Techdirt

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, a judge forbade a Facebook user being sued by a cop from publishing the cop's name on social media, the DC police union was suing to block the release of the names of officers involved in shootings, and we wrote about how Section 230 protects the ability of [...]

When the Techdirt community has had to hear so much about a single state's education superintendent, you know something has gone horribly wrong. The horribly wrong in this case is Ryan Walters of Oklahoma. Walters appears to be doing some sort of combo-impression of Joseph McCarthy mixed with Donald Trump. In his role running Oklahoma [...]

This is the final piece in aseries of poststhat 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 From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle.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 [...]

Earlier this year, an Army helicopter collided with a passenger plane over the Potomac River in Washington, DC. All sixty-seven people aboard both vehicles were killed. While the FAA focused its investigation on the failures that led to this mid-air collision, local investigators in Virginia were somehow far more concerned about identifying who had leaked [...]

The White House's recently-unveiled AI Action Plan" wages war on so-called woke AI"-including large language models (LLMs) that provide information inconsistent with the administration's views on climate change, gender, and other issues. It also targets measures designed to mitigate the generation of racial and gender biased content and evenhate speech. The reproduction of this bias [...]

In theory, the nice thing about having a Supreme Court is that it provides some level of legal certainty. You know how the system works: lower courts make decisions based on law and precedent, parties can appeal, and eventually the highest court issues careful, reasoned opinions that other courts can follow. It's not a perfect [...]

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 [...]

The number of assaults on ICE officers was always going to increase. There's no way it wouldn't, not when ICE was sending out a task force composed of multiple federal law enforcement agencies daily to multiple locations in the United States, hoping to finally hit the baseline number of 3,000 arrests per day by Stephen [...]

In a rare win for U.S. consumer privacy, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuithas ruled unanimouslyagainst T-Mobile and its subsidiary Sprint, upholding (for now) a $92 million 2020 FCC fine against the company for selling sensitive wireless customer location data without consumer consent. For decades now major wireless companies have [...]

As you will recall, a single gunmen opened fire on a CDC campus in Atlanta earlier this month, claiming to have been injured by COVID vaccines. The rhetoric he had used prior to the shooting closely aligned with what RFK Jr. had been spouting for years. While Kennedy took nearly a day to even publicly [...]

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. This is the second of our special episodes for the [...]

The UK government has reportedly backed down from its dangerous demand that Apple build encryption backdoors, following pressure from the Trump administration. But the secretive nature of this mutually beneficial" agreement should make us deeply suspicious about what was actually traded away. The UK government has backed down on a controversial demand for Apple to [...]

The Trump administration has been described as many things, none of them good. What no one will ever accuse it of being is competent." Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants, most of them known only for waving the MAGA flag when not hosting shows on Fox or podcasts celebrating the debut of American fascism. Case [...]

The 2025 Canva Bundle has six courses to help you learn about graphic design. From logo design to business cards to branding to bulk content creation, these courses have you covered. 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 [...]

Senator Amy Klobuchar is one of the top Democrats in the Senate. She could be fighting to protect democracy against fascists. She could be working on a new, better vision for Americans. But instead, she's focused on breaking the internet. And now we know why: someone made a stupid satirical video about her, and her [...]

I don't mean to harp on this, but a central promise of the Trump administration during the last election season was that a second Trump term would take aim at big tech," protect the little guy, rein in corporate power, and even continue the legacy of antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan." The press was filled [...]

If you're tired of Techdirt posts about RFK Jr.'s inability to competently lead HHS, I'm tired of him leading that organization, so too bad. The problem is that RFK Jr. represents something of a national health emergency, one that is multi-faceted. The most obvious bucket of fuckery in which he is operating is, of course, [...]

During the last year of the Trump administration, there was this weird period where the Bill Barr DOJ decided that it could destroy the internet. It came out of Donald Trump declaring that Section 230 was bad for whatever reason Donald Trump thinks anything is bad, and telling his Attorney General to do something about [...]

This story wasoriginally publishedby ProPublica.Republished under aCC BY-NC-ND 3.0license. A New York business frozen out of its checking account. A Georgia chemotherapy patient denied a credit card refund after a product dispute. A New Jersey service member defrauded out of their savings. These consumers - along with hundreds of others - reached out to their [...]

Petty thugs. That's all ICE is. Masked officers too cowardly to show their faces and too aware they're in the wrong to dare approach judges with warrant requests. Even ICE's lawyers are doing what they can to keep themselves from being added to the permanent record. Idiots are running the agencies and assholes are staffing [...]

The Complete Cisco Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you get ready to become certified. Courses cover al you need to know as a CCNA, CCEA, 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 Deals helps support [...]

When I was in DC last week, everyone seemed to be talking about the brewing drama at the Department of Justice's antitrust division. The HPE/Juniper merger settlement had raised eyebrows, two senior officials had been fired, and rumors were swirling about political interference playing a role in ending what had appeared to be a decently [...]

There are $42.5billionin broadband grants that are headed to the states thanks to the 2021 infrastructure bill most Republicans voted against (yetroutinely try to take credit for among their constituents). But Republicans, despite a supposed feud between Trump and Elon Musk, have been rewriting the grant program's guidance toeliminate provisions ensuring the resulting broadband is [...]

We've already demonstrated over the course of plenty of posts that RFK Jr. is wildly incapable of running Health and Human Services. The fact that he was even nominated for a role in managing American health is absolutely bonkers, but that a Senate filled with supposed grown adults voted to confirm his appointment to HHS [...]

Back in 2023 we wrote about how regional Polish rail company and a train manufacturer NEWAG had taken to using DRM to lock down trains that are repaired by independent technicians, in a bid to both monopolize - and drive up the costs of repair. This kind of effort to monopolize repair is common across [...]

Support us on Patreon As we've been thinking and writing about the intersection of democracy and technology, especially burgeoning AI technology, we always come back to the core issues of user control and user freedom. Recently, Chris Riley of the Data Transfer Initiative wrote an excellent piece for Tech Policy Press about the need for [...]

Since it's easier to jump people who aren't criminals than to actually track down criminals, ICE - especially in certain parts of the country - is sending its masked officers to hang around courtrooms and arrest people who are just trying to follow the rules to gain permanent residence in the United States. This tactic [...]

Here we go again. Whenever policy makers insist that there's some nerd harder" solution to tricky societal problems, actual experts have to spend a ridiculous amount of time explaining basic realities to them. Sometimes those are realities about the technology. And sometimes it's realities about the technology. This time it's age verification's turn. Steve Bellovin-one [...]

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 [...]

Suck it up, shitbirds. You're the beneficiaries of full-throated support from a megalomaniac who has just untied the purse strings and dumped pretty much everything in it into ICE's back pocket. ICE is on its way to becoming the largest law enforcement recipient of federal tax dollars, and yet the head of its controlling entity [...]

U.S. media mergers always follow the same trajectory. Pre-merger, executives promise all manner of amazing synergies and deal benefits. Post-merger, not only to those benefits generally never arrive, the debt from the acquisition spree usually results in significant layoffs, lower quality product, and higher rates for consumers. The Time Warner Discovery disaster was the poster [...]

How much vodka would you have to drink before you mistakenly and drunkenly believed you were drinking it out of a shoe? That is essentially the question that has been raised by a vodka distillery that sued an online sneaker marketplace for declaratory judgment that no trademark infringement exists between them. I'm sure you're confused; [...]

Western allies are abandoning American leadership while we stand by, morally bankrupt and intellectually spent, watching children starve in Gaza with weapons we provided to a corrupt authoritarian we're too cowardly to constrain. Meanwhile, the same brilliant minds who assured us Trump was a master negotiator who'd never actually implement his policies are already preparing [...]

Few areas of law have lately been as relevant, and the focus of so much dispute, as preliminary injunctive relief. Because the subject has come up so many times already, and is inevitably bound to come up again in the near future, this post takes a moment to discuss what is meant by preliminary injunctive [...]

While this latest bit of low-key embarrassment may not be a black eye for the administration, it certainly isn't putting any more lipstick on this pig. Whatever you may think about the recent summit meeting between these two international besties, you can be assured that some of the attendees thought even less of it than [...]

A federal judge has delivered an extraordinary rebuke to the FTC's Andrew Ferguson, finding that his investigation into Media Matters was motivated by retaliatory animus" rather than legitimate antitrust concerns. In a scathing ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan granted Media Matters' motion for a preliminary injunction, calling out not just the investigation's pretextual nature, but [...]

Get Adobe Acrobat Classic 3-Year and Microsoft Office Pro 2021 licenses: your all-in-one bundle for editing PDFs, creating docs, and working smarter on Windows. With Adobe Acrobat Classic, you can easily create, edit, convert, and protect your documents on Windows and Mac without connecting to the cloud. Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice [...]

Trump and his GOP enablers wouldn't know subtlety if it held them down and punched them in the face repeatedly. Being a little bit crafty is never an option for an administration that prides itself on its performances. A little subtlety tends to go a long way, especially when you're already fighting dozens of federal [...]

A fusion of authoritarianism and corporatism is destroying what's left of already soggy U.S. federal consumer protection and corporate oversight. You might not know this because the U.S. press and many policymakers genuinely don't appear to care, but it's happening all the same. Whether bydodgy Supreme Court ruling,executive order, orcaptured regulators, the U.S. authoritarians, often [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Strawb with a reply to a couple parts of a comment on our post about Trump derangement syndrome" turning out to be pretty damn correct: In second place, it's Rocky with a comment about the FCC installing a babysitter at CBS: And here it [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we wrote about how the idea that banning TikTok thwarts Chinese intelligence was ridiculous, and how any real threat probably comes from America's feebly secured infrastructure. As for failed security, we looked at the incredible waste of Baltimore's aerial surveillance program, and as for worrying security", we looked [...]

We've talked a bunch about the lawsuit drama between Nintendo and the Pokemon Co. against PocketPair, the makers of the hit game Palworld. The short version goes something like this. Palworld is clearly inspired by the Pokemon world and games, but does not directly copy anything from those properties. Nintendo in particular seems very annoyed [...]

Thisseries of postsexplores 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 of technological [...]

Age verification laws and regulations that target online pornography and digital sex work are far from being the modest" child safety measures intended to protect public decency favored by the far-right. Proponents of these laws benefit from the fearmongering and framing of age verification as a necessity to protect children from inappropriate material found on [...]

There was a colloquy at oral argument earlier this year in the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton case between Justice Kavanaugh and FSC that raised the unsettling prospect that at least several of the Supreme Court justices did not understand what preliminary injunctions are for. In that case, the bad Texas law had already been [...]

The US Court system's electronic filing front-end has always been a mess. Not only is it prohibitively expensive for most casual users, it's prohibitively dysfunctional even for power users. Whoever isn't discouraged by the outdated front end will be just as unimpressed by its back end. PACER charges per page like it's a librarian running [...]

The 2025 Java Bundle has 6 courses designed to help you build real projects and fast-track your way to a becoming a Java expert. Courses cover the fundamentals of Java with exercises to help you improve your skills. You'll learn how to build a website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There's also a course to [...]

Donald Trump has declared war on American cities, and he's sending in the troops to prove it. As Rolling Stone rightly notes regarding Trump seizing direct control of DC law enforcement by deploying the National Guard: President Donald Trump has expanded his military campaign against the United States by deploying armed troops to yet another [...]

While there was a lot to criticize the Biden administration about, it did at least try to shift the balance back toward antitrust reform (see: Lina Khan), boosting competition, and occasionally trying to help labor (see: the noncompete ban). This desperately upset America's richest assholes, which is why so many of them have rushed to [...]

Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed a really, really dumb trademark fight between NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson and former NFL quarterback Troy Aikman. This got to our attention when Jackson filed an opposition to a trademark application from Aikman. Typically, we go in pretty hard on oppositions to trademark applications, because they are almost [...]