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Another state lawmaker has introduced an age verification bill looking to block minors' access to porn websites. This time, Indiana state Sen. Mike Bohacek of the community of Michiana Shores has introduced a preliminary draft that proposes copycat age verification policies similar to other states, including Louisiana, Texas, Utah, and others. The Indiana bill would [...]

As you likely know by now, last week, Elon Musk released the initial version of the AI chatbot he created earlier this year via xAI" which may or may not be part of his many other companies, but definitely uses employees, technology, and resources from those other companies. He named it Grok," though also claimed [...]

Everyone who wants client-side scanning to be a thing insists it's a good idea with no potential downsides. The only hangup, they insist, is tech companies' unwillingness to implement it. And by implement," I mean - in far too many cases - introducing deliberate (and exploitable!) weaknesses in end-to-end encryption. End-to-end encryption only works if [...]

This DevDojo Pro subscription gives you access to a set of tools to help you build your next great idea. Start with the Page Creator, where you'll find Tailwind CSS Page Builder, a tool for crafting beautiful landing pages. Then, move on to Wave SAAS Starter Kit, where you'll learn how to build your Software [...]

Over the last few weeks, YouTube has been cracking down on YouTube adblockers, blocking users who are using such adblockers (or, in some cases, disabling extensions). There are still some ways around it, but apparently it's becoming more difficult. Here at Techdirt, we've always been pro-adblocker (even though we sometimes have ads on the site, [...]

Maine residents have made it very clear: the overwhelming majority of Americans want to be able to easily and affordably repair the stuff they own. 83 percent of Maine voters last week responded yes to Question 4," asking whether automakers should be required to provide car owners (and independent repair shops) access to on-board diagnostic [...]

Way back in 2018, we discussed how the Ravinia Festival Association, which operates the Ravinia Festival venue north of Chicago, attempted to shut down or force a rename for the then new Ravinia Brewing Company brewery and restaurant in Highland Park. That might all look fairly appropriate at first glance if you're not from the [...]

TheEU Copyright Directiveis arguably the most important recent legislation in the area of intellectual monopolies. It is also a failure, judged purely on its own terms as an initiative to modernize and unify copyright across the European Union. Instead, it includes many backward-looking features that go against the grain of the digital world, which are [...]

There's generally been two reasons the U.S. government hasn't tried to regulate data brokers or pass even a baseline privacy law, and it's not, contrary to conventional wisdom, because it's too hard. One, there's an army of industries with near-bottomless lobbying budgets opposed to meaningful privacy protections, because empowered consumers would inevitably cost these companies [...]

I've noted my skepticism regarding the antitrust attacks on the current Google antitrust trial regarding how it pays to have its search placed as the default on Safari and other browsers/phones. Again, that does not mean I'm skeptical of all antitrust suits against Google, as some of the others (around advertising) appear to have significantly [...]

The UK government thinks the 2016 Investigatory Powers Act is due for an overhaul. But it has plenty of opposition. Some of the proposed amendments actually appear to be illegal. And at least one major tech company has threatened to exit the market if the proposed amendments become law. The so-called Snooper's Charter" has always [...]

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As some folks know, back in 2005, right here on Techdirt, I coined The Streisand Effect," as a throwaway line at the end of a post. It was in reference to a story from two years earlier regarding Streisand suing photographer Ken Adelman after he had started the California Coastal Records Project, in which he [...]

GOP FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr can routinely be found hyperventilating about TikTok, a company he doesn't actually regulate. At the same time, Carr routinely turns a blind eye to the endless sleazy behavior in the sector he actually regulates: telecom. He doesn't much care about predatory pricing, privacy violations, or the way companies like AT&T [...]

The copyright industry's war on the Internet and its users has gone through various stages (full details and links to numerous references in Walled Culture the book,free digital versions available). The first was to sue Internet users directly for sharing files. By 2007, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) had sued at least 30,000 [...]

It's amazing just how much war and conflict can change a country. On October 7th, Hamas blitzed Israel with an attack that was plainly barbaric. Yes, this is a conflict that has been simmering with occasional flashpoints for decades. No, neither side can even begin to claim it has entirely clean hands as a result [...]

Under the pretense of a computer crime investigation, the Marion County PD - led by then-Chief Gideon Cody - raided the offices of the Marion County Record, as well as the home of its 98-year-old co-owner, Joan Meyer. Joan Meyer died one day after the raid, one she strenuously objected to while her home was [...]

Let's just start off by noting that if you're not in the US and you live anywhere with some form of single-payer/universal healthcare, we know. You don't need to tell us. We know. The US healthcare system is a fucking mess. A decade ago I wrote an article about how the US healthcare system wasn't [...]

The most serious opposition to extending Section 702 surveillance authorities since the immediate aftermath of the Snowden leaks came from a perhaps-unexpected source: House Republicans. Of course, this isn't an altruistic effort. This is purely politically motivated, driven by abuses of surveillance authorities by the FBI. The FBI has always done this. It just so [...]

The Apple Watch Wireless Charger Keychain is the perfect accessory for Apple Watch users on-the-go. With a built-in 950mAh lithium-ion battery, it can charge all series of Apple Watch. The technology allows it to be used as a base for a bedside table or table for convenient charging. Its portable, pocket-size design makes it easy [...]

Omegle has been a controversial service. While Chatroulette got all the attention as a service to randomly connect with video to others online, it grew fast and burned out fast. Omegle was basically the same service, but had a slower ramp up, and became quite popular over the last few years. Except that now Omegle [...]

Thanks to industry consolidation and saturated market growth, the streaming industry has started behaving much like the traditional cable giants they once disrupted. As with most industries suffering from enshittification," that generally means steadily worse service at higher prices as it tries to appease Wall Street's demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost (even [...]

We've got another double winner this week, with the same anonymous comment taking first place for insightful and second place for funny. It comes in response to a joke about Republicans in the zombie apocalypse: Republicans will be the zombies because when an outbreak happens, the government will tell people to avoid the zombies, and [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, there was another failed attempt to hold Twitter responsible for terrorism, while we were taking a closer look at the massive influence campaigns and coordinated election interference happening on the platform. AT&T began kicking pirates off the internet, the Supreme Court rejected the telecom industry's calls to hear [...]

One of the longest standing jokes in professional sports is labeling the NFL, or National Football League, the No Fun League, instead. This typically has to do either with the way the league has legislated a lot of what fans love about the game off the field in the name of player safety, which isn't [...]

Last week in our Error 402 series on the history of web monetization, we covered how early paywalls for content almost universally failed. We'll explore a bit more of the why later, but first we need to talk about internet ads. Because they basically sucked up all of the oxygen in the online monetization world. [...]

We've dealt with plenty of outlandish government behavior here at Techdirt over the years. But, every so often, something clears that high bar - something that hits you square in the jaw and makes you take a step back. You'll never know what your government employees feel they're entitled to do until they actually do [...]

Look, I get that Rep. Jim Jordan is going to just keep on Jim Jordaning up the joint, and making statements that are blatantly untrue in an effort to chill speech he doesn't like. But, for fuck's sake, the media doesn't need to repeat it. Of course, in this case, the media" is the NY [...]

As the completely normal parents of two completely normal teen boys, I was sincerely hoping I would never have to write about Fortnite again. This is not to say there's anything particularly wrong with Fortnite, the free-to-play arena shooter/Minecraft that took the online world by storm. Epic Games recognized its new field of cash cows [...]

Charge your device or illuminate your desk with this innovative 6-in-1 Wireless Charger. It's easy to use with its touch buttons and Qi wireless charging for Qi-enabled devices. Beautifully made with a modern look, it can quickly charge your device and is touch-sensitive allowing you to show the digital clock. For your convenience, this charger [...]

This is what I get for praising a move by the FTC earlier this week. It repays me by pushing out a batshit crazy statement regarding AI and copyright. As we've been discussing over the past week, the Copyright Office's request for comments regarding AI and copyright has been leading to some odd comments, including [...]

Amazon is now charging Prime customers an extra $3 a month to avoid ads that didn't used to exist. Netflix is charging password sharers extra for sharing passwords, in addition to yet another looming price hike. Apple just doubled the price of Apple TV on the heels of price hikes by Disney, Hulu, and ESPN. [...]

Usually when we're talking about a trademark dispute, never mind a lawsuit, there is some level of anger, frustration, or animosity between the two parties. The reason for that is pretty obvious: nothing puts you on negative footing towards another quite like getting sued or getting threatened with a lawsuit. But, and I cannot stress [...]

We've noted many times that there are two major reasons that the U.S. still hasn't passed even a basic privacy law for the internet era or regulated data brokers. One, the U.S. government is corrupt, and has repeatedly buckled to the lobbying of multiple industries that find the current dysfunction very profitable. Two, the government [...]

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Fucking finally. I've been somewhat critical of the glaring failures of this FTC, which has been something of a mess, seemingly spending more time on questionable academic theories, rather than focusing on all sorts of obvious low-hanging fruit, clearly within its authority to protect consumers. So, it was nice a few months ago to see [...]

Adding to the unearned wins racked up by cops is this decision [PDF] from the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court. According to the court, figuring out digital stuff is just too complicated. And if it can't handle the nuances, it certainly can't expect cops to follow the constitutional rules. And who can blame it? The guidance [...]

Last week we wrote about our comments submitted to the Copyright Office's request on copyright and AI. We tried to make it clear that copyright had no place in the data that is used to train AI, and that computers simply consuming data shouldn't require any kind of special copyright protection or licensing. It's not [...]

Aging satellite TV provider Dish Network is supposed to be undergoing a major transformation from tired old satellite TV provider to streaming and wireless juggernaut, but it's... not going well. The company's latest earnings report indicates it lost another 284,000 video subscribers during the quarter. That includes a loss of 197,000 satellite TV customers, as [...]

When it comes to the big 3 of the video game industry - Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony - the circle is now complete when it comes to integrations with ExTwitter. Late last year, Nintendo killed off parts of its own integration not just with then-Twitter, but with Facebook as well. But then ExTwitter abruptly announced [...]

A few months ago, the Marion, Kansas police department made the immediately regrettable decision to raid the office of the local paper, as well as the home of the paper's owner. According to Police Chief Gideon Cody, this was the proper thing to do. The paper's journalists were suspected of breaking state laws pertaining to [...]

We live in strange times. It used to be that you could set your watch to one simple thing: any time any government agency or policymaker had any question about whether or not we needed to expand copyright laws, Hollywood would answer with a resounding YES, ABSOLUTELY!" Over the years, copyright has expanded massively, and [...]

The First Amendment provides broad protections for journalists, not only as to what they publish, but also how they collect information. For instance, publishing leaked government documents is protected, even if the acts that provided journalists with these documents may be subject to criminal proceedings. In recent months, however, a couple of law enforcement agencies [...]

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That's all well and good, but it means nothing if you don't have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In the Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class you'll [...]

While I often disagree with Tim Wu, I like and respect him, and always find it interesting to know what he has to say. Wu was also one of the earliest folks to give me feedback on my Protocols not Platforms paper, when he attended a roundtable at Columbia University discussing early drafts of the [...]

We just got done noting how pretty much all of the criticism of the Sprint T-Mobile merger by economists and consumer advocates wound up being true. The deal has resulted in more than 10,000+ eliminated jobs, steady price hikes, annoying new fees, a weaker T-Mobile brand, and a lower quality product overall. It also clearly [...]

It truly is amazing that the video game industry is so heavily divided on the topic of user-made game mods. I truly don't understand it. My take has always been very simple: mods are good for gamers and even better for game makers. Why? Simple, mods serve to extend the useful life of video games [...]

A few weeks ago we had a story from Glyn Moody about how some people were effectively spamming music streaming services like Spotify with functional music," tracks designed to get plays solely for the sake of royalties. Glyn, reasonably, called for an overhaul," in how these systems worked. And apparently some people were thinking similarly? [...]

In the latest chapter of my laziness writing on the crazy escapades of anti-porn Republicans for Techdirt, I wish to introduce you to Ohio state Rep. Steve Demetriou, who represents Bainbridge Township. Rep. Demetriou introduced the Innocence Act, or House Bill (HB) 295, on October 11, 2023. I wrote about the bill over at AVN.comand [...]

NSO Group used to have everything going for it. It had plenty of customers and plenty of leeway to sell to some of the worst governments in the world. Then everything changed. A leaked list of malware targets made it clear most of NSO's customers weren't trying to secure nations or solve horrible crimes. Instead, [...]