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Not long after twelve states sued Paramount claiming its $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers would harm market competition, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed their own lawsuit, warning that the massive debt load from the media industry's latest megamerger will result in an ocean of layoffs for an already reeling U.S. entertainment industry. [...]

In all of our discussions about how the digital revolution has created a system in which people don't actually own the things they think they're buying, I get particularly frustrated by the lack of change in it all. We've spilled much ink complaining that this clearly anti-consumer practice needs to be done away with, where [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. In its term that ended last October, the Supreme Court passed an important milestone that went unnoticed: For the first time, it decided more cases by secret ballot, and with few signed opinions, than it did for cases argued in open court. These decisions, which make [...]

Well, it was fun while it lasted. And even while it still (theoretically) lasts, it's really nothing more than the Fifth Circuit saying rights can violated, but only for 90 days at a time. Earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit managed to deliver a very un-Fifth Circuit decision, finding in favor of rights and against [...]

Last year, the Marco Rubio-run State Department announced that it would start denying visas to people who worked in misinformation/disinformation research, content moderation, fact-checking, or other compliance and trust & safety roles. So, yeah, if you were an EU-based person who worked on preventing child sexual abuse material from appearing online, the US government decided [...]

Opusonix is the workflow-first platform built for music producers and engineers who are tired of endless email chains and scattered files. By centralizing feedback, versions, and tasks in one structured workspace, it helps you cut email traffic by up to 90% so you can focus more on creating and less on chasing approvals. From time-coded [...]

Donald Trump believes that being elected president means he should never be challenged, never be asked to justify his actions, and never be given less than absolute loyalty and deference. He also clearly believes the office is there to serve him, rather than there for him to serve the public. He's going to make bank [...]

In late 2024 the Biden FTC under Lina Khan passed new click to cancel" rules that made it easier to cancel subscriptions and services, promising to punish the worst offenders. It was a direct response to decades of sleazy behavior from companies (from AOL to the Wall Street Journal) that made cancelling services an overly [...]

Are you currently pooping yourself uncontrollably and want to know why? Well, the CDC made that slightly more difficult last year, but you might just have cyclosporiasis, the unintentional weight loss craze that is gripping parts of the country. The disease - cyclosporiasis - is a foodborne illness caused by a microscopic parasite called cyclospora. [...]

Paramount is now threatening California regulators that they'll be taking their ball and going home (to Texas? Israel?) after California and 11 other states filed an antitrust lawsuit against the company's unpopular $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. Paramount leaked word of the nonexistent move to Semafor, which dutifully parroted the empty threat: Ellison's confidantes [...]

The central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) is the growing incompatibility between traditional copyright law and the digital, online world. The culmination of that process was theEU Copyright Directive, passed in 2019. The Directive was supposed to be transposed into local laws by 2021, but a year after that deadline, many [...]

Well, well, well. Last month we noted that Judge Kathleen Williams had agreed to reopen the incredibly sketchy case where Donald Trump (as President of the United States) sued his own IRS (which he controls) for $10 billion because a contractor (who was caught, tried, convicted, and is currently serving his sentence) had leaked tax [...]

The 2026 Data Engineering Bundle has 7 online courses designed to help learners build skills that align directly with industry expectations.The focus is on practical tools and languages used by data professionals: Python for programming, Pandas and NumPy for data manipulation, foundational certification prep and specialized work with Databricks, an industry-standard platform for data engineering [...]

This is pointless escalation, but pointless escalation is this administration's brand. We already know ICE officers have gone out of their way to aim their phones at protesters and others who try to derail their masked kidnapping squads. And we know - thanks to public records and leaked documents - ICE has access to facial [...]

A dozen states have filed an antitrust lawsuit to block Paramount/CBS' $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers. The states argue the deal will undermine market competition, cause untold layoffs, result in higher prices and lower quality for consumers, and significantly harm a Hollywood entertainment industry that still hasn't fully recovered from Covid, the streaming revolution, [...]

I'm not sure who out there is in RFK Jr.'s corner anymore, beyond some unfortunately powerful people in seats of federal power at the moment. That Kennedy's tenure at HHS has lasted even this long is as absurd as it is dangerous, given the mountains of chaos he's created in a mere year and change [...]

Recently, politicians in the UK pushed forward with plans to eviscerate privacy and free speech on the internet byannouncing a ban on social mediafor users under 16 that is set to take effect in Spring 2027. The UK government continues to falsely characterize this policy as a necessary response to growing concerns about online harms [...]

I think I've extensively explained at this point why the $111 billion merger between Paramount/CBS and Warner Brothers is a gargantuan pile of shit that will indisputably harm labor, consumers, markets, creatives, and potentially even national security. It doesn't matter the company names; every single major media merger of this type ends badly for everyone [...]

Less than a month ago, Trump secured himself a $400 million plane for free - something he certainly couldn't have accomplished if he weren't the president of the United States. It's no longer a mere appearance of corruption: it's a 250-foot long luxury plane with 2,500 square feet of tangible corruption. Here are some details [...]

We have all wanted to learn a language at some point but it's hard to get started. Some language learning tools can be complicated and very time-consuming. But with uTalk, you'll be speaking keywords and phrases in no time, and will start to see the results straight away. It helps you overcome the language barrier [...]

One thing that we've heard for many years in covering a variety of ridiculous civil and criminal court cases is the belief that when a crazy case is filed, the person accused of wrongdoing should just walk into court and tell the judge what really happened." While that might feel right, it's really not how [...]

For years I've noted that while Elon Musk's Starlink satellite broadband system can be very useful for people with no other options (warzones, RVs, boats, rural Americans), the network has struggled to maintain performance as it grows into more mainstream markets, resulting in not only widespread slowdowns, but also the company socking users with massive [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Bloof with a comment about Wikipedia banning its co-founder: Guy was one of many people involved in the start of Wikipedia, left in a snit to start rival project after rival project more in line with his personal vision, each dying a death because [...]

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The long-rumored layoffs at Xbox have come and they are massive. We just recently discussed the mess that Microsoft's Xbox division has become. An internal email that was sent to staff by CEO Asha Sharma laid out just how bad things were, essentially preparing the staff for the forthcoming staffing cuts. Interestingly, this is the [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. Last month, my colleagues and I published aninvestigation into a Texas oil refinery startup, America First Refining, that had secretly gotten investment from Donald Trump Jr. We discovered a saga involving the Trump administration's tariff policy, sanctioned Russian oil and an Indian billionaire family's private zoo. [...]

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. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on [...]

Another senior Trump administration official is gleefully showing off his true colors: The current general counsel for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) published an opinion column with the Heritage Foundation's news outlet The Daily Signal calling for stronger obscenity regulation. From the Founding through most of American history, courts allowed the legislature to control pornographic [...]

The All-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Course Bundle has 10 courses designed to teach you about video editing, animations, photography, design, and more. Courses cover popular Adobe products like Lightroom, After Effects, Photoshop, and Adobe XD. The bundle is on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackSocial. A [...]

It's no secret that I'm a fan of developmental psychologist Candice Odgers. I've mentioned her and her work on the site many times, and she was a guest on my podcast as well. She actually has expertise and has done the work to look at the impact of social media on kids. In many ways [...]

To be clear, the FTC under Donald Trump and new boss Andrew Ferguson has been a dangerous embarrassment. Whether it's the firing of both Democratic Commissioners, the politically motivated investigations, the extremist attacks on trans people, the agency's useless attacks on porn, or its efforts to undermine free speech, the Trump FTC has largely been [...]

One of the key tools in the tool belt of the anti-vaxxer has long been VAERS, the voluntarily reporting system for adverse events following vaccinations. People who don't really understand how any of this works often get very, very confused about what VAERS is and is not. It does not contain confirmed outcomes caused by [...]

Bari Weiss is seeking out friendly interviewers at the New York Times to try and calm the firestorm engulfing her leadership of CBS News." By leadership" of course they mean censoring stories critical of the president, letting Benjamin Netanyahu pick his own interviewer (who he knows won't press him on war crimes), firing a bunch [...]

This article is republished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article. The 2026FIFA World Cupis thelargest sporting eventin history. It's also the most surveilled World Cup ever. If you're visiting or traveling around host cities, then you and your face, behavior, movement and devices are being monitored by governments and private companies. The [...]

It's hard to believe that the same people who spent the Biden years screaming that Democrats were socialists" out to destroy free market capitalism are now cheerfully handing the federal government ownership stakes in private companies. And yet here we are. Just as Trumpists have decided that their go-to strategy for trying to rile up [...]

The Essential MATLAB and LabVIEW Mega Bundle has 9 courses to help you improve your skills in programming and visualization. You'll learn the basics of each and then go through hands-on courses building apps, learning about data analysis and visualization, and more. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

ICE has already been operating like a paramilitary kidnapping squad. Officers roam through neighborhoods, stake out hardware store parking lots, and even occasionally enjoy some ethnic food just so they can raid the source of hospitality later. It's nasty, disturbing, and definitely doesn't resemble any of the things that have made America great. Now, the [...]

Civil rights groups like the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) have noted how Elon Musk's Colossus xAI data centers in Memphisdisproportionately pollute the air in minority neighborhoods. Ajoint lawsuitby SELC, Earthjustice, and the NAACP filed last April argued that Musk and friends didn't bother to get the necessary permits to run the 57 gas turbines [...]

Sony just gave the world another lesson in how they don't actually own the content they've bought digitally generally, and particularly not through Sony's digital storefronts. Instead, as readers here will largely know, what is actually being bought is a temporary license to download and play these games, movies, music, whatever. Sony has done this [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. In late November in Jamnagar, India, the scions of two of the most powerful families in the world stood face-to-face. On one side was 30-year-old Anant Ambani, son of one of the richest men in Asia. On the other was Donald Trump Jr. For months, the [...]

For a while there, you might remember how giant telecom monopolies, running out of new subscribers, all decided to get into the media business. But because terrible telecom monopoly executives can't innovate and generally don't know how competition works, it never really goes that well. The various Yahoo/Tumblr/Verizon/AOL exploits were a legendary mess, only outshined [...]

For over a decade, a particular argument keeps resurfacing from well-meaning progressives: the rise of authoritarianism around the globe is a good reason to pass laws suppressing speech. The idea is that somehow, magically, without free speech, authoritarians and fascists would never come to power in the first place. This is historically illiterate. It's also [...]

The Premium Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence Super Bundle is a twelve-course digital toolkit designed to take you from coding novice to AI architect. The curriculum breaks down complex data science concepts into actionable steps, guiding you through hands-on projects using Python, data analysis tools, and advanced neural networks. Whether you want to automate everyday tasks, [...]

Good news!(?) It's good news of sorts, so we'll go with a qualified good news!" here. There's a little table setting that needs to be done to explain why it's better now than it was before the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court continued ingratiating itself to race-motivated tyranny. I realize that's not a great pitch in [...]

Back in February, Trump FCC Boss Brendan Carr launched a fake investigation" of ABC because the network's comedians and daytime talk show hosts hadn't adequately kissed Republican ass. Five months later and ABC's The View is wimping out when it comes to hosting politicians at all, for fear it will upset the country's mad idiot [...]

As we mentioned previously, the Stop Killing Games movement has come to America and there is currently an effort to get some legislation based on the movement's goals on the books in California. The movement hit a snag recently when the written version of the bill failed to make it out of committee on a [...]

Last week marks four years sinceDobbs v. Jackson Women's Health OrganizationoverturnedRoe v. Wade's constitutional protections for people seeking abortion care. Anniversaries are a moment to take stock, and over the last four years, EFF has seen firsthand how digital rights and reproductive rights have become increasingly intertwined. One major way this has happened: the fight [...]

Oh boy do the Nazi-esque dudes running rampant in our country hate being called Nazis. They love the Nazi chic and the Nazi talk about securing the nation for white, blue-eyed males, but they hate being compared to the thing(s) they resemble most, even when they're promoting people for actively generating these comparisons. Like any [...]

For many, many years on Techdirt we've bemoaned the fact that federal court documents are not available for free as they should be. Instead, we have PACER, a bloated, expensive, difficult to use system that charges you for every page" it loads up for you (including search results). The whole thing is a sham. Indeed, [...]

Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice for any professional who needs to handle data and documents. It comes with many new features that will make you more productive in every stage of development, whether it's processing paperwork or creating presentations from scratch. You receive licenses for MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote, [...]