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Every New Year's Eve, the Chief Justice releases his year-end report, which used to include things like what the court would like to see Congress do. However, Justice Roberts now uses it more as a way to blog post whatever is on his mind. His latest is particularly tone-deaf, which is impressive, given how John [...]

It seems unfathomable that we're even here. The First Amendment is one of our clearer constitutional provisions. Make no law," it says, abridging the freedom of speech." And yet, with the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," Congress has done exactly that, effectively banning a platform helping millions of Americans speak. It tells [...]

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I know it's no surprise that the modern MAGA world is incredibly hypocritical. They speak of free speech while making every effort to suppress speech they dislike. But the latest example of this hypocrisy is glaring. Those who screamed to high heaven about debunked claims of the Biden admin censoring" social media are noticeably silent [...]

Last week a corrupt court system bought and paid for by corporations effectively made it illegal for the federal government to protect broadband consumers from widely despised regional telecom monopolies. That, as we wrote at the time, is at the heart of the death of the several decade net neutrality fight. But if you read [...]

They're going to have to change the nickname. For years, cops have referred to drug dogs as probable cause on four legs." But over the last half-decade or so, jurisprudence has been leaning the other way. One of the first rulings to knock this assumption back a bit was the Supreme Court's ruling in Rodriguez, [...]

A little over a year ago, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) topass a new state right to repair lawdesigned to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical datato consumers and third-party independent repair shops. [...]

Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos wants you to believe he's on a noble mission to restore trust in media. His solution? Muzzling his own paper by blocking it from endorsing Kamala Harris in the runup to the election, a decision he defended in a self-serving op-ed claiming that trust in media is at an all-time [...]

Never let a tragedy go unexploited. That's the political rule and it applies to both sides of the partisan divide. Of course, the divide has been Oval Office top heavy for a majority of this century, so we're hearing more from one side than another in most cases. That being said, there's no limit to [...]

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When Elon Musk took over Twitter, one of his primary stated goals was to bring back free speech" to the platform. He was particularly critical of how Twitter had briefly blocked links to a New York Post story about Hunter Biden's laptop in 2020. But now, the self-proclaimed free speech absolutist" is doing the very [...]

Back in 2023 Mozilla issued a report indicating that automakers have some of the worst privacy and security standards in all of tech, routinely hoovering up oceans of consumer behavior and phone data then failing to adequately secure it. Senator Ron Wyden has been at the forefront of calls for Congress to shake off corruption [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the fact that 41% of Americans now live under age verification laws: Such small government" In second place, it's That One Guy with a comment about the hypocrisy of the right: You can set your watch by the consistent [...]

Five Years Ago This week at the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, a new study shed light on just how racially biased facial recognition algorithms are, while we looked at how tracking college students everywhere they go on campus had become the new norm. The Minnesota appeals court struck down the state's broadly-written [...]

Bethesda, for any other faults you might find with the company, has built a reputation for itself as a gaming publisher that is not just tolerant of its modding community, but one which embraces that community. While not every attempt at this by Bethesda has been a hit, we've seen the company's embrace of its [...]

It has long been acknowledged by federal courts that firing off a one-finger salute to law enforcement officers is not only not a crime, but protected speech. That means that the appearance of the bird" cannot alone be the basis for stops or arrests. And it certainly doesn't justify force deployment, especially that of the [...]

For the past few years, I've used Cronometer as a nutrition app. It's pretty good for tracking food, exercise, and much more. I appreciate that it has very detailed nutritional data, and even when it doesn't, I'm able to upload nutritional labels with just a quick photograph on my phone. It's a nice app. So [...]

In what will sadly come as no surprise to anyone, an Arizona prosecutor has decided no cops should be punished for partnering up with a different Arizona prosecutor to portray anti-police violence protesters as gang members for the sole purpose of seeking sentencing enhancements. As millions did all over the nation, Phoenix, Arizona residents hit [...]

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The telecom industry(with the help of the recent Trump Supreme Court), has been drooling for months at the prospect that the Trump-stocked courts would soon finally deliver the killing blow to FCC net neutrality protections (read: popular FCC rules designed to prevent telecom monopolies from abusing their market power to screw over customers and competitors). [...]

Like far too many legislators, Arkansas politicians have decided it's time to codify irrational hatred. To do this, they pretended they had a sudden and urgent new obligation to protect the children" harder than they've ever been protected before against the encroachment of alternative viewpoints. Like far too many other states, the Arkansas government piggy-backed [...]

On October 27, 2024, Oklahoma City police officer Joseph Gibson violently assaulted a 71-year-old Vietnamese man while investigating [checks notes] a non-injury traffic accident." The man, Lich Vu, was definitely much smaller than the cop that assaulted him. He was very definitely much older. A discussion about who was at fault occurred, hampered by Vu's [...]

When Apple unveiled its AR/VR Vision Pro headset early last year the product was met with just an absolute ocean of tech press hype. You couldn't spend thirty seconds online without reading about how the expensive ($3,500-$4,600 depending on accessories) headset was going to revolutionize every industry in existence or change absolutely everything. Seriously: everything. [...]

There are no winners here. There are only varying levels of losses. The government sustains the most. As it should. When there needs to be an adult in the room, the government bears that responsibility, no matter how irritating the proverbial child might be. That means the most childish person will learn nothing from this [...]

Elon Musk is once again threatening to sue over speech he dislikes - this time, over factual headlines about a deadly explosion involving a Tesla Cybertruck. But not liking how a story is framed doesn't make it defamatory. For a statement to be defamatory, it must be false, damaging, and published with reckless disregard for [...]

To completely understand computer security, it's vital to step outside the fence and to think outside the box. Computer security is not just about firewalls, Intrusion Prevention Systems, or anti-viruses. It's also about tricking people into doing whatever a hacker wishes. A secure system, network, or infrastructure is also about informed people. The All-in-One Super-Sized [...]

With the exception of ABC News being weird and just throwing cash at Trump for no apparent reason, every libel lawsuit filed by Donald Trump (or his various business holdings) has failed. This is another one for the loss column. And, despite all these losses, Trump will continue filing lawsuits whenever and wherever there's a [...]

Another day, another major privacy scandal we'll likely do nothing about. Health care giant Ascension - which owns 140 hospitals and assisted living facilities - says that a May cyberattack compromised the sensitive data of more than 5.6 million patients. According to a filing with the Maine Attorney General and a December 19th post to [...]

It's a new year, and that means new works are entering the public domain, and that means it's time for the latest installment of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! If you've been itching to get started on your entry, now's the time - you've got until the end of the month [...]

As is the tradition on Techdirt, my final post of the year is about optimism and how I continue to be optimistic about innovation and online community, even in the midst of whatever other nonsense may be happening around the globe. This is now my 16th such post. The trend kicked off in 2008 when [...]

A couple of weeks back, we discussed the implosion of startup company Embodied and the resulting bricking of its $800 emotional support" robots designed for children. Like many other stories about IoT-type products, the post focused on how these robots would cease functioning as designed once the backend support infrastructure for the shuttered business was [...]

Last December, we published a recap, 2023: The Year of AI Panic." Now, it's time to ask: What happened to the AI panic in 2024? TL;DR - It was a rollercoaster ride: AI panic reached a peak and then fell down. Two cautionary tales: The EU AI Act and California's SB-1047. Please note: 1. Thefocushere [...]

The inevitable has happened and Elon has started banning and suppressing the speech of folks who were on his team," leading to many suddenly realizing that maybe he wasn't such a free speech supporter after all. Look, we've spent the better part of the last three years pointing out that Elon Musk does not understand [...]

Age verification laws saw an unfathomable renaissance in 2024. It's quite frightening to see a political class of predominately far-right Christian nationalistsimplement the anti-porn vision of Project 2025 without President-elect Donald Trump yet entering the White House. These laws coming out of state legislatures are scripted like how Russell Vought, a controversial architect of Project [...]

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For the better part of thirty years telecom giants (and the consultants, think tanks, and lobbyists paid to defend them) have fought against every effort at coherent federal oversight. It didn't matter whether it was modest privacy standards or basic pricing transparency, the argument that was if you stripped away coherent state and federal government [...]

Updated: This post has been updated, as the original potentially overclaimed both what the FTC settlement said regarding what Evolv could market as well as Evolv's response to it (suggesting it would try to limit the settlement it agreed to). We regret the misleading descriptions and have updated the article accordingly. Evolv might be new [...]

The new year is approaching fast, and that means it's time for our annual look at the highest-voted comments of the year on Techdirt (as usual, including the top three in each category). This year's list is something of an inverse of last year's: while 2023 had only a couple winning comments from anonymous commenters, [...]

As we announced earlier this month, we're once again celebrating the new year with the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! With 2025 just a few days away, it's time to get ready. Whether you're an experienced game designer, a total newbie, or anything in between, we want you [...]

Earlier this year, we talked about a fairly silly trademark dispute in the UK between beverage company Thatchers and German grocer Aldi. At issue was competing lemon cider products offered by both companies. Thatchers makes a product named its Cloud Lemon Cider", while Aldi sells its Taurus Cloud Cider." Thatchers complained that the products were [...]

It takes a pretty weird string of coincidences to turn a Google Street View car into a potential witness for the prosecution. But that's what has happened here. Street View is pervasive. Some may also call it intrusive. Millions of miles are logged by drivers and pedestrians, year after year. And while those efforts to [...]

I had seen this story before Christmas making the rounds on Bluesky, claiming that United Healthcare had sent DMCA takedowns to Teepublic to remove artist Rachel Kenaston's illustration of Luigi Magione, the guy arrested for shooting and killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. While it does appear that Teepublic did, in fact, remove the image [...]

A central theme of Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) and this blog is that the copyright industry is never satisfied. Now matter how long the term of copyright, publishers and recording companies want more. No matter how harsh the punishments for infringement, the copyright intermediaries want them to be even more severe. Another [...]

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As much as I write about cops, you'd think I'd rarely be surprised by them or their thought processes. But, every so often, they surprise even me. Let's take a ride back to early 1989, when the Broward County (FL) Sheriff's Office was actually bragging about this sort of thing: A chemist with the Broward [...]

U.S. automakers have long tried to monopolize repair, in a bid to cash in on captive customers. But they also want to cash in on user behavior, driving, and phone data without much in the way of oversight, transparency, or consumer privacy. That's why they've historically been so opposed to right to repair" reforms that [...]

I have to thread the needle a bit on this one. On the one hand, I have very much evangelized how much sports video games has done to educate lots of people on some of the finer points of professional and college sports, myself included. Even though, at times, I like to poke fun about [...]

In an era where digital devices are everywhere, the term screen time" has become a buzz phrase in discussions about technology's impact on people's lives. Parents areconcerned about their children's screen habits. But what if this entire approach to screen time is fundamentally flawed? While researchers have made advances in measuring screen use, a detailed [...]

Few things have been more enjoyable than watching the collapse of New York City mayor Eric Adams' personal, cop-focused empire. Granted, if you're a NYC resident, your mileage will vary because violently disintegrating governments rarely later resolve as fully functional enterprises. But there's still something incredibly satisfying as watching a law-and-order mayor bind himself to [...]

Walled Culture has been following the sorry saga of Italy's automated blocking systemPiracy Shieldfor a year now. Blocklists are drawn up by copyright companies, without any review, or the possibility of any objections, and those blocks must be enforced within 30 minutes. Needless to say, such a ham-fisted and biased approach to copyright infringement is [...]