Techdirt

Charge all your devices in one place with this sleek and compact, 3-in-1 wireless charging station. Pop your phone, smart watch, and wireless earbuds on the designated spots and charge them all at once without worrying about cords or needing multiple chargers. You can even fold it up and take it with you wherever you […]

Maybe it’s a weird personal flaw or something, but one of the most fascinating things in business to me is watching one-time pesky disruptors inevitably pivot into powerful turf protectors. As well as all the executive finger-pointing, shenanigans, and denialism that process usually entails. Take, for example, Netflix. After being disruptive and shaking up streaming […]

Apparently, it’s not enough to prevent hundreds or thousands of people with “no known affiliation” with terrorist groups from flying — a list that includes children who have yet to enter kindergarten. Even though the TSA long ago admitted (albeit, not publicly) the threat to airline flights was almost nonexistent, it still needs to look […]

It’s been a bit since we’ve talked about 3D printing, which I mostly took to mean that the world realized that there was no massive threat here and that we all collectively decided to make this a non-controversy. Early on there was some noise made about larger companies viewing the ability for the public to […]

We just got done noting how the telecom industry has been pushing misleading editorials in Arizona to derail the nomination of popular and well-qualified telecom and telecom reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The editorials are full of false claims that Sohn has a terrible track record on media diversity, shoveled by organizations with longstanding […]

So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it’s a special gift to “big tech”. A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries […]

It can always get dumber. As you’ll recall, last year Florida man governor Ron DeSantis, as part of his big push to become the new populist leader of ignorant people, pushed for a law to force social media websites to host political content they didn’t want to host. He convinced the subservient Florida Legislature to […]

In early 2020, Peter Brimelow, the founder of the incredibly sketchy site VDARE, sued the NY Times for calling him an “open white nationalist” among other similar things. Brimelow and VDARE have only spent two decades or so pushing for “ethno nationalism,” that “America is not a melting pot,” and that we need to “preserve […]

The Complete 2022 Agile and DevOps Training Bundle has 7 courses on Agile Scrum, and DevOps certification exam prep. You’ll learn about the Agile and Scrum methodologies of project management that are an integral part of ensuring your entire team knows what to expect from start to finish, keeps everyone on deadlines, and gets you […]

A few weeks ago, Rene Ebersole drew the curtain back on law enforcement forensic training, showing the public that their tax dollars were being blown on forensic education handed out by Dr. Arpad Vass — someone who in the year of our lord two thousand twenty-two is teaching cops how to utilize witching to locate […]

ISPs, looking to undermine, FCC authority managed to frame the whole net neutrality debate as “partisan” as to sow dissent, prevent consensus, block reform, and justify the 2017 repeal. But the idea was never really partisan. Despite headlines and DC rhetoric, a massive bipartisan majority of Americans actually supported the rules. Why? Because net neutrality […]

Praise be to the various gods! (Shout out to Tiamat!) The DOJ is back in the busting up local PD business, something it largely abandoned while Donald “A Police State Is The Best State” Trump held office for a single term. The DOJ Civil Rights Division was relegated to the furthest back burner during Trump’s […]

We’ve tried to make this point many times before. A few months back I wrote a detailed post in response to a famed economist who kept insisting that repealing Section 230 would hurt Facebook, that the reality is the opposite. If you understand the mechanisms by which Section 230 actually works, the key is that […]

Cops may have only the vaguest grasp on the laws they use to initiate stops, but they sure as hell understand copyright law. With algorithms doing the heavy lifting to prevent copyright infringement, cops have deployed a new tactic in hopes of preventing accountability activists from livestreaming or uploading their interactions with officers. When the […]

Last week, about the same time I posted by giant post on all the things that Elon Musk didn’t understand about content moderation, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong posted a really long, but completely worth reading thread about content moderation on social networks. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but did want […]

A world leader not known for shying away from truly terrible ideas about speech and the internet is back at it again. A few years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered, as Cathy Gellis put it, “a speech only an autocrat would love,” decrying pretty much everything that’s good and open about the internet while […]

Agenda is a date-focused note-taking app for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS, which helps you plan and document your projects. Agenda gives you a complete picture of the past, present, and future, driving your projects forward. Whether you’re a business manager noting decisions in a meeting, a teacher planning next week’s lessons, or a blogger brainstorming […]

Behold! An actually interesting academic study exploring whether or not Twitter moderation has an anti-conservative bias! This is something many of us have been asking for for a while, but it’s a very difficult thing to study in any meaningful way. The results of this study are actually really fascinating, but it’s important to dig […]

We’ve long covered how cable and broadband companies use a rotating array of bullshit fees to covertly jack up advertised rates, hitting you with a much higher bill after you’ve subscribed. We’ve also noted how new streamlined technologies have been turning the binding arbitration process on its head, making it easier and more affordable for […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a comment about Ed Sheeran filming his songwriting sessions to avoid copyright complaints, in response to a commenter saying it’s unfair to malign the copyright holders who went after him, because they legitimately own the rights they own: The legitimacy of the […]

Here we are at the last 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, Dreaming The Cave, Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn!, and A Drunk Man Looks at […]

On February 2, 2022, Minneapolis PD officers executed a no-knock raid on an apartment. Officer Mark Hanneman then summarily executed Amir Locke within seconds of his entry into the apartment. The Minneapolis PD suggested Amir Locke had plenty of time to realize police officers were in the apartment. The body cam time stamps showed something […]

Cops lie. It’s a statement more factual than statements cops — the people given the biggest benefit of a doubt in “your word against mine” courtroom showdowns — tend to make when testifying or filling out reports. Here’s the most recent example of cops lying. And it’s only one of several. A Missouri State Highway […]

In the pantheon of aggressive intellectual property bullies, Disney certainly would be one of the companies that would be competing to be Zeus. Disney has simply never seen an opportunity for IP enforcement that it hasn’t acted upon, be it copyright, trademark, or anywhere in between. More to the point for this post, Disney also […]

A few months after the snippet tax was agreed to as part of the EU Copyright Directive, Australia indicated it wanted to take the same route. The government there planned to make Internet companies pay newspapers for sending the latter extra traffic, by imposing something called the News Media Bargaining Code. In a blog post […]

Last week, federal agents took down two alleged baddies for doing the thing: impersonating federal agents. Two men have been arrested for allegedly impersonating federal agents over the course of several years. The FBI alleges that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, have been pretending to be various officers and employees of the U.S. […]

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 […]

Lots of talk yesterday as Elon Musk made a hostile takeover bid for all of Twitter. This was always a possibility, and one that we discussed before in looking at how little Musk seemed to understand about free speech. But soon after the bid was made public, Musk went on stage at TED to be […]

While the press and some policy circles have made a large stink the last few years about massive new “bipartisan support for antitrust reform,” we’ve noted that the push isn’t quite what’s being advertised. While some of the bills being proposed might help correct some competitive imbalances online, the push in general is bizarrely narrow […]

This reads like a film script and plays like a farce. It is one of the most insane decisions you’ll ever read. And it’s not because the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court did something insane. It’s because everything leading up to the decision plays out like a Coen brothers crime film and keeps escalating from there. […]

Historically, “smart” TVs aren’t always particularly smart. They’ve routinely been shown to have lax security and privacy standards. They also routinely feature embedded OS systems that don’t age well, aren’t always well designed, don’t perform particularly well over time, are slathered with ads, and are usually worse than most third-party game streaming devices or video […]

We’ve written a few times about the serious problems of the “SMART Copyright Act” from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy. However, Cory Doctorow alerts us to yet another reason why the bill is extremely problematic. As you’ll recall, the bill would allow the Copyright Office to basically designate “technical measures” that websites would have […]

Last year, we wrote about the Canadian government’s efforts to push a bill regulating social media content like broadcast television and, soon after, their work on new “Online Harms” legislation that (among many provisions) would require platforms to report certain content to law enforcement and national intelligence services. These efforts and the government’s general approach […]

Undoubtedly, the FBI has always surveilled the open web, looking for persons or phrases of interest. It’s just going to get a whole lot better at doing it. And it’s going to spend millions of your tax dollars to make it easier to place your public internet interactions under its social media-focused microscope. Aaron Schaffer […]

The 2022 Complete Microsoft Excel Expert Bundle has 12 courses to help you master Excel. You’ll start from the beginning by learning how to create a basic spreadsheet and move on to more advanced skills like working with Power Pivot, Power Query, and DAX. Other courses cover business analytics, VBA, advanced formulas, and more. It’s on […]

Last month at SXSW, I was talking to someone who explained that they kept seeing people use the term “Unalive” on TikTok as a way of getting around the automated content moderation filter that would downrank or block posts that included the word “dead,” out of a fear of what that video might be talking […]

When the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was established in 1934, it could not have possibly foreseen the exponential growth in records the move to electronic communications would create. Perpetually short on funding, oversight, or (seemingly) interest in fulfilling its duties, the NARA has been forced to allow agencies to write their own rules […]

The constitutional challenge to FOSTA suffered a significant setback late last month when the district court granted the government’s motion for summary judgment, effectively dismissing the challenge. If not appealed (though it sounds like it may be), it would be the end of the road for it. What is most dismaying about the decision – […]

One of the many symptoms of the many, deep-rooted, law enforcement sicknesses is how often officers decide to “help” people by harming them. That’s why some cities have chosen to redirect mental health issues to mental health professionals, rather than to armed officers who view anything they can’t immediately address with yelling and pointing of […]

It must be tax season, because here we are yet again talking about Intuit and the company’s skullduggery when it comes to offers for “free” tax filing. You can go back and look at the plethora of posts we have done on all of this. The quick summary for you is that Intuit has deceptively […]

For years, we’ve noted how one of the greasier lobbying tactics in telecom is the co-opting of civil rights groups to provide the illusion of broad support for what’s often awful policy. Such groups are given cash for a shiny new event center in exchange for parroting any policy position that comes across their desks, […]

Josh Hawley sucks. I disagree with him on about just about everything. And I am appalled by his support of the rioters who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. It’s disappointing and shameful that a United States Senator would endorse a riot, especially a riot intended to challenge the indisputably legitimate election of […]

Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you’ll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting […]

Here we go again. It’s a plan that almost never works but one that legislators and the special interest groups pushing for it continue to believe will shower them with untold riches from billion dollar tech companies that they blame for the destruction of local content creation. I mean, they’re not entirely wrong… at least […]

On any given day you can find a stellar array of phenomenal reporting in the pages of the New York Times. On any other day you can also find a rotating crop of terrible gibberish, from COVID coverage that large swaths of the medical community say borders on journalistic malpractice, to numerous examples of “view […]

As Mike noted the other day, state after state has been playing “fuck around and find out” with all sorts of bills that fundamentally interfere with the First Amendment and Section 230. So far Florida has already wasted over $700k in taxpayer dollars trying to defend their indefensibly censorial law. And now Texas is setting […]

Ed Sheeran has made it onto Techdirt’s radar many, many times. What started as his reasonable views on how “piracy” actually kickstarted his career has unfortunately turned into several posts on how he’s been targeted himself or sticking up for others in copyright disputes. While Sheeran has settled such disputes out of court before, he […]

People often talk about some kind of “right to deletion” as an approach to fixing online privacy issues. This construct can create problems, as we’ve seen with Europe’s version, but newer proposals don’t seem to consider these lessons. A recent paper by law professor Tiffany Li looks at another angle on the issue: how data […]

We’ve noted for years that the adtech sector is a convoluted, unregulated hellscape, where consumer data is bought and sold with nothing remotely close to competent oversight. The end result is just about what you’d expect: a percussive parade of massive scandals in which location, financial, and other sensitive data is bought, sold, leaked, abused, […]

Rental car company Hertz has put the “hurt” back in, um, “Hertz.” The company recently declared itself bankrupt, something that presumably only referred to its balance sheet. But Hertz has more problems. In 2021 (the same year Hertz “emerged” from bankruptcy), the company was sued by a man who could have been cleared of murder […]