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I’m not here to make broad statements about the state of Iowa, its various governing entities, or its court system, but it does seem that the state periodically struggles with recognizing long-held, pretty much unassailable rights. Lots of assailing in recent years, with only one instance working out for the government, and even that’s unlikely […]

Do not believe everything you read. Even if it comes from more “respectable” publications. The Intercept had a big story this week that is making the rounds, suggesting that “leaked” documents prove the DHS has been coordinating with tech companies to suppress information. The story has been immediately picked up by the usual suspects, claiming […]

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It’s kind of a rite of passage for any new social media network. They show up, insist that they’re the “platform for free speech” without quite understanding what that actually means, and then they quickly discover a whole bunch of fairly fundamental ideas, institute a bunch of rapid (often sloppy) changes… and in the end, […]

We’ve noted repeatedly how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr doesn’t have the authority to regulate social media. And over in the sector he does actually regulate, telecom, Carr is routinely a no show. He’s been a consistent opponent of holding telecom monopolies like AT&T accountable for pretty much anything, and generally doesn’t believe government has any […]

I have to admit I’m amused by recent court activity dealing with chalking tires. Something that has been done for years with zero protest — marking tires with chalk to determine how long a vehicle has been parked — is now fodder for federal appellate decisions. It’s a low tech solution to a low tech […]

After Microsoft’s deal to acquire Activision Blizzard was announced, alongside its deal to acquire Zenimax/Bethesda, we’ve had a series of posts pointing out that this consolidation of the gaming industry has featured vague statements from Microsoft leaving everyone wondering about the exclusivity of major gaming franchises. One of those major franchises would be Activision’s Call […]

There are big internet regulatory changes coming in the EU, with the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. Each is a huge bundle of new rules that could drastically change the future of the entire internet, and today we’re focusing on the DSA, which is set to come into force in 2024. Emma […]

I think, by this point, I’ve made my overall views on the hype around “cancel culture” pretty clear. To me it seems to be just as much of a moral panic about free speech as most other moral panics, though couched in language that pretends it’s about supporting free speech. As with most moral panics, […]

There’s a drug panic underway and the DEA is to blame. Ever since the appearance of multi-colored fentanyl pills on the scene, the DEA has somehow managed to surpass its normal ridiculous hyperbole in public statements, making all sorts of absurd claims about this new threat to the youth of America. Couple this hysteria with […]

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Earlier this year, the mother of child who died of asphyxiation while participating in the so-called “Blackout Challenge” sued TikTok, alleging the company was directly responsible for her 10-year-old daughter’s death. The lawsuit claimed this wasn’t about third-party content, even though the content that the child allegedly emulated was posted on TikTok. Instead, the lawsuit […]

We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution. But that’s not what telecom giants […]

In December 2014, the US Supreme Court extended its blessing of pretextual stops to cover imaginary moving violations. Ignorance of the law is the best excuse, cops were told in the Court’s Heien decision. All cops needed to do was make a “reasonable” error when interpreting the laws they enforce and that mistake could be […]

Back in 2013, Techdirt wrote about “the monster lurking inside free trade agreements”. Formally, the monster is known as Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS), but here on Techdirt we call it “corporate sovereignty“, because that is what it is: a system of secret courts that effectively places companies above a government, by allowing them to sue […]

The regional monopolization of U.S. broadband (and the widespread corruption that protects it) comes with all manner of nasty side effects. The lack of competition at the heart of the country’s telecom economy contributes to high prices, comically bad customer service, slow speeds, spotty coverage, annoying fees, and privacy and net neutrality violations (since there’s often no […]

One interpretation of the First Amendment has been found by the federal courts (both levels) to be far more interesting than meritorious. But the plaintiffs have at least made the court (and the city of Everett, Washington) admit that an ordinance expanded solely for the purpose of preventing baristas from wearing bikinis while serving, treats […]

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You may recall that, back in April, Elon Musk announced that one of his plans was to “authenticate all real humans” on Twitter. This was his plan to somehow magically get rid of spam. As we noted at the time, doing so would create some pretty serious questions regarding freedom of speech on the platform […]

I’ve got some bad news for those of you who were frustrated or bored by decades of net neutrality bickering: it’s about to kick off all over again. And this time it’s even more global. In the UK, US, EU, and South Korea, telecom lobbyists have been making successful inroads on plans that would force […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the attacks on libraries from big publishers: It’s depressing to know libraries could not exist if they were invented today because of greedy publishers. In second place, it’s Strawb responding to a commenter complaining about our praise of Vijaya […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, it was looking like the FCC would use the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday to hide its unpopular plan to kill net neutrality, while a Verizon-funded group was claiming that killing the rules would really help Puerto Rico. The DOJ subpoenaed Twitter about Popehat and others over a smiley emoji […]

There must be something about being an energy drink company that turns you into a trademark bully turd sandwich. The stories about Monster Energy, for instance, are absolutely legendary and legion. Meanwhile, Red Bull, the other large player in the energy drink space, has far fewer chiding posts from us, but there are still a […]

Nilay Patel over at The Verge has written a fantastic article, Welcome to Hell, Elon, highlighting the many, many ways in which Elon Musk is likely going to be regretting the fact that he now owns Twitter. I will note that many of the links in the article are to some of my stories here […]

Thanks to our corruption-fueled failure to pass even a basic privacy law for the internet era, the US has seen a steady parade of privacy scandals, hacks, and data breaches. More often than not involving companies with pathetic privacy and security standards, which are dinged repeatedly with pathetic wrist slap fines that are just absorbed […]

To date, Elon Musk has shown very little inclination to actually understand Twitter and why it has been such a useful platform to many. His understanding of free speech and content moderation hasn’t just been generally lacking, but ridiculous. And that’s not even getting into his apparently purposely obtuse misunderstanding of spam/mDAU issues. And, so, […]

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Last night, Elon Musk closed his on-again, off-again, on-again deal to buy Twitter, and his very first order of business was to fire a bunch of top executives. This was not necessarily unexpected. When new owners come in, they will often clean house, and the text messages revealed as part of the lawsuit while Musk […]

Telecom lobbyists have been working overtime in both the US and EU, trying to get policymakers to support the idea of “Big Tech” paying “Big Telecom” billions of additional dollars for no coherent reason. This taxation effort always involves some variant of the claim that popular tech services are getting a “free ride” on the […]

Long-time readers here will know that one of the consistent themes over the years when it comes to video game DRM has been the absolute plethora of anecdotal stories you get about how DRM screwed up the playing experience for legitimate customers. Performance issues, inability to play online or single-player campaigns due to DRM failures, […]

Open records laws were passed because governments simply aren’t interested in voluntarily sharing their documents with the people that foot the bill for both the people and the paper. But governments have to pass these laws, in essence forcing transparency upon themselves. Since most governments seem to be more interested in opacity, massive holes in […]

I’ll start this post with a bit of whimsy before alarming you with the sense of doom portended by the stakes involved with last week’s oral argument at the US Supreme Court in Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts v. Lynn Goldsmith. In this case the Warhol Foundation is trying to get SCOTUS to […]

Last month, Florida officially asked the Supreme Court to review the detailed 11th Circuit ruling which mostly upheld the district court ruling saying that Florida’s social media content moderation law was unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment. Earlier this week, NetChoice and CCIA argued that the 11th Circuit was (mostly) correct in trashing the law, but […]

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It seems like every couple of weeks there’s another report of a Hertz customer being treated like a thief because the car rental company can’t be bothered to do even the most minimal of due diligence or follow-up. At this point, there are more than 100 plaintiffs involved in class action lawsuit claiming Hertz has […]

Early in the pandemic, the FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB program), which gives low income Americans a $50 discount off of their broadband bill. Under the program, the government gave money to ISPs, which then doled out discounts to users — if they qualified. But (and I’m sure this will be a surprise […]

Governments set up rules governing how they govern. Then they ignore them. So, what’s the point? Is it a nod to decorum before the proverbial government party guest throws up in the bathtub and hits on your mom? If the law says an entry order or warrant is needed to enter people’s homes to investigate […]

A couple of weeks ago, we reported on a terrible idea in France: requiring companies to pay for the use of public domain material. As the post explained, this is a subversion of what it means for something to enter the public domain, and a betrayal of the implicit bargain of copyright. Fortunately, the plan was dropped, […]

Signal ensures its users’ security and privacy by encrypting their messages and refusing to collect a bunch of data governments or malicious hackers might find useful or interesting. That hasn’t made it many friends in governments (except with government officials who utilize the service to dodge public records requests). An FBI official once compared Signal […]

Imagine waking up in the morning, grabbing your hot cup of coffee, and scrolling your favorite blog post or website, only to find it looking like this: Images are missing. Video content is not there. Nothing but an empty black void staring back at you. This is what could happen if a recent case brought […]

The Brazilian government — under the “leadership” of Donald Trump Mutual Admiration Society member Jair Bolsonaro — has been steadily cracking down on free speech under the guise of saving the public from “fake news” and other misinformation. Over the past few years, it has ramped up efforts to eradicate content and reporting that it […]

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There’s this weird thing that people who hate Section 230 continue to ignore: that if you just take away Section 230, it doesn’t magically make companies liable for the actions of their users. If you studied the history of Section 230 (i.e., read Jeff Kosseff’s excellent book on the topic) or just had a passing […]

For decades, consumers have mostly wanted one thing from their ISP: a semi-affordable dumb pipe connection for the Internet. For just as long, US ISPs have bucked this demand, routinely trying to saddle users with higher costs and additional services consumer never asked for, while finding strange new ways to make an additional buck on […]

A couple of years ago, we discussed the work being done, essentially by one enterprising individual going by the handle “Peebs,” to archive a bunch of retro video game manuals for the sake of preservation. Earlier this year, we updated you all with the fairly impressive news that every SNES game manual had been digitized […]

Last week a new GitHub Copilot investigation website created by Matthew Butterick brought the conversation about GitHub’s Copilot project back to the front of mind for many people, myself included. Copilot, a tool trained on public code that is designed to auto-suggest code to programmers, has been greeted by excitement, curiosity, skepticism, and concern since it was announced. The GitHub […]

We’ve often talked about the importance of distinguishing content moderation at the infrastructure layer of the internet stack from that which happens on platforms at the edge, and this issue was brought to the forefront recently when Cloudflare took down Kiwi Farms. This week, we’re joined by internet policy expert Konstantinos Komaitis to discuss an […]

The Saudi government, led by crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, doesn’t care to be criticized. It routinely punishes its own citizens for insulting the nation’s ruler. It occasionally murders and dismembers critics for refusing to be silenced. And now it’s prosecuting and imprisoning US citizens for exercising their First Amendment rights. Last month, the Saudi […]

Emily Baker-White has quite the story over at Forbes, revealing how ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, apparently planned to have its “Internal Audit and Risk Control” department spy on the location of some American citizens: The team primarily conducts investigations into potential misconduct by current and former ByteDance employees. But in at least […]

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