Techdirt

Four years ago, the Supreme Court took a long look at the wealth of data generated by cell phones and made a good call. It said warrantless access to months of cell site location data was an unreasonable search. If cops wanted weeks or months of cell site location info, they’d need a warrant going […]

We’ve explained the details of Twitter’s case against Elon Musk and the legal issues at play multiple times, but for reasons I don’t fully understand, the general narrative on Twitter seems to be that Elon is likely to win the case, and it’s because “Twitter lied about spam.” This is not even close to accurate, […]

TheGameCreators are pleased to bring to you the final and complete collection of classic GameGuru and AppGameKit bundle, including 36 DLC packages. This is undeniably the most comprehensive and definitive introduction to the exciting world of game design. GameGuru, the easy-to-use game-maker, provides the best solution for initial forays into game design with its intuitive […]

In April 2021, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals forced itself through uncomfortable legal contortions to award qualified immunity to Denver, Colorado police officers who detained a man, seized his recording device, and made an apparent attempt to delete his recording. According to the Appeals Court, this was legal and not a violation of rights. […]

We’ve noted for years how your mobile phone location data is routinely abused by a long list of bad actors, including your wireless carrier. We’ve also noted how the GOP Senate, hand in hand with the telecom sector, managed to kill FCC broadband privacy guidelines in 2017 that would have gone a long way in […]

This week, both our winners on the insightful side are replies to a comment asserting that the internet has existed all this time without net neutrality. In first place, it’s BernardoVerda with an explanation of why that’s the wrong way to look at it: Nah, the Internet was built on net neutrality; it was specified […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, we hit the deadline on the FCC’s comment period about rolling back net neutrality rules, and published Techdirt’s submission. We also looked at how AT&T tricked its customers into opposing net neutrality, and Comcast’s silly attempt to say killing the rules was necessary to help sick and disabled […]

Last year, we discussed how malicious actors on the internet were using fake copyright infringement notices in order to get people to click links that downloaded malware onto their machines. While there have long been these sorts of malware scams, what was notable about this one was that copyright culture and the fear of infringement […]

A couple of weeks ago, news leaked of a match made in hell: the acquisition of toxic asset/exploit developer NSO Group by defense contractor L3Harris. The “Harris” part of the contractor’s name refers to none other than Harris Corporation, the manufacturer of Stingray cell tower spoofers and an entity that often found itself described as […]

When last we checked in with One America News (OAN), it was trying (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) to pretend that DirecTV’s decision to boot the barely watched conspiracy network from its cable lineup was part of a vast, diabolical cabal to censor conservatives (it wasn’t). OAN more recently attacked Verizon, the last […]

Someone emailed to call my attention to some new survey results out of the University of South Florida’s Center for Cybersecurity, which contained public opinion polls about internet regulation (and gas prices, but that’s a bit outside our wheelhouse). The key part that was highlighted to me was: More than half of Floridians (52%) say […]

In 2010, the town of Fort Myers Beach, Florida passed an ordinance that banned portable signs. According to the town government, this was done to “prevent visual blight and confusion” while simultaneously “protecting the free speech rights” of sign owners/holders. It failed to achieve the second half of the noble goals, the Eleventh Circuit Court […]

The Z2 headphones earned their name because they feature twice the sound, twice the battery life, and twice the convenience of competing headphones. This updated version of the original Z2s comes with a new all-black design and Bluetooth 5.0. Packed with TREBLAB’s most advanced Sound2.0 technology with aptX and T-Quiet active noise-cancellation, these headphones deliver goose bump-inducing […]

Not every crime is linked to a cell phone, no matter what cops may think. True, cell phones are omnibuses of information, containing overflowing email inboxes, social media posts, personal contacts, photographs, text messages, vast amounts of location history, etc., but not every crime generates evidence on a phone, not even one carried by a […]

Telecom lobbyists are exploiting the creation of a new federal privacy bill, using the opportunity to further lobotomize the FCC and ensure the broken, uncompetitive U.S. telecom sector sees even less oversight than ever before. For years telecom giants, the entire GOP, and some key Democrats have worked tirelessly to gut oversight of a very […]

It’s hardly a secret that upload filters don’t work well. Back in 2017, Felix Reda, then Shadow Rapporteur on the EU Copyright Directive in the European Parliament, put together a representative sample of the many different ways in which filters fail. A recent series of tweets by Markus Pössel, Senior Outreach Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, […]

There’s surely some utility buried somewhere underneath the monumental piles of bullshit, hype, and outright scams. But with cryptocurrency values tanking and the public losing interest, the NFT craze appears to be retreating just as quickly as it arrived. That’s bad news for the numerous companies that — after bumbling through the bureaucratic process of […]

Antonio García Martínez recently invited me on his podcast, The Pull Request. I was thrilled. Antonio is witty, charming, and intimidatingly brilliant (he was a PhD student in physics at Berkeley, and it shows). We did the episode, and we had a great time. But we never got to an important topic—Antonio’s take on free […]

It’s seems to have become accepted wisdom by many — including policymakers — that social media is dangerous for kids. But every time we look at the details, the data is lacking. This is not for a lack of trying, of course. There have been tons of studies that try to make the link, but […]

Canada’s Bill C-11, which will hand the country’s broadcast regulator new powers to set rules for all kinds of online video and audio content, was rushed through an undemocratic sham of a “review” and then passed in the House of Commons by the reigning Liberal government. Now, it’s sitting in the Senate where the last […]

If capturing a bird’s eye view of your favorite places is a fun way for you to unwind when you have some time, then the Vivitar VTI Phoenix Foldable Camera Drone (certified refurbished) is a great choice for updating your hobby’s capabilities. All the pieces come secured in the sided carrying case, which helps protect them from […]

Based on (admittedly scattershot) case law, the best protection for your phone (and constitutional rights) seems to depend on whatever device owners feel is the most persistent (or dangerous) threat. If you, a regular phone owner, feel the worst thing that could happen to you is the theft of your phone, then using biometric features […]

The US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of “broadband.” Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, […]

For a few years now, uninformed police officials have been making America stupider by pushing the narrative that fentanyl is so dangerous, simply being near it is possibly fatal. Ignoring the fact that drugs must be ingested in some form to do what they’re supposed to do, law enforcement agencies have repeatedly made absurd, completely […]

The Chinese government often seems like an unstoppable force of evil. Perhaps the word “seems” needs to be removed from the previous sentence. The government seems all too capable of keeping a few billion people in line, strongly suggesting it has obtained the oppression cheat codes. But there are still signs of life. Residents of […]

We’ve highlighted for years the problems with the data protection regime in the EU, mainly the GDPR, but other aspects as well. The underlying idea — that people have a right to have their data protected — may seem sound and logical, but in practice it’s generally been a total mess*, that has likely caused […]

Given the seemingly endless privacy scandals that now engulf the tech and telecom sectors on a near-daily basis, many consumers have flocked to virtual private networks (VPN) to protect and encrypt their data. One study found that VPN use quadrupled between 2016 and 2018 as consumers rushed to protect data in the wake of scandals, breaches, and […]

The 2022 Premium IT Asset and Risk Management Certification Prep Bundle has 11 courses on IT asset management, server backup, network security, ethical hacking and more. You’ll learn how to protect the integrity of the databases, how to better prevent malicious exploitation, how to build simple LANs, and more. It’s on sale for $59. Note: […]

Judicial immunity is one of a handful of absolute immunities. Like the name suggests, absolute immunity is a pretty tough shield to pierce. Every so often, someone will do something terrible enough to be stripped of immunity they assumed was absolute. But those cases are extremely rare. Rarer still is hearing of a judge being […]

After years of saying password sharing wasn’t really a big deal and was akin to free advertising, Netflix recently announced it would be cracking down on password sharing. It started with a new trial in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, where users were forced to pay an additional fee if they shared their password with […]

There are a great many things that tend to annoy me about the sorts of trademark disputes we cover here at Techdirt. Overly aggressive parties policing trademarks in ways that extend far beyond the reasonable. A USPTO that seems all too happy to grant trademarks for things that it simply shouldn’t have, causing all kinds […]

About a week ago, a Florida judge decided a local law superseded the First Amendment. The judge granted an injunction to law enforcement officers, barring a Florida newspaper from publishing their names. The names were of public interest. The officers, deputies for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, had arrived at an apartment to serve an […]

Yesterday, we released a new report from the Copia Institute, written by Karl Bode, about the state of broadband competition and the great potential of an open access fiber model: Just A Click Away: Broadband Competition In America. On today’s episode, Karl joins the podcast to dig into the details of the report and explain […]

Things move fast in the Delaware Chancery Court and if you blink, you just might miss it. A week and a half ago, you’ll recall, Musk sought to terminate the deal using the exact pretextual excuses most of us assumed he would be using, and which he telegraphed in his letter to Twitter. Days later, […]

California has officially joined the growing list of states attempting to regulate how social media companies run their platforms. The state’s proposed legislation, however, faces a major legal obstacle: the Constitution. California lawmakers are marching ahead with AB 2408, the Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act. On June 28, the Judiciary Committee unanimously passed […]

Whether you’re checking emails or watching a great movie, the Lenovo N22 Chromebook delivers enhanced browsing and streaming. Powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Celeron dual-core processor and 4GB of RAM, the N22 can handle multitasking and everyday computing needs. If you need more processing power, the CPU can achieve a burst speed of 2.16 GHz. […]

The FBI’s shift from law enforcement to counter-terrorism began shortly after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, but really took off about a decade later, when it got into the business of radicalizing internet randos to turn them into “terrorists” worth hitting with material support charges. While the FBI continued to pretend it was making the […]

As we’ve long noted, the Trump era attack on net neutrality was one of the more grotesque examples of regulatory capture and corruption in Internet policy history. The rules, which imposed some very modest restrictions on giant telecom monopolies to prevent them from abusing market power, were very popular among consumers of all political stripes. […]

Beyond the overproduced marketing videos and janky product prototypes closely associated today with “the metaverse” lies a bright and boundless future. In a pandemic-stricken world that imposes more and stronger barriers at every turn—whether they be medical, social, legal, economic, or geopolitical—there is magic in transposing the spirit of a global free and open internet […]

A lawsuit filed by four protesters against three Boston police officers can move forward, following a federal judge’s determination that the cops’ counterarguments were too ridiculous to be granted credence. The plaintiffs were participating in one of thousands of protests that erupted following the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a white […]

I guess it’s only natural that the UK’s Online Safety Bill — brilliantly dubbed the bill to Brexit the internet by Heather Burns — is getting delayed, just like the regular Brexit. And, no surprise, Boris Johnson is part of the issue again. As you’ll have likely heard, if you haven’t been under a rock, […]

Welcome back to the negative news cycle, Ring! It’s been awhile. Ring has spent years cultivating so-close-they’re-incestuous relationships with law enforcement agencies. Ring hands out free/cheap cameras to cop shops, asking in return that they hand them out to the townsfolk and nudge them towards sharing footage via Ring’s own highly problematic social media platform, […]

Last week, I wrote about Twitter’s opening legal salvo in its case to try to force Elon Musk to pay the $44 billion he agreed to pay for Twitter (or, more likely, to try to force him to pay a very large settlement to walk away). As we noted, it was a very strongly argued […]

Get started in the exciting world of electronics with this complete Arduino Uno compatible starter kit. It’s specifically designed for those new to electronics and the Arduino Uno ecosystem. It has everything you need to learn about electronics and comes with FUN projects you can build right out of the box. It’s on sale for […]

Read our new report on broadband competition in America » We’re excited today to release the Copia Institute’s latest report, written by Karl Bode, on the benefits of an open access fiber model to enable much more widespread competition in the broadband space. As I’m sure you know, for huge parts of the US, there […]

One of the reasons that propaganda mills like Fox News don’t take a bigger hit from advertising boycotts is because U.S. consumers pay billions of dollars annually for the channel, even if they don’t watch it. More specifically, Fox rakes in $1.8 billion in carriage fees to include the channel in bloated cable bundles, despite […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Toom1275 with a comment about the GOP’s push to force Google to stop filtering political spam: This sounds like great idea if you’re a malware spammer – just dress up your payload delivery like a political email to get straight in everyone’s inbox, and […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, as a new study shed more light on America’s terrible broadband access situation, many people were gearing up for a day of protest in support of net neutrality. After long being holdouts, Facebook and Google finally joined, followed by the laughable move of AT&T getting on board, though […]

Another school has learned it can’t discipline students for off-campus behavior, especially in light of the Supreme Court’s “fuck cheer” decision. Teens do stupid things. Sometimes they do them at school and the school is free to punish them. Sometimes they do them elsewhere and that’s where the limits kick in. That’s what the Cherry […]

It’s no secret that Techdirt believes YouTube’s copyright enforcement program is an absolute mess. On the one hand, it’s difficult to be too hard on the company. After all, it is trying to figure out how to enforce draconian copyright laws in countries like America at a scale that is absolutely absurd. On the other […]