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September 1, 2026

You Spin Me Round: Three Features Built to Keep a Child in the Loop

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Dead or Alive performing "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)". The opening post in this series, Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan, described how the French Conseil constitutionnel struck down the under-15 ban because the legislator had set out to address the risks posed by certain features of social media services and then wrote a rule about the user’s age...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy, technology
August 27, 2026

Non, a Ban Is Not a Plan: France Struck Down the Ban, Meta Settled on Features

For some background music when reading this post, we encourage you to (re)discover Michel Polnareff’s “La poupée qui fait non”. France adopted its under-15 social media ban on 21 July 2026 but hit a major roadblock a few weeks before its prohibition was due to take effect. The Conseil constitutionnel censured the central provision of the ban on 14 August, and the reasoning for its “Non” travels far beyond France. While the court did accept...

Blog Post, digital rights, European policy, internet policy, technology
July 8, 2026

Zero Knowledge, Full Record: Age Verification And The Infrastructure The Privacy Label Ignores

The “privacy-preserving age verification” label should be understood at two separate levels: on the one hand, it accurately describes a mechanism, yet on the other, it misleadingly describes a system. The protection it refers to covers a single exchange between a user and a website; the infrastructure that makes that exchange work requires knowing who the user is. The former may be preserving privacy, but the latter certainly doesn’t. That distinction has consequences. The label...

Blog Post, digital rights, technology
July 1, 2026

Two Megaphones and an Empty Room: The Need to Write the Copyright Reform for the Empty Seats

The EU copyright review is being argued by two blocs of private interests. The party that will live with the result, the public, was never really in the room. That was a choice by those who drafted the consultation. That is not a good thing. Two private interests are shouting at each other across the European Commission's copyright review, and the room they are shouting in is empty. On one side stand rightholders. On the...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright
June 22, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright – Part 3: Why an Optional Research Exception Is No Exception at All

This is the third and final installment in a series analysing the European Commission's current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Part 1 examined live content piracy and the fundamental rights implications of enforcement without safeguards. Part 2 examined the push for mandatory AI training licences and why the mechanism would harm the creators it claims to protect. This post focuses on the research exception: a provision that has been optional for twenty-five...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright
June 17, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright –  Part 2: Why Mandatory AI Licensing Is Not a Silver Bullet And Could Ricochet

This is the second installment in a three-part series analysing the European Commission's current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. Part 1 examined live content piracy and the fundamental rights implications of enforcement without safeguards. This post focuses on text and data mining (TDM) and the push for mandatory AI training licences; the third piece will explore the research exception. The European Commission's call for evidence to support its review of the Directive on...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright
June 15, 2026

Brussels Revisits Copyright –  Part 1: Why the Rush to Block Live Sports Piracy Threatens Fundamental Rights

This is the first installment in a three-part series analyzing the European Commission’s current call for evidence on EU copyright rules. This post focuses on live content piracy; subsequent pieces will explore text and data mining (TDM) and the research exception.  The European Commission has launched a call for evidence, which closes on 25 June, to support two parallel workstreams: the review of the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (DCDSM); and, the preparatory work...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, copyright
June 4, 2026

From Buzzword to Blueprint? The EU Tech Sovereignty Package Has Landed

A year ago, we argued that digital sovereignty was Europe's favourite empty buzzword: elastic enough for everyone to project their fears onto, specific enough to satisfy no one. Yesterday, the European Commission adopted a package that tries, with notable seriousness, to prove that argument wrong. The Tech Sovereignty Package was postponed three times since March 2026. Those delays were themselves informative: reporting suggested that language around preferential treatment for European providers was carefully managed to...

artificial intelligence, Blog Post, European policy, internet policy
May 20, 2026

Don’t Be Fooled: What Australia Calls a Social Media Delay Is Actually a Triple Ban

The word "delay" is doing a great deal of work right now. Not only in Australia, but also in Brussels. On 12 May 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen addressed the European Summit on Artificial Intelligence and Children in Copenhagen. She called for action. She cited platform addiction, algorithmic harm, and the exposure of children to distressing content. The speech was substantive, and it landed. But it also contained a word choice that...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy
May 6, 2026

Zlonk! What a Los Angeles Jury Found That Fifty Years of Research Could Not – Part 3

This is Part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 examined the five-century history of media moral panics and why the smartphone debate fits that template imperfectly. Part 2 traced the engineering logic behind algorithmic feeds back to the television scheduling techniques of the 1970s and 1980s.  On 25 March 2026, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury found Meta and Google legally liable for the depression, body dysmorphia, and suicidal ideation suffered by a plaintiff...

Blog Post, digital rights, internet policy