internet – Hellbound and Down

Warner Bros. DMCA Takedowns Hit Lanterns Spoiler Discussion

Warner Bros. Discovery has been using DMCA copyright takedowns to remove posts on social media that contained just discussions about the first episode of the HBO series Lanterns, a report by Puck said.

The posts in question didn’t contain any leaked stills or footage from the show – just people’s comments about a major plot twist revealed in the first episode, which had previously been rumored and reported on by some outlets.

The series, a DC one co-created by Chris Mundy, Damon Lindelof, and Tom King, premiered on Sunday, and its final moments delivered a shocking fate for one of the show’s characters.

Cosmic Book News (this link contains spoilers for Lanterns), an independent pop-culture site run by editor Matt McGloin, had spent months piecing the twist together from casting, promotional footage, and the show’s timeline; by March, McGloin was predicting the ending outright.

Warner Bros. was not happy about this, and went on to use copyright law to remove posts on X, YouTube, and Facebook. The first takedowns happened on July 10, two weeks before Comic-Con, when an anonymous Reddit post claimed to reveal the twist, and it spread to X. An HBO Max social strategist then filed a takedown notice covering six posts from five accounts, including Cosmic Book News, describing the infringement as “people discussing the spoilers of the first episode of Lanterns.”

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X Wins Australian Case Over Private Message Scanning Rule

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner wrote a rule requiring online services to scan what their users send each other. Not to act on reports, but to run detection systems across private messages before anyone has complained, hunting child sexual abuse and pro-terror material. Top censor, Julie Inman Grant, wrote it herself, under powers the Online Safety Act hands her, and breaching it carries penalties of up to $49.5 million.

Then she took the view that it covered social media platforms as well, because they let users send each other messages.

On August 12, the Federal Court told her it does not. The Relevant Electronic Services Standard “does not apply” to X, Justice Elizabeth Raper held, ruling for the platform in a case it brought in May 2025. It “would be rather perverse for a social media service…not to enable messaging or chat between end users,” X’s barrister had argued — on eSafety’s reading, having a DM function was enough to pull a platform into a rulebook written for something else.

The distinction is important because of who writes what. Social media services in Australia are covered by a code developed with the industry, X included. The RES Standard is not a negotiated code. It is an instrument the Commissioner drafts and enforces herself. The standard says it applies “to the exclusion of any industry code” — so reading it to cover social media would have let the instrument she controls displace the one she negotiated.

Raper said so directly. “I accept X Corp’s characterisation of the facts that the RES Standard has been made by the commissioner…as a standard applicable to participants in a different section of the online industry, that are specified…as ‘providers of relevant electronic services’,” she wrote.

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States take Meta to trial in California in the biggest fight yet over social media harms to children

Of the thousands of lawsuits Meta faces over child safety on its platforms, none may be more consequential than one going to trial this week in California.

States are seeking extensive financial damages that could, in theory, total as much as $1.4 trillion, plus changes to how the company operates Facebook and Instagram.

The lawsuit accuses the social media giant of contributing to the youth mental health crisis by knowingly and deliberately designing features that get children addicted to its platforms. It also claims that Meta routinely collects data on children under 13 without their parents’ consent, in violation of federal law.

“Meta has harnessed powerful and unprecedented technologies to entice, engage, and ultimately ensnare youth and teens. Its motive is profit, and in seeking to maximize its financial gains,” the lawsuit says.

Dozens of states filed the lawsuit three years ago. The trial set to begin Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, features four of the states as plaintiffs — California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey. The other 25 states are expected to have trials later.

Meta said it disputes the allegations, and the trial evidence will show its commitment to supporting young people. “We’ve listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted in-depth research to understand the issues that matter most,” the company said in a statement.

States seek to land a major blow against Meta
For Meta, which already lost two pivotal cases over harms to children and teens this year, the stakes are high. The company reported a rare profit decline last month, in part due to $2.4 billion in legal expenses.

The $1.4 trillion figure, which Meta disclosed in a legal filing, is almost as high as the Menlo Park, California, company’s entire market capitalization — that is, the value of all its outstanding shares on the stock market. Paying it would inevitably put Meta Platforms in bankruptcy and perhaps put the company under state ownership.

“The state attorneys general are going for the gusto,” said Eric Goldman, a professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. “They are trying to set the definitive precedent in this case and they have asked for extraordinary damages and they are going to seek extraordinary structural remedies if they succeed.”

Meta calls the possible penalty “untethered to any claimed violation” by the states.

“A sanction of that size has no analog in the history of consumer protection enforcement,” Meta said in a July 6 filing with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

If Meta loses the trial, the court would have wide discretion over the size of any financial penalty, and legal experts say anything close to $1.4 trillion would be unlikely.

“It’s not plausible in the sense that Meta doesn’t have that much money and could not get it,” said James Grimmelmann, a law professor at Cornell Law School and Cornell Tech. “An award that large would put Meta into bankruptcy, wipe out its owners, and effectively result in the states owning Meta.”

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Former Police Officer Convicted of Sharing ‘Grossly Offensive’ Meme About Islam in Britain

A former British police officer has been convicted of posting offensive content on Facebook after he reposted an image mocking Islam, sparking accusations that blasphemy laws have returned to the United Kingdom.

Retired police officer Stephen Gray, 65, has been found guilty by the Newton Aycliffe magistrates’ court of breaching Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003 over a post he reshared on Facebook, which was deemed to be “grossly offensive”.

According to The Telegraph, Gray was reported to the Durham Constabulary for two Facebook memes by a non-Muslim neighbour of his, whom Gray had previously been in a separate dispute with.

The first post reported to the police featured the title “time for mass deportations” next to a Middle Eastern man in his 20s or 30s with the words “Children in need”. It was captioned with: “12-year-old Mohammed recently arrived at Dover. Please donate to help him move from a three-star to a five-star hotel, which has a better halal menu, free Wi-Fi, and Sky and is nearer to a girls’ school”.

This post was not deemed by the court to violate the law, as it concerned a political issue that had been debated in Parliament.

The second meme depicted a picture of a man wearing a turban next to some bacon with the caption: “Fun facts about Bacon! People who eat bacon have a lower chance of marrying a 9-year-old!”

As the post was not considered to be a political message, but rather critical of a religion, it was found to be “grossly offensive” by the court. For this, Gray was found guilty of violating the Communications Act and was ordered to pay £1,000 in fines and court costs.

Gray said of the ruling: “I made a joke, an ironic joke, about Islam. That is all it was at the end of the day. A joke. I certainly never, not for one second, thought it would be deemed abusive.”

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Texas Locked a Foreign Company’s Domain Over Missing Digital ID Checks

In Travis County, Texas, a judge has frozen motherless.com, the .com domain of a foreign pornography operator, taking it down worldwide until it posts a $9.14 million bond and builds an age verification digital ID system to the state’s own specification.

Kick Online Entertainment is a foreign corporation, and the order admits so, which is the reason the writ went somewhere else. A state court cannot summon a company overseas, but it can order the American firm that keeps the registry of every .com name, and that registry is what makes a domain resolve at all.

We obtained a copy of the order for you here.

The case turns on HB 1181, Texas’s age-verification law for adult sites. That firm is Verisign, a nonparty to it, and Judge Maya Guerra Gamble signed the writ of attachment on June 4, 2026, filed four days later in State of Texas v Kick Online Entertainment.

The order directs Verisign to place motherless.com on “a registry lock, hold, or similar status until replevied by Defendant,” the legal term for the operator posting a bond to get its domain back.

The domain is frozen rather than taken, though the difference means little here. What Verisign actually applied on was serverHold plus server-level prohibitions on deleting, transferring and updating the name. A hold pulls motherless.com out of the .com zone file, so it resolves for nobody.

Kick must post a bond of $9,140,000, and that bond is “conditioned on Defendant’s implementation of age verification that conforms with Texas Civil Practice and Remedies code chapter 129B,” together with an affirmation that it will satisfy the civil penalties entered against it on September 30, 2024. A company outside the state’s reach is being made to both pay and obey a Texas statute before its property comes back. This is specific performance of a state law, pulled from a foreign operator by holding an asset hostage at the registry.

Among the court’s stated reasons the writ is “appropriate and justified” is the finding that “Defendant is not a resident of this state and is a foreign corporation,” which turns the state’s inability to reach a company into a ground for taking its property.

The order then pre-authorizes more of the same, closing with the line that “as many writs as the State deems necessary shall issue,” so the count of future seizures is set by the attorney general and not by a judge weighing each one. And Texas was excused from the security these writs normally demand, because the order says “the State of Texas is not required to post a bond prior to the issuance of the Writ of Attachment.”

The party taking the asset posts nothing. The party losing it posts $9.14 million.

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California City Pulls Plug on It’s Computer System After Cyberattack

A northern California city of 30,000 people had to disconnect its entire computer network after a cyberattack, idling the municipality’s 911 emergency line for police and fire dispatch.

Officials in the city of Suisun City, located about 45 miles from San Francisco, had to find a workaround for emergency calls and did by forwarding 911 calls to a county dispatch center.

The city declared a state of emergency Saturday after malicious software invaded its computer network and system shortly before 6 p.m. Friday, according to the California Post.

“Officials shut down the entire network to stop the threat from spreading and protect evidence for a federal investigation,” the Post reported.

Despite the attack, Suisun City officials say they found a work around to prevent residents from being put in immediate danger during emergencies.

First responders remain active and dispatched, with city emergency operators routing calls through he Solano County dispatch center.

That way police and fire personnel are able to respond to calls for service,

The attack also disrupted non-emergency city services, including access to municipal records such as building permits and idled residents ability to pay bills online.

The complete shutdown came after the city council voted unanimously to pull the plug and declare a state of emergency at a special meeting Saturday morning.

Cybersecurity for municipalities and infrastructure systems have been in the news during the Iran war after U.S. authorities earlier this year issued an “urgent warning” that hackers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Iran were attempting to disrupt American computer networks.

Investigators are still at work in an effort to determine how the malicious software got inside the network and who was behind the attack, according to news reports.

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Online News Act left rural Canadians without credible information during wildfires: report

The report, first detailed by Blacklock’s Reporter, examined the consequences of Meta’s decision to block Canadian news from Facebook and Instagram following Parliament’s passage of Bill C-18.

The legislation was designed to compel large digital platforms to compensate Canadian publishers for news content. Meta responded by blocking news content from its platforms in Canada.

Researchers from the University of British Columbia said the consequences were particularly serious in rural communities, where Facebook had become a major source of local information during emergencies.

“Rural B.C. communities lost access to credible journalism at the precise moment they needed it most,” researchers wrote, citing consequences for public safety, trust and compliance with emergency instructions.

The study, “When Good Intentions Cause Harm: The Online News Act, Meta’s News Ban And Public Safety During Wildfire Emergencies,” examined wildfire coverage in several B.C. communities.

Researchers said removing journalism from Facebook did not eliminate information about the fires. Instead, personal accounts and emotionally charged material remained and were amplified on the platform, contributing to community outrage and conspiracy theories.

The report blamed the problem on a combination of declining institutional trust, social media algorithms and the disappearance of credible journalism from Facebook.

Researchers also criticized mainstream news coverage, saying the absence of local reporters with established community relationships made newsrooms increasingly dependent on governments and other “official voices.”

“Media were producing a version of wildfire events in which affected communities were compliance problems rather than people in crisis,” the report said.

The researchers noted an irony at the centre of the controversy: declining local journalism was partly caused by the advertising-market changes Bill C-18 was supposed to address, but the legislation ultimately contributed to credible journalism disappearing from one of the platforms rural Canadians relied upon most.

Blacklock’s was among the independent Canadian outlets that opposed the Online News Act, arguing it amounted to federal interference in the news marketplace. The outlet says it neither sought nor accepted payments available under the legislation.

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Four Kids “Safety” Bills, Supporting Online Digital ID Agenda, Hit Senate Floor

The CHATBOT Act says that nothing in it shall be construed to require a company to “implement an age gating or age verification” system, or to “affirmatively collect any personal data with respect to the age of any individual that the covered entity is not already collecting in the normal course” of its business. The Kids Online Safety Act carries a version of the same promise, ruling out “the affirmative collection of any personal data with respect to the age of users” that a platform doesn’t already gather.

But now read the rest of the same bills…

Yesterday, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee sent four children’s online safety bills to the Senate floor, with parents who attribute the harm of their children to social media sitting right there in the room. KOSA went through on a unanimous voice vote. This obviously wasn’t a place for a debate. The Youth AI Privacy Act from Senator Ed Markey advanced. So did the CHATBOT Act from Senator Ted Cruz, with Senators Schatz, Curtis and Schiff as co-sponsors. Senator Tammy Duckworth’s bill makes four, and it orders the FTC and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to study AI-enabled toys, which turns on nothing a company has to know about a user. A fifth, the SCREEN Act, got a tally and no result, which we’ll come back to.

KOSA passed the Senate in 2024 by 91 to 3, but the House never took it up. KOSA’s “duty of care” is the provision that gets the attention. It requires platforms to “exercise reasonable care” in design features to prevent and mitigate a listed set of harms to minors, with the FTC enforcing, and the harms run from conditions with “clinically diagnosable symptoms” through patterns of use “that indicate compulsive” behavior to sexual exploitation. The House stripped it out. The Senate sponsors called that version dead on arrival.

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Pritzker Signs Law Making Devices Report Every User’s Age Bracket to Apps

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has signed the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, a law that takes the age check off individual websites and builds it into the device.

We obtained a copy of the law for you here.

It gives the state a say in what time minors are allowed to receive notifications. It’s also similar to what California is up to and also to what some senators want to extend nationwide. Starting in 2028, House Bill 5511 requires internet-enabled devices, operating systems and app stores to ask for the primary user’s birth date or age during account setup. The device then tells websites, apps, and online services which bracket that user falls into, whether under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, or 18 and older.

Covered services must use the bracket to set default protections for users under 18. Algorithmic feeds are off for minors without “verifiable parental consent,” and their feeds can show only content they search for, posts from accounts they follow, and direct messages.

Feed notifications are blocked between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m., precise location data is shielded, and minors need parental sign-off for what the bill calls “gifted currency” exchanges.

The governor’s office says the law reaches Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, X and gaming platforms like Roblox. Traditional news media, broadband providers, email services and learning management systems are exempt.

The age declaration happens once, at setup, and then follows the user everywhere. NetChoice testified that Section 10 “mandates that device manufacturers and operating system providers collect birth dates, ages and age bracket data from all users, and share that information with covered developers through digital signals.” All users include adults. An adult setting up a new phone in Illinois states an age so the operating system can vouch for it to any covered service, and the company that ships the operating system becomes the gatekeeper.

Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously and Pritzker made it one of his top priorities for the spring session. “Big social media companies have intentionally designed their platforms to keep kids online for as long as possible,” he said at the signing in Chicago. House sponsor Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, said attention spans are shrinking, depression rates are rising and kids are “sacrificing sleep to scroll long past when they should be asleep.”

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