Techdirt

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, new CIA director Mike Pompeo went on a hypocritical rant about Wikileaks and free speech, the administration killed Open.Gov, and the DOJ boss was railing against encryption. Tech companies were fighting against Trump’s travel bans in two different courts, and Roku was getting into the lobbying world to […]

A case involving a DUI stop that somehow morphed into the search of a passenger has earned a couple of cops a rebuke from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and a couple of handy reminders in a precedential decision that will make it that much tougher for law enforcement officers in this circuit to […]

Well, this one is moving fast. It was only a few days ago that we talked about a lawsuit filed by Sycamore Brewing against Stone Brewing for what sure looked like a pretty blatant ripoff of the former’s trademarked slogan, “Keep It Juicy”. What made this story notable was that Stone Brewing is just coming […]

Law enforcement officers are more used to violating rights than having theirs violated, so this case — brought to us by Courthouse News Service — is something of an anomaly. But it is a good discussion of some issues that don’t receive a lot of attention. Like, how is “reasonable” defined in terms of searches […]

We had mentioned just how pathetically ridiculous it was that the Florida legislature was considering stripping the already unconstitutional Disney theme park exemption fully from the unconstitutional social media bill that was passed, with the help of Disney, just last year. And on Thursday, as expected, the Republicans in Florida’s legislature went ahead and approved […]

On Thursday, former President Barack Obama gave a speech at Stanford University talking about “Challenges to Democracy in the Digital Information Realm.” It’s worth watching, even if I have some issues with it. My very short summary is that he’s much more willing than most of the pundit class to grapple with the nuances and […]

The 2022 Complete Raspberry Pi and Arduino Developer Bundle has 9 courses to teach you everything you need to know to start creating your own projects. Courses cover Linux, C++, Python 3, ROS, and more. You’ll learn through a combination of lectures and hands-on projects. The bundle is on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store […]

There has been a push over the last few months by some pro-patent academics and (of course) the pharmaceutical industry to insist that high drug prices and high healthcare costs have nothing whatsoever to do with our broken patent system that grants drug and device makers a full on monopoly. That claim doesn’t just defy […]

We’ve noted several times how the Trump FCC spent four years being little more than a giant rubber stamp for the nation’s biggest 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. The Trump GOP and Congress killed efforts […]

In February, cash transport business Empyreal Logistics sued the DOJ and a California sheriff for the lifting of nearly $1.2 million in cash from its drivers during two traffic stops. Empyreal, which notes that it follows all federal guidance for the transport of cash generated by legal marijuana sales, was hit twice in California, resulting […]

Angry Joe, real name Jose Antonio Vargas, has appeared on our pages several times in the past. In addition to being a famed YouTube creator with a huge following, Angry Joe also regularly rages against the DMCA machine. Whether he’s criticizing Twitch’s takedown policies, swearing off Nintendo for being bullies, or battling CBS over television […]

We’ve written a bunch about Carl Malamud, who has devoted so much of his time and energy towards freeing the law. While that may sound ridiculous that the law needs to be “freed,” Malamud noticed, before most others, different forces that were looking to lock up (and often from) the actual text of the laws. […]

In most people’s heads, electric vehicles are going to very quickly supplant gas-powered vehicles in the next few years, resulting in massive disruption and a massive boost to climate change mitigation. But there’s trouble in paradise: experts continue to warn that we lack the elements and supply chain necessary to ramp up production of electric […]

For years now we’ve been following cases related to scraping data off of websites and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The CFAA is an extremely poorly drafted law, that has been stretched by both law enforcement and civil plaintiffs alike to argue that all sorts of things are “unauthorized access” and therefore hacking. […]

The 2022 Ultimate Big Data Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn about software development and data visualization. You’ll learn about Python, Pandas, Numpy, Raspberry Pi, and more. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support […]

Back in 2017, the Indian government — having collected at least some biometric records from most of its 1.2 billion citizens — did what was previously considered unthinkable: it opened up access to these records to anyone willing to pay for the privilege. What had been collected involuntarily was sold to private companies for use […]

Given the seemingly endless privacy scandals that now engulf the tech, telecom, and adtech sectors on a near-daily basis, many consumers have flocked to virtual private networks (VPN) to protect and encrypt their data. One study found that VPN use quadrupled between 2016 and 2018 as consumers rushed to try and protect themselves in the wake of […]

The opportunistic actions of drug warriors has often been encouraged by courts, which have been willing to grant considerable leeway to law enforcement, even when their articulated suspicion is contradictory or could be read to cover nearly 100% of the American public. (And when that fails, there’s always the ever-popular “odor of marijuana” claim which […]

What is it about producing champagne that turns you into a trademark bullying jackwagon? Readers here will know that the Comite Champagne, or CIVC, is purely a trademark bully for champagne producers out of France, policing the rest of the world to ensure nobody dares call anything not produced by one of its constituents anything […]

Last week, Zoom announced its plans to add emotion detecting tech to its virtual meeting platform, something it apparently felt would facilitate the art of the deal. Here’s Kate Kaye, breaking the news for Protocol. Virtual sales meetings have made it tougher than ever for salespeople to read the room. So, some well funded tech […]

For a while there in 2019, it seemed like a month couldn’t go by without (then) Rep. Devin Nunes suing some critic or another (including, somewhat infamously, a satirical cow). After kicking it off by suing mocking livestock, he quickly moved on to suing news organizations. A big one was suing CNN, a favored punching […]

God help you if you lie to a cop. We’re not even talking about court, where everyone swears to tell the whole truth, etc. before being subjected to testilying by law enforcement officers. We’re talking about the questioning that happens after law enforcement decides someone is a person of interest. Cops are terrible at solving […]

Charge all your devices in one place with this sleek and compact, 3-in-1 wireless charging station. Pop your phone, smart watch, and wireless earbuds on the designated spots and charge them all at once without worrying about cords or needing multiple chargers. You can even fold it up and take it with you wherever you […]

Maybe it’s a weird personal flaw or something, but one of the most fascinating things in business to me is watching one-time pesky disruptors inevitably pivot into powerful turf protectors. As well as all the executive finger-pointing, shenanigans, and denialism that process usually entails. Take, for example, Netflix. After being disruptive and shaking up streaming […]

Apparently, it’s not enough to prevent hundreds or thousands of people with “no known affiliation” with terrorist groups from flying — a list that includes children who have yet to enter kindergarten. Even though the TSA long ago admitted (albeit, not publicly) the threat to airline flights was almost nonexistent, it still needs to look […]

It’s been a bit since we’ve talked about 3D printing, which I mostly took to mean that the world realized that there was no massive threat here and that we all collectively decided to make this a non-controversy. Early on there was some noise made about larger companies viewing the ability for the public to […]

We just got done noting how the telecom industry has been pushing misleading editorials in Arizona to derail the nomination of popular and well-qualified telecom and telecom reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The editorials are full of false claims that Sohn has a terrible track record on media diversity, shoveled by organizations with longstanding […]

So much of the debate about Section 230 is based on an incorrect understanding of its procedural benefits, and the completely false idea that it’s a special gift to “big tech”. A new paper (which we wrote about yesterday) by Elizabeth Banker from the Chamber of Progress dives deep into the real benefits and beneficiaries […]

It can always get dumber. As you’ll recall, last year Florida man governor Ron DeSantis, as part of his big push to become the new populist leader of ignorant people, pushed for a law to force social media websites to host political content they didn’t want to host. He convinced the subservient Florida Legislature to […]

In early 2020, Peter Brimelow, the founder of the incredibly sketchy site VDARE, sued the NY Times for calling him an “open white nationalist” among other similar things. Brimelow and VDARE have only spent two decades or so pushing for “ethno nationalism,” that “America is not a melting pot,” and that we need to “preserve […]

The Complete 2022 Agile and DevOps Training Bundle has 7 courses on Agile Scrum, and DevOps certification exam prep. You’ll learn about the Agile and Scrum methodologies of project management that are an integral part of ensuring your entire team knows what to expect from start to finish, keeps everyone on deadlines, and gets you […]

A few weeks ago, Rene Ebersole drew the curtain back on law enforcement forensic training, showing the public that their tax dollars were being blown on forensic education handed out by Dr. Arpad Vass — someone who in the year of our lord two thousand twenty-two is teaching cops how to utilize witching to locate […]

ISPs, looking to undermine, FCC authority managed to frame the whole net neutrality debate as “partisan” as to sow dissent, prevent consensus, block reform, and justify the 2017 repeal. But the idea was never really partisan. Despite headlines and DC rhetoric, a massive bipartisan majority of Americans actually supported the rules. Why? Because net neutrality […]

Praise be to the various gods! (Shout out to Tiamat!) The DOJ is back in the busting up local PD business, something it largely abandoned while Donald “A Police State Is The Best State” Trump held office for a single term. The DOJ Civil Rights Division was relegated to the furthest back burner during Trump’s […]

We’ve tried to make this point many times before. A few months back I wrote a detailed post in response to a famed economist who kept insisting that repealing Section 230 would hurt Facebook, that the reality is the opposite. If you understand the mechanisms by which Section 230 actually works, the key is that […]

Cops may have only the vaguest grasp on the laws they use to initiate stops, but they sure as hell understand copyright law. With algorithms doing the heavy lifting to prevent copyright infringement, cops have deployed a new tactic in hopes of preventing accountability activists from livestreaming or uploading their interactions with officers. When the […]

Last week, about the same time I posted by giant post on all the things that Elon Musk didn’t understand about content moderation, former Reddit CEO Yishan Wong posted a really long, but completely worth reading thread about content moderation on social networks. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but did want […]

A world leader not known for shying away from truly terrible ideas about speech and the internet is back at it again. A few years ago, French President Emmanuel Macron delivered, as Cathy Gellis put it, “a speech only an autocrat would love,” decrying pretty much everything that’s good and open about the internet while […]

Agenda is a date-focused note-taking app for macOS, iPadOS, and iOS, which helps you plan and document your projects. Agenda gives you a complete picture of the past, present, and future, driving your projects forward. Whether you’re a business manager noting decisions in a meeting, a teacher planning next week’s lessons, or a blogger brainstorming […]

Behold! An actually interesting academic study exploring whether or not Twitter moderation has an anti-conservative bias! This is something many of us have been asking for for a while, but it’s a very difficult thing to study in any meaningful way. The results of this study are actually really fascinating, but it’s important to dig […]

We’ve long covered how cable and broadband companies use a rotating array of bullshit fees to covertly jack up advertised rates, hitting you with a much higher bill after you’ve subscribed. We’ve also noted how new streamlined technologies have been turning the binding arbitration process on its head, making it easier and more affordable for […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a comment about Ed Sheeran filming his songwriting sessions to avoid copyright complaints, in response to a commenter saying it’s unfair to malign the copyright holders who went after him, because they legitimately own the rights they own: The legitimacy of the […]

Here we are at the last 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, Dreaming The Cave, Mr. Top Hat Doesn’t Give A Damn!, and A Drunk Man Looks at […]

On February 2, 2022, Minneapolis PD officers executed a no-knock raid on an apartment. Officer Mark Hanneman then summarily executed Amir Locke within seconds of his entry into the apartment. The Minneapolis PD suggested Amir Locke had plenty of time to realize police officers were in the apartment. The body cam time stamps showed something […]

Cops lie. It’s a statement more factual than statements cops — the people given the biggest benefit of a doubt in “your word against mine” courtroom showdowns — tend to make when testifying or filling out reports. Here’s the most recent example of cops lying. And it’s only one of several. A Missouri State Highway […]

In the pantheon of aggressive intellectual property bullies, Disney certainly would be one of the companies that would be competing to be Zeus. Disney has simply never seen an opportunity for IP enforcement that it hasn’t acted upon, be it copyright, trademark, or anywhere in between. More to the point for this post, Disney also […]

A few months after the snippet tax was agreed to as part of the EU Copyright Directive, Australia indicated it wanted to take the same route. The government there planned to make Internet companies pay newspapers for sending the latter extra traffic, by imposing something called the News Media Bargaining Code. In a blog post […]

Last week, federal agents took down two alleged baddies for doing the thing: impersonating federal agents. Two men have been arrested for allegedly impersonating federal agents over the course of several years. The FBI alleges that Arian Taherzadeh, 40, and Haider Ali, 35, have been pretending to be various officers and employees of the U.S. […]

The Z2 headphones earned their name because they feature twice the sound, twice the battery life, and twice the convenience of competing headphones. This updated version of the original Z2s comes with a new all-black design and Bluetooth 5.0. Packed with TREBLAB’s most advanced Sound2.0 technology with aptX and T-Quiet active noise-cancellation, these headphones deliver goose bump-inducing […]

Lots of talk yesterday as Elon Musk made a hostile takeover bid for all of Twitter. This was always a possibility, and one that we discussed before in looking at how little Musk seemed to understand about free speech. But soon after the bid was made public, Musk went on stage at TED to be […]