Techdirt

DuckDuckGo, of course, is a popular “alternative” search engine, using Microsoft’s Bing as its underlying search engine but then doing a bunch of generally good stuff for the wider internet/public, such as not trying to collect as much information on you as possible for tracking based ads, but focusing instead of intention based ads around […]

The Department of Justice has been keeping an eye on the Portland (OR) Police Bureau (PPB) for nearly a decade now, finding that officers routinely engage in excessive force, especially when dealing with residents suffering from mental illness. A consent decree was put in place in 2014. Since then, the Portland PD has violated the […]

Merge your creativity with science as you build exciting circuits using Circuit Scribe’s conductive ink pen, sweet magnetic modules, and plain old printer paper. By placing the paper over a steel sheet, included in every kit, your paper becomes the base for blinking lights, beeping buzzers, and whirling motors. Circuit Scribe’s DIY kit gives you everything you […]

Not only have corporate efforts to monopolize repair resulted in a flood of proposed state and federal laws, the idea was also included in the Biden Administration’s recent executive order on monopoly power and competition. Said order urged the FTC to tighten up its rules on repair monopolization efforts, whether it’s ham-fisted DRM, or making […]

There’s no business like cop business. When business is bad — like it can be following a high-profile murder by one of your officers — cops double down. They complain there’s too much scrutiny. They attack and punish people for engaging in First Amendment-protected activities. They engage in the very violence being protested against. And […]

We’ve been talking quite a bit lately about consolidation within the video game industry. As is often the case in times of economic strife, the pandemic has led to large entities in the gaming industry gobbling up smaller entities. Microsoft acquired Zenimax. Then Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard King for a wild amount of money. Soon […]

Last fall we had a whole series of blog posts explaining just how dangerous Rep. Jerry Nadler’s SHOP SAFE bill would be. It’s one of those bills that if you just hear what it’s about — stopping the sale of counterfeit goods online — sounds good. But only if you don’t understand how basically anything […]

Qualified immunity has been heavily criticized for what it allows law enforcement officers to get away with. The Supreme Court-created doctrine excuses officers from civil rights lawsuits even when it’s been shown rights were violated… so long as the rights violation hasn’t been previously ruled a rights violation by other courts with jurisdiction over the […]

We’ve already noted how several of the business decisions to shut down integral parts of the Internet to “punish Putin” aren’t really punishing Putin, but the Russian public. For example Cogent’s decision to sever Russia from the rest of the Internet is something that Putin generally wants given his longstanding desire to forge a sort […]

Last month, the NY Times published a really great article by (the always innovative) tech reporter Kashmir Hill, in which she tested out a bunch of those location tracking tools by hiding them (with permission) on her husband, Trevor Timm, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. It was a great and eye-opening […]

The Complete 2022 Linux Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you master Linux. You’ll start with the basics and move on to security techniques, shell scripting, command line, and more. The bundle is on sale for $69. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]

Tennessee has long been home to a truly astounding amount of First Amendment violations, some of which were enabled by courts’ willingness to entertain far too many bogus defamation lawsuits. And Daniel Horwitz has been a constant thorn in these courts’ sides, securing wins for clients facing bogus lawsuits. Fortunately, the legislature recently improved the […]

Fun fact: about 2,950,000 new subscribers signed up for broadband last year, and roughly 95 percent of them signed up with the biggest cable companies (primarily Comcast and Charter). These two cable giants’ market share continues to grow not really because they’re good — but because they’re the only option countless Americans have if they […]

A decade ago, we discussed how the pressure brought against Russia to more greatly enforce copyright laws was a mistake. A mistake mostly because of how Russia would choose to enforce those laws, namely by applying them only against critics of the state or undesirables, whether actual infringement was occurring or not. While Russia’s misuse […]

Remember NetzDG? This is the German content moderation law that has been a complete disaster from day one. It puts all sorts of requirements on social media companies to remove undesirable content in a very short period of time. Other countries, like Turkey, have used it as inspiration to pass their own laws to censor […]

It took a little longer than usual, but we’ve finally announced the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926! In this episode, Mike and I are joined by Randy Lubin (our partner in running the jam) to discuss the winners in all six categories, as well as some of […]

Well, it took us a little longer than usual, but we’re finally ready to announce the winners of our fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926! We asked designers to create games based on works published in 1926 (plus some earlier sound recordings, due to the complexities of copyright law) that entered […]

There are multiple places government agencies can go to acquire location data. The Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision put a damper on warrantless demands, but the private sector has rushed to fill this hole in the law enforcement market by selling access to data pulled from apps that don’t (currently) require a warrant to access. But […]

The 2022 SQL Freedom Course is for anyone who’s having difficulty writing SQL queries using the traditional ‘code-based’ method prevalent everywhere. Imagine being able to create SQL queries without writing any code. You simply interact with your data and the software builds the code for you in the background. It’s a system that follows a […]

Dear inevitable Google GDPR “right to erasure” specialist: Please skip three paragraphs down to learn why you should not remove this story or tag from search results, and that doing so would violate the limits placed on the right to erasure in the GDPR. Dear Thomas Goolnik: stop trying to hide information on how you […]

We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution. But that’s not what telecom […]

When it comes to Russia’s aggressive war in Ukraine and the world’s response to it, timelines obviously get quite compressed. I’ll admit to being somewhat surprised at how much relative unity there has been in the West’s response to Putin’s attempt to destroy European peace with its invasion of a neighboring country. This isn’t to […]

It’s difficult to overstate the amount of scammy bullshit that permeates the NFT space at the moment. On any given day my inbox is absolutely inundated with PR pitches for NFT-related products that are either pushing something that isn’t really new, don’t actually work, aren’t actually innovative if you eliminate the NFTs (the world’s first […]

Shortly after it was becoming clear Israeli malware manufacturer NSO Group was a troubling company selling to troubling governments (but before its odiousness hit critical mass last summer), the FBI took a meeting with NSO and test drove a bespoke exploit. It was a variant of NSO’s uber-powerful Pegasus malware — one that bypassed NSO’s […]

As Russia increasingly looks to cut itself off from the internet to avoid having any bit of reality reach its citizenry, others are working to get around the information blockade. The BBC on Friday reminded people that BBC News is available on the dark web in Ukrainian and Russian via Tor. As the BBC explained […]

While our attention is focused on a handful of Israeli malware purveyors that have the capability to turn phones into state witnesses, plenty of others are operating under the radar. Israel doesn’t have a monopoly on powerful phone exploits. It’s a crowded market and everybody — from totalitarian states to the FBI — wants some. […]

The 2022 Premium Python Programming PCEP Certification Prep Bundle will help you master the essentials of today’s digital literacy with 12 courses on beginner, intermediate, and professional Python training. You’ll learn how to build your own apps and websites, get an introduction to Machine Learning, and more. It’s on sale for $35. Note: The Techdirt […]

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is at it again. Over the last few years, he’s taken to using the Supreme Court’s denial of cert in various cases as his own personal blog, to randomly muse on legal issues without any briefing. He’s done it to attack long standing defamation/1st Amendment precedent, and has used it […]

It’s really hard to overstate what a colossal failure AT&T’s $200 billion acquisition of Time Warner and DirecTV was. And if you’re an AT&T executive with a bruised ego in the wake of the implosion, the hits just keep on coming. The megadeals were supposed to cement AT&T as a powerhouse in media and video […]

Over the last few weeks, as Russia invaded Ukraine, you’ve probably heard some version of the story about how carefully Putin prepared for economic sanctions against the country. Whether or not those preparations actually have helped protect Russia is another story, but it wasn’t just the economics part of the equation that Russia was preparing […]

Back in 2019, Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee along with Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden introduced a bill to study the actual impact of FOSTA on sex workers. While that bill unfortunately went nowhere, the same group is now back and have reintroduced the SAFE SEX Workers Study Act (SSWSA). This is an […]

The ice cream machines used by a majority of McDonald’s franchise owners are notoriously flaky. Produced by Taylor Restaurant Equipment, the machines are so unreliable even the McDonald’s corporate Twitter account has made jokes about them. This unreliability has created a (very small) cottage industry of solutions. One solution is web-based: it simply tells you […]

Last week the world watched in horror as Russia illegally launched a brutal war in Ukraine. Online videos and eyewitness accounts evoked a terrible throwback to WWII, with tanks rolling over borders, frightened refugees, and bomb blasts in a major European capital. While the visuals look hauntingly familiar, this war is very different: it is […]

An astounding number of people seem to think that having a “fake news” law would be a good idea, even as we’ve shown over and over and over again how those kinds of laws are always abused by authoritarian goons to silence criticism. As part of its ongoing offensive on both Ukraine and the truth, […]

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The federal government would prefer information not want quite so badly to be free. It has obligations under the Freedom of Information Act to set information free, but it also has a handy stack of exemptions to ensure not too much information is freed. Citizens are free to ask for information. And the government is, […]

For years a growing number of US towns and cities have been forced into the broadband business thanks to US telecom market failure. Frustrated by high prices, lack of competition, spotty coverage, and terrible customer service, some 750 US towns and cities have explored some kind of community broadband option. While the telecom industry routinely insists these […]

Well, that’s a wrap on our first week with Techdirt running on WordPress. Overall things have been working pretty well, but as expected there have also been several issues and some things that need improvement. We’ve been tracking user feedback in the comments and via the contact form, and I want to assure everyone that […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, new FCC boss Ajit Pai was getting down to work: moving to kill broadband privacy protections, falsely claiming benefits from his attacks on net neutrality (which he also called a mistake), and scaling back rules that forced ISPs to be clear about usage caps and hidden fees. On […]

I’ve banged on for quite a while about how video games have long not gotten the recognition they deserve as a major and growing part of the cultural landscape throughout the world. While there is no doubt that there has been a shift in this as time has gone on, it’s still the case that […]

Over the last five to six years, The NarrativeTM has been that Russia has built up such powerful propaganda and social media disinformation peddlers that it could effectively drive its own narrative and convince entire populations to go along with its preferred version of reality (i.e., not reality). There have always been reasons to question […]

Thanks to the one-two punch of the infrastructure bill and COVID relief, there’s more money sloshing around in the U.S. broadband ecosystem than perhaps any time in history. $46 billion (with a b) is slated to be distributed by the government over the next year, much of it overseen by the National Telecommunications and Information […]

At Tuesday’s State of the Union address, one of President Joe Biden’s pledges regarding the internet, was that he wanted to ban targeted advertising. Lots of people cheered this on, because lots of people absolutely loathe targeted advertising — which is sometimes, misleadingly, referred to as “surveillance capitalism.” My own opinion on this is that […]

Remember how Texas passed a social media content moderation law which was then blocked as unconstitutional by a federal court? Apparently people in Texas remember the passing of the law, but not the fact that it was blocked. Incredibly, this includes a judge as well. If it had been allowed to be come law, Texas’ […]

Now, you can understand any book or reading material of your choice regardless of its language! This state-of-the-art device is designed to translate up to 112 languages accurately and efficiently. The NEWYES Scan Reader can recognize 3000 characters per minute, has 0.3s fast translation speed, and its accuracy rate is as high as 98%. It […]

All the way back in August 2020, a Cincinnati (OH) police officer decided to sue some fellow citizens for defamation. The cop went after the authors of social media posts claiming the officer flashed a “white supremacist sign” during a city council meeting discussing concerns raised by the Black Lives Matter movement. These posts also […]

For years we’ve talked about how the broadband and cable industry has perfected the use of utterly bogus fees to jack up subscriber bills — a dash of financial creativity it adopted from the banking and airline industries. Countless cable and broadband companies tack on a myriad of completely bogus fees below the line, letting them advertise […]

If you’re not a sports fan, or not an American, you may not be aware that there is currently an owner’s lockout occurring in Major League Baseball. We’ve talked a bit in the past about some of the bullshit MLB is pulling with all of this, namely its decision to strip out all references to […]

Back in December, we wrote about how the major book publishers had teamed up to sue the state of Maryland over a fairly tame law concerning ebooks and libraries. As we’ve been detailing, over the last few years, the big book publishers have been working overtime to abuse copyright law to destroy libraries. Whereas, historically, […]

It’s not often you see a cop face criminal charges for injuring or killing someone they’re attempting to arrest. It’s even rarer still to see a cop convicted. Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is a unicorn. He knelt on George Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, choking the life out of the unarmed black man, […]