Techdirt

Support us on Patreon We've got another cross-post episode this week! Recently, Mike appeared on The Dynamist podcast from the Foundation for American Innovation for the second entry in a four-part series about copyright and artificial intelligence. He's joined by Alex Winter and Tim Hwang, and host Evan Swarztrauber, for a discussion about how artists, [...]

Great job, US government. You went so overboard with your TikTok is an evil Chinese app" and deciding to ban it that you're pushing kids to go even deeper into the Chinese app ecosystem. The US government's ham-handed attempt to ban TikTok on national security grounds is not only a troubling attack on free speech [...]

This 2-in-1 Keychain Wireless Charger with 2,500mAh battery will charge your Apple Watch 3-5 times on a full charge. Its magnetic design ensures perfect alignment and it works seamlessly with all Apple Watch series. It features Type-C port for versatile charging options for other devices. It's on sale for $19. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store [...]

Hitch yourself to a wagon and see what you get. Area dog-killer/current governor/possible DHS head Kristi Noem boarded the Trump Train when it first passed through town nearly a decade ago. Since then, she's won the loyalty of a bunch of fascist-adjacent dipshits who don't care how much they vote against their own interests, as [...]

As streaming video chipped away at traditional cable TV subscriber bases, most cable giants like Spectrum and Comcast responded byraising pricesand being difficult. When confronted with growing evidence that cord cutting (defined as cutting theTVcord but keeping broadband and streaming TV) was a growing trend, most of these same executives spent years firstdenying cord cutting [...]

This one is from a couple months ago, but I finally had a chance to catch up on some older stories. In late 2023, we wrote about one of the most egregious SLAPP suits we'd ever seen. In a case that seems to defy both law and basic human decency, King Vanga, a Stanford student, [...]

There but for the grace of whatever god goes any of us. Who among us is worthy to judge the actions of someone who has the power to do right, but uses it to do wrong? Apparently, none of us. Not even the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. (h/t Short Circuit) We like to believe [...]

This was inevitable, ever since Donald Trump and the MAGA world freaked out when social media's attempts to fact-check the President were deemed censorship." The reaction was both swift and entirely predictable. After all, how dare anyone question Dear Leader's proclamations, even if they are demonstrably false? It wasn't long before we started to see [...]

On Friday I attended the oral argument in the TikTok ban case in person, seated in the second row behind the table where the government's lawyers were sitting, and only about 15-20 feet away from the justices themselves. There's something kind of profound about being a normal human distance from them, instead of just in [...]

Visual Studio Professional 2022 is a fully featured development environment. Their first 64-bit IDE makes it easier to work with even bigger projects and more complex workloads. Enhance your productivity, write high-quality code, and re-imagine collaboration with an advanced suite of tools and built-in integrations to tackle the most challenging development workflows and deliver innovative [...]

Ohio residents pay for the cops. They pay for the cameras. Now, they're expected to pay for the footage generated by cops and their cameras. Governor Mike DeWine, serving no one but cops and their desire for opacity, recently signed a bill into law that will make it much more expensive for residents to exercise [...]

We've noted for several years how the race to 5G" was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager tosell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it's more of an evolution than a revolution. But that's not what telecom giants [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment about Mark Zuckerberg's pathetic deference to Trump: I've said it before, but what's even the point of having that level of wealth if you're just going to debase yourself for somebody like Trump? For what will it profit a man [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, the libel tourism of Devin Nunes was continuing to highlight the problems of weak anti-SLAPP laws. A patent troll got smacked down by an appeals court, while there was a twist in Oracle's attacks on Google, and Apple became the latest company to up the ante in abusing [...]

Early last year, streaming company Fubo filed an antitrust lawsuit against Disney, Fox, and Warner Brothers Discovery after the three companies decided to launch their own joint streaming live sports venture. Fubo, in the lawsuit, claims the collective power of the three companies would stifle competition in the sports streaming space, ultimately driving up costs [...]

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 round-up of the latest news in online [...]

In a twist that highlights the absurdity of UK libel laws, former Prime Minister Liz Truss is threatening to sue current PM Keir Starmer for saying she crashed the economy" during her chaotic 49 days in office... conveniently forgetting that she made the exact same accusation against an earlier PM herself. That's right, Truss, whose [...]

I don't know what kind of warrant system they're running in Pennsylvania, but it doesn't sound like a good one. Either the system is deliberately broken, or the testifying cops were playing fast and loose with the facts. Whatever the case is, the end result is the loss of the evidence obtained with Schrodinger's Warrant, [...]

The 2025 Graphic Design for Beginners Bundle has 4 courses to help you learn about graphic design. Courses cover working with Adobe Illustrator, using your iPhone for filming, and starting your own graphic design business. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all [...]

For quite some time now, we've pointed out how Jim Jordan has weaponized the government to suppress speech. Quite frequently, he seems to be doing this in coordination with Elon Musk. And yet, somehow, it felt like we were the only ones calling this out. So many in the media seem fine repeating the lie [...]

In February 2024, AT&T bungled a network update causing a massive outagethat it took AT&T twelve hours to fix. DownDetector lit up with 70,000 problem reports. The outage impacted an estimated 125 million wireless devices, blocked an estimated 92 million phone calls by AT&T customers, and prevented an estimated 25,000 attempts to reach 911. A [...]

Well, I'll give the Ninth Circuit this much: at least when the court is wrong, it is wrong fast. It was just a few weeks back that we discussed Molson Coors' appeal for both the rulings and damages over its trademark fight with Stone Brewing. For those not familiar with the history here, here's a [...]

Last April, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a law designed specifically to make it easier for cops to arrest people who film them. While it's generally accepted (without Supreme Court precedent... for some weird reason) by most courts that recording public employees in public while they perform their public duties is protected by the First [...]

Senator Richard Blumenthal is at it again. The long-time Connecticut Senator, who never met an internet regulation he didn't like, is eager to reintroduce his Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) - a bill that would trample all over the First Amendment in a misguided attempt to protect the children." As we've explained countless times, KOSA [...]

Having lost twice in a row, a handful of Missouri state clerks will now be using taxpayers' money to pay a former government employee who had the temerity to recommend a mask mandate during the height of the COVID pandemic. (via Short Circuit) The plaintiff, Tad Mayfield, had been a well-regarded staffer, serving as a [...]

The 2025 Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle will help you become a Microsoft expert in no time. Courses cover Microsoft 365, Excel, Word for beginners, and Word advanced. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. [...]

On Monday, Taylor Lorenz posted a telling story about how Meta has been suppressing access to LGBTQ content across its platforms, labeling it as sensitive content" or sexually explicit." Posts with LGBTQ+ hashtags including #lesbian, #bisexual, #gay, #trans, #queer, #nonbinary, #pansexial, #transwomen, #Tgirl, #Tboy, #Tgirlsarebeautiful, #bisexualpride, #lesbianpride, and dozens of others were hidden for any [...]

For decades now, U.S. wireless carriers have sold consumers unlimited data" plans that actually have all manner of sometimes hidden throttling, caps, download limits, and restrictions. And every few years a regulator comes out with a wrist slap against wireless carriers for misleading consumers, for whatever good it does. Back in 2007, for example, then [...]

Is it too much to ask for cops to be better? When other government employees get the address wrong, it may mean mail delivery delays or incorrect property tax assessments. But when cops get it wrong, people end up dead. If officers are unfamiliar with the area they'll be serving warrants in, it would make [...]

Gravy Analytics, the parent company of Venntel, is like many dodgy data brokers. The company gleans vast troves of sensitive U.S. behavior and location cellphone data, then generally sells access to that data to a long line of folks. Including the U.S. government, which has increasingly turned to buying data broker data as a quick [...]

As Michael McGrady pointed out in his recent guest post for Techdirt, nearly 41 percent of Americans subject to age verification laws targeting porn and, of course, porn consumers. An emboldened pseudo-theocratic wing of the Republican party is taking everything old and unconstitutional and making it new again, presumably in hopes of sliding it past [...]

A lot of people dunked on the amicus brief Donald Trump filed at the Supreme Court in the constitutional challenge of the law effectively banning TikTok. And there is plenty that is dunkable about it, especially in his tone of entitlement. Trump is no sincere defender of the First Amendment and its critical protections for [...]

Prepare to sit a various CompTIA certification courses with the Complete 2025 CompTIA Certification Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA. Over 17 courses, you'll learn about penetration testing, network security, IT fundamentals, and more. It's on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from [...]

When the NY Times declared in September that Mark Zuckerberg is Done With Politics," it was obvious this framing was utter nonsense. It was quite clear that Zuckerberg was in the process of sucking up to Republicans after Republican leaders spent the past decade using him as a punching bag on which they could blame [...]

Now that streaming subscriber growth has slowed, we've noted repeatedly how the streaming TV sector isfalling into all of the bad habits that ultimately doomed traditional cable TV. That has involved chasing pointless growth of growth's sake" megamergers and imposing bottomless price hikes and newannoying restrictions- all while simultaneously cutting corners on product quality in [...]

Well, there are two possibilities here. Either I've been doing this for too long or all cops are, indeed, bastards. Let me explain. When this rolled through my hundreds of feeds recently... DOJ enters agreement with California police department whose officers allegedly exchanged racist messages ... I was sure I knew which California police department [...]

Surveillance of students that continues even after they've left the campus is nothing new. School-issued tech comes preloaded with spyware meant to prevent students from cheating, accessing inappropriate content, or introducing malware of their own into the school tech ecosystem. But it goes beyond that: it also keeps tabs on anything they do while using [...]

Every New Year's Eve, the Chief Justice releases his year-end report, which used to include things like what the court would like to see Congress do. However, Justice Roberts now uses it more as a way to blog post whatever is on his mind. His latest is particularly tone-deaf, which is impressive, given how John [...]

It seems unfathomable that we're even here. The First Amendment is one of our clearer constitutional provisions. Make no law," it says, abridging the freedom of speech." And yet, with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," Congress has done exactly that, effectively banning a platform helping millions of Americans speak. It tells [...]

The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you get the most out of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt [...]

I know it's no surprise that the modern MAGA world is incredibly hypocritical. They speak of free speech while making every effort to suppress speech they dislike. But the latest example of this hypocrisy is glaring. Those who screamed to high heaven about debunked claims of the Biden admin censoring" social media are noticeably silent [...]

Last week a corrupt court system bought and paid for by corporations effectively made it illegal for the federal government to protect broadband consumers from widely despised regional telecom monopolies. That, as we wrote at the time, is at the heart of the death of the several decade net neutrality fight. But if you read [...]

They're going to have to change the nickname. For years, cops have referred to drug dogs as probable cause on four legs." But over the last half-decade or so, jurisprudence has been leaning the other way. One of the first rulings to knock this assumption back a bit was the Supreme Court's ruling in Rodriguez, [...]

A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) topass a new state right to repair lawdesigned to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical datato consumers and third-party independent repair shops. [...]

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wants you to believe he's on a noble mission to restore trust in media. His solution? Muzzling his own paper by blocking it from endorsing Kamala Harris in the runup to the election, a decision he defended in a self-serving op-ed claiming that trust in media is at an all-time [...]

Never let a tragedy go unexploited. That's the political rule and it applies to both sides of the partisan divide. Of course, the divide has been Oval Office top heavy for a majority of this century, so we're hearing more from one side than another in most cases. That being said, there's no limit to [...]

The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You'll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated [...]

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, one of his primary stated goals was to bring back free speech" to the platform. He was particularly critical of how Twitter had briefly blocked links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. But now, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist" is doing the very [...]

Back in 2023 Mozilla issued a report indicating that automakers have some of the worst privacy and security standards in all of tech, routinely hoovering up oceans of consumer behavior and phone data then failing to adequately secure it. Senator Ron Wyden has been at the forefront of calls for Congress to shake off corruption [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the fact that 41% of Americans now live under age verification laws: Such small government" In second place, it's That One Guy with a comment about the hypocrisy of the right: You can set your watch by the consistent [...]