Policy – Page 12

Trump admin demands states exempt ISPs from net neutrality and price laws

US says net neutrality is price regulation and is banned in $42B grant program.

Credit: Getty Images | Yuichiro Chino

The Trump administration is refusing to give broadband-deployment grants to states that enforce net neutrality rules or price regulations, a Commerce Department official said.

The administration claims that net neutrality rules are a form of rate regulation and thus not allowed under the US law that created the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Commerce Department official Arielle Roth said that any state accepting BEAD funds must exempt Internet service providers from net neutrality and price regulations in all parts of the state, not only in areas where the ISP is given funds to deploy broadband service.

States could object to the NTIA decisions and sue the US government. But even a successful lawsuit could take years and leave unserved homes without broadband for the foreseeable future.

Roth, an assistant secretary who leads the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), said in a speech at the conservative Hudson Institute on Tuesday:

Consistent with the law, which explicitly prohibits regulating the rates charged for broadband service, NTIA is making clear that states cannot impose rate regulation on the BEAD program. To protect the BEAD investment, we are clarifying that BEAD providers must be protected throughout their service area in a state, while the provider is still within its BEAD period of performance. Specifically, any state receiving BEAD funds must exempt BEAD providers throughout their state footprint from broadband-specific economic regulations, such as price regulation and net neutrality.

Trouble for California and New York

The US law that created BEAD requires Internet providers that receive federal funds to offer at least one “low-cost broadband service option for eligible subscribers,” but also says the NTIA may not regulate broadband prices. “Nothing in this title may be construed to authorize the Assistant Secretary or the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to regulate the rates charged for broadband service,” the law says.

The NTIA is interpreting this law in an expansive way by categorizing net neutrality rules as impermissible rate regulation and by demanding statewide exemptions from state laws for ISPs that obtain grant money.

This would be trouble for California, which has a net neutrality law that’s nearly identical to FCC net neutrality rules repealed during President Trump’s first term. California beat court challenges from Internet providers in cases that upheld its authority to regulate broadband service.

The NTIA stance is also trouble for New York, which has a law requiring ISPs to offer $15 or $20 broadband plans to people with low incomes. New York defeated industry challenges to its law, with the US Supreme Court declining opportunities to overturn a federal appeals court ruling in favor of the state.

But while broadband lobby groups weren’t able to block these state regulations with lawsuits, their allies in the Trump administration want to accomplish the goal by blocking grants that could be used to deploy broadband networks to homes and businesses that are unserved or underserved.

This already had an impact when a California lawmaker dropped a proposal, modeled on New York’s law, to require $15 monthly plans. As we wrote in July, Assemblymember Tasha Boerner said she pulled the bill because the Trump administration said that regulating prices would prevent California from getting its $1.86 billion share of BEAD. But now, California could lose access to the fund anyway due to the NTIA’s stance on net neutrality rules.

We contacted the California and New York governors’ offices about Roth’s comments and will update this article if we get any response.

Roth: State laws “threaten financial viability” of projects

Republicans have long argued that net neutrality is rate regulation, even though the rules don’t directly regulate prices that ISPs charge consumers. California’s law prohibits ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful traffic, prohibits fees charged to websites or online services to deliver or prioritize their traffic, bans paid data cap exemptions (also known as “zero-rating”), and says that ISPs may not attempt to evade net neutrality protections by slowing down traffic at network interconnection points.

Roth claimed that state broadband laws, even if applied only in non-grant areas, would degrade the service offered by ISPs in locations funded by grants. She said:

Unfortunately, some states have adopted or are considering adopting laws that specifically target broadband providers with rate regulation or state-level net neutrality mandates that threaten the financial viability of BEAD-funded projects and undermine Congress’s goal of connecting unserved communities.

Rate regulation drives up operating costs and scares off investment, especially in high-cost areas where every dollar counts. State-level net neutrality rules—itself a form of rate regulation—create a patchwork of conflicting regulations that raise compliance costs and deter investment.

These burdens don’t just hurt BEAD providers; they hurt the very households BEAD is meant to connect by reducing capital available for the hardest-to-reach communities. In some cases, they can divert investment away from BEAD areas altogether, as providers redirect resources to their lower-cost, lower-risk, non-BEAD markets.

State broadband laws “could create perverse incentives” by “pressuring providers to shift resources away from BEAD commitments to subsidize operations in non-BEAD areas subject to burdensome state rules,” Roth said. “That would increase the likelihood of defaults and defeat the purpose of BEAD’s once-in-a-generation investment.”

The NTIA decision not to give funds to states that enforce such rules “is essential to ensure that BEAD funds go where Congress intended—to build and operate networks in hard-to-serve areas—not to prop up regulatory experiments that drive investment away,” she said.

States are complying, Roth says

Roth indicated that at least some states are complying with the NTIA’s demands. These demands also include cutting red tape related to permits and access to utility poles and increasing the amount of matching dollars that ISPs themselves put into the projects. “In the coming weeks we will announce the approval of several state plans that incorporate these commitments,” she said. “We remain on track to approve the majority of state plans and get money out the door this year.”

Before Trump won the election, the Biden administration developed rules for BEAD and approved initial funding plans submitted by every state and territory. The Trump administration’s overhaul of the program rules has delayed the funding.

While the Biden NTIA pushed states to require specific prices for low-income plans, the Biden administration prohibited states “from explicitly or implicitly setting the LCSO [low-cost service option] rate” that ISPs must offer. Instead, ISPs get to choose what counts as “low-cost.”

The Trump administration also removed a preference for fiber projects, resulting in more money going to satellite providers—though not as much as SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has demanded. The changes imposed by the Trump NTIA have caused states to allocate less funding overall, leading to an ongoing dispute over what will happen to the $42 billion program’s leftover money.

Roth said the NTIA is “considering how states can use some of the BEAD savings—what has commonly been referred to as nondeployment money—on key outcomes like permitting reform,” but added that “no final decisions have been made.”

Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.

Trump admin demands states exempt ISPs from net neutrality and price laws Read More »

Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for “personal use”

adult content, AI, AI training, BItTorrent, Meta, Meta Movie Gen, Policy, pornography, torrenting / Rejus Almole / October 29, 2025

Instead, Meta argued, available evidence “is plainly indicative” that the flagged adult content was torrented for “private personal use”—since the small amount linked to Meta IP addressess and employees represented only “a few dozen titles per year intermittently obtained one file at a time.”

“The far more plausible inference to be drawn from such meager, uncoordinated activity is that disparate individuals downloaded adult videos for personal use,” Meta’s filing said.

For example, unlike lawsuits raised by book authors whose works are part of an enormous dataset used to train AI, the activity on Meta’s corporate IP addresses only amounted to about 22 downloads per year. That is nowhere near the “concerted effort to collect the massive datasets Plaintiffs allege are necessary for effective AI training,” Meta argued.

Further, that alleged activity can’t even reliably be linked to any Meta employee, Meta argued.

Strike 3 “does not identify any of the individuals who supposedly used these Meta IP addresses, allege that any were employed by Meta or had any role in AI training at Meta, or specify whether (and which) content allegedly downloaded was used to train any particular Meta model,” Meta wrote.

Meanwhile, “tens of thousands of employees,” as well as “innumerable contractors, visitors, and third parties access the Internet at Meta every day,” Meta argued. So while it’s “possible one or more Meta employees” downloaded Strike 3’s content over the last seven years, “it is just as possible” that a “guest, or freeloader,” or “contractor, or vendor, or repair person—or any combination of such persons—was responsible for that activity,” Meta suggested.

Other alleged activity included a claim that a Meta contractor was directed to download adult content at his father’s house, but those downloads, too, “are plainly indicative of personal consumption,” Meta argued. That contractor worked as an “automation engineer,” Meta noted, with no apparent basis provided for why he would be expected to source AI training data in that role. “No facts plausibly” tie “Meta to those downloads,” Meta claimed.

Meta denies torrenting porn to train AI, says downloads were for “personal use” Read More »

FCC Republicans force prisoners and families to pay more for phone calls

FCC, inmate calling, Policy / Tim Belzer / October 29, 2025

At yesterday’s meeting, the FCC separately proposed to eliminate a rule that requires Internet providers to itemize various fees in broadband price labels that must be made available to consumers. Public comment will be taken before a final decision. We described that proposal in an October 8 article.

“Under the cover of a shutdown with limited staff, a confused public, and an overloaded agenda, the FCC pushed to pass the most anti-consumer items it has approved yet,” Gomez said yesterday.

New inflation factor to raise rates further

The phone provider NCIC Correctional Services filed a petition asking the FCC to change its 2024 rate-cap order, claiming that the limits were “below the cost of providing service for most IPCS providers” and “unsustainable.” The order was also protested by Global Tel*Link (aka ViaPath) and Securus Technologies.

Gomez said that “providers making these claims did not even bother to meet with my office to explain their position,” and did not provide data requested by the FCC. By accepting the industry claims, “the FCC today decides to reward bad behavior,” Gomez said.

FCC price caps vary based on the size of the facility. The 2024 order set a range of $0.06 to $0.12 per minute for audio calls, down from the previous range of $0.14 to $0.21 per minute. The 2024 order adopted video call rate caps for the first time, setting rates from $0.11 to $0.25 per minute.

A few weeks before yesterday’s vote, the FCC released a public draft of its proposal with new voice-call caps ranging from $0.10 to $0.18 per minute, and new video call caps ranging from $0.18 to $0.41 per minute. These new limits account for changes to the method of rate-cap calculation, the $0.02 additional fee, and a new size category of “extremely small jails” that can charge the highest rates.

Gomez criticized an inflation factor of 6.7 percent that she said was added in the “11th hour.” The final version of the order approved at yesterday’s meeting hasn’t been released publicly yet. The inflation “factor will be adopted without being given notice to the public that it was being considered… or evidence that it’s necessary,” Gomez said.

FCC Republicans force prisoners and families to pay more for phone calls Read More »

ICE’s forced face scans to verify citizens is unconstitutional, lawmakers say

biometric data, customs and border protection, face scans, facial recognition, ice, Online Privacy, Policy / Paul Patrick / October 29, 2025

“A 2024 test by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found that facial recognition tools are less accurate when images are low quality, blurry, obscured, or taken from the side or in poor light—exactly the kind of images an ICE agent would likely capture when using a smartphone in the field,” their letter said.

If ICE’s use continues to expand, mistakes “will almost certainly proliferate,” senators said, and “even if ICE’s facial recognition tools were perfectly accurate, these technologies would still pose serious threats to individual privacy and free speech.”

Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media that ICE’s growing use of facial recognition confirms that “we should have banned government use of face recognition when we had the chance because it is dangerous, invasive, and an inherent threat to civil liberties.” It also suggests that “any remaining pretense that ICE is harassing and surveilling people in any kind of ‘precise’ way should be left in the dust,” Guariglia said.

ICE scans faces, even if shown an ID

In their letter to ICE acting director Todd Lyons, senators sent a long list of questions to learn more about “ICE’s expanded use of biometric technology systems,” which senators suggested risked having “a sweeping and lasting impact on the public’s civil rights and liberties.” They demanded to know when ICE started using face scans in domestic deployments, as previously the technology was only known to be used at the border, and what testing was done to ensure apps like Mobile Fortify are accurate and unbiased.

Perhaps most relevant to 404 Media’s recent report, senators asked, “Does ICE have any policies, practices, or procedures around the use of the Mobile Fortify app to identify US citizens?” Lyons was supposed to respond by October 2, but Ars was not able to immediately confirm whether that deadline was met.

DHS declined “to confirm or deny law enforcement capabilities or methods” in response to 404 Media’s report, while CBP confirmed that Mobile Fortify is still being used by ICE, along with “a variety of technological capabilities” that supposedly “enhance the effectiveness of agents on the ground.”

ICE’s forced face scans to verify citizens is unconstitutional, lawmakers say Read More »

If things in America weren’t stupid enough, Texas is suing Tylenol maker

autism, health, paxton, Policy, robert f kennedy jr, texas, Trump, tylenol / Kris Guyer / October 28, 2025

While the underlying cause or causes of autism spectrum disorder remain elusive and appear likely to be a complex interplay of genetic and environmental factors, President Trump and his anti-vaccine health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—neither of whom have any scientific or medical background whatsoever—have decided to pin the blame on Tylenol, a common pain reliever and fever reducer that has no proven link to autism.

And now, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is suing the maker of Tylenol, Kenvue and Johnson & Johnson, who previously sold Tylenol, claiming that they have been “deceptively marketing Tylenol” knowing that it “leads to a significantly increased risk of autism and other disorders.”

To back that claim, Paxton relies on the “considerable body of evidence… recently highlighted by the Trump Administration.”

Of course, there is no “considerable” evidence for this claim, only tenuous associations and conflicting studies. Trump and Kennedy’s justification for blaming Tylenol was revealed in a rambling, incoherent press conference last month, in which Trump spoke of a “rumor” about Tylenol and his “opinion” on the matter. Still, he firmly warned against its use, saying well over a dozen times: “don’t take Tylenol.”

“Don’t take Tylenol. There’s no downside. Don’t take it. You’ll be uncomfortable. It won’t be as easy maybe, but don’t take it if you’re pregnant. Don’t take Tylenol and don’t give it to the baby after the baby is born,” he said.

“Scientifically unfounded”

As Ars has reported previously, there are some studies that have found an association between use of Tylenol (aka acetaminophen or paracetamol) and a higher risk of autism. But, many of the studies finding such an association have significant flaws. Other studies have found no link. That includes a highly regarded Swedish study that compared autism risk among siblings with different acetaminophen exposures during pregnancy, but otherwise similar genetic and environmental risks. Acetaminophen didn’t make a difference, suggesting other genetic and/or environmental factors might explain any associations. Further, even if there is a real association (aka a correlation) between acetaminophen use and autism risk, that does not mean the pain reliever is the cause of autism.

If things in America weren’t stupid enough, Texas is suing Tylenol maker Read More »

Senators move to keep Big Tech’s creepy companion bots away from kids

age checks, age verification, AI, Character.AI, chatbots, chatgpt, child safety, companion bots, grok, Policy, replika / Mike M. / October 28, 2025

Big Tech says bans aren’t the answer

As the bill advances, it could change, senators and parents acknowledged at the press conference. It will likely face backlash from privacy advocates who have raised concerns that widely collecting personal data for age verification puts sensitive information at risk of a data breach or other misuse.

The tech industry has already voiced opposition. On Tuesday, Chamber of Progress, a Big Tech trade group, criticized the law as taking a “heavy-handed approach” to child safety. The group’s vice president of US policy and government relations, K.J. Bagchi, said that “we all want to keep kids safe, but the answer is balance, not bans.

“It’s better to focus on transparency when kids chat with AI, curbs on manipulative design, and reporting when sensitive issues arise,” Bagchi said.

However, several organizations dedicated to child safety online, including the Young People’s Alliance, the Tech Justice Law Project, and the Institute for Families and Technology, cheered senators’ announcement Tuesday. The GUARD Act, these groups told Time, is just “one part of a national movement to protect children and teens from the dangers of companion chatbots.”

Mourning parents are rallying behind that movement. Earlier this month, Garcia praised California for “finally” passing the first state law requiring companies to protect their users who express suicidal ideations to chatbots.

“American families, like mine, are in a battle for the online safety of our children,” Garcia said at that time.

During Tuesday’s press conference, Blumenthal noted that the chatbot ban bill was just one initiative of many that he and Hawley intend to raise to heighten scrutiny on AI firms.

Senators move to keep Big Tech’s creepy companion bots away from kids Read More »

Python plan to boost software security foiled by Trump admin’s anti-DEI rules

dei, National Science Foundation, Policy, python software foundation / Tim Belzer / October 28, 2025

“Given the value of the grant to the community and the PSF, we did our utmost to get clarity on the terms and to find a way to move forward in concert with our values. We consulted our NSF contacts and reviewed decisions made by other organizations in similar circumstances, particularly The Carpentries,” the Python Software Foundation said.

Board voted unanimously to withdraw application

The Carpentries, which teaches computational and data science skills to researchers, said in June that it withdrew its grant proposal after “we were notified that our proposal was flagged for DEI content, namely, for ‘the retention of underrepresented students, which has a limitation or preference in outreach, recruitment, participation that is not aligned to NSF priorities.’” The Carpentries was also concerned about the National Science Foundation rule against grant recipients advancing or promoting DEI in “any” program, a change that took effect in May.

“These new requirements mean that, in order to accept NSF funds, we would need to agree to discontinue all DEI focused programming, even if those activities are not carried out with NSF funds,” The Carpentries’ announcement in June said, explaining the decision to rescind the proposal.

The Python Software Foundation similarly decided that it “can’t agree to a statement that we won’t operate any programs that ‘advance or promote’ diversity, equity, and inclusion, as it would be a betrayal of our mission and our community,” it said yesterday. The foundation board “voted unanimously to withdraw” the application.

The Python foundation said it is disappointed because the project would have offered “invaluable advances to the Python and greater open source community, protecting millions of PyPI users from attempted supply-chain attacks.” The plan was to “create new tools for automated proactive review of all packages uploaded to PyPI, rather than the current process of reactive-only review. These novel tools would rely on capability analysis, designed based on a dataset of known malware. Beyond just protecting PyPI users, the outputs of this work could be transferable for all open source software package registries, such as NPM and Crates.io, improving security across multiple open source ecosystems.”

The foundation is still hoping to do that work and ended its blog post with a call for donations from individuals and companies that use Python.

Python plan to boost software security foiled by Trump admin’s anti-DEI rules Read More »

Australia’s social media ban is “problematic,” but platforms will comply anyway

age checks, age estimation, age gate, australia, online child safety, Policy, social media ban / Kris Guyer / October 28, 2025

Social media platforms have agreed to comply with Australia’s social media ban for users under 16 years old, begrudgingly embracing the world’s most restrictive online child safety law.

On Tuesday, Meta, Snap, and TikTok confirmed to Australia’s parliament that they’ll start removing and deactivating more than a million underage accounts when the law’s enforcement begins on December 10, Reuters reported.

Firms risk fines of up to $32.5 million for failing to block underage users.

Age checks are expected to be spotty, however, and Australia is still “scrambling” to figure out “key issues around enforcement,” including detailing firms’ precise obligations, AFP reported.

An FAQ managed by Australia’s eSafety regulator noted that platforms will be expected to find the accounts of all users under 16.

Those users must be allowed to download their data easily before their account is removed.

Some platforms can otherwise allow users to simply deactivate and retain their data until they reach age 17. Meta and TikTok expect to go that route, but Australia’s regulator warned that “users should not rely on platforms to provide this option.”

Additionally, platforms must prepare to catch kids who skirt age gates, the regulator said, and must block anyone under 16 from opening a new account. Beyond that, they’re expected to prevent “workarounds” to “bypass restrictions,” such as kids using AI to fake IDs, deepfakes to trick face scans, or the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) to alter their location to basically anywhere else in the world with less restrictive child safety policies.

Kids discovered inappropriately accessing social media should be easy to report, too, Australia’s regulator said.

Australia’s social media ban is “problematic,” but platforms will comply anyway Read More »

AT&T ad congratulating itself for its ethics violated an ad-industry rule

AT&T, Policy, T-Mobile / Tim Belzer / October 27, 2025

NAD: Our rulings can’t be used in ads

Violating a National Advertising Division rule isn’t the same as violating a US law. But advertisers rely extensively on the self-regulatory system to handle disputes and determine whether specific ads are misleading and should be pulled.

Companies generally abide by the self-regulatory body’s rulings. While they try to massage the truth in ways that favor their own brands, they want to have some credibility left over to bring complaints against misleading ads launched by their competitors. The self-regulatory system also may help minimize government regulation of false and misleading claims, although the NAD does sometimes refer particularly egregious cases to the Federal Trade Commission.

While the NAD routinely issues decisions that a particular ad is misleading and should be changed or removed, the public rebuke of AT&T was unusual. AT&T’s action, it said, threatens the integrity of the entire self-regulatory system.

NAD procedures state that companies participating in the system agree “not to mischaracterize any decision, abstract, or press release issued or use and/or disseminate such decision, abstract or press release for advertising and/or promotional purposes.”

The NAD said:

In direct violation of this, AT&T has run an ad and issued a press release making representations regarding the alleged results of a competitor’s participation in BBB National Program’s advertising industry self-regulatory process.

The integrity and success of the self-regulatory forum hinges on the voluntary agreement of participants in an NAD proceeding to abide by the rules set forth in the BBB National Programs’ Procedures. As a voluntary process, fair dealing on the part of the parties is essential and requires adherence to both the letter and the spirit of the process.

AT&T’s violation of its agreement under the Procedures and its misuse of NAD’s decisions for promotional purposes undermines NAD’s mission to promote truth and accuracy of advertising claims and foster consumer trust in the marketplace.

AT&T omits its own history of misleading ads

The NAD told Ars that “we did issue a cease-and-desist letter to AT&T on Friday, October 24, the day after the company issued its press release and launched the ad campaign. The letter demanded that AT&T immediately remove such violative promotional materials and cease all future dissemination.” A cease-and-desist letter can lead to a lawsuit, but the NAD told us it “will not speculate on potential next steps.”

AT&T ad congratulating itself for its ethics violated an ad-industry rule Read More »

10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him. Bad idea.

Features, lawsuit, lock picking, locks, McNally, Policy, Prove Locks / Tim Belzer / October 27, 2025

It’s still legal to pick locks, even when you swing your legs.

“Opening locks” might not sound like scintillating social media content, but Trevor McNally has turned lock-busting into online gold. A former US Marine Staff Sergeant, McNally today has more than 7 million followers and has amassed more than 2 billion views just by showing how easy it is to open many common locks by slapping, picking, or shimming them.

This does not always endear him to the companies that make the locks.

On March 3, 2025, a Florida lock company called Proven Industries released a social media promo video just begging for the McNally treatment. The video was called, somewhat improbably, “YOU GUYS KEEP SAYING YOU CAN EASILY BREAK OFF OUR LATCH PIN LOCK.” In it, an enthusiastic man in a ball cap says he will “prove a lot of you haters wrong.” He then goes hard at Proven’s $130 model 651 trailer hitch lock with a sledgehammer, bolt cutters, and a crowbar.

Naturally, the lock hangs tough.

An Instagram user brought the lock to McNally’s attention by commenting, “Let’s introduce it to the @mcnallyofficial poke.” Someone from Proven responded, saying that McNally only likes “the cheap locks lol because they are easy and fast.” Proven locks were said to be made of sterner stuff.

But on April 3, McNally posted a saucy little video to social media platforms. In it, he watches the Proven promo video while swinging his legs and drinking a Juicy Juice. He then hops down from his seat, goes over to a Proven trailer hitch lock, and opens it in a matter of seconds using nothing but a shim cut from a can of Liquid Death. He says nothing during the entire video, which has been viewed nearly 10 million times on YouTube alone.

Despite practically begging people to attempt this, Proven Industries owner Ron Lee contacted McNally on Instagram. “Just wanted to say thanks and be prepared!” he wrote. McNally took this as a threat.

(Oddly enough, Proven’s own homepage features a video in which the company trashes competing locks and shows just how easy it is to defeat them. And its news pages contain articles and videos on “The Hidden Flaws of Master Locks” and other brands. Why it got so upset about McNally’s video is unclear.)

The next day, Lee texted McNally’s wife. The message itself was apparently Lee’s attempt to de-escalate things; he says he thought the number belonged to McNally, and the message itself was unobjectionable. But after the “be prepared!” notice of the day before, and given the fact that Lee already knew how to contact him on Instagram, McNally saw the text as a way “to intimidate me and my family.” That feeling was cemented when McNally found out that Lee was a triple felon—and that in one case, Lee had hired someone “to throw a brick through the window of his ex-wife.”

Concerned about losing business, Lee kept trying to shut McNally down. Proven posted a “response video” on April 6 and engaged with numerous social media commenters, telling them that things were “going to get really personal” for McNally. Proven employees alleged publicly that McNally was deceiving people about all the prep work he had done to make a “perfectly cut out” shim. Without extensive experience, long prep work, and precise measurements, it was said, Proven’s locks were in little danger of being opened by rogue actors trying to steal your RV.

“Sucks to see how many people take everything they see online for face value,” one Proven employee wrote. “Sounds like a bunch of liberals lol.”

Proven also had its lawyers file “multiple” DMCA takedown notices against the McNally video, claiming that its use of Proven’s promo video was copyright infringement.

McNally didn’t bow to the pressure, though, instead uploading several more videos showing him opening Proven locks. In one of them, he takes aim at Proven’s claims about his prep work by retrieving a new lock from an Amazon delivery kiosk, taking it outside—and popping it in seconds using a shim he cuts right on camera, with no measurements, from an aluminum can.

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On May 1, Proven filed a federal lawsuit against McNally in the Middle District of Florida, charging him with a huge array of offenses: (1) copyright infringement, (2) defamation by implication, (3) false advertising, (4) violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, (5) tortious interference with business relationships, (6) unjust enrichment, (7) civil conspiracy, and (8) trade libel. Remarkably, the claims stemmed from a video that all sides admit was accurate and in which McNally himself said nothing.

Screenshot of a social media exchange. — In retrospect, this was probably not a great idea.

Don’t mock me, bro

How can you defame someone without even speaking? Proven claimed “defamation by implication,” arguing that the whole setup of McNally’s videos was unfair to the company and its product. McNally does not show his prep work, which (Proven argued) conveys to the public the false idea that Proven’s locks are easy to bypass. While the shimming does work, Proven argued that it would be difficult for an untrained user to perform.

But what Proven really, really didn’t like was being mocked. McNally’s decision to drink—and shake!—a juice box on video comes up in court papers a mind-boggling number of times. Here’s a sample:

McNally appears swinging his legs and sipping from an apple juice box, conveying to the purchasing public that bypassing Plaintiff’s lock is simple, trivial, and even comical…

…showing McNally drinking from, and shaking, a juice box, all while swinging his legs, and displaying the Proven Video on a mobile device…

The tone, posture, and use of the juice box prop and childish leg swinging that McNally orchestrated in the McNally Video was intentional to diminish the perceived seriousness of Proven Industries…

The use of juvenile imagery, such as sipping from a juice box while casually applying the shim, reinforces the misleading impression that the lock is inherently insecure and marketed deceptively…

The video then abruptly shifts to Defendant in a childlike persona, sipping from a juice box and casually applying a shim to the lock…

In the end, Proven argued that the McNally video was “for commercial entertainment and mockery,” produced for the purpose of “humiliating Plaintiff.” McNally, it was said, “will not stop until he destroys Proven’s reputation.” Justice was needed. Expensive, litigious justice.

But the proverbially level-headed horde of Internet users does not always love it when companies file thermonuclear lawsuits against critics. Sometimes, in fact, the level-headed horde disregards everything taught by that fount of judicial knowledge, The People’s Court, and they take the law into their own hands.

Proven was soon the target of McNally fans. The company says it was “forced to disable comments on posts and product videos due to an influx of mocking and misleading replies furthering the false narrative that McNally conveyed to the viewers.” The company’s customer service department received such an “influx of bogus customer service tickets… that it is experiencing difficulty responding to legitimate tickets.”

Screenshot of a social media post from Proven Industries. — Proven was quite proud of its lawsuit… at first.

Someone posted Lee’s personal phone number to the comment section of a McNally video, which soon led to “a continuous stream of harassing phone calls and text messages from unknown numbers at all hours of the day and night,” which included “profanity, threats, and racially charged language.”

Lest this seem like mere high spirits and hijinks, Lee’s partner and his mother both “received harassing messages through Facebook Messenger,” while other messages targeted Lee’s son, saying things like “I would kill your f—ing n—– child” and calling him a “racemixing pussy.”

This is clearly terrible behavior; it also has no obvious connection to McNally, who did not direct or condone the harassment. As for Lee’s phone number, McNally said that he had nothing to do with posting it and wrote that “it is my understanding that the phone number at issue is publicly available on the Better Business Bureau website and can be obtained through a simple Google search.”

And this, with both sides palpably angry at each other, is how things stood on June 13 at 9: 09 am, when the case got a hearing in front of the Honorable Mary Scriven, an extremely feisty federal judge in Tampa. Proven had demanded a preliminary injunction that would stop McNally from sharing his videos while the case progressed, but Proven had issues right from the opening gavel:

LAWYER 1: Austin Nowacki on behalf of Proven industries.

THE COURT: I’m sorry. What is your name?

LAWYER 1: Austin Nowacki.

THE COURT: I thought you said Austin No Idea.

LAWYER 2: That’s Austin Nowacki.

THE COURT: All right.

When Proven’s lead lawyer introduced a colleague who would lead that morning’s arguments, the judge snapped, “Okay. Then you have a seat and let her speak.”

Things went on this way for some time, as the judge wondered, “Did the plaintiff bring a lock and a beer can?” (The plaintiff did not.) She appeared to be quite disappointed when it was clear there would be no live shimming demonstration in the courtroom.

Then it was on to the actual arguments. Proven argued that the 15 seconds of its 90-second promo video used by McNally were not fair use, that McNally had defamed the company by implication, and that shimming its locks was actually quite difficult. Under questioning, however, one of Proven’s employees admitted that he had been able to duplicate McNally’s technique, leading to the question from McNally’s lawyer: “When you did it yourself, did it occur to you for one moment that maybe the best thing to do, instead of file a lawsuit, was to fix [the lock]?”

At the end of several hours of wrangling, the judge stepped in, saying that she “declines to grant the preliminary injunction motion.” For her to do so, Proven would have to show that it was likely to win at trial, among other things; it had not.

As for the big copyright infringement claim, of which Proven had made so much hay, the judge reached a pretty obvious finding: You’re allowed to quote snippets of copyrighted videos in order to critique them.

“The purpose and character of the use to which Mr. McNally put the alleged infringed work is transformative, artistic, and a critique,” said the judge. “He is in his own way challenging and critiquing Proven’s video by the use of his own video.”

As for the amount used, it was “substantial enough but no more than is necessary to make the point that he is trying to critique Proven’s video, and I think that’s fair game and a nominative fair use circumstance.”

While Proven might convince her otherwise after a full trial, “the copyright claim fails as a basis for a demand for preliminary injunctive relief.”

As for “tortious interference” and “defamation by implication,” the judge was similarly unimpressed.

“The fact that you might have a repeat customer who is dissuaded to buy your product due to a criticism of the product is not the type of business relationship the tortious interference with business relationship concept is intended to apply,” she said.

In the end, the judge said she would see the case through to its end, if that was really what everyone wanted, but “I will pray that you all come to a resolution of the case that doesn’t require all of this. This is a capitalist market and people say what they say. As long as it’s not false, they say what they say.”

She gave Proven until July 7 to amend its complaint if it wished.

On July 7, the company dismissed the lawsuit against McNally instead.

Proven also made a highly unusual request: Would the judge please seal almost the entire court record—including the request to seal?

Court records are presumptively public, but Proven complained about a “pattern of intimidation and harassment by individuals influenced by Defendant McNally’s content.” According to the company, a key witness had already backed out of the case, saying, “Is there a way to leave my name and my companies name out of this due to concerns of potential BLOW BACK from McNally or others like him?” Another witness, who did submit a declaration, wondered, “Is this going to be public? My concern is that there may be some backlash from the other side towards my company.”

McNally’s lawyer laid into this seal request, pointing out that the company had shown no concern over these issues until it lost its bid for a preliminary injunction. Indeed, “Proven boasted to its social media followers about how it sued McNally and about how confident it was that it would prevail. Proven even encouraged people to search for the lawsuit.” Now, however, the company “suddenly discover[ed] a need for secrecy.”

The judge has not yet ruled on the request to seal.

Another way

The strange thing about the whole situation is that Proven actually knew how to respond constructively to the first McNally video. Its own response video opened with a bit of humor (the presenter drinks a can of Liquid Death), acknowledged the issue (“we’ve had a little bit of controversy in the last couple days”), and made clear that Proven could handle criticism (“we aren’t afraid of a little bit of feedback”).

The video went on to show how their locks work and provided some context on shimming attacks and their likelihood of real-world use. It ended by showing how users concerned about shimming attacks could choose more expensive but more secure lock cores that should resist the technique.

Quick, professional, non-defensive—a great way to handle controversy.

But it was all blown apart by the company’s angry social media statements, which were unprofessional and defensive, and the litigation, which was spectacularly ill-conceived as a matter of both law and policy. In the end, the case became a classic example of the Streisand Effect, in which the attempt to censor information can instead call attention to it.

Judging from the number of times the lawsuit talks about 1) ridicule and 2) harassment, it seems like the case quickly became a personal one for Proven’s owner and employees, who felt either mocked or threatened. That’s understandable, but being mocked is not illegal and should never have led to a lawsuit or a copyright claim. As for online harassment, it remains a serious and unresolved issue, but launching a personal vendetta—and on pretty flimsy legal grounds—against McNally himself was patently unwise. (Doubly so given that McNally had a huge following and had already responded to DMCA takedowns by creating further videos on the subject; this wasn’t someone who would simply be intimidated by a lawsuit.)

In the end, Proven’s lawsuit likely cost the company serious time and cash—and generated little but bad publicity.

10M people watched a YouTuber shim a lock; the lock company sued him. Bad idea. Read More »

Clinical trial of a technique that could give everyone the best antibodies

antibodies, Biology, DNA, electroporation, medicine, plasmid, Policy, Science / Paul Patrick / October 24, 2025

If we ID the DNA for a great antibody, anyone can now make it.

One of the things that emerging diseases, including the COVID and Zika pandemics, have taught us is that it’s tough to keep up with infectious diseases in the modern world. Things like air travel can allow a virus to spread faster than our ability to develop therapies. But that doesn’t mean biotech has stood still; companies have been developing technologies that could allow us to rapidly respond to future threats.

There are a lot of ideas out there. But this week saw some early clinical trial results of one technique that could be useful for a range of infectious diseases. We’ll go over the results as a way to illustrate the sort of thinking that’s going on, along with the technologies we have available to pursue the resulting ideas.

The best antibodies

Any emerging disease leaves a mass of antibodies in its wake—those made by people in response to infections and vaccines, those made by lab animals we use to study the infectious agent, and so on. Some of these only have a weak affinity for the disease-causing agent, but some of them turn out to be what are called “broadly neutralizing.” These stick with high affinity not only to the original pathogen, but most or all of its variants, and possibly some related viruses.

Once an antibody latches on to a pathogen, broadly neutralizing antibodies inactivate it (as their name implies). This is typically because these antibodies bind to a site that’s necessary for a protein’s function. For example, broadly neutralizing antibodies to HIV bind to the proteins that help this virus enter immune cells.

Unfortunately, not everyone develops broadly neutralizing antibodies, and certainly doesn’t do so in time to prevent infections. And we haven’t figured out a way of designing vaccinations that ensure their generation. So we’re often found ourselves stuck with knowing what antibodies we’d like to see people making while having no way of ensuring that they do.

One of the options we’ve developed is to just mass-produce broadly neutralizing antibodies and inject them into people. This has been approved for use against Ebola and provided an early treatment during the COVID pandemic. This approach has some practical limitations, though. For starters, the antibodies have a finite life span in the bloodstream, so injections may need to be repeated. In addition, making and purifying enough antibodies in bulk isn’t the easiest thing in the world, and they generally need to be kept refrigerated during the distribution, limiting the areas where they can be used.

So, a number of companies have been looking at an alternative: getting people to make their own. This could potentially lead to longer-lived protection, even ensuring the antibodies are present to block future infections if the DNA survives long enough.

Genes and volts

Once you identify cells that produce broadly neutralizing antibodies, it’s relatively simple to clone those genes and put them into a chunk of DNA that will ensure that they’ll be produced by any human cell. If we could get that DNA into a person’s cells, broadly neutralizing antibodies are the result. And a number of approaches have been tried to handle that “if.” Most of them have inserted the genes needed to make the antibodies into a harmless, non-infectious virus, and then injected that virus into volunteers. Unfortunately, these viruses have tended to set off a separate immune response, which causes more significant side effects and may limit how often this approach can be used.

This brings us to the technique being used here. In this case, the researchers placed the antibody genes in a circular loop of DNA called a plasmid. This is enough to ensure that the DNA doesn’t get digested immediately and to get the antibody genes made into proteins. But it does nothing to help get the DNA inside of cells.

The research team, a mixture of people from a biotech company and academic labs, used a commercial injection setup that mixes the injection of the DNA with short pulses of electricity. The electricity disrupts the cell membrane, allowing the plasmid DNA to make it inside cells. Based on animal testing, doing this in muscle cells is enough to turn the muscles into factories producing lots of broadly neutralizing antibodies.

The new study was meant to test the safety of doing that in humans. The team recruited 44 participants, testing various doses of two antibody-producing plasmids and injection schedules. All but four of the subjects completed the study; three of those who dropped out had all been testing a routine with the electric pulses happening very quickly, which turned out to be unpleasant. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to make any difference to the production of antibodies.

While there were a lot of adverse reactions, most of these were associated with the injection itself: muscle pain at the site, a scab forming afterward, and a reddening of the skin. The worst problem appeared to be a single case of moderate muscle pain that persisted for a couple of days.

In all but one volunteer, the injection resulted in stable production of the two antibodies for at least 72 weeks following the injection; the single exception only made one of the two. That’s “at least” 72 weeks because that’s when they stopped testing—there was no indication that levels were dropping at this point. Injecting more DNA led to more variability in the amount of antibody produced, but that amount quickly maxed out. More total injections also boosted the level of antibody production. But even the minimal procedure—two injections of the lowest concentration tested—resulted in significant and stable antibodies.

And, as expected, these antibodies blocked the virus they were directed against: SARS-CoV-2.

The caveats

This approach seems to work—we can seemingly get anybody to make broadly neutralizing antibodies for months at a time. What’s the hitch? For starters, this isn’t necessarily great for a rapidly emerging pandemic. It takes a while to identify broadly neutralizing antibodies after a pathogen is identified. And, while it’s simple to ship DNA around the world to where it will be needed, injection setups that also produce the small electric pulses are not exactly standard equipment even in industrialized countries, much less the Global South.

Then there’s the issue of whether this really is a longer-term fix. Widespread use of broadly neutralizing antibodies will create a strong selective pressure for the evolution of variants that the antibody can no longer bind to. That may not always be a problem—broadly neutralizing antibodies generally bind to parts of proteins that are absolutely essential for the proteins’ function, and so it may not be possible to change those while maintaining the function. But that’s unlikely to always be the case.

In the end, however, social acceptance may end up being the biggest problem. People had an utter freakout over unfounded conspiracies that the RNA of COVID vaccines would somehow lead to permanent genetic changes. Presumably, having DNA that’s stable for months would be even harder for some segments of the public to swallow.

Nature Medicine, 2025. DOI: 10.1038/s41591-025-03969-0 (About DOIs).

John is Ars Technica’s science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

Clinical trial of a technique that could give everyone the best antibodies Read More »

Tech billionaires are now shaping the militarization of American cities

benioff, Policy, Politics, Trump / Tim Belzer / October 24, 2025

Yesterday, Donald Trump announced on social media that he had been planning to “surge” troops into San Francisco this weekend—but was dissuaded from doing so by several tech billionaires.

“Friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” Trump wrote.

Who are these “friends”? Trump named “great people like [Nvidia CEO] Jensen Huang, [Salesforce CEO] Marc Benioff, and others” who told him that “the future of San Francisco is great. They want to give it a ‘shot.’ Therefore, we will not surge San Francisco on Saturday. Stay tuned!”

Ludicrously wealthy tech execs have exerted unparalleled sway over Trump in the last year. Not content with obsequious flattery—at one recent White House dinner, Sam Altman called Trump “a pro-business, pro-innovation president” who was “a very refreshing change,” while Tim Cook praised the legendarily mercurial Trump’s “focus and your leadership”—tech leaders have also given Trump shiny awards, built him a bulletproof ballroom, and donated massive sums to help him get elected.

Most of these execs also have major business before the federal government and have specific “asks” around AI regulation, crypto, tariffs, regulations, and government contracts.

Now, tech execs are even helping to shape the militarization of American cities.

Consider Benioff, for instance. On October 10, he gave an interview to The New York Times in which he spoke to a reporter “by telephone from his private plane en route to San Francisco.” (Benioff lives in Hawaii most of the time now.)

His big annual “Dreamforce” conference was about to take place in San Francisco, and Benioff lamented the fact that he had to hire so much security to make attendees feel safe. (Over the last decade, several Ars staffers have witnessed various unpleasant incidents involving urine, sidewalk feces, and drug use during visits around downtown San Francisco, so concerns about the city are not illusory, though critics say they are overblown.)

Tech billionaires are now shaping the militarization of American cities Read More »