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We’ve talked about the many, many problems of the “SMART Copyright Act” from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, and highlighted how a ton of public interest groups, academics, companies, and more have spoken out against the bill. Perhaps realizing that their dream of sneaking through legislation that will mandate upload filters is facing a […]

As Russia has faced a flood of sanctions for its brutal invasion of Ukraine, many telecom companies, like Lumen and Cogent, also stopped feeding and financing key Internet transit routes into the country. Other companies, like domain registrar Namecheap, made the choice to stop doing business with any current residents of Russia. While severing Russia […]

You may have heard that Stone Brewing Co., once a scion and protector of the craft beer industry, won a trademark lawsuit against Molson Coors due to the latter’s rebranding of its “Keystone” brand to more prominently feature the word “STONE” on cans and labels. We didn’t write about the case, though that doesn’t mean […]

A couple months back, Starlink and Elon Musk got several weeks of press adulation for shipping thousands of low orbit satellite terminals to Ukraine. The units, generally capable of 100 Mbps speeds with low latency, were likely a huge help to locals struggling to maintain Internet access while under Russian assault (with the small caveat […]

I’ll admit this recent decision sort of passed me by. My brief read of it suggested nothing more was happening than an affirmation of preexisting law via lots of procedural discussion. There are plenty of hoops people who have been falsely accused of crimes need to jump through before a court will even entertain their […]

George Galloway is a UK politician with, well, something of a reputation. Anyway, recently, he got very, very upset, because Twitter labeled his account as being “Russia state-affiliated media.” That tweet shows the addition by Twitter of the “Russia state-affiliated media” and then says: Dear @TwitterSupport I am not “Russian State Affiliated media”. I work […]

Some of you may recall that, back in July of 2020, there was one of those interminably long “tech CEO” hearings in front of Congress that appear to serve only to make politicians look foolish, out of touch, and technically illiterate. Among the most laughable moments was when Rep. Greg Steube wasted everyone’s time by […]

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We may supposedly be a nation of equals but some people will always be more equal than others. The justice system has multiple tiers. This has always been the case, despite the best efforts of the founding fathers. Rich people view some laws as optional, since they can easily absorb the fines and fees. Laws […]

We’ve already noted how U.S. broadband maps aren’t just terrible, they’ve laid the foundation for terrible policy. When your maps falsely overstate competition and broadband coverage, it makes it easy to downplay or ignore the primary reason U.S. broadband stinks: regional monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects and enables it. But the […]

This week, That One Guy takes both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a comment about Senator James Lankford’s stupid letter to Sundar Pichai demanding answers about the removal of CPAC videos: Maybe take the gloves off? At this point everyone should really stop treating people like Lankford as honest individuals […]

We’re nearing the end of 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, and Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn! Today, we move on to the winner […]

Firewalls. You know, boring old IT stuff. So why are we talking about them at Techdirt? Well, one thing we regularly talk about is how companies tend to respond to exploits and breaches that are uncovered and, far too often, how horrifically bad they are in those responses. Often times, breaches and exploits end up […]

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, […]

GameGuru is a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an easy, enjoyable and comprehensive game creation process that is designed specifically for those who are not programmers or designers/artists. It allows you to build your own game world with easy to use tools. Populate your game by placing down characters, weapons, and other game items, […]

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 […]

Given the ever-changing landscape of technology, it is important to stay abreast with modern innovations in this space. This course explores fundamental technologies used in modern business and society. The aim is to equip students with knowledge in current technology trends while introducing them to the basics of front-end web development using a practical approach. […]

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 […]