Techdirt

With Elon Musk now Twitter’s largest shareholder, and joining the company’s board, there have been some (perhaps reasonable) concerns about the influence he would have on the platform — mainly based on his childlike understanding of free speech, in which speech that he likes should obviously be allowed, and speech that he dislikes should obviously […]

For years, we’ve noted how telecom and media giants have been trying to force “big tech” to give them huge sums of money for no reason. The shaky logic usually involves claiming that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on telecom networks, something that’s never actually been true. This narrative has been bouncing around telecom policy […]

A month ago, we wrote about a bizarre, nonsensical, Twitter rant from Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma that followed a bizarre, nonsensical appearance at the CPAC conference in which he lashed out at “big tech” for supposedly “censoring conservatives.” This fact-free grievance has been an item of blind faith among the Trumpist set, that big […]

Nearly every rumor about NSO Group has been proven true, despite plenty of early denials by the (oh, I guess we’ll be nice…) “embattled” malware merchant. The world’s foremost purveyor of zero-click exploits capable of completely compromising phones of targets is still in damage control mode. The damage can no longer be controlled, though. So, […]

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Local politicians across the political spectrum are trying to force websites to moderate their content in a manner the politicians want. Some (mainly Democrats) are trying to push for companies to remove more content. Some (mainly Republicans) are pushing companies to stop removing certain kinds of content. In both cases, trying to force specific editorial […]

We’ve noted for a while that Trump’s alternative social media platform, Truth Social, isn’t doing particularly well. Being a Trump product, the platform (surprise!) began with a lot of money slushing around that wasn’t spent in any coherent way. It’s also just generally glitchy and terrible. And it’s not helped much by the fact that […]

Cops lie. That’s just the way it is. It shouldn’t be this way. Cops are given an incredible amount of power and expected to handle it responsibly. But when they start doing things they shouldn’t be doing, out come the lies. Accountability may as well be a foreign term of legal art because cops understand […]

In the U.S., politicians are itching to disrupt Big Tech. In January, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced by Senator Klobuchar in October 2021, which would prohibit large technology companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google from preferencing their own products and services. Senator Grassley celebrated the bill […]

This seems to be becoming a thing here in America, this desire by those in power to punish private companies for their stances and speech on controversial topics. Mike recently wrote about how this effort to exert legislative influence on private actors is one of the few bits of bi-partisanship we have these days. And, […]

Encryption is under attack from all over the world. Australia already has a law on the books trying to force companies to backdoor encryption. The UK is pushing its Online Safety Bill, which would be an attack on encryption (the UK government has made it clear it wants an end to encryption). In the US, […]

Despite a massive amount of spending and tactical maneuvering to derail the effort, Amazon factory workers just successfully voted to form the company’s first union on Staten Island, New York. Much like Starbucks, years of grueling working conditions, weak benefits, and low pay directly contributed to the workers’ feeling they needed to organize. And, much […]

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We’ve covered a variety of recent copyright lawsuits against songs that sound vaguely similar, noting this ridiculous war on genres, and basically outlawing the idea of an homage. Even in cases where the lawsuits fail (which is frequently, though not always), it’s still an extremely costly waste of time that can still have massive chilling […]

For decades the U.S. newswires have been peppered with stories where somebody bought a house after being told by their ISP it had broadband access, only to realize the ISP didn’t actually serve that address. Generally, the homeowner then realizes they have to spend a stupid amount of money to pay the local telecom monopoly to extend service… […]

Long, long time readers here may remember that I have had something of a fascination in the past with subjects such as conspiracy theories and UFOs. Not that I’m much of a believer in the former, mind you, but I consider these forays into the occult to be wildly interesting on a variety of levels. […]

There was a case I remember reading in law school, about intentional torts, that stuck with me, for reasons that will probably be obvious once I tell you about it here. But first a word about what we mean by the policy building block “intentional torts.” In general, torts are laws that help people be […]

Cops who thought they could just be cops and that would be enough to let them get way with excessive force deployment and other misconduct have just received a rude awakening. The public — which includes very carefully selected jury members — is sick of law enforcement’s shit. A federal jury Friday awarded $14 million in […]

I feel like I keep needing to write this, but once again, no matter who does it and no matter which company they’re targeting, it’s wrong for politicians to promise to punish companies for their speech. For some reason, many people’s position on this point changes based on whether or not they like or dislike […]

It was a hard-fought battle, but in the end, the 1st Amendment has been crowned champion as the most misunderstood legal concept in the inaugural Techdirt Legal Misunderstanding March Madness: Techdirt Legal Misunderstanding March Madness Finals. Which of the following is the *most* misunderstood legal concept. — techdirt (@techdirt) April 4, 2022 Check out the […]

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The Texas government has passed a law that places a lot of restrictions on those operating drones. The law (passed in 2013 and amended in 2015) also creates a cause of action for residents who feel their privacy has been violated by UAV operators. There’s a single carve out: one for researchers operating drones “on […]

Back in January DirecTV announced it would be kicking the fantasy and conspiracy channel One America News (OAN) off of its satellite TV lineup, removing the biggest distribution avenue for the “news” channel. Despite the endless coverage the channel gets for its baseless conspiracies, it’s a channel relatively few people actually watch. DirecTV executives simply didn’t […]

Normally when discussing a company that has appeared on our pages before for being a trademark bully, I like to list off and link to a few examples. Monster Energy, the company that makes fizzy caffeine bombs in liquid form, makes that all very silly. You need only look at all the stories we’ve done […]

If only Clearview had managed to remain under the radar. If it had, it could have been the stealth privacy assassin multiple entities (both public and private) desire, but are unwilling to admit to using publicly. Even the rest of the facial recognition tech field wants nothing to do with Clearview and the billions of […]

Recently, Mike joined Jason Feifer on the Build for Tomorrow podcast for a discussion about predicting the future — and specifically about a prediction that Mike got very wrong. The episode includes interviews with several other guests on the subject, and we’re featuring the whole thing this week on the Techdirt Podcast. Follow the Techdirt […]

On March 9th, we covered a Virginia court’s decision to reject a geofence/”reverse” warrant as unconstitutional. This was brought to our attention by FourthAmendment.com. Roughly a month later, it’s suddenly news. The belated coverage — most of which is simply a reprint of an Associated Press report — is kind of terrible. So is the […]

We’ve already talked about how Georgia looks to be moving forward with its clearly unconstitutional content moderation bill. Back when Florida signed its content moderation bill into law (which actually put in a few things to pretend to appear more constitutional, unlike Georgia’s…), we noted that the state was going to waste a ton of […]

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Well, this is a mess. A lawsuit prompted by the actions of a protester at a demonstration held in Baton Rouge, Louisiana on July 9, 2016 still isn’t resolved. During that Black Lives Matter protest, some person in attendance threw a “rock-like substance” at a Baton Rouge police officer known only as “Officer Doe.” In […]

We’ve noted for a while that DC, and particularly the GOP’s, interest in “antitrust reform” is somewhat hollow. For one, while the United States is rife with heavily monopolized business sectors (insurance, health care, telecom, banking, airlines), this recent batch of “reform” only specifically targets large technology companies. It’s as if these other sectors (most […]

The courts in Massachusetts continue to set the standard for privacy protections. They have handed down several rulings that have expanded residents’ reasonable expectations beyond the baseline set by the Fourth Amendment and federal court rulings. The courts in the state erected a warrant requirement for cell site location data four years ahead of the […]

It’s more difficult to choose your investors than your customers. Maybe this isn’t entirely NSO’s fault, but it certainly helped make it easier to sell powerful zero-click exploits to the governments most likely to abuse them. Here’s Kaye Wiggins and Mehul Srivastava for the Financial Times. An Abu Dhabi state-owned investment company has been an […]

Never underestimate the ability of the baddies to exploit the good nature inherent to most people. That’s the takeaway from this latest depressing news that malicious people are abusing law enforcement tools to harvest personal information to exploit. Here’s William Turton, delivering the most recent bit of bad news for everyone everywhere. Apple Inc. and Meta […]

We’re now past the halfway point in our series of posts about the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926. So far, we’ve looked at The Wall Across The River, The Obstruction Method, and Dreaming The Cave. Today, the spotlight falls on the winner of Best Visuals: Mr. Top […]

Cops lie. It’s a fact. It’s called testilying and it happens so often hardly anyone can even be bothered to act surprised when these lies are exposed. This case — coming to us via FourthAmendment.com — contains yet another cop’s lies. This particular cop, Amtrak Police Officer Brandt Bartman, has just seen his train station […]

The US Department of Justice has entered into many consent decrees with many, many abusive law enforcement agencies. These decrees have the force of law, supported by court orders. They’re contractual obligations with the federal government — agreements that swear local agencies will comply with directives and do their part to respect not only the […]

One year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project. The decision provided a reset to a seventeen year long legal dispute over the FCC’s media ownership rules that had its inception in the Third Circuit in 2004. In 1996, the Telecommunications Act included substantial revisions to the […]

The problem with electing abusive assholes is you may not know they’re abusive assholes until after you’ve elected them. Then you have a problem on your hands, at least until the next election cycle. Until then, rights get violated and people get victimized. And while these abusive officials spend tax dollars getting “I didn’t choose […]

Vote On the Final Four Now! And here we are. The inaugural Techdirt Legal March Madness is down to its Final Four! There are just four concepts left, and (to be honest) none are that surprising. The 1st Amendment faces off against RICO and Free Speech faces off against Section 230. I don’t think any […]

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I have to admit that it’s been somewhat amusing watching Truth Social flop. After months of rumors (and a variety of competitors targeting the Trumpworld), Trump announced plans for his own Twitter clone, Truth Social, in October of last year, using a sketchy financial instrument to fund it. He found a perfect dupe in Congressman […]

For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like “environmentalists for big oil” or “Americans who really love telecom monopolies.” These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren’t popular, or great […]

The EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market contains two spectacularly bad ideas. One is the upload filter of Article 17, which will wreak havoc not just on creativity in the EU, but also on freedom of speech there, as algorithms block perfectly legal material. The other concerns the “snippet tax” of Article 15, more […]

In tech policy, as with any policy, we often talk about liability. Basically, should X liable to Y, why, and with what consequence? Figuring out good policy is often a matter of figuring out how those questions should be answered. Because sometimes it might be good for society if X could be held liable for […]

While Elon Musk often crows about his disdain for subsidies, Musk companies routinely hoover up billions in government assistance. For example, Starlink gamed the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidy auction to nab nearly a billion dollars to deploy broadband to areas that didn’t need it: including some airport parking lots and a few […]

We’ve already detailed why the latest bill from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, the SMART Copyright Act, is dangerous to the future of the internet. You can read that earlier article, but the short summary is that it would deputize the Copyright Office every three years to arbitrarily bless certain “technological measures” that websites, […]

Courthouse News Service (CNS) is (again) suing to block court administrators from deliberately withholding filed documents from the press. CNS has sued several other state court systems over the same misbehavior by clerks and the administrators overseeing them. Last summer, CNS — which obviously relies on prompt access to maintain its reporting edge — obtained […]

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Late last year, a coordinated messaging campaign emerged on the anniversary of the repeal of net neutrality. Numerous pundits and right-wing news outlets all simultaneously issued reports on the same day claiming that because the Internet hadn’t exploded in a rainbow, that the FCC’s extremely unpopular 2017 decision to gut oversight of predatory telecom monopolies […]