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The Coding 101 Bootcamp Beginners Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn how to code in many different languages. Courses cover C++, Git, Github, MongoDB, Node.js, HTML, CSS, and more. The bundle is on sale for $29. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]

“Who are we to judge?,” say federal court judges. That’s the questionable conclusion reached by an otherwise solid reading [PDF] of the constitutional implications of one of law enforcement’s favorite new tools: “reverse” warrants. (h/t Orin Kerr/Volokh Conspiracy) They’re called “reverse” warrants because the paperwork asks Google to turn over location info on everyone in […]

Remember when the cable and broadcast industry insisted that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional cable TV subscriptions) wasn’t actually a real trend? Or how, once they finally acknowledged it was a real thing, insisted that it was just a temporary fad that would abate once Millennials started having babies? Years later and amazingly enough the very […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side, our first place winner is MathFox with a response to Minnesota’s anti-algorithm social media bill: No algorithm means: no filtering against harassment, no filtering against violent content, no filtering of pornographic content and no filter to keep child predators out Are those Minnesota “representatives” so […]

Last week, to kick off our series of posts about the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926, we took a look at Best Adaptation winner The Wall Across The River. Today, we move on to the winner of the Best Deep Cut category: The Obstruction Method by Jason […]

Clearview AI has been disinvited from yet another country. This unrolling of the unwelcome mat also includes a hefty exit fee. (h/t Michael Vario) The Italian privacy guarantor (GPDP) has imposed a fine of €20,000,000 on Clearview AI for implementing a biometric monitoring network in Italy without acquiring people’s consent. This decision resulted from a […]

Thanks to Vladimir Putin and his one-man show designed to educate the world on just what can happen when a murderous dictator decides to throw a fit, the news is chock full of Ukraine. This has included Techdirt’s pages, which really shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. Still, I will admit that I didn’t […]

As Omar (RIP, Michael K. Williams) pointed out, using only his whistling and his sawed-off shotgun, “If you come at the king, you’d best not miss.” The “king” of First Amendment protections has always been the independent press, especially when coupled with issues of public interest that (almost always) involve government employees and officials. The […]

As the debate about how to rein in Big Tech and its anti-competitive practices continues, news publishers and telecommunications providers are increasingly calling for large pay-outs from major platforms. However, these proposals risk restricting users into ever-smaller walled gardens and cementing the dominance of a few big players. On Valentine’s day, an open letter from the CEOs […]

A year ago, the wonderful podcast, 99% Invisible, had a great episode exploring the history of state slogans and other statements ending up on license plates. It’s very entertaining and worth listening to. As part of it, it highlights an important free speech lawsuit, brought by George Maynard, a Jehovah’s Witness, to argue that New […]

The Fusion C is here, and it’s ready to replace your bulky desktop tower PC. Not much bigger than a small cigar box, the Fusion C comes loaded with a built-in Intel quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, and a pre-installed version of Windows 10 Home to make getting through your daily to-dos a breeze. Taking […]

To talk about game developer/serial litigant Jonathan Monsarrat is to open up several cans of hilarious and repulsive worms. Mike Masnick played catch up on Monsarrat’s past and present legal problems in this lengthy 2013 post, where Monsarrat — founder of video game company, Turbine — was slapped around by Booth Sweet LLP (of Prenda […]

Back in January DirecTV finally decided to axe OAN, the conspiracy and fantasy channel, from its cable lineup. The decision came just three months or so after a blockbuster report showed that AT&T not only helped fund and set up the “news” outlet, but it came up with the idea. OAN has been notorious for spreading […]

Apparently, it’s not enough that we pay their salaries and buy their uniforms, vehicles, and weapons. We’re also expected to foot the bill when law enforcement officers fuck up so badly they can’t even avail themselves of qualified immunity, a Supreme Court-created legal doctrine that has been watered down for decades, allowing all but the […]

Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users who shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far as to say he “loved” password sharing, seeing it as akin to free advertising. The idea was that as […]

The various “for the children” moral panic bills about the internet are getting dumber. Over in Minnesota, the legislature has moved forward with a truly stupid bill, which the legislature’s own website says could make the state “a national leader in putting new guardrails on social media platforms.” The bill is pretty simple — it […]

We recently discussed noted fascist and fist-raiser Josh Hawley and his campaign’s decision to start selling campaign merchandise using a photo from a Politico photographer. As part of that post, we talked about how the Associated Press was looking into whether this constituted copyright infringement. I very much think it does not, given that the […]

If you work for the government and the government is leaning towards more power and less accountability, why wouldn’t you be supportive of the government, no matter who’s running the joint? That’s what happened in the Intelligence Community, according to a whistleblower who oversaw the IC’s internal chat services for nearly a decade. An internal […]

An extra screen is a great tool to help you work more efficiently, whether you are coding, sketching, studying, or even gaming. But Desklab isn’t just another monitor that mirrors and distorts your device’s screen. This versatile, ultra-portable screen can transform your laptop into a fully functional touch panel that optimizes your ability to design, […]

Ridiculous, unhinged, anti-internet legislation is a bipartisan affair. The latest such examples is California’s new (awkwardly named) Social Media Platform Duty to Children Act. As you can likely tell from the name, this is yet another moral panic “think of the children!” bill. It argues that social media is addictive and that we need to […]

Hoping to pretend that the U.S. broadband industry is vibrant and competitive, every so often the broadband industry will issue a broad proclamation that U.S. broadband is secretly amazing and super affordable. Unfortunately data uniformly, clearly shows that it’s not. The availability of fast speeds remains spotty, prices remain high, and customer service, while improving […]

It rarely seems obvious, but you can just walk away from (some) unwanted interactions with law enforcement. People with badges and guns often make this option seem untenable, what with their badges and guns and often profane shouting. But law enforcement officers need a certain amount of reasonable suspicion to detain people. But the less […]

It appears that Donald Trump’s social network, at least in its initial form, is following the pattern of many of Donald Trump’s other business ventures: lots of hype, but little in the way of an actual business. As Politico has detailed, even the MAGA world isn’t exactly rushing to make Truth Social the Trumpist paradise […]

Over the last few years, the entertainment industry and big copyright have ramped up a war against VPN providers here in the U.S., culminating in a lawsuit against VPN provider Torguard by nearly two-dozen movie studios. The same studios had demanded $10 million in damages from another VPN provider, LiquidVPN, earlier last year. In both […]

There aren’t many ways to make something as objectively awful as civil asset forfeiture worse, but the FBI has found a way to do it. As it stands now, forfeiture allows law enforcement to take cash and property from people under the (unproven) theory that it was illegally obtained. The rest of the process does […]

Today is the 12th anniversary of the release FCC’s National Broadband Plan (NBP). In March of 2010, the FCC responded to Congress’s direction to develop a plan for broadband with the intent to ensure every American has “access to broadband capability.” This proposal was assembled with input across 36 public workshops, 31 public notices, 9 […]

The Microsoft Office Home & Business Bundle is for families and small businesses who want classic Office apps and email. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. A one-time purchase installed on 1 computer for use at home or work. Available for Mac or PC, it’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt […]

You may have noticed a whole bunch of stories about copyright lawsuits lately against famous musicians for having songs that sound just kind of like some other songs. I’d been meaning to write up something talking about all of these stories about how Ed Sheeran is supposedly a “magpie” who “borrows” songs, or about how […]

The U.S. is preparing to spend $42 billion to shore up broadband access, despite not actually knowing where broadband is or isn’t available. U.S. broadband maps have stunk for decades, and we’ve spent that entire time trying to fix mediocre U.S. broadband without using real world data to actually do it. Much of the problem was extremely […]

There are lots of reasons to have fallen in love with Wordle. The simple nature of the game. The ability to post spoiler-friendly brags for how you did on any given puzzle. The clean design. But here at Techdirt, we obviously became smitten with how Wordle’s creator, Josh Wardle, professed no interest in the ongoing […]

The New York Post editorial team has apparently decided some rights are more important than others. The Post has the First Amendment right to publish its opinion on other rights, even when it’s clearly in the wrong. And it’s willing to do so because it has long enjoyed an unhealthy relationship with the city’s police […]

Five years ago, we were joined on the podcast by author and law professor Aaron Perzanowski to discuss his book about the impact of copyright on property in the digital age, The End of Ownership. That book touched on the issue of repairing devices and the ways companies make it difficult, but his new book, […]

In 2021, Columbia Law professor Philip Hamburger, whose own website at the school describes him as “one of the preeminent scholars writing today on constitutional law,” beclowned himself in the pages of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial pages (which seem always open for a beclowning, so long as the beclowning supports Rupert Murdoch’s blinkered worldview). […]

ICE wants data and doesn’t care how it gets it. Its recently-elevated pursuit of all things not considered naturally American has increased its demands for information on… well, everybody. It works with private sector data brokers and data analysts to hoover up location info — something not strictly limited to movements at or near borders. […]

Degoo is AI-based cloud storage that helps you rediscover your best photos. With Degoo you get supremely secured backup space from which to manage and share files with awesome simplicity. With high-speed transfers from a database that offers more backup space than Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive combined, you’ll love how easy it is to […]

The UK’s euphemistically named Online Safety Bill is a disaster waiting to happen. The crux of the bill: any time anything bad happens online, we blame internet companies for it and take some of their money. As the bill has continued to go through discussions, it’s been getting worse and worse. The latest is that […]

Last week we noted how telecom backbone provider Cogent had decided to “punish Putin” for slaughtering Ukrainian civilians by severing the company’s transit routes to Russia. Cogent insisted that sanctions and an “uncertain security situation” made it “impossible for Cogent to continue to provide you with service.” While the goal is usually to apply pressure […]

Pretextual stops are law enforcement at its most shameless. The laws and the courts have blessed this activity, which involves cops claiming stops are justified for one reason while using the stop to go fishing for evidence or info related to a completely different criminal act. The Supreme Court curbed these stops a bit, preventing […]

Private companies have a lot of people to answer to. When you ask them, they’ll claim its either shareholders or customers that they owe their ultimate duty to. Ask them a couple of more times and they may admit they’re only accountable to their shareholders. But there’s more to it than this. The term “private” […]

For years we’ve noted how the U.S. has consistently maintained a fairly pathetic speed definition of “broadband” at the behest of major monopolies that didn’t want to try very hard. Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. […]

For a few years now, the Australian government has been seeking to outlaw online anonymity. This effort has moved forward under the delusional belief this will somehow result in a new era of online civility, something that has been repeatedly disproven by similar private sector efforts, like Facebook’s real name policy (and the downstream utilization […]

About the only positive thing you can say about famed play/movie writer David Mamet deciding to file an amicus brief in support of Texas in that state’s appeal of a district court correctly tossing the state’s social media content moderation bill as unconstitutional is… that it has fewer swear words than your typical Mamet production. […]

Use ITU Online Training’s for your own career advancement, and if you have any children at home who are tech-curious, let them try out IT beginner courses to get a head start in life. You’ll get 24/7 access to training in the topics of network admin skills, Cloud deployment, database/server management, networking fundamentals, cybersecurity training, […]

Cops love military gear. For years, they’ve cultivated a mindset that pits them against the public in a war against crime — a “war” that justifies any collateral damage to the public and its trust in its protectors. The federal government has embraced this combative stance, handing out excess military gear to law enforcement agencies, […]

When you’re a natural telecom monopoly in America you get away with a lot. Take for example broadband ISP Frontier Communications, which has spent the last few years stumbling in and out of bankruptcy while dodging no shortage of scandals, including allegations of subsidy fraud. A few years back, Frontier got a light wrist slap for […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment about the steps toward the Russian splinternet: A Reminder: The people most hurt by war always have the least to do with causing it. In second place, it’s Thad with a comment about how tracking an innocent person’s […]

This week, we announced the winners in all six categories of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926. For the next few weeks, we’ll be taking a closer look at each of the winning games (in no particular order). Today, the spotlight is on the winner of the Best Adaptation category: […]

For all the posts we’ve done on the impact of video games on society, I have found myself typically either beating back the notion that gaming is a terrible thing responsible for all the world’s problems or talking about common IP conflicts. On the topic of the internet generally, well, it’s mostly the same. But […]

By now you surely know that former Congressman and current satirical cow censor Devin Nunes has become quite well known for his series of SLAPP suits against people who made him feel bad. It started with his lawsuit against the satirical parody cow Twitter account, but that lawsuit also included political consultant Liz Mair, who […]

A month ago, the controversial EARN IT Act sailed through a markup hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. If enacted, the bill would strip the providers of online services of Section 230 immunity for their users’ child sexual exploitation offenses, meaning they could be subject to civil suit by private plaintiffs and criminal charges under state law. The idea is that […]