wore only generic “police” patches, and most were in street clothes. No visible insignia identified them as state or federal — or even legal authorities at all.
“When is it that we just decided to do things a different way? There’s due process, there’s a legal way, and it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore,” Rivas said. “Where are human rights?”
Video footage shows Rivas and others berating the officers for complicity in what they called a “kidnapping.” Local news channels later reported that the vehicles had chased the man after a raid at a nearby car wash.
“I know half of you guys know this is fucked up,” Rivas was recorded telling the officers.
Moments later, the scene took a turn. As suddenly as they’d arrived, the officers returned to their vehicles and left, with no apology and no explanation to the distraught man they left on the sidewalk.
Through a mask, one of them said, “Have a good day.”
On Tuesday, I wrote about how we were upgrading our daily email newsletter—the one we’ve had for decades but never actually promoted. Thousands of you had signed up just by spotting the little email icon. We figured more might be interested if we actually talked about it. We’d upgraded the tech, written a whole post about it, and figured people would start signing up.
And then… crickets. For two days straight, the only “new” signup was a test I’d run with my own email address. Which was, you know, not ideal. It was possible that no more people wanted to sign up and we’d maxed out on subscribers already. But… that seemed unlikely.
Then we got a few reports from people saying they tried to sign up but got error messages. Which is, generally speaking, not what you want.
It turns out that we had a little bug: users who were signed into their Techdirt account could sign up for the newsletter. But if you were signed out (as most readers are) well… you got the error. There’s some sort of QA lesson in that, and yes, we should have tested it logged out as well, but there’s always something you miss.
All that is to say, we’ve now fixed this, and ever since we did, the signups have been flowing in. So I thought I’d do another quick post and say that, no, really, you can sign up for the emailed daily newsletter if you want it!
Also worth noting: a bunch of people said they prefer RSS or just visiting the site directly, and that’s great too. We’ve had full-text RSS feeds for over two decades—long before most sites even understood what they were—and the site itself is always there. The point isn’t to force you into one distribution channel. If anything, we’re doing the opposite: giving you the option to consume Techdirt however you actually want to, rather than locking you into whatever method happens to be most fashionable… or profitable. That’s increasingly rare, and it’s not an accident.
We just want you to be able to enjoy Techdirt whichever way works best for you.
When Reddit sued “data scraper” companies and AI firm Perplexity earlier this week, I assumed it was another predictable skirmish over AI training data—the kind of case we’ve been tracking as companies try to wall off the open internet and set up toll booths. But reading the actual complaint made it clear this is something far more dangerous: Reddit isn’t just going after scrapers. It’s mounting a fundamental attack on the very concept of an open internet, using a twisted reading of copyright law that—if it succeeds—would break how search engines, archives, and the web itself operate.
Even if you love Reddit and hate AI, you should be worried about this lawsuit. If it succeeds, it would fundamentally close off most of the open internet.
Most reporting on this is not actually explaining the nuances, which require a deeper understanding of the law, but fundamentally, Reddit is NOT arguing that these companies are illegally scraping Reddit, but rather that they are illegally scraping… Google (which is not a party to the lawsuit) and in doing so violating the DMCA’s anti-circumvention clause, over content Reddit holds no copyright over. And, then, Perplexity is effectively being sued for linking to Reddit.
This is… bonkers on so many levels. And, incredibly, within their lawsuit, Reddit defends its arguments by claiming it’s filing this lawsuit to protect the open internet. It is not. It is doing the exact opposite.
The Background
It is totally reasonable to be concerned about the burden that data scrapers put on websites, and to talk about ways to deal with them. But that’s not what this lawsuit really is. It’s mostly focused on some companies that effectively have built unofficial APIs for getting search results data out of Google. That can be quite useful in some cases! But also, some of the companies in this space can be fairly sketchy. Reddit leans heavily on the sketchiness of the companies to imply “they’re bad.”
But, an open web must mean a programmable web of some sort. Building on other services is a fundamental part of the open web and has always been there. If the building becomes abusive, then there are often technical ways of dealing with it. But here, the “abuse” seems to be Reddit signed a $60 million scraping deal with Google, which was already kinda sketchy.
After all, Reddit has a license to the content users post in order to operate the service, but they don’t hold the copyright on it. Indeed, Reddit’s terms state clearly that users retain “any ownership rights you have in Your content.” Because of Reddit’s agreement that it can license content, the deal with Google could sorta squeeze under that term, but that doesn’t give Reddit the right to then sue over users’ copyrights (as it’s doing in this case).
Either way, there’s an indication that Reddit has gotten greedy. It’s apparently reopened negotiations with Google recently, seeking more money and traffic. But it also wants money from other AI providers. Apparently, that includes Perplexity, which is a pretty useful AI “answer engine” that lets users select from a variety of underlying LLMs (Perplexity has released its own LLMs, but they were modifications of open source LLMs including Llama (from Meta) and Mistral, a popular open source LLM from France. Thus, while Perplexity has offered its own models, it didn’t train them itself).
Because Perplexity is much more focused on being an alternative to a search engine than a traditional “chat bot,” its focus in answering your questions is to actually provide links as sources for the answers it gives. In effect, it combines a traditional search engine with an LLM and it did this before many other chatbot LLMs added web search capabilities (though most now have them).
But that means, if an “answer” to a question from a user comes from a Reddit post, Perplexity is likely to link to it, just like a regular search engine. But, Reddit wants to get paid. And because Reddit has become so closed and persnickety about things, it looks like Perplexity may have chosen to use these other data scraping firms’ unofficial Google search results APIs to find Reddit posts and link to them.
This is… how the open internet is supposed to work, actually. But Reddit presents it as a sneaky “circumvention.”
Recognizing that Reddit denies scrapers like them access to its site, Defendants SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy scrape the data from Google’s search results instead. They do so by masking their identities, hiding their locations, and disguising their web scrapers as regular people (among other techniques) to circumvent or bypass the security restrictions meant to stop them. For example, during a two-week span in July 2025, Defendants SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy circumvented Google’s technological control measures and automatedly accessed, without authorization, almost three billion search engine results pages (“SERPs”) containing Reddit text, URLs, images, and videos.
That’s Not How Circumvention Works
So you might notice something weird in the paragraph above. Namely the claim that the API/scraping companies “circumvented Google’s technological control measures.”
The fundamental issue is that it says any attempt to “circumvent a technological measure” that tries to protect a copyright-protected work is, itself, copyright infringement. And that’s even if the goal of the circumvention is not even to infringe on the underlying copyright at all. That’s why we’ve seen attempts by companies to use 1201 to, say, block people from using cheaper ink jet cartridges, or getting a cheaper garage door opener. Neither of those sound like copyright issues (because they’re not), but companies tried to abuse 1201 by claiming they put “technological control measures” on those devices, and any “circumvention” should then be seen as infringement.
But here, Reddit is doing something even crazier. Because it’s saying that since these companies (allegedly) get around Google’s technological measures, then somehow Reddit can accuse them of violating 1201.
Reddit and Google have implemented technological measures that effectively control access to Reddit content. Both companies use advanced technological techniques, as described above, to control unauthorized, automated access to their server systems. These measures, in the ordinary course of their operation, limit the freedom and ability of users to access Reddit content, including by prohibiting automated entities from accessing search engine result pages and scraping search engine results that include Reddit content.
Defendants’ actions violate 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1)(A), under which no person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work. Defendants have circumvented these measures in one or more ways, including:
a. Avoiding or bypassing Reddit’s measures entirely in order to obtain Reddit’s content and services, and the content authored by its users, that appear in Google search results; and
b. Avoiding, removing, deactivating, impairing, and/or bypassing SearchGuard and Google’s other technological control measures by using devices, systems, processes, and/or protocols, including large-volume proxy networks, to improperly gain access to Google Search results.
Let’s break this down, because we have to look at how crazy this is.
They’re saying that these companies are “avoiding or bypassing” Reddit’s TCMs. But, the way they’re doing that is by not scraping Reddit. You cannot claim that it is “circumventing a TCM” to get the same content… from Google. That’s crazy.
Even crazier is that they’re arguing that the defendants are circumventing Google’s TCM, even though Google isn’t even a party.
They’re making this claim over content that Reddit holds no copyright over. The copyright remains with the original creator. Reddit holds a license, but a license does not grant Reddit the right to sue over that copyright.
Each one of these ideas is crazy. All three of them together is ludicrous. Reddit is claiming that these companies violated copyright law by (1) avoiding Reddit and (2) getting the content from publicly available Google searches over (3) content that Reddit has no copyright over.
And somehow that’s supposed to be copyright infringement.
This Is Not Protecting the Open Internet
Even more obnoxiously, Reddit crowns itself a protector of the open internet with this nonsense:
Because Reddit has always believed in the open internet, it takes its role as a steward of its users’ communities, discussions, and authentic human discourse seriously.
Elsewhere in the lawsuit, it says:
As articulated in its Public Content Policy, Reddit believes in an open internet, but it “do[es] not believe that third parties have a right to misuse public content just because it’s public.”
If that’s the case, then… you don’t believe in an open internet. Text and data mining is a part of the open internet. Building on the work of others is part of the open internet. You can’t just claim “we support the open internet, but not if we say you’re misusing it.” It’s not your call.
Yes, there are copyright restrictions on what you can do with others’ content, but (again) Reddit has no copyright interest here. And it can’t even legitimately claim a “circumvention” of a TCM just because these companies got the same data elsewhere.
This Isn’t Even About Training
Some people will still insist this is bad because they hate all AI training based on scraping, but that’s not even what’s happening here. We discussed this a bit in our last piece on cutting off the open internet. It’s one thing to argue that you want to block your content from being trained upon, but it’s a wholly different thing to say “you can’t retrieve this page based on a user search.” That latter scenario is the basis of how search engines exist online, which are fundamental to an open web.
But, as Perplexity notes in its response to the lawsuit (ironically, in the Perplexity subreddit on Reddit), that’s exactly what Reddit is looking to block:
What does Perplexity actually do with Reddit content? We summarize Reddit discussions, and we cite Reddit threads in answers, just like people share links to posts here all the time. Perplexity invented citations in AI for two reasons: so that you can verify the accuracy of the AI-generated answers, and so you can follow the citation to learn more and expand your journey of curiosity.
And that’s what people use Perplexity for: journeys of curiosity and learning. When they visit Reddit to read your content it’s because they want to read it, and they read more than they would have from a Google search.
The company also notes that Reddit demanded Perplexity license its data, but Perplexity explained to them (as mentioned above) that they don’t train their own LLM so they don’t need to license data for training.
Here’s where we push back. Reddit told the press we ignored them when they asked about licensing. Untrue. Whenever anyone asks us about content licensing, we explain that Perplexity, as an application-layer company, does not train AI models on content. Never has. So it is impossible for us to sign a license agreement to do so.
A year ago, after explaining this, Reddit insisted we pay anyway, despite lawfully accessing Reddit data. Bowing to strong arm tactics just isn’t how we do business.
For what it’s worth, Perplexity also claims that this is part of Reddit’s plan to “extort” more money from Google.
This is an Anti-Open Internet Lawsuit
If this lawsuit succeeds, it would signal a huge destruction of the open internet. It would fundamentally make it impossible for search engines to work without licensing all content. It would, in effect, close off huge parts of the open internet to only those with the largest wallets.
Beyond that, it would extend our understanding of Section 1201’s anti-circumvention provisions to absurdity. Saying that not scraping your site is circumvention? Crazy. Saying that (allegedly) “bypassing” someone else’s technological measures lets you sue? Absurd. And saying that you can do all that over content you don’t even hold the copyright on? Preposterously stupid.
If this lawsuit succeeds, it would open up a cottage industry of frivolous lawsuits, while greatly diminishing the nature of the open web.
I’ve long considered Reddit one of the “good” examples of how narrow, more focused, communities can operate. On our latest Ctrl-Alt-Speech, we talked about how it’s one of the examples of the “good” parts of the internet. I know and respect many people at Reddit, including on their legal team.
But I just don’t get this lawsuit. It seems massively destructive to the open internet in what appears to be a very misguided and mis-targeted attempt to shake down extra licensing revenue. There are better ways to do this, and I hope that Reddit reconsiders its approach.
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Earlier this year, Donald Trump declared (without facts in evidence) that Chicago was a crime-ridden hellhole that could only be saved by sending in the literal troops. This happened during a year which has been one of the safest (in terms of crime rates) in Chicago’s recent history. And, of course, actual crime rates were far beside the point. The real reason for Trump’s declaration of war was his ongoing grudge with any major city or US state whose residents have voted against him in recent elections.
A month later, Trump amped up his war plans by calling for the arrest of Illinois governor JB Pritzker and the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson. Then he did the actual war stuff, sending National Guard members from Illinois (already legally problematic) and [wtaf] Texas to the city of Chicago to do the stuff these troops have done elsewhere… which has basically amounted to performing policing of areas for literal trash, filing paperwork for federal cops, shitting in humvees, and dealing with the uncomfortable reality of working for a logistics-last administration that amuses itself by moving its toy soldiers to wherever the vibe takes it.
JB Pritzker has done a great job pushing back against the Trump administration. And, for the moment, so has the federal court in the jurisdiction affected by Trump’s domestic war plans. Consequently, Trump administration figures are getting so mad it’s being put in the all the papers. Here’s the Chicago Tribune, covering DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s latest fact-free rant in defense of… um… martial law, I guess?
U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday criticized the media and politicians, including Gov. JB Pritzker, for “trying to demonize” federal immigration agents and the Trump administration’s enforcement operations, and she urged citizens to thank law enforcement officers and “cook a meal for their families.”
Well, if we’re going to thank these officers properly, we’re going to need their names and addresses. Let’s hope Noem will be publishing this information in the near future so citizens can thank these officers personally.
But let’s go back to the first sentence. No one needs to try to “demonize” ICE officers. They do it to themselvesevery day of the week. All anyone needs to do to cast demon-esque aspersions is simply report on their actions.
Noem’s comments continue from here, however, laying her chin out like she’s the straight man in a bit she’s not currently aware she’s participating in. Every statement offers up her chin like a regular Glass Joe Jane, just patiently waiting for someone to connect directly and send her spiraling to the canvas.
“I want to speak directly to the American people today and remind them and recall the facts that we are focused on the worst of the worst, bringing these individuals to justice. We’re not going to let individuals terorize our streets anymore and we’re not going to let them make victims out of families that live in this country,” Noem said.
“Since January, the Department of Homeland Security has arrested over 480,000 criminal illegal aliens,” she said. “Seventy percent of those individuals have criminal charges against them or have been convicted of those criminal charges.”
That can’t possibly be correct. In fact, it isn’t. The first clue is that Kristi Noem is saying it. The second clue is the actual data, which shows that more than 65% of people booked by ICE have never been convicted. And that means there’s no way 70% have either been convicted or have current criminal charges because there are simply not enough people left.
If Noem wants to include the immigration charges arrestees are now facing, that’s fine. That might make everything add up to 70% (but it does make you wonder why it’s not 100%), but it doesn’t add any credence to her assertion that ICE is focused on the “worst of the worst.” An immigration offense is a civil offense. If Noem wants to pretend overstaying a visa is the criminal equivalent of felony assault, she’s welcome to do that. Pritzker and the media at large (who Noem includes in this free-association venting) are under no obligation to play along with the administration’s narrative.
The media did push back a bit as Noem attacked them for not showing respect, if not abject adoration, for ICE officers. When asked about arrests for low-level crimes not exactly being the “worst of worst” they were told ICE was gunning for, Noem said this:
“We have laws and we don’t get to pick which ones matter and which ones don’t,” she said. “Every single one of our laws has been put in place for a reason and, therefore, will be enforced.”
This person works for a man who was convicted on 34 counts in a felony trial and yet — thanks to the Supreme Court — is somehow back in the Oval Office. Her employer is also a man who has declared he can break pretty much any law he wants to and still get away with it because of who he is and the immunity he has access to.
Twenty exhausting minutes later, Noem finished up by targeting the Illinois governor yet again.
“Gov. Pritzker in Illinois is putting his people in danger every day by going against us and not working with us to make sure that we’re detaining individuals who have criminal charges against themor have been convicted and then re-releasing them out on the streets,” she said.
US President Donald Trump issued pardons or commutations for more than 1,500 people convicted or charged in connection with the US Capitol riot four years ago.
Whoa, if true.
Suck it, ICE. You’re demons. Get demonized. You and you alone have earned all the hate you’re getting. The same goes for you, Kristi. The sooner you leave office and get back to murdering your kids’ pets, the better off this nation will be.
U.S. media mergers always follow the same trajectory. Pre-merger, executives promise all manner of amazing synergies and deal benefits. Post-merger, not only to those benefits generally never arrive, the debt from the acquisition spree usually results in significant layoffs, lower quality product, and higher rates for consumers. The Time Warner Discovery disaster was the poster child for this phenomenon.
“Major job cuts have been expected even before the Skydance Media-Paramount Global deal closed, as part of Ellison and his team’s goal of slashing upwards of $2 billion in costs. Previously, the company had been targeting layoffs by early November. The new round of cuts is expected to eliminate around 2,000 jobs in the U.S., with additional layoffs internationally.
I’m sure the longstanding employees at CBS and Paramount are particularly thrilled about the Ellisons overpaying for Bari Weiss’ blog, then promoting a woman with no real experience in journalism to be the new head of CBS News. As we’ve noted, that effort to bring even more right wing trolling and billionaire-ass kissing to a fairly saturated media market is likely to be a major headache.
The Ellisons, in their bid to dominate U.S. media, also have their eye on acquiring whatever is left of Time Warner, which is expected to cost them somewhere around $60 billion. Historically these kinds of media domination plays never end well (just ask AT&T), so you can expect significantly more layoffs as this weird combination of fail-upward brunchlords and nepobabies try to navigate a tumultuous market they don’t really understand.
It used to be that companies planning for harmful, pointless mergers had to at least make a fleeting effort to justify the pointless consolidation. But during the Trump era all you have to do is kiss the idiot king’s ring and any and all pointless consolidation gets the green light. All of the costs of those harms will, of course, be borne by consumers and employees in the months and years to come.
And because we’ve let our journalism and media consolidate in the hands of just a few billionaires — the media’s coverage of itself generally doesn’t honestly reflect any of this, propping up billionaire efforts to keep making the same mistakes over and over again for some tax cuts and a temporary stock boost.
Several years ago, DC Comics opposed the trademark sought by Unilever for the term “Wonder Mum” with the UKIPO over its trademarks for “Wonder Woman”. Now, DC Comics is notoriously draconian when it comes to policing its IP, trademarks included, but this one was fairly ridiculous, as the UKIPO pointed out. There is no actual branding comparison here. No color schemes or tradedress that would point someone to Wonder Woman. Despite that, DC took the case to the UK High Court. While we didn’t report on the result at the time, the High Court rejected DC’s appeal and affirmed the decision by the UKIPO.
Those who do not learn from past mistakes are doomed to repeat them, as the saying goes. This time, back in April, DC Comics had sent C&D notices to a French woman who runs an app dedicated to providing family guidance called “Wondermum.”
“When I got the letter, I rang my close friends and said: ‘Very funny, guys,’ thinking it was an April fool,” she said. “Then I contacted the lawyers’ office and realised it was no joke. They told me DC Comics objected to the name Wondermum.”
Sobéron, 43, who visits schools to talk about bullying, is a hero to parents and children in Caen in Normandy, where her company is based. The app provides local listings for family activities and atéliers (workshops) as well as advice and a chatroom. She insists her creation bears no resemblance to the fictional Wonder Woman.
She’s absolutely right about that last bit. Nothing in the app, from color schema to its logo, looks anything remotely like the branding or iconography for Wonder Woman. Like… not even close. If you think the following images from the Google Play Store in any way call Wonder Woman to mind, you have a problem and should seek professional help.
So, fast forward six months and this idiotic fight is still going on. Sobéron has reportedly lost nearly 20 lbs due to all the stress surrounding this battle and she has had to spend a decent chunk of money to retain legal representation for this battle that never should have been. This is how trademark bullying works, as we’ve said many times. The practice relies on both fear and disparate legal warchests so that the bully gets its way, no matter how unjust that outcome is.
Sobéron has had to setup a crowdfunding page for help with her legal bills as a result.
Anne-Laure Boileau, Sobéron’s lawyer, said she had been accused of registering and using a trademark that DC Comics – which is owned by Warner Bros and also home to Batman and Superman – says conflicts with its Wonder Woman trademark.
“It basically criticises the similarities between the two trademarks but the only similarity is the prefix ‘wonder’. Beyond this prefix and beyond the reference to women, there are no visual or graphic similarities, and above all, we are dealing with concepts that are completely different,” Boileau told French television.
This is a woman attempting to build a business around helping parents and children alike. The name came from Sobéron’s daughter, in the wake of a death in their family, in which she referred to her mother as a “wonder mum.”
That’s who DC Comics is attempting to drain of money and time, applying stress and pressure over a trademark concern that simply doesn’t exist. It’s remarkable just how often DC Comics becomes the villain in these stories.
But, hey, at least this time DC isn’t trying to fight a trademark battle over the gravestone of an abused child.
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