Techdirt

So it appears we haven't covered this up to the present, but back in 2020 Francesca Gregorini sued Apple and M. Night Shyamalan for copyright infringement. At issue was a series for Apple TV called Servant and, according to Gregorini, the manner in which the first three episodes of the show copied from Gregorini's movie, [...]

Lawmakers show no sign of slowing down with laws to limit minors' use of social media. State and federal legislation mandating that sites verify users' age and adjust their social media experiences accordingly are still popular, despite the fact that they haverepeatedlyfailedcourt challenges. As of late, policymakers have turned to a different model where parents [...]

It's not the first time. It certainly won't be the last. But every time, we're expected to hang back and assume the FBI is on the right side of history. Something the FBI has tried a couple of times previously is back in the news: the remote access of thousands of computers containing foreign spyware [...]

Transform any speech into written words with an impressive accuracy rate of up to 99% in just three simple steps using Voicetapp, an AI-driven voice to text transcription tool. Voicetapp harnesses the capabilities of a deep learning method called automatic speech recognition (ASR), backed by leading platforms like AWS and GCP. It supports over 170 [...]

In what looks increasingly like a protection racket, Meta has agreed to pay Donald Trump $25 million to settle a lawsuit that multiple courts had already indicated was completely meritless. The settlement, which directs $22 million toward Trump's presidential library, comes after a dinner at Mar-a-Lago where Trump reportedly told Zuckerberg this needed to be [...]

Last year the Biden FCC passed a new rule that would help bring Wi-Fi access to school kids who struggle to do their homework online. More specifically, the rule allowed schools to leverage the FCC's E-Rate program funds to pay for mobile hotspots in things like busses, making it easier for kids who lack broadband [...]

While most of our conversations about Nintendo recently have focused on the somewhat bizarre patent lawsuit the company filed against Pocketpair over the hit game Palworld, traditionally our coverage of the company has focused more on the very wide net of IP bullying it engages in. This is a company absolutely notorious for behaving in [...]

As we mentioned on Saturday, this is the final week of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! The clock is ticking, and now there's just barely more than two days left to get your entries in. The jam closes at this Friday, January 31st, when the clock hits midnight Pacific Time. We're [...]

Well, we can go ahead and erase perhaps" from this not-all-that-prescient-actually-given-the-circumstances headline: DOJ Issues Perhaps The Last Law Enforcement Investigation Report We'll See For The Next Four Years It was inevitable. Trump's DOJ kicked the Civil Rights Division to the curb faster than Trump cycled through Attorneys General during his first term. Trump promised the [...]

While AI" (language learning models) certainly couldhelpjournalism, the fail upward brunchlords in charge of most modern media outlets instead see the technology as a way to cut corners, undermine labor, and badly automate low-quality, ultra-low effort, SEO-chasing clickbait. As a result we've seen an endless number of scandals where companies use LLMs to create entirely [...]

After years of Meta insisting its content moderation was essential for platform health, Zuckerberg's sudden embrace of fake free speech" is having exactly the consequences anyone paying attention would expect. Just as advertisers fled ExTwitter when Musk decided brand safety" was for wimps, Meta's advertisers are getting nervous about their own brands being associated with [...]

The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, [...]

It's amazing how many things just don't look bad until, you know, you actually look at them. I mean, we've always known civil asset forfeiture programs are hot garbage, but the government at large was never really interested in this take. Some officials and legislators may have had their suspicions, but the easiest way for [...]

The 2021 infrastructure bill earmarked $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies that will be coming to the states starting this year. But it also tasked the FCC with creating rules surrounding digital discrimination," or the practice of big telecoms refusing to evenly deploy next-generation broadband to low income and minority neighborhoods (despite receiving untold billions in [...]

Ah, Steve King. Not the famed author of horror fiction, of course. I'm talking about the former representative from Iowa who authored all kinds of political horror, instead. This fucking guy was perhaps best known for wanting a fence on our southern border to be of the electrified variety, for keeping a Confederate flag on [...]

You might remember that Sonos was the golden child of smart," internet-connected home hardware a decade or so ago. But that reputation has been steadily tarnished by a long line of bone-headed decisions, ranging from their 2020-era choice to brick still useful speakers and hardware, to their choice last year to release an app update [...]

You may recall a few years back that then Rep. Devin Nunes went on a SLAPPtastic suing spree, filing a bunch of highly questionable defamation lawsuits against a variety of people, including someone pretending to be a cow owned by Nunes. The lawsuits, generally, have not gone well. One of the dumber lawsuits was the [...]

Because we're all just riding Mr. Trump's wild ride down the greased slope towards fascism, the nation just has to keep getting worse day by day until the rot has set in permanently. Trump's first term in office unleashed a lot of latent censorial desire in like-minded Republicans, who soon started assaulting constituents' sensibilities and [...]

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. This charger comes with an [...]

For the past couple of years, Elon has tried all sorts of ways to publicly claim that things are going great since his purchase of Twitter, even as basically everyone knows that he's the emperor with no clothes on that one. He's been claiming that traffic and usage are at all-time" highs, despite little outside [...]

To be clear up front, AT&T is a predatory telecom monopolist. It works tirelessly to lobby (and sometimes bribe) government for favorable treatment as it works tirelessly to undermine competition and eliminate state and federal oversight. It then miraculously exploits that lack of competition and oversight in the form of shoddy, sluggish, and very expensive [...]

The facts are all up there in the headline, so let's deal with the lies first. Lots of places reported on this incident, but we'll go to the original source, WESH TV. Body cam footage recovered from Lake County (FL) Sheriff's Office deputy Tristan Macomber's body cam showed him driving southbound before hitting a stopped [...]

As you may have noticed, the tech world is full of news about TikTok, its ban, its reprieve and possible sale, and whether it represents a security threat to the US and its citizens. Of course, the question of whether TikTok is spying on its users and sending data back to China is broader than [...]

It's a grind. But it's been worth it. Last week, the court that's been handling Agron Hasbajrami's case for nearly a decade finally said what plenty of people have been saving for nearly as long: the FBI's warrantless searches of NSA collections to target US persons' communications and data violates the Constitution. Here's Andrew Crocker [...]

In his latest drain the swamp" move that will actually flood the entire ecosystem, Trump demanded the Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) resign immediately. This may sound like just more petty partisan BS, but it could have huge unintended consequences, including for Trump's own companies. Sometimes it helps to [...]

The Trump Administration is apparently going to be a law unto itself. There have been plenty of people put up against the wall in recent days, but the weekend concluded with Donald Trump - perhaps illegally - firing at least 15 Inspectors General. This mass firing leaves the Defense Department, State Department, Department of Veterans [...]

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 [...]

Disclosure:I'm onthe board of Bluesky, so feel free to take as many grains of salt as you want in reading it, though all of it applies equally to other decentralized social media ecosystems. The internet was supposed to liberate us. Instead, it's left us feeling helpless, waiting for billionaires, governments, and tech giants to save [...]

Late last year eight major U.S. telecoms were the victim ofa massive intrusion by Chinese hackerswho managed to spy on public U.S. officials for months. The Salt Typhoon" hack was so severe, the intruders spent much of the last year rooting around the ISP networks even after discovery. AT&T and Verizon, two of the compromised [...]

This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about the meteorologist who was fired for criticizing Elon Muk's nazi salute. In first place, it's Maura with a reaction to the whole ridiculous situation: I hate that Elon Musk's fans are using his autism diagnosis to excuse his behavior. [...]

Despite all that has happened (and boy does it seem like too much), the fact is we're still less than one month into 2025 - and that means there's still time to enter the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It's 1929! The jam is open through January 31st, and you [...]

And now this whole thing gets even messier. What started off as something of a Streisand Effect post about Justin Baldoni's decision to amplify the accusations made against him by Blake Lively has now simply ballooned into something much, much larger. Keep in mind that Lively's accusations can essentially be distilled down to two main [...]

Numerous articles on Walled Culture have chronicled the struggles to turn the aspirations ofopen access to knowledgeinto reality. The central reason people do not have free digital access to all academic knowledge is that publishers have been successful in subverting attempts to provide it. Publishers are strongly motivated to undermine open access, since its successful [...]

The Detroit PD has made this sort of thing its unofficial brand. It has even shelled out at least $300,000 to ensure people most often think of the Detroit PD when discussing false arrests aided and abetted by facial recognition tech. But there are plenty of others in the US law enforcement industrial complex vying [...]

After King Trump's dutiful Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case, a New York State law has taken effect requiring that ISPs provide low-income, state residents affordable $15 broadband. It's a big win for digital equity activists and consumer groups that have long argued that America's heavily monopolized (and barely competitive) broadband industry results [...]

Back in November, I explained in great detail how Trump's new FCC chair Brendan Carr was signaling loud and clear that he intended to be Trump's top censor. This was in contrast to both his and Trump's declaration that Carr was some sort of free speech warrior." Instead, he has given every indication that he's [...]

Project Management is global. This is one of those professions similar to being an accountant, where your skills and talents can be applied to any industry in any place. The 10-course Complete PMP Training Bundle provides a comprehensive training path for all things project management, including the most update to date courses including PMP 6th [...]

Well, well, well: let's get this circuit split started! In completely unexpected news, the DC Court of Appeals has ruled [PDF] that compelling someone to unlock a device using their finger is a violation of Fifth Amendment protections that disallow forcing someone to testify against themselves. (h/t Gabriel Malor on Bluesky) Most courts have ruled [...]

We've talked repeatedly how one way to boost lagging U.S. broadband competition is the support of open access" fiber networks that allow numerous ISPs to compete over a centralized fiber network. In ideal implementations, like Ammon, Idaho or in parts of Utah, residents have the option of switching between multiple, competing ISPs, sometimes in a [...]

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 [...]

To borrow a phrase famously used by the world class philosophers called Green Day, Elon Musk is something of a walking contradiction. He touts the so-called Twitter Files" as some kind of damning report on government weaponization against critical content and is then accused of doing exactly the same thing himself. He's a free speech [...]

For all the hype and warnings about how TikTok is clearly a national security threat" from China, the Trump administration has effectively kneecapped the investigation into one of the most serious cybersecurity breaches in US history - a genuine, proven threat to national security. In what Team Trump probably thinks is a move to destroy [...]

Despite a lot of bullshit about how Trump is super populist," supports antitrust reform," and will carry on the legacy of monopoly busters like Lina Khan," none of that has ever been true. Trump's first administration was jam packed with the rubber stamping of plenty of terrible mergers. Streaming, media, and telecom companies are very [...]

In Trumpworld, loyalty trumps all - even deeply held beliefs about crime and punishment. Shower Trump with praise and you can get away with murder (or at least drug trafficking). But dare to criticize him, and no punishment is too harsh. Making decisions based on who most inflated your ego may not seem like the [...]

The Database Administration Super Bundle has 9 courses to help you go from data novice to expert administrator. You'll discover how to build and manage databases with MySQL and MongoDB. Courses also cover Microsoft SQL Server, Informatica, Minitab, Tableau, and regression modeling. It's on sale for $60. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and [...]

The government's next-best argument (after Third Party Doctrine yo!") in support of its bulk collection of US persons' phone metadata via the (now partly-dead) Section 215 surveillance program was this: hey, it's just metadata. How harmful could it be? (And if it's of so little use to the NSA/FBI/others, how is it possible we're using [...]

It's fairly obvious that Netflix won the first round of the streaming TV wars. Here's the thing: as subscriber growth becomes saturated, Netflix has to keep providing Wall Street with those sweet, improved quarterly returns at any cost. To do that they're going to follow directly on the heels of the cable giants (like Charter [...]

Like the other major sports leagues in America, the NHL has not been immune from engaging in IP protectionism in the past. The league has been relatively touchy when it comes to local businesses simply cheering on their local hockey teams, for instance, and has also tried to keep apps that report on NHL content [...]

Love it or loathe it, there's no denying that the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is the most important piece of data protection law around. GDPR stories are often about big, bad companies failing to respect the legislation, but there's a small but amusing group of incidents in which the EU itself has been [...]

This is probably it for awhile. The DOJ Civil Rights Division most likely will be sidelined for at least the next four years as Trump returns to office and his not-so-latent desires to impose a police state. Notwithstanding his supporters' apparent willingness to assault officers who stand between them and a stolen" election, Trump has [...]