Techdirt

We’ve noted a few times now that while Facebook gets most of the heat for its privacy scandals, the stuff going on in the telecom, app, and adtech markets in regards to location data makes many of Facebook’s privacy issues seem like a grade school picnic. That was well highlighted by the recent Securus, LocationSmart, and numerous T-Mobile […]

Back in December we wrote about just how absolutely, pathetically ridiculous Alex Berenson’s lawsuit against Twitter was. As you’ll recall, Berenson, who has accurately been described as the “pandemic’s wrongest man“, got kicked off Twitter after posting a non-stop stream of utter nonsense, completely misinterpreting vaccine data in ways that weren’t just embarrassing but that […]

Late last year, more than 165 Hertz customers sued the company over false allegations of theft. Multiple plaintiffs claimed they had been stopped by law enforcement for supposedly having stolen a rental car. In some cases, customers were jailed for months before criminal charges were dropped. One former Hertz employee claims this is just how […]

As everyone’s trying to read the tea leaves of what an Elon Musk-owned Twitter will actually look like, it’s been reported that in his presentation to Wall St. banks to get the financing he needs to complete the deal, he suggested the deal would be profitable because of some of his new business model ideas. […]

Free up space on your phone, tablet, laptop, or home computer. Prism Drive is a lightning fast hot storage solution that allows you to store all of your files in one place, and access them from any device. Easily share large files, like video, graphics, images, and audio. Access files from your computer, your phone, […]

NSO Group’s reputation continues to decline, tracked inversely by the rise of Citizen Lab, a team of Canadian security researchers working out of the University of Toronto. Citizen Lab has exposed plenty of abuse by NSO’s customers, and saved plenty of malware targets from remaining compromised by NSO-crafted spyware. This obviously hasn’t made NSO Group […]

You may have heard that Republican politicians have been celebrating Elon Musk’s announced plans to purchase Twitter, in the belief that his extraordinarily confused understanding of free speech and content moderation will allow them to ramp up the kinds of nonsense, abuse, and harassment they can spread on Twitter. I’m still not convinced that will […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side comes in the form of a reply that builds on the second place winner. So for clarity’s sake, we’ll present them in reverse order! In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a piece-by-piece reply to yet another comment on our post about how Twitter […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Ajit Pai unveiled his plan to replace net neutrality rules with fluff, while Canada was trying to defend net neutrality. Congress was trying (and then succeeding) to strip oversight from the Copyright Office, while a Texas lawamaker was looking for the power to decide who counts as a […]

Now this one surprises me. We’ve been talking recently about a trademark infringement suit brought against Stone Brewing by Sycamore Brewing, a much smaller brewery. Fresh off a massive win against Molson Coors over its decision to alter the branding for Key Stone beer to feature the word “stone” in very big letters, Stone Brewing […]

There was recently an absolutely fascinating episode of the NPR podcast Planet Money, all about how Tai Verdes became a pop star. It actually appears to be a rerun of a different podcast, called Switched On Pop, which originally ran back in December of last year, but I first heard it on Planet Money. The […]

Citing a post-pandemic shutdown surge in violent crime and some other shaky reasoning, the city council of Houston, Texas has decided the time has come to violate the rights of business owners. Here’s Elizabeth Nolan Brown for Reason: Officials in Houston, Texas, have voted to require an array of businesses—including bars, convenience stores, and strip clubs—to install […]

The Biden Administration just announced the creation of a DHS subagency apparently intended to confront “disinformation.” The biggest problem with it is that it is impossible, right now, to even know whether it’s a good idea or not, because it is so unclear what this board is intended to do. Further, its name does not […]

Earlier this week, law professor Orin Kerr raised an alert. The 9th Circuit appeals court had come out with a ruling in a case regarding the question of whether or not preservation requests counted as a seizure under the 4th Amendment, and basically said “nope.” As Kerr notes, this ruling effectively could allow the government […]

The 2022 Ultimate DevOps And Agile Bundle has 6 courses to help you learn how to implement DevOps into your organization, and how to foster an Agile team culture. You’ll learn how to improve collaboration, increase efficiency, and reduce waste. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by […]

When law enforcement officials get caught saying something extremely troublesome at press conferences, the first page of the police playbook is to accuse everyone reporting/retweeting the news of misinterpreting the statements made and/or spreading misinformation. It’s the “my account was hacked” of the Thin Blue Line — a claim no one believes but one that […]

The U.S. is about to spend an historic $42.5 billion on expanding affordable broadband access courtesy of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA). While this spending is largely being organized by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), much of it involves grants that will need to be managed by the states. The problem: […]

Over the past few years, we’ve seen a flurry of activity centering around video game emulation. Much of that has been focused on how a few companies, namely Nintendo, have reacted to emulation sites. Almost universally, these companies see emulation as a threat and try to get them shut down. Often times those same companies […]

Bogus lawsuits are a form of bullying. (Hence the need for a federal anti-SLAPP law.) Some lawsuits are merely frivolous, filed by people who have no idea how the law works. Others, like this one, are filed solely to silence critics and remind them who actually has the power in this relationship. That’s what has […]

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) set aside $42.5 billion to be spent by the states on expanding access to affordable broadband. But state by state, telecom lobbyists are working hard to ensure that this money only goes toward “unserved” locations, and can’t be used to potentially create competition in markets they already serve. […]

Content ID isn’t really the villain here. But it’s an accomplice. YouTube content moderation — including the prevention of copyright infringement — is almost completely automated. It has to be. As of 2019, more than 500 hours of content were uploaded to YouTube every minute. Machines have to do the work because human moderation is […]

Last chance to get your boxed copy of CIA: Collect It All! If you’ve been around Techdirt for a while, you’ll probably recall that almost exactly four years ago, we launched our Kickstarter for CIA: Collect It All. This was our version of an internal CIA training card game, called “Collection Deck” that was partially […]

The 2022 School of Graphic Design Bundle has 8 courses to help you start on your path to becoming a digital artist. Courses cover Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Figma, and more. You’ll learn how to edit and enhance your photos and videos, how to create a portfolio, how to build a mobile app without coding, and […]

So there has been lots of talk about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter. I’ve written multiple things about how little he understands about free speech and how little he understands content moderation. I’ve also written (with giant caveats) about ways in which his takeover of Twitter might improve some things. Throughout this discussion, […]

For more than a decade, cable TV executives brushed aside the idea of cable TV “cord cutting” as either a nonexistent threat or a temporary phenomenon that wound end once Millennials started procreating. Of course, none of that wound up being true, and consumer defections from the bloated, pricey traditional cable TV bundle continue to set records during […]

Field drug tests are awful. They’re insanely unreliable. Sure, sometimes the tests are correct: the suspected drugs are actual drugs. Broken clocks and all that. But they’re so often wrong they should be considered as scientifically sound as hiring a full-time psychic and promoting them to detective. Here’s a short list of things drug field […]

I’ll admit I’ve written some posts of praise here for Sega, usually due to the company’s more lax attitude on fan-made creations alongside the company’s habit of making fun of Nintendo for going the opposite route. But taking a look at the wider number of posts we’ve done involving Sega, the company is by and […]

More case law on compelled passcode production and the Fifth Amendment has been generated by a New Jersey appeals court. Unfortunately, it doesn’t do anything to strengthen Fifth Amendment protections against compelled production. And that’s largely because this court can’t. The state’s Supreme Court handed down a ruling in August 2020 that limited the “foregone […]

Update: After this post went up, Tech Review appears to have done a major edit to that article, and added a correction about the completely false claim regarding Section 230 protecting CSAM. The article still has problems, but is no longer quite as egregiously wrong. The post below is about the original article. MIT’s Tech […]

Earlier this year, we covered what appears to be the first of several lawsuits filed on behalf of parents by the Social Media Victims Law Center. In that lawsuit, the mother of an eleven-year-old who committed suicide sued Meta and Snap, claiming SnapChat’s algorithmically enabled feedback loops drove her daughter to her death. The suit […]

The Complete 2022 Microsoft Office Master Class Bundle has 14 courses to help you learn all you need to know about MS Office products to help boost your productivity. Courses cover SharePoint, Word, Excel, Access, Outlook, Teams, and more. The bundle is on sale for $75. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]

Play the game and test your skills » Can you survive the Startup Trail? Today we’re launching a browser-playable startup policy simulator game called Startup Trail, developed in partnership with Engine. Here’s your chance to learn about all the challenges of building a successful tech startup in the face of all sorts of obstacles. Over […]

If you listened to Verizon fifth-generation wireless (5G) marketing at any time during the last three years, it went something like this: fifth generation (5G) wireless was going to absolutely transform the world by building the smart cities of tomorrow, revolutionizing medicine, and driving an ocean of innovation. In reality, US 5G has largely landed with […]

When it comes to fan-created video games utilizing established IP, the vast majority of instances tend to result in a narrow set of responses from the original creators or publishers. The Nintendo route is to go fully nuclear as often and immediately as possible, destroying any and all attempts. Take 2 follows a similar path, […]

The idea that there is a link between the exclusivity period on patents and higher drug prices is about as noncontroversial as a view can be. It is the easy question on an ECON 101 exam on monopolies, supply and demand. Yet, somehow, this has come under attack thanks to big PhRMA and their minions. […]

An in-depth report on Israeli malware manufacturer NSO Group has (again) exposed the company’s lies about its activities (and the activities of its customers). Here’s what NSO said to Calcalist in July of last year as the steady drip of bad news became a cascade. According to [NSO founder and CEO Shalev] Hulio, “the average […]

Hey, finally time for a little bit of good news in the world of free speech: the Kentucky General Assembly recently passed the Kentucky Uniform Public Expression Protection Act. It’s a kind of anti-SLAPP bill that is based on a model bill, the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), and similar to a bill passed […]

A couple of weeks ago, a police transparency activist caught something on video: a cop trying not to get caught on video. That isn’t the interesting part. Lots of cops hate being recorded, even by their own cameras. This Santa Ana police officer was rolling through a neighborhood — supposedly to investigate a stolen car […]

CramWise has compiled CompTIA certification exam simulators into one comprehensive bundle for your convenience. This bundle includes only exam simulators with Performance-Based Questions (PBQs) and CompTIA labs following the Official CompTIA exam objectives. The bundle includes exam prep for, CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1001), CompTIA A+ Core 2 (220-1002), CompTIA Network+ (N10-008), CompTIA Security+ (SY0-601), CompTIA […]

For all the talk of how Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter to make it more supportive of free speech, there remain a ton of questions about what it will actually mean in practice. I’ve explained why his conception of free speech is incredibly naïve and his ideas around content moderation are not just outdated […]

U.S. wireless company T-Mobile hasn’t had what you’d call a stellar track record on privacy or security. Last year, the company was forced to acknowledge that hackers had obtained the personal details (including social security numbers) of more than 53 million T-Mobile customers, the sixth time the company had been meaningfully compromised in as many […]

It really feels like we shouldn’t have to have discussions about how companies should handle information that leaks onto the internet in 2022. Or, to be more precise, we should at least not have to remind them that attempting to re-bottle the leak-genie just isn’t going to work and will almost certainly have the opposite, […]

Feeling the crunch of this economy? Why not leverage government power to create a sustainable revenue stream? That’s the plan in Vietnam, a country not unfamiliar with regular deployments of censorial efforts by the government. The Vietnamese government keeps the internet — and its citizens — on a short leash. Only so much free expression […]

We’ve written numerous posts about the EU Copyright Directive, because it contains two extremely harmful ideas. The first is the “snippet tax“, an attempt by some press publishers to make sites like Google pay for the privilege of displaying and linking to newspaper publishers’ material – an assault on the Web’s underlying hyperlink technology. The second […]

In recent months, a lot of attention has been paid to private companies who assist governments with surveillance. Most of this has been focused on companies like Clearview (a company that scrapes the public web for data to sell to its customers) and NSO Group (an Israeli company that sells powerful cell phone exploits to […]

With it looking almost certain that Elon Musk will own Twitter in the very near future, a lot of people are freaking out, and I did think it was worthwhile to explore ways in which this might actually be good. At this point, I think it’s quite clear that Elon Musk’s comments about Twitter show […]

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For many, many, many years we’ve been talking about the idea of advertising as content and content as advertising on Techdirt. The basic idea is that in today’s world, where there are so many things competing for our attention, rather than trying to force annoying ads on people, advertisers should look to turn their advertising […]

We’ve noted for a long time how data makes it clear that, contrary to claims by telecom monopolies, community broadband networks are hugely beneficial. They generally offer faster speeds at lower prices with better customer service than regional monopolies, and they also tend to push said monopolies to try a little harder to compete on […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Naughty Autie with a comment about Peter Brimelow and VDARE, and specifically their past statements about how “America is not a melting pot”: Correct, America is not a ‘melting pot’. However, it has been multicultural ever since white people first invaded and occupied it […]