Techdirt

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, as quickly as it went away, Article 13 was back in the EU. And now somehow the Copyright Directive was even worse than before, but still not bad enough for the copyright industries. Meanwhile, we wrote about the failings of YouTube's ContentID, the ongoing fight to make PACER [...]

Here we go again. In so many of these trademark disputes, the disputer far too often is wielding overly broad trademarks granted by the USPTO to suggest that having that registered mark is all they need to shut down the use of those broad terms by others. Nowhere do you find any claims of actual [...]

Dropshipping - memorably described by Sirin Kale in Wired as people selling products they've never handled, from countries they've never visited, to consumers they've never met" - is one of the best examples of pure" Internet activity around. As Kale explains: Dropshipping is a fulfilment" method. At one end of the supply chain, an entrepreneur [...]

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (who is still indicted and facing a trial later this year) has argued in court that governments both should never, ever try to influence what content social media sites take down, but also that Texas should be able to tell social media websites what content they must keep up and [...]

At the end of last month, a federal court judge decided to throw the First Amendment out the window to engage in a bit of the old prior restraint. At the center of this case (but not the case actually before the judge) was The Oregonian, a newspaper that found itself in possession of documents [...]

This DevDojo Pro subscription gives you access to a set of tools to help you build your next great idea. Start with the Page Creator, where you'll find Tailwind CSS Page Builder, a tool for crafting beautiful landing pages. Then, move on to Wave SAAS Starter Kit, where you'll learn how to build your Software [...]

The free speech absolutist" is at it again. Despite his claim to be an absolutist, Elon Musk has an uncanny ability to magically keep finding himself involved in lawsuits that are attempts to suppress the free speech rights of others. And he's at it again. Earlier this week, actor Gina Carano sued Disney almost exactly [...]

Back in 2019, when fifth generation (5G) wireless was getting a lot of dumb (and as it turned out, unwarranted) marketing hype, the cable industry came up with an amazing idea: they'd simply call their existing cable broadband service a 10G technology" in a bid to (1) piggyback on the hype 5G was getting, and [...]

Maintaining some sort of database of known criminals and their criminal associates is undoubtedly a smart thing to do. Cross-referencing detainees makes sense, especially when it comes to larger criminal organizations. Ensuring databases are up to date, both in terms of adding new associates as well as removing people who aren't connected to criminal activity, [...]

I don't know what it is or why it is, but the Xbox team just can't seem to communicate clearly when it comes to how it's going to handle exclusivity in games for its console. After it gobbled up several game studios and publishers, most recently Activision Blizzard, the messaging from the Xbox team about [...]

For decades, frustrated towns and cities all over the country have responded to telecom market failure by building their own fiber broadband networks. Data routinely shows that not only do these networks providefaster, better, and cheaper service, the networks are generally more accountable to the public - because they're directly owned and staffed by locals [...]

Earlier this week I posted two examples of people falsely being told that a post or a search was deemed connected to child sexual abuse material. Earlier this week, I thought I had spotted another example, when someone on Bluesky alerted me that they had searched for techdirt" and the results included a line saying [...]

This would be the second time in recent months that a cop tech purveyor with a heavily checkered past has shelled out big bucks to expand the reach of its own tech, as well as expand the reach of existing police surveillance capabilities. Last October, ShotSpotter - the company whose shoddy shot spotting has been [...]

Go from absolute zero to GIMP pro with this comprehensive 9 course bundle. Jump into the Complete Master GIMP Design Bundle, and you'll go all the way from installing the GIMP software and configuring it to run on Windows, to producing banners, book covers and even memes that you'll display using Facebook and other social [...]

Over the last few days there have been a few stories making the rounds on right wing media sites, claiming that Rep. Jim Jordan had exposed the White House pressuring Amazon to remove books related to COVID disinformation. This is based on a thread Jordan posted to ExTwitter. If it's true that the White House [...]

So we've noted more than once that as the streaming sector is saturated and new user growth slows, streaming giants will follow on a fairly predictable path that got their predecessors (cable TV companies) in trouble. Namely, shifting away from innovation and disruption and consumer welfare, and toward nickel-and-diming customers in a bid to give [...]

It's not often when three of your biggest interests all intersect at once, but here we are. Readers here will know that I am a regular when it comes to writing about trademark disputes, bullying, and news. You may also know that I have quite the affinity for wine. You probably don't know, however, that [...]

In late 2022, the state of New Yorkfinally passednew right to repair legislation after years of activist pressure. The bill, which went live last month, gives New York consumers the right to fix their electronic devices themselves or have them more easily repaired by an independent repair shop, instead of being forced to only obtain [...]

Every week it's some other dumb thing going on in the Senate. On Tuesday Senator Josh Hawley went to the (mostly empty) Senate floor to seek unanimous consent" for the STOP CSAM bill. That's basically a process to rush the bill forward before it's ready. We've written about STOP CSAM before. Despite it's name, it [...]

The FBI has done some heinous things in its pursuit of its counter-terrorism objectives. While it's true the FBI has occasionally nabbed actual terrorists, it seems to prefer creating terrorists to going after those that are already avowed terrorists. The FBI utilizes informants and undercover agents to perform this highly questionable work. Investigations border on [...]

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That's all well and good, but it means nothing if you don't have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In this course you'll cover not just data [...]

We've written a few times now about how the misleadingly named House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government" is not actually looking into the weaponization of the federal government," but rather is very much about allowing Chairman Jim Jordan to go about weaponizing the powers of the subcommittee himself to threaten and intimidate [...]

Back in December I wrote a feature for The Verge exploring the FCC's long overdue effort to stop race and class discrimination in broadband deployment. For decades, big telecoms have not only refused to evenly upgrade broadband in low income and poor areas (despite billions in subsidies for this exact purpose), they've charged poor and [...]

Well, this is a new one for me. In all the stories we've done over the years on concerns over real life violence and violent video games, one point we've made over and over again is that people certainly can tell the difference between video games and real life. I, for one, abhor guns in [...]

Predictive policing programs were supposed to make police work smarter and more efficient. It was supposed to trim down on hours wasted where a police presence wasn't needed and increase enforcement in areas where crime was a problem. But it hasn't done this. It hasn't made cops smarter. It's possibly just made them lazier. No [...]

A couple weeks ago, we released the 2024 edition of our Sky Is Rising report about the state of the entertainment industries. Last week, Mike and I joined Corbin Barthold on Techfreedom's Tech Policy Podcast for a discussion about the report and, more broadly, the state of culture in the internet era and the conversations [...]

Bluesky is now open to anyone without an invite. And a bunch of other exciting things are coming soon. As many of you know, I've been pretty excited about where Bluesky is going as a social media offering, not just because of the people who have been using it (who have mostly been great, making [...]

I'm not a religious man, but Jesus Fucking Christ. Yet another insane decision that allows the government to ignore constitutional rights has been handed down by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals - the one nationally known as the most cop-friendly circuit in the nation. The long journey to this horrible ending begins in 2018. [...]

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 [...]

Last week, as you likely heard, the Senate had a big hearing on child safety" where they grandstanded in front of a semi-random collection of tech CEOs, with zero interest in actually learning about the actual challenges of child safety online, or what the companies had done that worked, or where they might need help. [...]

Last month you probably saw the story about how somebody used a (sloppy) deepfake of Joe Biden in a bid to try and trick voters into staying home during the Presidential Primary. It wasn't particularly well done; nor was it clear it reached all that many people or had much of an actual impact. But [...]

Cops will charge someone with assault, whether or not they've been actually assaulted. It's a charge often added on top of resisting arrest and can be triggered by any movement or action that results in physical contact with an officer. Throwing a snowball in the direction of a cop can be considered assault, depending on [...]

Earlier this year, we discussed a frustrating story regarding one company in the UK, Cornices Centre, threatening a cyclist over a YouTube video showing what purports to be a near miss by a truck with the company's name and logo on it. Those threats centered on a very confused understanding of trademark law, such that [...]

Things remain troubling in Los Angeles. The city is still trying to somehow punish investigative journalist Ben Camacho and activist group Stop LAPD Spying Coalition for a mistake its own police department made. Camacho made a public records request for LAPD officers' photos. After some litigation, the LAPD finally complied. Camacho - who writes for [...]

There are a number of people, both those who agree with me and those who disagree with me, who seem to think I have some sort of personal dislike of Elon Musk. That's not true. I find it amazing that he gets away with some of the stuff he gets away with, and I am [...]

Facial recognition may be helping law enforcement catch bad guys, but inherent flaws in these systems ensure it's only a matter of time before the AI coughs up yet another unforced error. That sort of error rate might be acceptable when the AI is doing nothing more than pitching in to refine Google search results [...]

This handy, pocket-sized recording device fits in your wallet, bag, and purse. It comes with a high-capacity battery that can be charged in under two hours and stores up to 750 hours of audio. With a super-clear audio quality, this recorder offers 24-hour battery life and is equipped with digital noise reduction technology that is [...]

Amidst all of the attention paid to last week's Senate hearing on child safety online, it remains stunning just how little time was actually spent on how to help children online. Instead, we saw pure theatrical nonsense, with Senators insisting (falsely) that these five tech CEOs could magically stop bad things from happening to kids, [...]

For decades now, airlines, hotels, cable companies, banks and a long list of other companies have bilked U.S. consumers out of billions of dollars annually via bullshit fees that unfairly jack up the advertised price of service. More interesting perhaps is the fact that it it took until 2023 for a U.S. federal regulator to [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is also our second place winner on the funny side. It's from That One Guy in response to our refusal to take down our posts about Appin: Someone didn't do their homework... If only there had been some way for Rajat Khare and Appin to [...]

As you likely know, at the beginning of January we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1928! We invited designers of all stripes to make analog and digital games using the material that entered the public domain this year (including the big one, Mickey Mouse). Now, the jam [...]

In January, after a lot of back and forth with TikTok, Universal Music Group announced it would not be renewing its license with the platform for its catalog of music that users could use in their videos. UMG's claimed reasoning for this was three-fold: TikTok wasn't doing enough to combat deepfakes of the artists it [...]

As our Error 402 series continues, I swear that eventually we're going to get to some of the more promising models and stuff that actually has been working in some cases shortly, but we're still covering some of the stuff that hasn't fully panned out (or, has only panned out in limited setups). For this [...]

We've well documented how giant telecom companies have taken billions of dollars in tax breaks, subsidies, and regulatory favors in exchange for fiber networks they only half deploy. We've also noted that when those big ISPs do finally deploy service, they tend to prioritize white, affluent neighborhoods - which generally see faster, cheaper, service than [...]

We've covered a few stories this week related to the Senate hearing on kids safety" and there's going to be a lot more in the coming weeks as those same Senators grandstand and yell about protect the children!" and generally make fools of themselves. I think Casey Newton's summary of the spectacle is about right: [...]

A half-decade ago, Amazon was an emerging player on the facial recognition scene. Its proprietary blend was called Rekognition." At the outset, Amazon was definitely interested in getting it in the hands of as many cops as possible. Documents obtained by the ACLU showed the company was courting law enforcement agencies, seeking to sell them [...]

MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, [...]

For years now we've been covering the big ongoing fights between the US and the EU regarding the transfer of user data across the Atlantic. The main issue was that due to somewhat different data protection/privacy laws between the EU and the US, the two keep trying to work out a deal" that allows (mostly) [...]

Early last year new journalism outlet named The Messenger" launched to great fanfare. The brainchild of former The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, the outlet launched with $50 million in backing anda lot of chatterabout how it was going to revolutionize U.S. journalism. Finkelstein claimed he wanted to build an alternative to a national news media" [...]

Well, this is certainly moving fast. We had begun talking about the recently released PC game Palworld as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, specifically as the game has both been described as Pokemon, but with guns" while also not containing any specific Pokemon copyrighted expression within it. While the Pokemon [...]