Techdirt

Hewlett Packard (HP) has been socked with yet another lawsuit for crippling the printers of consumers who use cheaper third-party ink cartridges. The lawsuit, filed by eleven plaintiffs in US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, states that HP misleadingly used its Dynamic Security" firmware updates to create a monopoly" over replacement printer [...]

D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), has certainly been pissing folks off as of late. Between its attempt to change its OGL license for D&D both in the future and retroactively last year combined with sending the literal Pinkerton Agency after someone who received some unreleased Magic cards in error, [...]

Public records requesters in California recently scored a small victory in one of the state's appeals courts. The EFF, which filed an amicus brief in this case, summarizes the decision at its website. Video footage captured by police drones sent in response to 911 calls cannot be kept entirely secret from the public, a California [...]

Last year, soon after Elon completed his purchase of (then) Twitter, I wrote up a 20 level speed run" of the content moderation learning curve. It seems like maybe some of the folks at Substack should be reading it these days? As you'll recall, last April, Substack CEO Chris Best basically made it clear that [...]

December was not just busy with Supreme Court briefs. The Copia Institute also joined many others, including copyright scholars and public interest organizations, in filing an amicus brief to support the Internet Archive's appeal at the Second Circuit, seeking to overturn the troubling ruling holding its Open Library to be copyright infringement. We've written about [...]

Things are still batshit insane in the Florida legislature. Again. Apparently, the state's government won't be satisfied until it's attempted to violate every single constitutional amendment (except the 2nd!) via godawful bills crafted by godawful people. The latest insanity is a bill [PDF] written by state senator Jason Brodeur. It aims to completely rewrite defamation [...]

StackSkills is the premier online learning platform for mastering today's most in-demand skills. Now, with this exclusive limited-time offer, you'll gain access to 1000+ StackSkills courses for life! Whether you're looking to earn a promotion, make a career change, or pick up a side hustle to make some extra cash, StackSkills delivers engaging online courses [...]

On Tuesday morning, former politician Tulsi Gabbard, who had to have the 1st Amendment clearly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridiculous lawsuit to restrict the free speech of others, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a news show" to ExTwitter. Hilariously, she claimed that [...]

Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn't heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows [...]

As all manner of content creators will tell us, copyright enforcement is both very important and is at least doable enough that it sure would be nice if platforms like YouTube could do even more to enforce those rights for content creators. This mantra will typically come from those that are the most aggressive and [...]

Across the nation, bigoted politicians (of the Republican variety, almost exclusively) are trying to punish and silence content and expression they don't like. It's not like it's even a close question about who's doing this and why. A slew of bills targeting drag shows and LGBTQ+ writing have been tossed into legislatures all over the [...]

We're back from the holidays, and it's time for a new episode of the Techdirt Podcast! This week, we're joined by Ravi Iyer, Research Director for the USC Marshall School's Neely Center and Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute, to discuss a proposed design code" that aims to make social media better serve [...]

There's plenty of hypocrisy and bad faith to go around in the ridiculous Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal. While Gay's accusers are right that she technically violated Harvard's plagiarism rules by copying phrases either without quotation marks or required attribution, they don't actually care about plagiarism, only scalping" Gay. What's more, their own plagiarism accusations have [...]

It was a busy December for the Copia Institute (and me), even just at the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to filing (along with Bluesky and Mastodon admin Chris Riley) an amicus brief supporting NetChoice and CCIA in their combined cases, we also filed another one challenging the bizarre injunction imposed by the Fifth Circuit [...]

Charge your device or illuminate your desk with this innovative 6-in-1 Wireless Charger. It's easy to use with its touch buttons and Qi wireless charging for Qi-enabled devices. Beautifully made with a modern look, it can quickly charge your device and is touch-sensitive allowing you to show the digital clock. For your convenience, this charger [...]

Go NetChoice go. The trade group has been going around the country and blocking all the bad state level social media laws. Early on (with CCIA) it sued to stop Texas and Florida's problematic laws. Last year it sued successfully to stop laws in Arkansas and California. Just a few weeks ago it sued Utah [...]

Early last year new journalism outlet named The Messenger" launched to great fanfare. The brainchild of former The Hill owner Jimmy Finkelstein, the new news empire launched with $50 million in backing anda lot of chatterabout how it was going to revolutionize U.S. journalism. Finkelstein claimed he wanted to build an alternative to a national [...]

Nearly four years ago, we discussed the online superhero game City of Heroes, which had been shut down officially by NCSoft, but which had survived in the shadows due to some fan-run servers. That story from 2019 was fairly interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it stood in contrast to some similar instances where [...]

Between the holidays, and to minimal fanfare, the FCC released a decision in the 2018 Quadrennial Review of Media Ownership policy. The timing of the release was no surprise, as the agency had been ordered by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to conclude the proceeding by December 27th. The FCC's decision, which made only [...]

As most of you will readily recall, last summer there was quite a lot of attention paid to a case involving a lawyer who had submitted a brief in a personal injury case that had a whole bunch of made up case citations. After this was brought to the attention of the judge, the lawyer [...]

Just when it finally looked like the FBI's year of abuse might catch up to it, it (along with the NSA and other beneficiaries of this surveillance authority) has been granted a four-month reprieve. The FBI made a lot of enemies with its continuous abuse of this surveillance authority - a foreign-facing collect it all" [...]

Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at [...]

Over the last few years we've pointed out time and time again that the evidence regarding the supposed harm" of social media to teen mental health just isn't supported by the data. But it seems it's never enough to stop savior-complex folks in the media, the advocacy community, and the political class from insisting it [...]

Back in 2019, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge proudly declared that the trend of cord cutting - or people ditching traditional cable television and switching to streaming - was finally coming to an end. According to Rutledge, the worst was now behind the cable industry, and the trend was finally slowing down. Yeah, about that. According [...]

This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come in response to worrisome ruling in California that denied Section 230 protections to Snapchat because it has disappearing messages. In first place, it's radix with thoughts on the potential implications: I can't wait for every document shredding company to be swept up in every [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we kicked off the new year with a copyright lawsuit over dance moves in Fortnite, while the EU made its first attempt at listing pirate sites and included a bunch of non-infringing sites. Similarly, we looked at how antipiracy outfits routinely claim copyright infringement against sites that simply [...]

I'm always heartened to see another local news team start digging into asset forfeiture. Especially the ones that don't sugarcoat the findings with headlines that read like they were crafted by law enforcement officials. Charlotte, North Carolina's NBC affiliate, WCNC, tells it like it is. Although it puts quotes around a couple of phrases, it [...]

It's no secret that there are mountains of examples of companies and individuals attempting to use intellectual property laws merely to silence critics and disappear information from the internet. While I'm sure this sort of thing must somtimes work, it's also quite common for these would-be censorial folks to be introduced to the Streisand Effect [...]

The technological marvel of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, developed by AI engineers and experts, has posed a unique challenge in the realm of copyright law. These advanced AI systems, which undergo extensive training on diverse datasets, including copyrighted material, and provide output highly dependent on user prompts," have raised questions about the bounds [...]

The banal will never capture as much attention as the lurid. I'm sure that this opening sentence will be seized upon by the many critics of my posts criticizing cops. So be it. Just be aware that we expect our public servants to be banal at almost any cost. That's a sign of competence and [...]

Dive into Godot - a rising star in the game engine world. You'll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you'll also explore techniques for game design and game asset creation - giving you the ultimate techniques to [...]

Okay, look, at this point, we need to start calling out those in positions of power who insist that it's unquestionable that social media is harmful to kids when the don't present any evidence at all to back up those assertions. Because as we've been documenting, every single study that comes out these days seems [...]

While Comcast's streaming service Peacock has now reached 30 million subscribers, Comcast has been taking an absolute bath on the proposition. Comcast CEOMike Cavanagh says the company lost nearly $3 billion dollars on the effort last year alone. The other streaming giants haven't fared a whole lot better. Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, and Paramount all [...]

The war on China's video game industry by the Chinese government continues, but it appears that its casualties aren't only within the industry itself. Over the last couple of years, the Chinese government has put more and more restrictions on the gaming industry, primarily aimed at youths, that were designed for everything from restricting how [...]

If you love to irrationally hate, you'll hate this. The Iowa legislature recently shat out a bill that allowed the state to start punishing people for not being straight and/or white. It was signed into law by another hateful person, Governor Kim Reynolds - the head of (this) state that recently made it clear she's [...]

On January 1, 2024, the parent company of Pornhub.com geo-blocked adult users in the states of Montanaand North Carolina. Aylo, the site's corporate parent, said they did so in protest to laws these states adopted requiring adult platforms to verify their users' ages through various age-check tools. This isn't the first time Aylo geo-blocked IP [...]

Master the core concepts of coding with the 2024 Intro to Coding & Development Bundle. You'll learn to work with some of the world's most popular languages, including C++, Java, Swift, Kotlin, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Plus, you'll explore these fundamentals and more while learning to build portfolio-ready apps, games, and websites - testing [...]

Regulatory agencies can often be an essential part of day-to-day life, preventing people from engaging in activities they have no expertise in - something that could potentially endanger a lot of people. But they can also be overbearing brutes whose only concern is whether or not they've managed to extract as much money as possible [...]

Well, this is dumb. As detailed by NBC News, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff has rejected a perfectly reasonable attempt by SnapChat to have a lawsuit thrown out on Section 230 grounds. The case involves family members of kids who overdosed on illegal drugs like fentanyl, suing Snap for apparently providing the connection [...]

During Trump's tenure, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to what was left of media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely owned) competitors underfoot. The Trump FCC stripped away a lot of the rules [...]

Let's roll into the new year by saying what needs to be said: if you're arguing against government transparency, you're on the wrong side of history. But being on the wrong side of history is just something cops love to do. They figure the short term wins - if there are any - might somehow [...]

As you well know, the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain in the US, meaning you can use a version of that Mickey (or any other newly public domain work) in our Gaming Like It's 1928 Public Domain Game Jam. Also, we're already seeing some of the expected effort [...]

Thanks to politicians (including a former president) being overly willing to scratch the bigoted itch of a voting bloc that appears to prefer the brutal caress of fascism to the freedoms of a democratic republic, far too many state and local legislators are crafting and enacting laws designed to relegate a whole lot of the [...]

A few months ago we noted that Fidelity, which had contributed over $300 million to help Elon purchase Twitter a little over a year ago, had already marked down its investment by 65%. This news came out at basically the same time that Elon himself admitted the company's value was down 56% (from $44 billion [...]

You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let's focus on the app. Right off the bat, let's be clear about one thing: When we say app" we don't mean that you're limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across [...]

Israeli malware developer NSO Group found itself the subject of international headlines a couple of years ago. Not the good kind either. A leaked document apparently showed who was being targeted by the company's cell phone exploits - a long, disturbing list that contained journalists, lawyers, activists, dissidents, religious leaders, and plenty of politicians. The [...]

Last month we noted how a program aimed at helping low income Americans afford broadband was at risk of being dismantled thanks to congressional incompetence and corruption. The FCC program, dubbed the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), was part of the 2021 infrastructure bill. It provides low-income Americans $30 off their monthly broadband bill. 22 million [...]

Readers here shouldn't need to be reminded that the Tolkien Estate, through its company Middle-Earth Enterprises, is known to be extremely aggressive with its enforcement of intellectual property over anything remotely to do with The Lord of the Rings. The estate appears to operate under the notion that it has control over words via trademark [...]

Last year we were dismayed (and somewhat annoyed) to see the FTC step way beyond its bounds and expertise by issuing a ridiculous comment to the US Copyright Office regarding questions around AI and copyright. In it, the FTC (which has no authority - or expertise - regarding copyright law) argued that fair use was [...]

2023 is over. Taylor Swift was Time's Person of the Year, beating out candidates like Jerome Powell, who may have stuck the economic soft-landing, but can't hit the high notes. Only a fool would challenge the decision, but I would like to nominate 2023's Unperson of the year - ChatGPT; the neural-network based, Large Language [...]