Techdirt

Last week the European Union’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), handed down its judgment on whether upload filters should be allowed as part of the EU Copyright Directive. The answer turned out to be a rather unclear “yes, but…“. Martin Husovec, an assistant professor of law at the London […]

From the Internet of very broken things to telecom networks, the state of U.S. privacy and user security is arguably pathetic. It’s 2022 and we still don’t have even a basic privacy law for the Internet era, in large part because over-collection of data is too profitable to a wide swath of industries, which, in […]

We’ve talked a fair bit about Australia’s ridiculous “News Bargaining Code,” which is literally nothing more than a tax on Facebook and Google for sending traffic to media organizations. Again, the law requires Facebook and Google (and just Facebook and Google) to pay media organizations for sending them web traffic. This is, of course, backwards […]

Laura Loomer still thinks she can sue her way back onto Facebook and Twitter. In support of her argument, she brings arguments that failed in the DC Appeals Court as well as a bill for $124k in legal fees for failing to show that having your account reported is some sort of legally actionable conspiracy […]

Buy 1 Get 1 Free! Each order comes with 2 drones: 1 Alpha Z PRO Ultra HD Dual Camera Drone and 1 Flying Fox Ultra HD Dual Camera Drone. Both drones are equipped with a 4K front camera and a 720P bottom camera. The Alpha Z PRO comes in a sleek black color while the […]

It’s becoming quite clear that Elon Musk’s approach to dealing with complex issues is not to actually understand the complex realities behind them, but to simply say what he thinks an audience wants to hear, and perhaps relatedly, to simply accept the last thing that someone presented to him as the official state of things. […]

This week the Biden administration spent some time celebrating its accomplishments on broadband. The nation’s about to invest $42 billion in expanding broadband access (even though we still haven’t mapped broadband accurately). The administration also implemented the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which doles out a $30 discount on broadband for qualifying low income households. In […]

In news that is altogether so unsurprising it needs a “resigned sob” emoji attached, a Reuters investigation has found that far-right extremists are training cops because of course they are. Given law enforcement’s beginnings as an entity tasked with ensuring plantation owners maintained their access to free labor, it’s little wonder that cop shops have […]

We’re still pretty much in the dark about Elon Musk’s real plans for Twitter. He had talked a little about changing how Twitter’s subscription product worked, and then the only other idea that had leaked was a weird one about trying to charge media organizations to quote or embed tweets. However, late last week, the […]

There are several reasons law enforcement agencies would take care not to associate themselves with Clearview. First off, Clearview is the NSO Group of the facial recognition tech world. Its actions — which begin with scraping data from any publicly accessible website and end with selling its product to whoever expresses an interest — have […]

Last week the recently formed California Privacy Protection Agency held “pre-rulemaking stakeholder sessions” to solicit input on the regulations it intends to promulgate. I provided the following testimony on behalf of the Copia Institute. Thank you for the opportunity to speak at these hearings. My name is Cathy Gellis, and I’m here representing myself and […]

Like other EU Member States, Finland is grappling with the problem of how to implement the EU Copyright Directive’s Article 17 (upload filters) in national legislation. A fascinating post by Samuli Melart in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice reveals yet another attempt by the copyright industry to make a bad law even worse. […]

Resoume is an easy-to-use resume, portfolio, and cover letter builder that helps you create beautifully designed, ATS-ready documents that let your skills shine. Are you worried that your resume will be rejected by an ATS because of the format, or that your portfolio won’t stand out from the pile? Put your fears to rest and […]

As you probably recall, former President Donald Trump sued various social media companies for kicking him off their platforms, claiming (absolutely ridiculously) that private companies deplatforming the President of the United States violated his 1st Amendment rights, and claiming that Section 230 was unconstitutional. As we noted at the time, this is not how any […]

The Trump FCC spent four years being a giant rubber stamp for giant U.S. telecom monopolies. That included rubber stamping mergers before even reading the details, gutting FCC consumer protection authority, and demolishing decades-old media consolidation rules crafted with broad bipartisan consensus, and stripping away your town and city’s ability to stand up to giant carriers. The Trump GOP […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a response to Josh Hawley’s tweet saying “woke corporations shouldn’t get sweetheart deals”: This statement heavily implies that non-“woke” corporations should get sweetheart deals. Someone would do well to ask him about that. In second place, it’s Jeffrey Nonken with […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the NSA was shutting down its 702 program, but with a whole lot of caveats and some questionable statements, while the public dump of the agency’s hacking toolkit was causing privacy problems. Meanwhile, James Comey was testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee and hinting at expanded […]

Prosecutors have an obligation to turn over evidence — exculpatory or otherwise — to criminal defendants. They often don’t. In rare cases, this refusal to play by the rules results in dismissals or sanctions. But, for the most part, they tend to get away with it, allowing the government to stack the prosecutorial deck in […]

There has been a trend over the past decade or so in which a very specific part of America’s political spectrum appears to be simultaneously advocating for “free speech” in ways that have nothing to do with the American system while also attacking all kinds of other speech and insisting that speech not happen. Hypocrisy […]

Putting cops in schools is a terrible idea. It tends to encourage school administrators to abdicate their disciplinary duties and allow cops to decide which school policy violations should be treated as criminal acts. Turns out it’s also a bad idea to have compliant cops adjacent to schools. A new report from ProPublica, sourced from […]

This one is just absolutely bizarre. The Attorneys General of Missouri and Louisiana are now suing President Joe Biden and a whole bunch of his administration, including press secretary Jen Psaki, Dr. Anthony Fauci, DHS boss Alejandro Mayorkas, and newly appointed Disinfo czar Nina Jankowicz, in a nearly incomprehensible complaint that the Biden administration forced […]

Following the brutal killing of an unarmed black man (George Floyd) by a Minnesota police officer (convicted murderer Derek Chauvin), protests against police violence erupted around the country. Police agencies reacted predictably. Rather than dial back their aggression in response to vocal complaints about their aggression, they gave protesters everything they wanted: more violence. This […]

Introducing Simbla: a simple, intuitive, and fast drag-and-drop (no coding required) website builder, perfect for bringing your business into the 21st century. We’re not just talking about a sleek new look and feel. Simba is a guarantee that your site will be supported on all browsers and devices. Simbla’s responsive design puts your users in […]

There are all sorts of silly and made up reasons to be mad at Disney, but those shouldn’t take away from the many legitimate ways in which Disney is a terrible, awful company. For years, it was one of the most aggressive in pushing for ever expanded copyrights, and was one of the chief lobbyists […]

We’d already noted how telecom and media giants are engaged in a last ditch attempt over the next few weeks to derail Biden’s nomination to the FCC, Gigi Sohn. Sohn is widely admired by folks on both sides of the aisle, and is eminently qualified on stuff like expanding access to affordable broadband, media consolidation, […]

The justice system loves a stacked deck. Well, certainly the prosecutorial side loves it. Courts are, at best, ambivalent. Occasionally, this behavior gets called out. When the DOJ made it clear it wasn’t really interested in a thorough examination of its many dubious forensic techniques, Judge Jed Rakoff resigned from just-formed “Forensic Science Committee” by […]

A few days ago, Motherboard revealed they were able to purchase the location data of visitors to Planned Parenthood clinics for just $160 from a company named SafeGraph. While SafeGraph refused to comment at the time, they’ve since written a blot post announcing they’ll be ending the practice. But not without spending much of the […]

We had just written about the great difficulty national governments are having in transposing the EU Copyright Directive into local law. That’s largely because of the badly drafted and contradictory Article 17. It effectively calls for upload filters, which have obvious problems for freedom of expression because of the impossibility of crafting algorithms that encapsulate the subtleties […]

There are not enough words to describe the horrors of what Russian troops have been doing to their Ukrainian neighbors. But it should go without saying that stealing their stuff is, on its own, not ok. But it turns out that some of what they’ve stolen is farming equipment. And modern farming equipment at that, […]

You will recall that Lauren Boebert was unsuprisingly confused about what lawmaking power she has as a lawmaker, having threatened to not “extend Micky (sic) Mouse’s trademark”, which is not a power Congress has. Josh Hawley, who has never been shy about threatening private companies over protected speech, at least has straight which law to […]

The FilterGrade Adobe Photoshop Actions Asset Bundle is on sale for $39. Choose from various styles including retro and film effects, realistic light leaks, portrait Photoshop actions, black and white styles, pro fashion Photoshop actions, and even minimal looks. The FilterGrade Bundle includes 220 of our best-selling Photoshop actions. These are broken up into 11 […]

For many years we’ve discussed the sheer ridiculousness of the “triennial review” process of Section 1201 of the DMCA. If you’re lucky, and don’t spend that much time deep in the weeds of semi-obscure copyright law, Section 1201 of the DMCA is the “anti-circumvention” part of the law, that was initially designed to outlaw breaking […]

Two years ago the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding experts warnings that the reduced competition would likely degrade service, kill jobs, and slowly raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for the problematic nature […]

We have a whole series of posts going back several years about Intuit, maker of TurboTax software, and its bullshit and misleading practices for fooling the public into thinking they can file taxes for free under the government’s free-to-file program only to deceptively convince them to pay for services instead. The highlights are that the […]

Cops love laws when they’re using them against people, no matter how esoteric or misunderstood (by cops) the laws are. When laws are applied to them, they’re far less concerned about being law-abiding. Kansas implemented a law in July 2019 that required all law enforcement agencies to track and report forfeiture amounts. This hasn’t gone […]

Last week, in partnership with Engine, we launched our startup policy simulator game Startup Trail. The game puts you in the shoes of a founder trying to build a successful startup, and facing the many difficult policy decisions that entails without running out of money, losing all your users, or ending up with a company […]

In Part I, we explained why the First Amendment doesn’t get Musk to where he seemingly wants to be: If Twitter were truly, legally the “town square” (i.e., public forum) he wants it to be, it couldn’t do certain things Musk wants (cracking down on spam, authenticating users, banning things equivalent to “shouting fire in […]

Almost exactly a decade ago, a few months after the US Congress rejected the site blocking setup of the SOPA copyright bill, which would enable copyright holders to force ISPs to block access entirely to websites deemed as being dedicated to “piracy,” we wrote a post about how it wasn’t even clear SOPA was needed […]

The Project Management Super Saver Bundle includes all essential courses to gain the fundamental and necessary knowledge of Project Management. The Project Management courses focus on a wide collection of real-world scenarios, study aids, project management tips, and learning tools. It’s on sale for $60. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by […]

“Twitter has become the de facto town square,” proclaims Elon Musk. “So, it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they’re able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.” When pressed by TED’s Chris Anderson, he hedged: “I’m not saying that I have all the answers here.” Now, […]

With the leaked Supreme Court ruling indicating the court is poised to effectively overturn Roe V. Wade, you can expect a new wave of worry about the weaponization and abuse of consumer location data, as states increasingly seek to criminalize abortion — and those aiding others seeking such services. As if on cue: Motherboard’s latest […]

Nearly the entire online-game-playing world hates the fact that cheating in online games exist. The cheaters don’t, obviously. Nor do those that make money by selling cheats and hacks for online games. Given the majority/minority situation here, it’s perhaps not terribly surprising that efforts to combat online cheating very often go way, way too far. […]

The New Yorker magazine is famous for its fact checking effort. Indeed, the New Yorker itself has written multiple pieces about how ridiculously far its fact checking team will go. And when people want to present the quintessential example of how “fact checking” should work, they often point to The New Yorker. Of course, I […]

Courthouse News Service, as its name would imply, relies heavily on court documents to create content. Over the past few years, however, random court clerks around the nation have suddenly decided the old way of doing things was no longer acceptable. For years, reporters have been given access to filings the day that they’re filed. […]

We’ve noted for a while now how Elon Musk’s Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband service isn’t going to have the impact many think. For one thing, the service can currently only provide service to a maximum of around 800,000 subscribers globally. For context, around 20-40 million people in the U.S. lack broadband, and 83 million live under a broadband monopoly […]

The government of India still claims to be a democracy, but its decade-long assault on the internet and the rights of its citizens suggests it would rather be an autocracy. The country is already host to one of the largest biometric databases in the world, housing information collected from nearly every one of its 1.2 […]

The 2022 Cloud Computing And DevOps Super Bundle will teach you everything you need to know to build and manage your own Cloud Computing and DevOps environment. It’s jam-packed with all the most effective, time-tested techniques for building a fully-automated DevOps environment without any experience or previous knowledge of Cloud Computing. It’s on sale for […]

It would be nice if we could go at least a day or two without Republicans playing absolutely pathetic victims over made up moral panics. A few weeks ago, we debunked the nonsense story making the rounds in Trumpist media that a new study “proved” that “Gmail censored conservatives” by catching their campaign emails in […]

Eight years ago, prompted by the Snowden revelations (and Senator Ron Wyden’s persistent questions), then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper finally provided the public with some insight into the FBI’s warrantless searches of Americans’ data collected (supposedly inadvertently) by the NSA. The report delivered to Sen. Wyden was surprisingly redaction-free. But that didn’t mean it was […]

For those that run online video game services, there have been plenty of ways to deal with those who cheat in-game. Some, like Blizzard, look to twist copyright law into a pretzel to argue that cheating in an online game somehow constitutes infringement. Other companies have gone for more creative options. Cheaters in Pokémon Go […]