Techdirt

By now we've well established that this particularseries of media mergers- which began with AT&T's doomed acquisition of Time Warner and ended with Time Warner's subsequent spin off and fusion with Discovery - were some of the dumbest, most pointless business" exercises ever conceived by man. The idiotic saga burned through hundreds of billions in [...]

The saga of former Nikola CEO Trevor Milton has come to a close. We began talking about Nikola, a company that bill itself as decarbonizing" the trucking industry by selling electric long-haul trucks, back in 2020 when it was revealed that a very slick demo of its products had been totally staged. Like, hilariously staged. [...]

Last week in the Error 402 series on the past, present, and future of web monetization, we talked about the whole information wants to be expensive, information wants to be free" dilemma, that partially explained why early paywalls failed, and why display and search ads seemed to be the primary way in which internet content [...]

Copyright has always been about money. That's why the copyright industry fights so hard to strengthen legal protections, in order to boost its profits. However, getting detailed information about how much money is involved, and who receives it, is hard, because there are so many small pieces to the overall copyright ecosystem. That makes a [...]

People keep accusing me of criticizing Elon Musk because I hate" him. But I don't hate him, nor do I criticize him out of any personal feelings at all, beyond thinking that he often is hypocritical in his decision making, and makes decisions that defy common sense and logic. But when he does the right [...]

Earlier this month the Biden FCC announced that it was exploring banning early termination fees, which ISPs use to punish you for switching to competitors. It was a long overdue action in a country where cable and broadband giants routinely rip off consumers with a rotating bevy of fees, all designed to let them falsely [...]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the most popular enterprise cloud computing solutions, used by businesses around the world to manage data, promote effective communication, secure proprietary information, and more. The Amazon Web Services Training course aims to make you completely proficient in navigating the Management Console. It's on sale for $40. Note: The [...]

There have been all sorts of overblown fears and moral panics raised by the availability of new generative AI tools. And one that I keep hearing about, which many people have accepted as obviously true, is that it will damage school education, as kids will just use ChatGPT to do their work. This has always [...]

Back in July, Reuters released a bombshell report showing that not only has Tesla aggressively lied about its EV ranges for the better part of the last decade, it created teams whose entire purpose was to lie to customers about it when they called up to complain. The story lasted all of two days in [...]

Earlier this year we discussed a trademark fight between rapper Eminem and two stars of The Real Houswives of Potomac, Gizelle Bryant and Robyn Dixon. At issue was the trademark application for Bryant and Dixon's podcast, which is entitled Reasonably Shady." Em's legal team opposed that application, arguing essentially that all things shady" belong to [...]

As you likely know, a few weeks back former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor passed away. There have been lots of discussions about her rulings and her legacy, but the one that caught my eye was from the Disruptive Competition Project, which has a post by Jonathan Band exploring her immense impact on copyright [...]

The attacks ongenerative AIstarted out claiming that it was all about protecting the creators whose works were being stolen" in some mysterious way by virtue of software analyzing them. In some cases, that high-minded stance has alreadydegeneratedinto yet another scheme to pay collecting societies even more for doing next to nothing. But beyond all this [...]

One of the big, usually misleading, complaints about content moderation is that it's done out of personal animus or whims, rather than a focus on actually making it so people stop being jackasses on platforms. Indeed over and over again you hear stories about some content moderation decision that people assert way too much thought [...]

There's been plenty of courtroom discussion about Fifth Amendment rights surrounding compelled decryption in recent years. Encryption is on by default on most devices these days. Law enforcement seems to believe all it needs is a warrant to compel decryption. Courts aren't so sure. A lot of judicial discussion revolves around the foregone conclusion" doctrine. [...]

Listening to your favorite tunes coming out of a mini Gramophone style Bluetooth speaker is fun and this speaker is small enough to have on your desk while you do your work or as a part of the decor in your den while you are enjoying Sunday brunch and lounge around the house! Enjoy Olden [...]

Given just how many terrible state social media laws we keep seeing, it's nice to finally see one that, conceptually, I agree with, though practically still worry about. NY state senator Brad Holyman-Sigal has introduced a bill to require social media websites to provide an openly accessible API for others to build on top of. [...]

Hackers have managed to obtain the personal data of 36 million Comcast customers. In a notice sent to customers on Monday, Comcast announced that hackers had exploited the CitrixBleed" vulnerability in Citrix networking devices that's been a problem since at least August. Hackers gained access to a significant portion of Comcast systems between October 16 [...]

As Walled Culture has often noted, the process of framing new copyright laws istiltedagainst the public in multiple ways. And on the rare occasions when a government makes some mild concession to anyone outside the copyright industry, the latter invariably rolls out its highly-effective lobbying machine to fight against such measures. It's happening again in [...]

To paraphrase Voltaire, I disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death the government's right to prosecute you for what you say. That's apparently the thought process in Olyphant Borough, Pennsylvania. Marine veteran Dave Bliler lives in this town. He's also not thrilled with any level of government, at least according [...]

Many of you might know Andrew K'Tetch" Norton as a Techdirt commenter, or from his work at TorrentFreak or for the Pirate Party, and some of you might know that he also runs his own podcast, Tetch Talk. Recently, Andrew asked Mike and I to join him on the podcast for a discussion about our [...]

Oh boy. We've already written a few times about Elon Musk's Grok" AI from his company xAI, which may or may not be a part of ExTwitter or possibly Tesla, but no one really knows because all of Elon's companies blend together in a mishmash of hell for anyone who believes in good, normal corporate [...]

The man who decided he was the real glue holding New York City together following the 9/11 attacks is now nothing more than a man whose stupid, obsequious mouth has written checks he can't cash. And all to stroke the ego of a lame duck president who thought what the nation really needed was a [...]

StackSkills is the premier online learning platform for mastering today's most in-demand skills. Now, with this exclusive limited-time offer, you'll gain access to 1000+ StackSkills courses for life! Whether you're looking to earn a promotion, make a career change, or pick up a side hustle to make some extra cash, StackSkills delivers engaging online courses [...]

This one is from a couple months ago, but I'm clearing out some older stories that I didn't have the time to write up when they were new. For years, we've highlighted how the DMCA is regularly abused for a variety of purposes. Often it's abused to try to take down content someone doesn't like, [...]

Back in 2017 the FCC tried to pass some very basic privacy protections for broadband access. The rules simply demanded transparency as to what kind of data your ISP collects and sells. They also mandated that the trafficking of sensitive financial data by telecoms require the opt in consent of consumers. Telecom giants like AT&T [...]

Warrants that are short on things required by the Fourth Amendment - probable cause, specificity, the correct address, solid affidavits - are often given a free pass because law enforcement has plenty of options when it comes to sneaking around the edges of the Constitution. In some cases, the excuses are pretty much just this: [...]

The folks behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise are certainly no strangers to lawsuits and complaints over publicity rights issues. GTA5 famously found the publishers of the game in court defending itself against the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Karen Gravano, ultimately winning both cases. Anyone familiar with the GTA franchise will have a sense [...]

Back in May, Walled Culture wrote about an important case before the EU's top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It involved the High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights on the Internet" (Haute Autorite pour la diffusion des uvres et la protection des droits sur [...]

A few weeks ago, publishing giant Penguin Random House (and, yes, I'm still confused why they didn't call it Random Penguin House after the merger) announced that it was filing a lawsuit (along with many others) against the state of Iowa for its attempt to ban books in school libraries. In its announcement, Penguin Random [...]

For years, Google has collected all the data it can about its users. And for years, it has utilized this data to... well, it depends on who you ask. For Google, it meant a whole lot of targeted advertising - something so valuable Google tended to collect the data even when it told users it [...]

The Complete 2024 Microsoft Tech Certification Training Super Bundle has 11 courses focusing on Microsoft tech. It includes courses such as Microsoft 365 Identity & Services (MS-100), Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (AZ-305), MD-100: Windows Client, AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies, Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104), and more. It's on sale for $80. Note: The Techdirt [...]

At this point, I really have to question the seriousness of anyone who claims that the evidence shows that social media is bad for kids. We're now reaching a point where the research is increasingly overwhelmingly pointing in the other direction. I've posted it before, but I'll post this list again: And we can go [...]

Knoxville, Tennessee is making progress on an ambitious, $700 million plan to deliver $65 gigabit fiber connections to every last city resident. With no usage caps, weird fees, or long-term contracts. Once completed, the city-owned fiber network, run through the city's existing city-owned electrical utility, will be the biggest community-owned broadband network in the U.S. [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Strawb with a response to someone claiming there's no first amendment issue with Ken Paxton's investigation into Media Matters: That's because you don't understand the first amendment, Koby. For those of us that do, there's very much a violation going on here. In second [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the Australian government passed a law forcing tech companies to break encryption, Hollywood and record labels were quietly asking congress to bring back SOPA, and the UK intelligence community said it was moving on from bulk data collection in favor of bulk equipment interference. The latest EU copyright [...]

It's that time... Get ready for the Gaming Like It's 1928! public domain game jam! The game jam, like all our public domain game jams, runs from January 1st through January 31st, and we're eager to see what kinds of games, both digital and analog, you'll make by building on newly public domain works. As [...]

While not super common, we have seen issues surrounding copyright claims or negative reactions to so-called reaction videos." These videos essentially take content that is out there, typically on the internet, and then react to them in a video providing either additional context for the content or a reaction to it. Sometimes those reaction videos [...]

Traditional newspapers have been complaining about the rise of the digital world for decades. Their discontent derives from the fact that they failed to recognize opportunities early on, leaving the field open for a new generation of born-digital companies to meet the demand for alternative ways to access the news. Rather than trying to understand [...]

Last month, Sports Illustrated found itself at the center of a firestorm after it was busted using fake computer-generated authors and (shitty) computer-generated content - without telling employees and readers. The scandal came shortly after Gannett (which likely owns whatever's left of your hometown newspaper) was busted doing the exact same thing. We've noted how [...]

The Italians are the new Israelis... at least in terms of hawking phone exploits and other spyware. NSO Group crashed hard following leaks showing its customers (many of which were, shall we say, questionable) were targeting political rivals, dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and religious leaders with powerful exploits that completely exposed the contents [...]

The Complete Python Programmer Bundle has nine courses to help you learn more about programming. This bundle starts with fundamental Python functionality such as arithmetic, conditional statements, and working with basic data structures. It then expands upon your working knowledge of data structures to work with full-blown datasets in the Pandas package. You'll learn all [...]

It seems like the only bipartisan" support around regulations and the internet these days is... over the false, widely debunked moral panic that the internet is inherently harmful to children. Study after study has said it's simply not true. Here's the latest list (and I have one more to write up soon): And yet, if [...]

We just got done noting how 2023 was finally the year that streaming fully surpassed traditional TV in terms of overall paying subscribers. A very obvious cord cutting" trend that executives spent years claiming wasfake or a fad is now the majority norm. But what's left of traditional cable TV isn't doing so well. Broadcast [...]

I will admit, after my last post on Russian game developer Fntastic shutting down operations days after the release of the much-hyped The Day Before, I really thought it would be my last post on the this whole fiasco. But, no, it turns out that the developer has given us more to write about. If [...]

We took a few weeks off in our Error 402 series on the history of web monetization, but we're back. If you're just catching up, we've talked about the earliest monetary transactions online, the rise of e-commerce, the initial failed attempts at paywalls for content, and the rise of internet ads followed quickly by the [...]

Well, this was a bit of a surprise. Over the past couple of weeks I wrote about how Senator Josh Hawley was planning to try to hotline his terrible No Section 230 Immunity for AI Act. As we have explained multiple times, the bill is so poorly drafted that it would make a mess of [...]

We've repeatedly noted how the Republican quest to ban TikTok is both stupid and performative. Stupid, in that banning TikTok doesn't fix the deeper privacy rot caused by a corrupt Congress' ongoing refusal to pass a privacy law or regulate data brokers (who do much worse, at much greater scale). Dumb, in that the ban" [...]

You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let's focus on the app. Right off the bat, let's be clear about one thing: When we say app" we don't mean that you're limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across [...]

We just wrote up a story about Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey and his bullshit censorial investigation into Media Matters, and I think we just got a preview of what he should expect. Back in November, Texas' (still criminally indicted, still waiting for trial) Attorney General Ken Paxton launched a similar investigation to buddy up [...]

You might recall that Elon Musk claims to hate taxpayer subsidies. They should all be deleted." Except for the subsidies given to his companies (often for doing nothing), of course. Back in 2020, Musk's satellite broadband venture, Starlink, gamed a Trump-era FCC subsidy program to try and grab $886 million in taxpayer dollars. It was [...]