Techdirt

Book bans are all the rage these days, as you likely well know. Far too many people, and folks in government more importantly, seem to have read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 not as a lesson in the dangers of new media, but as some sort of instruction manual for how to treat literature. But the [...]

A bill purporting to target the issue of misinformation and defamation caused by generative AI has mutated into something that could change the internet forever, harming speech and innovation from here on out. The Nurture Originals, Foster Art and Keep Entertainment Safe (NO FAKES) Act aims to address understandable concerns about generative AI-created replicas" by [...]

According to the latest data on robocalls from the YouMail Robocall Index, the scale of the U.S. robocall problem has grown by another eleven percent year over year. U.S. consumers received just over 4.8 billion robocalls in May. We've normalized ceding our primary voice communications platforms to corporations, debt collectors, and scammers, and there's every [...]

The Trump administration's immigration enforcement has revealed itself to be not just cruel, but fundamentally backwards: They're literally freeing dangerous criminals while manufacturing cases against innocent people. And they're doing it all to cover up their own massive legal fuckups. Take the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. We covered this last week when Magistrate Judge [...]

The DHS finally decided to provide the underlying stats for its exponentially increasing claims of sky-high numbers of assaults on ICE officers. Earlier this year, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin insisted assaults were up 413%, which was parroted by acting ICE direction Todd Lyons in his whiny response to Washington Post columnist Philip Bump's questioning of [...]

The 2025 Project Management Masterclass Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to date on different project managment systems and tools. Courses cover Scrum, Jira, Kanban, Agile, and more. You'll learn about time mangament, product ownership, and receive test prep for various certification exams. The bundle is on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt [...]

After Donald Trump won the election, he was still so full of hatred, bile, and spite, that he sued the pollster Ann Selzer as well as the Des Moines Register. Selzer, who has been one of the most trusted names in polling, released a poll slightly before the election that predicted a somewhat shocking victory [...]

While the GOP budget bill continues to include no limit of corrupt garbage that will kill millions of Americans (the cuts to Medicaid and rural hospitals being particularly brutal), one key component of the GOP agenda didn't quite make the cut. Ted Cruz had proposed withholding billions of dollars in federal broadband grants for states [...]

When it comes to the anti-piracy efforts taken by some of the more aggressive companies out there, such as Nintendo, the most frustrating part of the whole thing for me is just how completely short-sighted those efforts tend to be. Take Nintendo's updated EULA for its Switch consoles, for example. The updated agreement makes several [...]

I need to say something that will make many of you deeply uncomfortable: your refusal to call fascism fascism" is not sophistication-it'scomplicity. When Donald Trump postsexplicit ordersfor REMIGRATION" and Mass Deportation Operations" targeting American cities because they are the core of the Democrat Power Center," that's not controversial immigration policy." That's mass deportation directed against [...]

Not content with just shipping people to a foreign concentration camp, Donald Trump now has his own, homegrown concentration camp in Florida. Trump, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis gleefully toured the hastily constructed concentration camp in the Florida Everglades, obnoxiously referred to as Alligator Alcatraz, in reference to (1) the infamous [...]

Martial law? Police state? These are just things the alleged Leader of Free World wants, rather than things a nation founded on rejecting these options should be in the process of instituting. And yet, here we are, barely six months into Trump's return to office, staring down the barrel of both of these related horrors. [...]

The Academy of Educational Engineering is a premier platform tailored for aspiring and professional geeks. This all-in-one educational ecosystem is designed to empower you with expert-level knowledge and hands-on experience across embedded systems, electronics, IoT, and software development. As a premium member, you'll access comprehensive tools, engaging projects, personalized feedback, and direct mentorship, helping you [...]

At a time when politicians on both sides reflexively call for censorship and speech policing, it's refreshing to see someone actually defend free speech principles-especially when it would be politically easier to cave. That's exactly what New York City Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani did when NBC's Meet the Press tried to pressure him into [...]

Republicans are rewriting an infrastructure bill grant program to redirect billions of dollars to Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband service. The claim is that this is necessary because Starlink is the perfect solution for the country's rural broadband users and deserves this money. The reality is that Starlink continues to show that it lacks the [...]

At the beginning of this year, the Colorado state legislature introduced HB25-1097, a state law that updated the state's disease control statutes. Eventually signed into law by the Governor in April, the bill does a whole bunch of things related to public health: repealed the state's epidemic response committee, set a schedule for reviewing the [...]

During pandemic lockdowns, you might recall how AMC executivesthrew a temper tantrumbecause companies like Comcast/NBC began experimenting with more innovative movie release windows. AMC execs were mad because the pandemic highlighted how the 90-day gap between the time a movie appears in theaters and its streaming or DVD release was exposed as both dated and [...]

The Supreme Court just discovered that nationwide injunctions are problematic. How convenient that this revelation came right as Donald Trump returned to office with plans to rule by executive fiat. Last week's big Supreme Court decision in Trump v. CASA was trumpeted in the media as being about birthright citizenship, even though that was only [...]

The cops certainly had fun partnering with Ring, the surveillance camera company now owned by Amazon. Ring handed out free cameras to cops, who handed out these cameras to citizens with the implicit expectation that they'd have warrantless access to camera footage whenever they wanted it. It didn't quite work out that way. Lots of [...]

One of Elon Musk's first promises" upon taking over Twitter was that fighting child exploitation was priority #1." He falsely implied that the former management didn't take the issue seriously (they did) and insisted that he would make sure it was a solved problem on the platform he now owned. Of course, while he was [...]

It's no secret that Photoshop can be a bit dense when you're first getting your feet wet with it. That's why it pays to have a expert instructors show you the ropes. Led by a Photoshop pro, the Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle will help you master Photoshop CC and become an expert-no prior experience [...]

Quite obviously, the Trump Administration was never going to respect the law when it came to its mass deportation plans. That much became immediately clear as ICE engaged in raid after raid of neighborhoods and businesses, searching for literally any migrant, rather than just those suspected of or convicted for violent crimes. As soon as [...]

Whether bydodgy Supreme Court ruling,executive order, mindless DOGE cuts, orcaptured regulators, the U.S. right wing, usually in lockstep with consolidated corporate power, are making massive, historic, and potentially irreversible inroads in destroying all federal corporate oversight, labor protections, public safety provisions, environmental standards, and regulatory autonomy. I bolded that last bit because it's not clear [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment on last week's post, where I had to forego most of the Funny section due to a lack of candidates: To be fair, it seems like there's less and less to be laughing at, except as a gallows humor coping [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we published our popular reference post on all the ways people are wrong about Section 230. It was needed because, as we covered in that week's episode of the podcast, there were a whole lot of attacks on the law, most notably from some of the provisions of [...]

When you're a huge country, and a communist one to boot, the Streisand Effect is a thing that's just going to inevitably happen to you at times. China has definitely lived this experience. The government is the unfortunate combination of incredibly authoritarian and completely devoid of a sense of humor. The result is the serious [...]

This series of posts explores how we can rethink the intersection of AI, creativity, and policy. From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle. Together, they advocate for a more balanced, forward-thinking approach that acknowledges the potential [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students - or anyone else - who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others. ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how [...]

Much of what we've written about regarding the Trump regime's nonsensical and ridiculous immigration policies have focused on how they're grabbing people off the streets, or disappearing them to random foreign gulags without due process. But we've also talked about the absolute insanity of US immigration policy as it pertains to foreigners traveling to the [...]

Just because a constitutional violation is easy to ignore doesn't make it any less of a constitutional violation. And yet, that was the first defense of Louisiana's Ten Commandments mandate offered by the governor of the state, Jeff Landry. When asked what he would say to parents who are upset about the Ten Commandments being [...]

The Ultimate AWS Data Master Class Bundle has 9 courses to get you up to speed on Amazon Web Services. The courses cover AWS, DevOPs, Kubernetes Mesosphere DC/OS, AWS Redshift, and more. It's on sale for $39. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt [...]

The Supreme Court this morning took a chainsaw to the First Amendment on the internet, and the impact is going to be felt for decades going forward. In the FSC v. Paxton case, the Court upheld the very problematic 5th Circuit ruling that age verification online is acceptable under the First Amendment, despite multiple earlier [...]

In a day full of terrible Supreme Court rulings there was one bit of good news: in their FCC v. Consumers' Research ruling, the court rejected a bid by radical right wing Republicans to destroy a popular $8 billion FCC program that connects poor and rural schools and communities to the internet. The plaintiff in [...]

Last week we noted how the Trump administration had cooked up a half-assed wireless phone company. Even calling it a phone company is generous: It's basically a licensing agreement and a lazy coat of paint on another, half-assed MVNO effort (Patriot Mobile), which in turn just resells T-Mobile service. A cornerstone of the supposed company [...]

Well, RFK Jr.'s reconstructed Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), just concluded its first day of meetings in Atlanta. This was over the objection of GOP Senator Bill Cassidy, who confirmed RFK Jr. to his appointment but called for a delay to ACIP's meeting after Kennedy terminated all 17 panel members weeks ago and replaced [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week's roundup of the latest news in online [...]

For years, we've written about the concept of soft corruption," which is the idea that there are certain actions that may not mean the full definition of corrupt practices in the legal sense, but are so obviously corrupt that they make people more cynical towards those who claim to represent our interests in the government. [...]

Within days of each other, two federal judges in the same district reached completely opposite conclusions about AI training on copyrighted works. Judge William Alsup said it's likely fair use as transformative. Judge Vince Chhabria said it's likely infringing because of the supposed impact on the market. Both rulings came out of the Northern District [...]

To call the administration's worst of the worst" claims a ruse is to give this administration too much credit. It's not clever enough to run a con. Going after criminals was never the point during Trump's first term. And mass deportation was the platform Trump ran on to get back to the Oval Office for [...]

Splunk is a powerful data platform used to gather information from multiple sources and index it for efficient access. You can then use collected data to create visualizations, analytics, and a variety of automated and security-related functions. With its web-style interface, Splunk is easy to use and is utilized by many companies worldwide.The 2025 Complete [...]

While dozens of AI copyright lawsuits wind their way through courts nationwide, Judge William Alsup's ruling this week in Bartz v. Anthropic stands out - not just because it's from one of the most thoughtful tech judges on the federal bench, but because it charts a somewhat nuanced path through the copyright minefield that could [...]

So you may have seen that Elon Musk's long-hyped Robotaxis have finally launched" in Austin. And it's going just about how you'd expect if you're familiar with the fit and finish of Elon Musk promises. There are about a dozen Robotaxis now operating; Model Ys with a human observer in the front seat to try [...]

A year ago, Walled Culture wrote about a growing risk that we willlose access to the world's knowledge, because of a failure by traditional academic publishers to place copies of the articles they publish in key backup archives. Although unacceptable, that oversight is more a matter of laziness and cost cutting on the part of [...]

We've noted more than a few times that media and streaming execs are all out of original ideas. Now that the market has saturated and subscriber growth has slowed, streaming companies have decided to stop giving the public what it wants (few restrictions, low prices, better quality content) in order to provide Wall Street with [...]

It's a bit jarring to be reminded that it was only on June 10th that RFK Jr. decided to fire every member of ACIP, the CDC's immunization advisory panel. Those 14 experts had a variety of backgrounds all related to and demonstrating industry experience specifically dealing with vaccination science and policy. They were replaced by [...]

There are a few thousand military troops in Los Angeles now, thanks to Trump's Martial Plan. Local law enforcement officials pointed out they had the situation under control, what with most of the violence (what there was of it that isn't police violence) limited to a few blocks in downtown LA. The rollout of National [...]

Here's a fun corporate governance puzzle for you. Suppose you're a foreign company trying to buy an American steel producer. The previous administration blocked your deal. The current president promised during his campaign to block it too, saying he'd stop it instantaneously. Absolutely." How do you get the deal approved? If you guessed write the [...]

The Ultimate Oracle, SAP and Salesforce Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you brush up on your CRM knowledge. Courses cover database programming languages, data analysis, Recovery Manager, and more. It's on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals [...]

Using statistics to lie is so commonplace, it's hardly worth noting. But the DHS can't even be bothered to use statistics to lie. Instead, it just repeats the lie and uses this lie to engage in circular reasoning. Washington Post columnist Philip Bump angered ICE by asking a simple question: why are so many ICE [...]

Republicans are currently trying to force through a massive and cruel new legislation package that will impose historic cuts in public services to the benefit of the nation's richest assholes. The bill will add $3.8 trillion to the deficit over a decade and includes an unlimited number of major hand outs to the wealthiest individuals [...]