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The Supreme Court has taken two swings at this issue: whether or not artistic expression can also be evidence of criminal activity. Two cases with obviously serious First Amendment implications and yet the nation’s top court felt there was no need for it to establish a bright line that might deter future prosecutions based on […]

We’ve noted more than a few times how net neutrality rules were just some stopgap rules to prevent telecom monopolies from being assholes in the absence of real competition. They were modest protections (by international standards) attempting to protect consumers and competitors from giant unchecked monopolies we’ve let run amok for the better part of […]

This week, both our winners on the insightful side are anonymous responses to commenters trotting out the same old, boring, easily dismissed arguments about content moderation on our post about how very little content moderation has anything to do with politics. In first place, it’s a response to someone basically just saying “nuh-uh, of course […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the FCC was still working hard to ignore support for net neutrality and also ignore how fake much of the opposition was, while Apple and Verizon were joining forces to lobby against the right to repair. We learned more about how little it takes to be branded a […]

This report, by Aaron Gordon for Motherboard, looks like a hypothetical dreamed up by a particularly cruel constitutional law professor: For the last five years, driverless car companies have been testing their vehicles on public roads. These vehicles constantly roam neighborhoods while laden with a variety of sensors including video cameras capturing everything going on […]

There are lots of ways content makers can respond to copyright infringement. From going fully legal and suing, to attempting to threaten to sue to scare the hell out of the “pirates”, to seeking government intervention that would negatively impact all kinds of innocent folks, to trying (and failing) to curb piracy using DRM, none […]

It’s 2022 and yet we still haven’t received a nationwide blessing from the country’s top court that recognizes a First Amendment right to record public officials carrying out their public duties. In most cases, this involves cops, whose public activities are far more public than those of most other public servants. For whatever reason, the […]

The recent mass murders in Buffalo and Uvalde are sickening, horrifying, and extraordinarily frustrating. And part of that is because, as The Onion keeps having to point out, we live in a world where the underlying message is: ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens. And that is the most […]

It’s not just the private sector leaking data at alarming rates! Well, it is still the private sector, but it’s leaking data on behalf of the government! So… somewhat different. But still alarming. According to this report from Caroline Haskins for Business Insider, an ICE contractor harvesting facial recognition and GPS data on behalf of […]

The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle will help you develop your own dream video game, and publish it on multiple platforms with thousands of royalty-free, 2D and 3D assets. You get AppGameKit Studio, a fully featured game development toolset with two asset packs. The bundle also has GameGuru, a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an […]

Look: there are very real issues with the state of the internet today, including the amount of power a few companies have. But that doesn’t mean any solution is a good solution. Unfortunately, Senator Amy Klobuchar, whenever given the option, seems to put forth the worst possible plan. It’s mind boggling. For a while now, […]

While a lot of the scandals surrounding “big tech” have been overblown, one that hasn’t been discussed enough is Silicon Valley companies’ abuse of user two-factor authentication data. If you’ve been napping, two-factor authentication (preferably of the email variety) helps protect your accounts from being compromised by hackers. But when both Facebook and Twitter implemented […]

The last time we discussed Zara, the clothing retailer based out of Spain, it was to witness the company tripping all over itself to apologize to mainland China for denoting Taiwan and Hong Kong as countries on its website. Well, now the company is back, this time for engaging in a somewhat silly trademark opposition […]

While Space X’s Starlink is a promising broadband option if you’re out of range of traditional options (and can afford it), many users who’ve pre-ordered aren’t having a great time. Some say they’ve been waiting for service more than a year, during which time Starlink has often refused to answer basic emails or issue refunds, […]

We’ve gone into detail as to why it makes no sense at all, legally or conceptually, to call a website a common carrier. We’ve also explained how conservatives — bizarrely the ones pushing for this, despite decades of claiming that common carrier designations were an affront to all that is good and holy — aren’t […]

Crime rates are increasing. And too many government officials are deciding it must be something other than the most obvious explanation. That’s prompting actions that will give residents of certain states and cities less liberty, while doing very little for their safety. Virginia in July will eliminate its prohibition on local police use of facial […]

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It remains ridiculous how many politicians, across the political spectrum, resort to nonsense populism and grandstanding, rather than actually being willing to confront actual challenges. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that there are certain societal level issues that politicians simply cannot solve, and given the nature of a democracy based on first-past-the-post voting, […]

Earlier in May, Motherboard showcased how it was relatively trivial to buy the location data of cellphone users that had visited abortion clinics across the U.S. As states criminalize getting abortions (and helping people get abortions), there’s valid concern that our rampant failure to secure user location data will be abused in new and exceptionally […]

We’ve talked a great deal about the public’s right to repair the tech they own and how right to repair has finally started to shift in favor of the consumer as of late. In tech in general, and specifically in the video gaming hardware space, manufacturers have long fought to make it impossible for the […]

Cops lie. Cops lie so often it’s hardly even news at this point. The only people left to be shocked by these revelations are the increasingly small segment of the population who’ve actually considered, at some point in their lives, the purchase of a fainting couch. Cops lie because cops can almost always get away […]

There’s a story in the Daily Mail that underlines why it is important for people to make copies. It concerns the re-surfacing of rare recordings of the Beatles: In the summer of 1963, the BBC began a radio series called Pop Go The Beatles which went out at 5pm on Tuesdays on the Light Programme. Each […]

Hertz has dug its own hole. And it insists it hasn’t hit the bottom yet. The shovels will continue to be deployed until the litigation ends. This isn’t going to work out well for Hertz, but the company seems to have retreated deep into denial following lawsuits over its bogus theft allegations. Hertz is facing […]

It’s truly amazing how focused people are, in discussions on content moderation, on the claims that “content moderation is censorship” and that it’s primarily “suppressing” political speech. That’s not how it works at all. Honestly, the origins of most content moderation efforts were around two major things: (1) spam prevention and (2) copyright infringement. Over […]

The Fast Mag Wireless iPhone Charger is a chic, modern wireless charger for your iPhone. It features a built-in magnet and metal plate, which sticks securely to your phone to prevent it from sliding off. Fast Mag features built-in safeguards against overcharge The addition of Fast Charge technology enables your phone to rapidly charge from […]

Two political figures determined to play to the base no matter what it costs them have filed lawsuits against book retailer Barnes & Noble, claiming (one specific Virginia Beach store, along with a Virginia Beach school) the company is marketing “obscene” books to kids. It’s all incredibly stupid. Here’s Kelly Jensen with the details for […]

If you hadn’t noticed, the U.S. doesn’t give much of a shit about this whole privacy thing. Our privacy regulators are comically and intentionally understaffed and underfunded, we still have no meaningful privacy law for the Internet era, and when regulators do act, it’s generally months after the fact with penalties that are easily laughed […]

Following the murder of unarmed black man George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the streets of the city erupted in protest. Police responded accordingly. Which is to say indifferently. Rather than rein in the violence that had triggered the protests, many officers felt they needed to make protesters pay for their ungrateful response […]

Online platforms often give access to digital material that is under copyright. If any of that content is infringing, then potentially the platform would be liable as well as the person who uploaded it. Online companies naturally want to be immune to the consequences of any copyright infringement committed by their users. However, companies in […]

The problems with copyright have been a subject of coverage here at Techdirt since the beginning, and for most of that time it has been largely a non-partisan subject. At the moment, however, that isn’t so much the case thanks to Josh Hawley’s war with Disney, which has created a situation where some copyright reform […]

Have politicians all gone mad? On the Republican side, we have Texas and Florida trying to stop websites from moderating content, while on the Democratic side, we have New York and elsewhere trying to blame them for not moderating content. And then we have… California. Back in March we had warned about AB 2408, ostensibly […]

“You can remember it for us wholesale.” – the government of India, probably. The Indian government has been working for years to ensure it has complete control of constituents’ use of the internet. It has been steadily increasing its stake in internet use for years, ensuring its interests (especially those of Narendra Modi, who has […]

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I’ve been trying to explain this in all sorts of ways: Elon Musk’s understanding of free speech does not have anything to do with actual free speech. And, for the most part, it seemed that people who understand this stuff got that. But I remain surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people seem to be […]

For more than forty years, the GOP (and to a more sporadic degree the DNC) mindlessly supported giant corporations, consolidation, and monopolization. The evidence is everywhere (banking, insurance, health, air travel, energy), but particularly obvious in telecom. The GOP has endlessly, ceaselessly, cheered on telecom monopolization, and all it usually entails (high prices, poor service, […]

Back in September we wrote about a lawsuit between Flying Dog Brewery and the state of North Carolina over the latter’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC Board) denying a beer label for use within the state. The ABC Board refused to certify the label for use on the grounds that it was vulgar and offensive, […]

Earlier this year, we wrote about how the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, better known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses — despite a long history of litigating many, many important 1st Amendment cases — had thrown away its reputation as a staunch defender of free speech rights by massively abusing the DMCA 512(h) subpoena process […]

Mike Lindell just used to be a guy selling overpriced pillows to people who liked to buy overpriced pillows. But when Donald Trump was elected, he threw his entire company under the Trump campaign bus, making it clear Lindell was willing to ride The Donald’s coat tails into relevance. What used to be just a […]

There are many good things to say about the Eleventh Circuit’s decision on the Florida SB 7072 social media law, including that it’s a very well-reasoned, coherent, logical, sustainable, precedent-consistent, and precedent-supporting First Amendment analysis explaining why platforms moderating user-generated speech still implicates their own protected rights. And not a moment too soon, while we […]

Well, well. As we still wait to see what the Supreme Court will do about the 5th Circuit’s somewhat bizarre, and reasonless reinstatement of Texas’ ridiculously bad social media content moderation bill, the 11th Circuit has come out with what might be a somewhat rushed decision going mostly in the other direction, and saying that […]

The Bose Series 2 Bluetooth Headset provides up to 4.5 hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby time so you can keep in touch with friends, family, and business associates when you’re on the go. The Bluetooth wireless headset is engineered to automatically adjust as noise levels change so that you can hear […]

The much-abused Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (passed in 1986) will no longer be abused quite as much… at least by the Department of Justice. The DOJ recently issued a revised policy [PDF] on CFAA prosecutions — one that states the DOJ will no longer bring charges against security researchers operating in good faith. The […]

At some point U.S. regulators effectively declared that it was okay to rip off consumers with a dizzying array of bogus fees, letting companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock you with a bunch of additional surcharges when the bill comes due. That’s particularly true of the cable and broadband industry, which has saddled consumers […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about New York’s blatantly unconstitutional investigation into online platforms in the wake of the Buffalo shooting: So, what the’re saying is… This guy was able to leave a HUGE trail of information about his hate crimes… But now they want to […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the NSA was pushing for a smooth renewal of Section 702 while more details were revealed about the process, and more info was emerging on the agency’s abuse of other programs. Meanwhile, we looked at the FCC’s efforts to make net neutrality supporters seem unreasonable, even though it […]

You will recall that we have been discussing a trademark suit between Sycamore Brewing and Stone Brewing recently. As you can see in images in the post we did about the lawsuit, and then the follow up post on the battle over an injunction requiring Stone Brewing to sticker over the offending branding, it’s pretty […]

The New York Times has obtained more information about the FBI’s courting of NSO Group, something that has since raised questions from its oversight. An earlier report from the Times stated that NSO Group had arrived at FBI headquarters in 2019 to allow the agency to test drive a version of its Pegasus malware, one […]

While they’re not impervious, at least you know where you stand with a good, old fashioned dumb lock. That’s in stark contrast to so-called “smart” locks, which studies have repeatedly shown to be easily compromised with minimal effort. One report showed that 12 of 16 smart locks they tested could be relatively easily hacked thanks to flimsy […]

Last month I wrote about how, contrary to the weird narrative, Twitter has actually been among the most aggressive companies fighting for free speech online. While many people criticize it, they are wrong, or just uninformed. Mostly, they think (falsely) that because Twitter doesn’t want some speech that you like on their site, it somehow […]