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Normally when we talk about trademark disputes, they tend to look fairly similar. Some entity is upset and/or sues over a trademark they have and we spend some time analyzing whether the trademark itself ever should have been granted, whether there is true customer confusion to worry about, whether the plaintiff is simply bullying, etc. […]

We’re still waiting to see if California Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the California Age Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273) into law, though all indications are that he will. However, he has now signed a different bad bill into law. He has happily signed what he calls the “nation-leading social media transparency measure” AB 587 […]

Government officials may say acceptable things when pressed for comment by journalists, oversight, and members of the public. But if you really want to know what an agency thinks, just keep your eye on the rank-and-file. So, when the West Texas branch of the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) started retweeting one of the Trump […]

Matt Levine, over at Bloomberg, whose coverage of the Elon Musk/Twitter saga has been excellent (his coverage of most things has been excellent, but especially the Musk/Twitter stuff), recently wrote that he was coming to the conclusion that Elon Musk simply does not know what a merger agreement means. As he explains, if you want […]

In 2016, Arizona state senator John Kavanaugh tried to make it much more difficult to record police officers. He authored a bill that would create a 20-foot “no recording” zone around cops, supposedly in the interest of officer safety. That bill went nowhere. It contained obvious First Amendment problems and reeked of protectionism that armed […]

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We’ve been writing a bit about the JCPA — the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act — the very bad bill from Senator Amy Klobuchar that would create all sorts of problems, from allowing news orgs to demand money for links (breaking the fundamental nature of how the web works), to creating a “must carry” provision […]

During a heat wave last summer, some Texans were shocked to wake up and find that their local energy company had turned up their thermostats in the night to save energy. Houston locals weren’t exactly thrilled to wake up sweating in the night to the sound of dehydrated, crying infants. As it turns out, consumers has participated […]

I really cannot believe we’re back here. Way back in 2016 we wondered aloud who gets to trademark the word “Iceland”. Confused? Well, Iceland Foods is a grocery in the UK that’s been around since the 1970s. Iceland is also the name of a sovereign nation established in the early 1900s. In 2016, Iceland Foods […]

Summer is nearly over, but, for many politicians, destructive tech regulations are always in season. Congress is back from recess, and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) is once more under consideration. Senator Amy Klobuchar’s “antitrust” pet project would crack down on the five biggest tech giants — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and […]

The explosion of AI-generated art has taken the internet by storm, and is poised to continue growing for a long time. In turn, that’s sparked a lot of conversation (and a lot of backlash) about the impact on artists — but much of the controversy seems misguided or overblown. This week we’re joined by Rob […]

It’s a tale as old as time. Two companies look to merge, and promise regulators that the new super-union will create unlimited, untold synergies. They insist repeatedly the consolidation most certainly won’t raise prices, and that the megadeal will absolutely in no way result in layoffs. Regulators rubber-stamp the deal, then, like clockwork, all of […]

Given the inalienable protections this country has determined are essential to democracy, the United States has only tolerated limited violence against journalists. Most of this violence is perpetrated by law enforcement officers who feel a fully functioning democracy demands they greet documentation of their acts with force or unjustified arrests. This calculus shifted during the […]

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It’s often kind of amazing at how much moral panics by adults treat kids as if they’re completely stupid, and unable to do anything themselves. It’s a common theme in all sorts of moral panics, where adults insist that because some bad things could happen, they must be prevented entirely — without ever considering that […]

Last year we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had launched a bad faith effort suggesting that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on the internet, and should be forced to fund broadband expansion. This argument, that tech giants like Google and Netflix somehow get a free ride (they don’t) and should “pay their fair share” to […]

The operative word in the phrase “criminal justice system” isn’t “justice.” As much as we tip our hats to enshrined rights and ideals like “innocent until proven guilty,” the operative word remains “system.” And like any system, the justice system is mostly there to process those accused of crimes, rather than act as a check […]

The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with a thirty-percent jump in the last decade. That’s in contrast to every other developed country, which saw a decline. With that as backdrop, there’s some growing concerns about not just the safety of undercooked autonomous driving, but the extreme weight of larger electric […]

I mean, of course. On Friday Elon Musk terminated his Twitter purchase for the third time. In yet another termination letter sent to Twitter, he claims that Twitter’s severance agreement with Peiter “Mudge” Zatko was a violation of the purchase agreement. Some background: you already know that Musk signed a purchase agreement to buy Twitter. […]

Sooooooo… this was something that happened. Trump, the commander of a fine legal team that has included, over the years, plenty of people facing indictments, sanctions, and lawsuits of their own, sued the Clinton campaign for trying to throw an election he ended up winning. Perhaps Trump was as surprised by his victory as millions […]

Hany Farid is a computer science professor at Berkeley. Here he is insisting that his students should all delete Facebook and YouTube because they often recommend to you things you might like (the horror, the horror): Farid once did something quite useful, in that he helped Microsoft develop PhotoDNA, a tool that has been used […]

The Complete 2022 Microsoft Office Master Class Bundle has 14 courses to help you learn all you need to know about MS Office products to help boost your productivity. Courses cover SharePoint, Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Teams, and more. The bundle is on sale for $75. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]

Normally, there wouldn’t be much need to insert yourself into lawsuits involving seriously flawed claims about social media moderation. But these two lawsuits — both losses for plaintiffs claiming the Biden administration conspired to ban their social media accounts — are now in the hands of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has delivered […]

To be clear, the shift from traditional cable television to streaming TV has been a very good thing. Consumers had grown irritated with bloated, expensive bundles of channels they never watched, and customer service that was literally ranked some of the worst of any industry in America. Based on recent data, it’s not a trend […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That Anonymous Coward with a comment about religious rules, regulations, and exemptions: I enjoy how their deeply held beliefs can never ever be questioned, because that would be a burden on them and open a can of worms… Like when Hobby Lobby was screaming […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Apple sort of threw its support behind net neutrality, while the CEOs of large ISPs and tech companies were absent from a round of public hearings, and Senators were blasting the FCC for weakening its definition of broadband. A court found the FBI’s malware deployments to be perfectly […]

And here we are again, with more exclusivity drama coming out of the recent acquisitions Microsoft has undertaken in the video game space. After the announcements of the Zenimax/Bethesda and Activision Blizzard acquisitions, which are still going through review, Microsoft came out with a bunch of conflicting statements on what those buys would mean for […]

One of the more notable announcements at Apple’s event this week was that the iPhone 14 lineup won’t have a physical SIM tray to swap out SIM cards. Instead, the devices will embrace eSIM, a technology that’s supposed to make it easier than ever to switch carriers without consumers needing to buy and install a […]

Alongside death and taxes, one of life’s great certainties is a constant flow of absurd copyright claims. Here’s one from the world of live videogame streaming on the popular Twitch platform, owned by Amazon. A group of Spanish-speaking streamers organized a gaming event featuring “Project Zomboid“, a zombie survival role-playing game. TorrentFreak explains how copyright spoilt their fun: The […]

Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, who is overseeing the Twitter v. Musk case in the Delaware Chancery Court, has a bit of a reputation as a no-nonsense judge who isn’t one to put up with much crap. And so far, that’s definitely been clear from how she’s handled the case. She isn’t showing favoritism, but every time […]

The Supreme Court may have extended constitutional protection to historical cell site location info, but that’s not going to stop our public servants — and the private companies that serve them — from finding ways to elude the ramifications of the Carpenter decision. Over the past couple of years, court documents and public records have […]

If you’re looking for a tablet that can also double as a laptop, the refurbished Surface Pro 12.3″ 256GB is your best bet. This device weighs just 1.73 pounds and measures just 0.33″ thin, so it’s one of the lightest and smallest laptops available on the market today. The device features a 7th-Gen (Kaby Lake) […]

During the 2020 campaign, there were a few times when candidate Joe Biden insisted he wanted to get rid of Section 230 entirely, though he made it clear he had no idea what Section 230 actually did. When I wrote articles highlighting all of this, I had some Biden supporters (even folks who worked on […]

Today’s the day! We’re hosting an online party to celebrate Techdirt’s 25th Anniversary, and we hope all of you will join us. The event begins at 11am PT / 2pm ET and attendance is free for anyone with an active Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind The Curtain membership from our Insider Shop, or the equivalent […]

New Politico owner and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner has been craving U.S. press attention, and got more of it than he wanted this week. Döpfner was the focus of a not particularly flattering profile in the Washington Post showing, among other things, that the German billionaire was excited by the prospect of a second […]

Consent can mean a lot of things when you’re accosted by cops. Law enforcement officers tend to feel it’s always voluntary, even when you’re sitting in an interrogation room for what the “good cop” refers to as a “friendly chat” meant to “clear everything up.” Whenever a seizure is challenged, if cops didn’t have the […]

It’s no secret that copyright trolls have been a scourge on many countries for some time now. The typical method of the copyright troll is quite simple. You buy or acquire the rights to some media, you watch for any of that media to show up on the internet illicitly, and then you attempt to […]

The Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) was voted out of committee with a long list of amendments. Advocates had been warning about some severe unintended consequences that could arise out of this bill, the most concerning of which was forcing tech companies to out LGBTQ+ minors to their parents — potentially against their wishes. The […]

Earlier today, there was a Senate Judiciary Committee markup on the JCPA — the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act — put forth by Senator Amy Klobuchar. Last week I wrote a long post about just how broken the bill is. It does almost everything it seeks to do badly, in ways that are genuinely dangerous. […]

Get your Old Logo and Retro Logo gear on Threadless » As we continue our celebration of Techdirt’s 25th anniversary and gear up for our anniversary party this Friday, it’s time to launch some new gear in our Threadless store! First, it’s the return of something we offered for a limited time on our 20th anniversary […]

The terrorists won. And it wasn’t a small victory. It was one that managed to make the American way of life significantly worse for anyone attempting to fly. Flying is how we get around in this sprawl of a nation that encompasses 50 states and ~3,000 miles between the coasts. And that’s just 48 of […]

New Politico owner and Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner has called for a ban on TikTok at the Vox Media Code conference. In fact, the lion’s share of the conference involved folks hyperventilating in one form or another over the existential threat posed by a popular social media app: Like most of the folks freaking […]

This keeps getting better and better. We have been discussing a Texas law requiring that a school district display any posters that are donated by outside parties, so long as they follow a couple of defined rules. Those rules are that the posters can display no words beyond “In God We Trust”, that it must […]

As we’ve been noting for years now, the global internet is at risk. China walled off its part of the internet early on, and other authoritarian regimes followed suit, with Russia and Iran taking the lead. But, at the same time, we’ve seen other regimes start to layer on their own regulatory regimes that effectively […]

Some DEA agent field-tested sidewalk chalk and managed to arrive at this conclusion: Rainbow fentanyl is being sold in multiple forms, according to the DEA, including as pills, powder and blocks that resemble sidewalk chalk. This is from The Hill’s stenography of DEA bullshit, which doesn’t even remain consistent over the course of the six […]

As you know, Techdirt recently marked its 25th anniversary, and we’re celebrating with a special online party this Friday, September 9th at 11am PT / 2pm ET, where you can mix and mingle with Techdirt staff and other fans, and get the inside story on the history of the blog from Mike Masnick. Attendance is […]

I rather expected that not everyone would agree with the points I raised in my recent post on Cloudflare and my thinking regarding both Cloudflare’s statement of principles on content moderation at the infrastructure layer and, secondly, its decision to block Kiwi Farms. That turned out to be an accurate expectation. It has also resulted […]

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Called it! Virginia Attorney, Congressional Hopeful File Doomed Lawsuit Against Barnes & Noble Over ‘Obscene’ Books But I’m not here to pat myself on the back. Anyone (well, anyone other than the people filing the lawsuit) could have seen this coming. It really doesn’t take more than a mere acquaintance with the First Amendment to […]