Techdirt

Stephen Thaler is a man on a mission. It’s not a very good mission, but it’s a mission. He created something called DABUS (Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience) and claims that it’s creating things, for which he has tried to file for patents and copyrights around the globe, with his mission being […]

For decades now, privacy advocates warned we were creating a dystopia through our rampant over-collection and monetization of consumer data. And just as often, those concerns were greeted with calls of “consumers don’t actually care about privacy” from overly confident white guys in tech. Nothing has exposed those flippant responses as ignorant quite like the […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a simple comment about the “bad apple” theory of policing: Someone should really tell them what the other half of that expression is. That comment came in response to a police official complaining about police as a group being unfairly hated because […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, a lawyer renounced his participation in copyright-trolling activities and sued his former partner and clients, the creator of Kickass Torrents was trying and failing to get the criminal case against him tossed out, and Canadian telcos were losing their minds over TVAddons. Bob Murray was trying to stop […]

We have long lamented how the current method for many streaming platforms to enforce copyright laws, be they via automated systems like ContentID at YouTube or DMCA reporting platforms, is wide open for fraud, abuse, and mistakes. There are a huge swath of posts just on ContentID you can go check out if you’re not […]

Israel’s foremost purveyor of malware, NSO Group, has undergone nearly a yearlong reckoning. A leak last summer appeared to show NSO customers were routinely targeting journalists, activists, members of opposition parties, and, in one case, the ex-wife of a Dubai ruler. That NSO Group was shady wasn’t a new fact. Its decision to sell malware […]

On Thursday, the California Senate’s appropriations committee was set to review a collection of anti-internet bills to see which ones should move forward. It decided to drop one that was particularly terrible: AB 2408, which would allow basically any California prosecutor (local or state-level) to sue companies for “addicting” kids (with addiction being extremely loosely […]

In the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, there has been plenty of attention paid to the kinds of data that companies keep on us, and how they could be exposed, including to law enforcement. Many internet companies seemed somewhat taken by surprise regarding all of this, which is a bit ridiculous, […]

The past two election cycles have seen an explosion of attention given to “echo chambers,” or communities where a narrow set of views makes people less likely to challenge their own opinions. Much of this concern has focused on the rise of social media, which has radically transformed the information ecosystem. However, when scientists investigated […]

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Over the last few months, Republican politicians have been working on a nonsense plan to force their spam into your inboxes. This kicked off following some Republican operatives misunderstanding (whether through their own cluelessness, or on purpose) a study about political spam and how different email providers deal with it. Since then, Republicans have been […]

For much of the last decade, Vladimir Putin has attempted to compensate for various shortcomings (like a less sophisticated real world military) by launching cyber and propaganda attacks on much of the world. And while this, for a while, resulted in a mythology that Russia was in a league of its own when it comes […]

It’s always frustrating when you come across an intellectual property lawsuit that is so laughably frivolous. On the other hand, it’s then quite fun when a court gets things so right that the frivolous filer gets a good wrist-slapping for their trouble. In late 2021, Activision Blizzard was sued by a company called Brooks Entertainment, […]

This op-ed for Police1, written by longtime law enforcement officer/official Booker Hodges (currently the chief of the Bloomington, MN police department), may have its heart partially in the right place but it’s wrong in all the wrong places. Entitled “Why we need to talk about the blueprint for hate,” the op-ed belatedly calls for more […]

As it turns out, people would download a car. For decades, Techdirt has highlighted the wide array of incredibly stupid anti-piracy ads the entertainment industry has used to try and steer people away from piracy. Usually these ads were being run at the same time the industry was busy fighting against evolution (providing less expensive, […]

The debate over end-to-end encryption continues in the UK. It’s really not much of a debate, though. government officials continue to claim the only way to prevent the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) is by breaking or removing encryption. Companies providing encrypted communications have repeatedly pointed out the obvious: encryption protects all users, […]

codeSpark’s mission is to help all kids learn to code by igniting their curiosity in computer science and turning programming into play. The app is designed to teach kids 5 and up the foundations of computer science through puzzles, coding challenges, and creative tools. It’s a great way for your kid to learn how to […]

I can’t say for certain how Elon Musk’s thought process works, but his progression in how he talks about free speech over the last few months through this Twitter ordeal certainly provides some hints. When he first announced his intention to buy Twitter, he talked about how important free speech was, and how that was […]

We noted the other day how our shiny newly proposed federal privacy bill (as written now) includes a massive gift to US telecom monopolies. It effectively strips away huge swaths of FCC authority over telecom giants, shoveling it over to an FTC that often lacks the resources or expertise to police telecom. Because “big tech” […]

A couple of months back, we discussed a bit of a David v. Goliath trademark situation occurring in the UK. Zara is a massive fashion brand, well known throughout Europe. House of Zana is a small boutique clothier that attempted to trademark the full name of the company, “House of Zana”, only to have Zara […]

Two years ago we wrote about how a former Trump campaign staffer, Jessica Denson had sued the Trump campaign, claiming that the non-disclosure agreement she was pressured into signing by the campaign was not enforceable. As we know, Trump loves his non-disclosure agreements. He seems to use them frequently. When you’re a private citizen, or […]

We entrust plenty of our personal data to the US government at all levels. And, at all levels, they fail to protect this information on a far too regular basis. For instance, there’s the Office of Personnel Management hacking. Well, hackings. It happened twice, with the second breach being worse than the first. The two […]

There’s a very strange opinion piece over at The Hill by the chair of something called The Institute for Free Speech, Bradley Smith, basically arguing that because courts are finding that websites are protected by Section 230 while moderating in ways that some people (read: him and his friends)… Congress may take away Section 230, […]

Last June, the president of Nigeria, Muhannadu Buhari, issued a tweet that looked a lot like a call for genocide in response to often violent anti-government protests: Many of those misbehaving today are too young to be aware of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred during the Nigerian Civil War. Those of us […]

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You may recall back in May we wrote about a batshit crazy proposal out of the EU Commission to “protect the children” by mandating no encryption and full surveillance of all communications. Those behind the proposal would argue it’s not technically surveilling all messages, but all messages have to be surveillable, should the government decide […]

We just got done noting how the patriotic quest to purge all Chinese hardware from U.S. networks was a a bit of an incoherent mess. The U.S. demand to purge all Huawei and ZTE equipment imposed huge costs on many mid- and small sized telecom vendors (read: their customers), and the U.S. now says it […]

Welcome to America, where not only are people subject to frisks by cops when things seem reasonably suspicious, but their vehicles are as well. A “Terry stop” is generally understood to apply to a person. When cops have enough reasonable suspicion, they can stop a person, ask questions, and pat them down to search for […]

You might recall that almost exactly a year ago, Netflix announced that it would be getting into the “gaming” business. While the announcement led many to believe that Netflix was going to jump into competing with Google’s Stadia platform and offer streaming AAA video games, in actuality, it turns out to be… not so much. […]

WTF, TikTok? Time and time again we see that TikTok does weird things regarding content moderation. More than most firms in the space, TikTok often does things that suggest that it hasn’t bothered to speak to other experts in trust and safety, and they want to reinvent the wheel… but with terrible, terrible instincts. Apparently […]

As surveillance tech has become cheaper, it has become ubiquitous. Lots of people believe they can solve education-related problems, and most frequently their “solutions” involve tech replacing people and AI replacing common sense. Even before the COVID pandemic forced most students to engage in studies remotely, human problems were being addressed with inhuman, error-prone tech. […]

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Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who heads something called the “House Republican Big Tech Task Force” has teamed up with Seth Dillon, the CEO of the deeply unfunny “conservative” Onion wannabe, The Babylon Bee, to whine in the NY Post about “how to end big tech censorship of free speech.” The answer, apparently, is to remove […]

Hungry to boost municipal budgets, a growing roster of states and cities have spent the last five years or so trying to implement a tax on Netflix, Hulu, and other streaming services. Sometimes (like in Chicago) this has involved expanding an existing amusement tax (traditionally covering book stores, music stores, ball games and other brick and mortar […]

To be in law enforcement is to be almost criminally obtuse. (We haven’t criminalized that. YET! But when we do…) They can’t stay out of their own way. The public may be willing to cut them some slack but they constantly make moves that dis-endear them to the people they’re supposed to be serving. DNA […]

This post will serve as the start of what will be a familiar cycle for fans of Nintendo. I’m going to show you something cool that Nintendo fans did, you’re going to get moderately excited, and then you’ll immediately become depressed when you realize that Nintendo will absolutely shut this cool project down in the […]

There’s very little that seems to anger public servants more than mandates requiring them to serve the public. For years, the San Diego police department has expanded its surveillance programs. And for years, these expansions have gone unchallenged. But now that the city has passed an ordinance requiring more direct oversight of police activity, cops […]

Project Veritas, the faux conservative group of pranksters pretending to be journalists likes to pretend that they’re “free speech” supporters. But they’re not. They appear to really only support their own free speech, and have a much more flexible view of free speech when it includes speech critical of themselves. Over the past few years, […]

To keep an eye on what the UK government considers to be dangerous migrants, it’s turning to some questionable tech provided by a company that’s long been in the business of tracking people for more altruistic reasons. Migrants who have been convicted of a criminal offence will be required to scan their faces up to […]

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As I type this, I’m sitting in a (fairly uncomfortable) chair in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, having read through nearly 300 pages of legal filings of sniping between Elon Musk (165 pages) and Twitter (127 pages) trying to figure out how to best explain what’s in the filings in a meaningful and accurate […]

Roughly 83 million Americans currently live under a broadband monopoly. In most instances, their only choice is Comcast or Charter Communications, which sells service under the “Spectrum” brand. And in both cases, users pay significantly higher prices for spotty, slow, service with statistically terrible customer service, because that’s how monopolization works. But the nation’s two […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about the EU’s new office in Silicon Valley that aims to work with tech companies on EU law compliance: I know it won’t happen because money, but the tech companies really need to just stop trying to placate these people. If […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Russia banned VPNs, Australian prosecutors were seeking to make it illegal to refuse to turn passwords over to law enforcement, the UK Home Secretary wanted companies to stop offering encryption altogether, and another US federal court said cops can get historic cell site location info without a warrant. […]

We had a depressing number of Techdirt stories on this site that involve Shaquille O’Neal. I say that as a basketball fan who absolutely adores Shaq’s contributions to the TNT studio broadcasts for the NBA. On the other hand, the times Shaq has made it onto our pages hasn’t been for the best of reasons. […]

There are a few questionable assumptions made by the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court in its denial [PDF] of a suppression request, but the opening suggests drug cartels might want to vet their employees a little better. David Sierra Orozco was paid to drive a car with over $100,000 in drug-tainted cash hidden in a secret […]

The EU is well on its way to fundamentally destroying the internet. Two giant new regulations are set to become law soon: the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. And while neither is ridiculous in the same way that laws in the US and the UK and some other places are just pandering […]

A few years back, the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber-stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding expert warnings that it would stifle competition, kill jobs and eventually raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for these problems: they’d cobble together a fourth major […]

Pretty much everyone who has ever gone to college hates educational publishers. There’s an oligopoly of just five giant publishers, and they long ago learned that they are in the best market ever: the buyers of their textbooks (the students) have no choice and are forced to buy the books if their professors assign them […]

The 2022 Data-Driven Decisions Bundle is designed to help you become a data expert. The courses are self-paced and interactive, so you can begin right away. This data-driven bundle takes you through the step-by-step process of creating, manipulating, and analyzing data. Master data and make better, smarter decisions. It’s on sale for $49. Note: The […]