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As the battle for streaming market share accelerates, the fighting between companies has increasingly gotten dumber. Such as when AT&T’s streaming TV app was pulled from Roku customer hardware because the two companies couldn’t agree on data sharing parameters. Or when Google TV customers almost lost access to NBC content because those companies couldn’t negotiate […]

You’ve presumably read the headline. Let’s take a look at how we got there. On Dec. 31, 2017, Nija Guider finished her waitressing shift and headed to a friend’s 21st birthday party in Cartersville, Georgia. She had been at the party for less than an hour when, suddenly, the police arrived. Without a warrant or permission, […]

It’s always difficult for me to land on an overall opinion of Elon Musk’s Tesla company. On the one hand, sure, the company has been instrumental in pushing the auto industry forward on electric vehicles. Whether Tesla will dominate that space in the future is an open question, but there can’t be too much doubt […]

Yesterday we announced the inaugural Techdirt Legal Misunderstand March Madness tournament. You can still get and fill out your own tournament bracket, and tweet it at us if you’d like (though our mentions are full of so many brackets!). Anyway, the first round is now underway and Twitter voting will continue through mid-day tomorrow. You […]

Old habits die hard, even when limited by incarceration. Convicted lawyer/Prenda mastermind Paul Hansmeier apparently isn’t going to let being locked up for 14 years steer him clear of recidivism. As was reported in late 2020 by TorrentFreak, Hansmeier began filing copyright litigation from a place he certainly shouldn’t be filing lawsuits alleging illegal actions […]

We already knew that the UK’s Online Safety Bill was going to be an utter disaster for the open internet, because that had been made clear early on. Last week, the government finally unveiled the latest version of the Online Safety Bill and it’s perhaps even worse than expected. It’s 225 pages of completely misunderstanding […]

Microsoft Office is one of the most ubiquitous software in the world, used extensively in offices of all industries. If there is any business software to learn, it’s the Microsoft Office Suite. At eLearnOffice, you can use bite-sized videos and quizzes to assess and increase your skills in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, OneDrive, Outlook, […]

Ah, MarkMonitor. (Please, my father is “Mr. Monitor.”) MarkMonitor has plenty of clients, few of which have been served competently during its tenure at the forefront of the “War Against Piracy.” HBO cast its lot with MarkMonitor just to watch it try to take down official HBO URLs in an attempt to thwart pirates. Adobe […]

Last January DirecTV finally decided to kick fantasy and conspiracy channel One America News (OAN) off of their satellite TV lineup, likely dooming the “news” channel. It’s a channel relatively few people watch, and the company simply didn’t figure the controversy to income ratio was worth it, so DirecTV simply didn’t renew OAN’s carriage agreement […]

Karl Bode recently wrote about Netflix’s new password sharing policy, which mostly amounts to test-running an upcharge should Netflix discover that passwords are being used “outside the home” of the subscriber. While this pilot program is only going to be run in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, Netflix’s announcement was completely silent on how it’s […]

The games have begun! Vote here! It’s that time of year — March Madness — when tons of people have filled out brackets and are watching college basketball. Way back in 2020 I had jokingly suggested on Twitter that we should set up a bracket for the most frequently misunderstood legal concepts, and people seemed […]

It still amazes me how unwilling many copyright system supporters are to admit that copyright is regularly used for actual censorship, using the power of the law to suppress speech. The latest example is particularly galling. Over the weekend, a somewhat ridiculous video went viral of a Tesla doing a jump over a hill in […]

Over the last few years we’ve seen this ongoing bizarre infatuation with “cancel culture” despite little evidence to suggest that it’s a serious issue. As we wrote nearly two years ago, in response to Harper’s trying to sound some sort of vague alarm about cancel culture, so much of the debate conflates a variety of […]

I guess ten years is long enough that Senator Pat Leahy thought everyone had forgotten about the SOPA/PIPA disaster that he was a leading reason for. Senator Leahy is on his way out of the Senate, and apparently has at least one last gift in store for Hollywood lobbyists (which includes his daughter) who make […]

The Coding 101 Bootcamp Beginners Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn how to code in many different languages. Courses cover C++, Git, Github, MongoDB, Node.js, HTML, CSS, and more. The bundle is on sale for $29. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]

“Who are we to judge?,” say federal court judges. That’s the questionable conclusion reached by an otherwise solid reading [PDF] of the constitutional implications of one of law enforcement’s favorite new tools: “reverse” warrants. (h/t Orin Kerr/Volokh Conspiracy) They’re called “reverse” warrants because the paperwork asks Google to turn over location info on everyone in […]

Remember when the cable and broadcast industry insisted that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional cable TV subscriptions) wasn’t actually a real trend? Or how, once they finally acknowledged it was a real thing, insisted that it was just a temporary fad that would abate once Millennials started having babies? Years later and amazingly enough the very […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side, our first place winner is MathFox with a response to Minnesota’s anti-algorithm social media bill: No algorithm means: no filtering against harassment, no filtering against violent content, no filtering of pornographic content and no filter to keep child predators out Are those Minnesota “representatives” so […]

Last week, to kick off our series of posts about the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926, we took a look at Best Adaptation winner The Wall Across The River. Today, we move on to the winner of the Best Deep Cut category: The Obstruction Method by Jason […]

Clearview AI has been disinvited from yet another country. This unrolling of the unwelcome mat also includes a hefty exit fee. (h/t Michael Vario) The Italian privacy guarantor (GPDP) has imposed a fine of €20,000,000 on Clearview AI for implementing a biometric monitoring network in Italy without acquiring people’s consent. This decision resulted from a […]

Thanks to Vladimir Putin and his one-man show designed to educate the world on just what can happen when a murderous dictator decides to throw a fit, the news is chock full of Ukraine. This has included Techdirt’s pages, which really shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Still, I will admit that I didn’t […]

As Omar (RIP, Michael K. Williams) pointed out, using only his whistling and his sawed-off shotgun, “If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.” The “king” of First Amendment protections has always been the independent press, especially when coupled with issues of public interest that (almost always) involve government employees and officials. The […]

As the debate about how to rein in Big Tech and its anti-competitive practices continues, news publishers and telecommunications providers are increasingly calling for large pay-outs from major platforms. However, these proposals risk restricting users into ever-smaller walled gardens and cementing the dominance of a few big players. On Valentine’s day, an open letter from the CEOs […]

A year ago, the wonderful podcast, 99% Invisible, had a great episode exploring the history of state slogans and other statements ending up on license plates. It’s very entertaining and worth listening to. As part of it, it highlights an important free speech lawsuit, brought by George Maynard, a Jehovah’s Witness, to argue that New […]

The Fusion C is here, and it’s ready to replace your bulky desktop tower PC. Not much bigger than a small cigar box, the Fusion C comes loaded with a built-in Intel quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a pre-installed version of Windows 10 Home to make getting through your daily to-dos a breeze. Taking […]

To talk about game developer/serial litigant Jonathan Monsarrat is to open up several cans of hilarious and repulsive worms. Mike Masnick played catch up on Monsarrat’s past and present legal problems in this lengthy 2013 post, where Monsarrat — founder of video game company, Turbine — was slapped around by Booth Sweet LLP (of Prenda […]

Back in January DirecTV finally decided to axe OAN, the conspiracy and fantasy channel, from its cable lineup. The decision came just three months or so after a blockbuster report showed that AT&T not only helped fund and set up the “news” outlet, but it came up with the idea. OAN has been notorious for spreading […]

Apparently, it’s not enough that we pay their salaries and buy their uniforms, vehicles, and weapons. We’re also expected to foot the bill when law enforcement officers fuck up so badly they can’t even avail themselves of qualified immunity, a Supreme Court-created legal doctrine that has been watered down for decades, allowing all but the […]

Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users who shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far as to say he “loved” password sharing, seeing it as akin to free advertising. The idea was that as […]

The various “for the children” moral panic bills about the internet are getting dumber. Over in Minnesota, the legislature has moved forward with a truly stupid bill, which the legislature’s own website says could make the state “a national leader in putting new guardrails on social media platforms.” The bill is pretty simple — it […]

We recently discussed noted fascist and fist-raiser Josh Hawley and his campaign’s decision to start selling campaign merchandise using a photo from a Politico photographer. As part of that post, we talked about how the Associated Press was looking into whether this constituted copyright infringement. I very much think it does not, given that the […]

If you work for the government and the government is leaning towards more power and less accountability, why wouldn’t you be supportive of the government, no matter who’s running the joint? That’s what happened in the Intelligence Community, according to a whistleblower who oversaw the IC’s internal chat services for nearly a decade. An internal […]

An extra screen is a great tool to help you work more efficiently, whether you are coding, sketching, studying, or even gaming. But Desklab isn’t just another monitor that mirrors and distorts your device’s screen. This versatile, ultra-portable screen can transform your laptop into a fully functional touch panel that optimizes your ability to design, […]

Ridiculous, unhinged, anti-internet legislation is a bipartisan affair. The latest such examples is California’s new (awkwardly named) Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act. As you can likely tell from the name, this is yet another moral panic “think of the children!” bill. It argues that social media is addictive and that we need to […]

Hoping to pretend that the U.S. broadband industry is vibrant and competitive, every so often the broadband industry will issue a broad proclamation that U.S. broadband is secretly amazing and super affordable. Unfortunately data uniformly, clearly shows that it’s not. The availability of fast speeds remains spotty, prices remain high, and customer service, while improving […]

It rarely seems obvious, but you can just walk away from (some) unwanted interactions with law enforcement. People with badges and guns often make this option seem untenable, what with their badges and guns and often profane shouting. But law enforcement officers need a certain amount of reasonable suspicion to detain people. But the less […]

It appears that Donald Trump’s social network, at least in its initial form, is following the pattern of many of Donald Trump’s other business ventures: lots of hype, but little in the way of an actual business. As Politico has detailed, even the MAGA world isn’t exactly rushing to make Truth Social the Trumpist paradise […]

Over the last few years, the entertainment industry and big copyright have ramped up a war against VPN providers here in the U.S., culminating in a lawsuit against VPN provider Torguard by nearly two-dozen movie studios. The same studios had demanded $10 million in damages from another VPN provider, LiquidVPN, earlier last year. In both […]

There aren’t many ways to make something as objectively awful as civil asset forfeiture worse, but the FBI has found a way to do it. As it stands now, forfeiture allows law enforcement to take cash and property from people under the (unproven) theory that it was illegally obtained. The rest of the process does […]

Today is the 12th anniversary of the release FCC’s National Broadband Plan (NBP). In March of 2010, the FCC responded to Congress’s direction to develop a plan for broadband with the intent to ensure every American has “access to broadband capability.” This proposal was assembled with input across 36 public workshops, 31 public notices, 9 […]

The Microsoft Office Home & Business Bundle is for families and small businesses who want classic Office apps and email. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. A one-time purchase installed on 1 computer for use at home or work. Available for Mac or PC, it’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt […]

You may have noticed a whole bunch of stories about copyright lawsuits lately against famous musicians for having songs that sound just kind of like some other songs. I’d been meaning to write up something talking about all of these stories about how Ed Sheeran is supposedly a “magpie” who “borrows” songs, or about how […]

The U.S. is preparing to spend $42 billion to shore up broadband access, despite not actually knowing where broadband is or isn’t available. U.S. broadband maps have stunk for decades, and we’ve spent that entire time trying to fix mediocre U.S. broadband without using real world data to actually do it. Much of the problem was extremely […]

There are lots of reasons to have fallen in love with Wordle. The simple nature of the game. The ability to post spoiler-friendly brags for how you did on any given puzzle. The clean design. But here at Techdirt, we obviously became smitten with how Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, professed no interest in the ongoing […]

The New York Post editorial team has apparently decided some rights are more important than others. The Post has the First Amendment right to publish its opinion on other rights, even when it’s clearly in the wrong. And it’s willing to do so because it has long enjoyed an unhealthy relationship with the city’s police […]

Five years ago, we were joined on the podcast by author and law professor Aaron Perzanowski to discuss his book about the impact of copyright on property in the digital age, The End of Ownership. That book touched on the issue of repairing devices and the ways companies make it difficult, but his new book, […]

In 2021, Columbia Law professor Philip Hamburger, whose own website at the school describes him as “one of the preeminent scholars writing today on constitutional law,” beclowned himself in the pages of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages (which seem always open for a beclowning, so long as the beclowning supports Rupert Murdoch’s blinkered worldview). […]

ICE wants data and doesn’t care how it gets it. Its recently-elevated pursuit of all things not considered naturally American has increased its demands for information on… well, everybody. It works with private sector data brokers and data analysts to hoover up location info — something not strictly limited to movements at or near borders. […]

Degoo is AI-based cloud storage that helps you rediscover your best photos. With Degoo you get supremely secured backup space from which to manage and share files with awesome simplicity. With high-speed transfers from a database that offers more backup space than Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive combined, you’ll love how easy it is to […]

The UK’s euphemistically named Online Safety Bill is a disaster waiting to happen. The crux of the bill: any time anything bad happens online, we blame internet companies for it and take some of their money. As the bill has continued to go through discussions, it’s been getting worse and worse. The latest is that […]