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As we just talked about the joint lawsuit filed in Japan by Nintendo and The Pokemon Co. against Pocketpair, the company behind the hit game Palworld, we still don't have all the details. But one of the strange things about the suit is that is not a copyright or trademark suit, which is what everyone [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week's round-up of the latest news in online [...]

MAGA world's false belief that Joe Biden is censoring conservatives" on social media may actually kill the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As we mentioned earlier this week, while KOSA has already passed the Senate and advanced in a different form out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, there were still big concerns among [...]

We all hate data brokers. I mean, those of us who aren't in law enforcement. Law enforcement tends to love data brokers because they allow investigators to collect a bunch of stuff (including location info) without having to whip up a subpoena or (the horror...) ask a judge to sign off on a warrant. Nope, [...]

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Elon Musk fought the Brazilian law, and it looks like the Brazilian law won. After making a big show of how he was supposedly standing up for free speech, Elon caved yet again. Just as happened back in April when he first refused to comply with court orders from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, [...]

Cable broadband giants like Charter Communications (Spectrum) and Comcast (Xfinity) generally don't have to try very hard, because they enjoy a monopoly over broadband access across vast swaths of the U.S. That lack of competition traditionally results in high prices, spotty access, slow speeds, and some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any sector [...]

Oh, these law and order" types. What a joke. The self-proclaimed law and order" candidate is Donald Trump, a convicted felon and open supporter of those who committed federal crimes during the January 6th raid of the Capitol building. And, of course, he's earned the endorsement of another law and order" figurehead, the Fraternal Order [...]

The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with athirty-percent jump in the last decade. That's in contrast toevery other developed country, which saw a decline. 40,000 Americans die every year in traffic fatalities. And while tech advancements have made life safer for drivers and passengers, the same can't be true for [...]

Well, it took awhile, but we finally got here. Earlier this year, we discussed the game Palworld shortly after its release. It made our pages because the game is clearly partially inspired by the Pokemon series of video games, with some very stark differences. Similarities aside, the characters in the game are certainly different than [...]

As California edges closer to enacting SB 1047, the state risks throwing the entire AI industry into turmoil. The bill has already cleared the legislative process and now sits on Governor Newsom's desk, leaving him with a critical decision: veto this ill-conceived policy or sign away the U.S.' future in AI. While Newsom appears skeptical [...]

The FBI and DOJ have always felt comfortable going after Islamic extremists. That's the sort of thing they like to do. They like it so much they'll radicalize vulnerable people for the sole purpose of locking them up for multiple decades. A lot of digital ink has been spilled covering the FBI's success rate in [...]

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Automation and language learning models aren't inherently bad. But when half-cooked automation is layered on top of very broken systems by greedy, incompetent people, it certainly can be. See, for example, the way brunchlords are using AI" to cut corners or undermine labor in journalism, or the way insurance companies are using it to automatically [...]

Have you been missing patent trolls destroying innovation and making products you like more expensive? Have you felt that, maybe, some lawyers who did nothing but send extortionate shakedown letters weren't getting rich enough? Well then, good news for you, Congress is looking to bring all that back! In the early years of Techdirt, we [...]

Update: Annnnnnnnd... Cloudflare has already said it will isolate and block Brazilian IP addresses from reaching ExTwitter. Original story below. It appears that Elon has decided to take the Brazilian hornet's nest he'd already kicked over the last few weeks and start slamming it with a baseball bat. It's unlikely this will end well. I've [...]

This morning, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a pretty long markup about KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and other bills. The quick summary is that both of those bills passed out of committee and could be taken to the House floor this session. The longer version, though, is that cracks in the coalition pushing these [...]

Wikipedia seems such an essential and benign aspect of the online world that it is hard to understand why people would want to attack it in the courts. But it is nonetheless subject to lawsuits that try to force it to censor its articles because they contain facts that are inconvenient for someone. The Wikimedia [...]

Florida's legislative antipathy towards free speech and general overall bigotry has generated plenty of bad laws and plenty of fully justified lawsuits. Earlier this month, the state's quasi-book bans became the defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by multiple big-name publishers. But that was just the latest lawsuit, and the first to actually sue the [...]

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Back in 2022, you might recall that ex-Moviepass executives Theodore Farnsworth and J. Mitchell Lowe were charged by the DOJ for wire and securities fraud, after it was found they'd repeatedly misled investors about the profitability of their all you can eat" movie ticket efforts. Lowe this week pleaded guilty to a securities fraud conspiracy [...]

If you had that Congress was going to take bad protect the children" bills and make them worse on your bingo card, congratulations, you've won this week's easiest prediction. This seems like a not great situation. As mentioned, the House Energy & Commerce Committee is holding a markup today for a bunch of bills. Yesterday, [...]

It's amazing just how many of the trademark disputes we cover here are only disputes because the USPTO granted a trademark that it shouldn't have. The examples of this sort of thing are legion, but they typically revolve around trademarks that are either generic, descriptive, or both. Which brings us to Chickie's and Pete's, a [...]

Thierry Breton has finally taken the next logical step in his role as the EU's censor: he's talked himself out of his job. Over the last few years, Thierry Breton, the former CEO of France Telecom, has spent the last few years as the Commissioner for the Internal Market in the EU, where he has [...]

If you're a Techdirt reader (or any tech news reader) you've already heard a lot of stories about the chaos of Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter, but no matter how much you know, there's a lot to learn in a new book that hits the shelves today. Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, by [...]

Just when you thought it was safe to go back on the internet, KOSA rears its ugly head once again. The rumors of KOSA's demise in Congress may have been overstated. Following a big push by supporters of the bill, including Senator Marsha we need this to protect kids from the transgender in our culture" [...]

It's been a whirlwind few months for NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban, at least in terms of press coverage. None of it has been positive, though. A few months ago, reporting from ProPublica exposed Commissioner Caban's efforts to make the NYPD even less accountable than it always has been. Public records and other information obtained by [...]

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Today, the new book by NY Times reporters Kate Conger and Ryan Mac, Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, comes out. If you're at all interested in what went down, I can't recommend it enough. It's a well-written, deeply researched book with all sorts of details about the lead-up to the acquisition, the acquisition [...]

AT&T's $86 billionmerger with Time Warner resulted in an ocean of chaos, layoffs, and quality control problems. That was followed up with T-Mobile's$26 billion merger with Sprint, which resulted in thousands of layoffs and an immediate end to wireless price competition in the U.S. Not to be outdone, struggling satellite TV providers Dish Network (owned [...]

It was almost exactly a year ago to the day that Unity updated its pricing program for its game engine in a way that seemed perfectly designed to piss everyone off. Whereas Unity was once a subscription-based game engine, rather than one which collected royalties, suddenly Unity went in the opposite direction, with per-install fees [...]

Some of you may have heard about this. It made all the papers (at least in the United States). Tyreek Hill, wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins, was pulled over about a block away from the stadium by Miami-Dade police officers. What started as a simple situation involving a speeding/seat belt ticket escalated quickly when [...]

It's no secret that Trump-administration-in-waiting at the Heritage Foundation supports KOSA because it thinks it will be useful in achieving some of the most extreme goals of Project 2025, a project Heritage created. Last year they came out and said that they supported KOSA because keeping trans content away from children is protecting kids." With [...]

More than a half-decade ago, the Australian government gave itself more powers. These new powers allowed the government to compel decryption - something far easier said than done, especially if existing encryption was expected to still protect everyone else but the government's targets. Shortly after the law was passed, Australia's federal law enforcement and national [...]

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In the bizarro world of MAGA politics, up is down, black is white, and apparently, fact-checking is now a form of election interference. It is no secret that people across the political spectrum have a very warped view of what free speech or the First Amendment means. But I am particularly perplexed by the view [...]

The wireless industry's major trade association (CTIA) just released a new study indicating that Americans consumed more than 100 trillion megabytes of wireless data last year. CTIA's2024 Annual Wireless Industry Surveyfound last year saw the biggest single-year increase in wireless data usage ever recorded: 36% more data consumed than in 2022 - and almost double [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Mithras with a comment about the Patriot Reporter" and his claims about his wealth: $5 million a month... But he needs a sideline as a realtor? That's really making me doubt the $5 million a month. In second place, it's That One Guy with [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, an appeals court issued a worrying ruling about handing IP addresses to the FBI, while the DOJ was trying to get Apple and Google to hand over names and phone numbers of 10,000 app users. A better appeals court ruling also arrived, saying that the CFAA can't be [...]

Here we go again. For those of us that view video games as a vital and still emerging form of culture and art, one of the more frustrating aspects of the industry is how music is licensed for game soundtracks and how that licensing complicates games as they age. For instance, we saw this play [...]

Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderations Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice - or go straight to the RSS feed. In this week's round-up of the latest news in online [...]

Imagine your search terms, key-strokes, private chats and photographs are being monitored every time they are sent. Millions of students across the country don't have to imagine this deep surveillance of their most private communications: it's a reality that comes with their school districts' decision to install AI-powered monitoring software such asGaggleandGoGuardianon students' school-issued machines [...]

It's hardly surprising that someone who makes a living trafficking in things other than facts would have trouble recognizing facts when they're applied to him. That's the case here with Philip Godlewski - a self-proclaimed patriot reporter" and QAnon conspiracy theorist. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy) According to claims made in court, Godlewski is one of the [...]

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I recognize why some parents are worried about screen time and the use of technology in the classroom. But isn't the better idea to teach kids how to use it properly, rather than banning it altogether? Lately, there have been a bunch of stories about banning mobile phones in schools. Both California and New York [...]

It seems like only yesterday that cable TV executives - and the analysts poised to prop up their narratives to boost stock valuations - were busy insisting that the cord cutting" trend was a fiction" that would abate any moment now. It was the kind of thinking that helped justify their inability to adapt to [...]

Of all the ways that content creators use copyright to strike down content, one of the most befuddling is when trailers are the subject of copyright strikes. There is occasionally some logic to these sorts of strikes. Trailers that are unfinished, for instance. But even when trailers leak early in a finished state, copyright holders [...]

When it comes to the Supreme Court-created (and diluted) qualified immunity doctrine, the Ninth Circuit leads the league in rejections. The Fifth Circuit is its polar opposite, more willing to forgive cops than uphold civil rights. This case would have been dead on arrival in the Fifth. But since it landed in the Ninth, the [...]

Can we add a warning label to the First Amendment that says Actually reading this can cause extreme embarrassment to grandstanding politicians"? California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, has just lost two separate cases in the Ninth Circuit regarding social media laws he strongly supported, which the court said violated the First Amendment. You would think [...]

You would think this is a done deal, but it isn't. It just keeps getting stupider. Last year, journalist Ben Camacho filed a public records request for photos of all active Los Angeles PD officers. After a couple of rounds of litigation, the city agreed to release the sought records. Camacho shared these with the [...]