Sources & limitations

Verified 19 August 2026; next review 19 September 2026. These official starting points support issue spotting. The checklist reads them at the time they are written into it rather than fetching, cross-referencing, ranking, or monitoring them.

Why each entry carries a status

The authorities below sit at four different levels, and the level decides what a campaign owes today. An enacted law binds within its jurisdiction and on its own effective date. An operative rule published in the Code of Federal Regulations has the force of law where it applies. Agency guidance tells you how the regulator reads a rule it enforces, which is persuasive and practically decisive without itself being legislation. An introduced bill creates no obligation at all until it passes, however widely it is reported.

That last distinction is the one most often lost in campaign discussion. The NO FAKES Act is frequently described as though it governs synthetic likeness in the United States today. It is introduced legislation. The enforceable digital-replica rules in this checklist come from California and Tennessee, and they are narrower than the federal bill would be.

How these were verified

Each link was opened and read at the review date, and each is pointed at the issuing body rather than at a summary, a law-firm client alert, or a news write-up. Where an official consolidated text exists, as with the EU AI Act on EUR-Lex, the link goes to that text and to the dated consolidation rather than to the original publication. State provisions link to the legislature’s own database so that the bill history and the enacted chapter number are both visible from the page you land on.

Review cadence

The whole set is re-read monthly and the verified date at the top of this page moves only when that has actually happened. A source that has moved is repointed, a bill that has passed is relabelled as enacted, and a question in the checklist that rested on a superseded authority is rewritten before the date changes. Corrections are welcome at collins.ra@northeastern.edu and are the fastest way to get an error fixed.

Use limitation

This site is educational information rather than legal advice, a compliance determination, or a substitute for qualified counsel. Laws, guidance, facts, jurisdictions, contracts, and platform rules all change the analysis.