Techdirt

The 2024 All-in-One Ethical Hacking Bundle has 18 courses to help you learn more about penetration testing, social engineering, network security and ethical hacking. Courses cover Metasploit, Nmap, Wireshark, Burp Suite, Splunk, and more. It's on sale for $45. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales [...]

Well, things sure move fast in this world of AI regulations. Just last week, we noted that California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a pretty obviously unconstitutional set of laws regarding the use of deepfake imagery around election communications." Then, just hours later, he was sued for it. This week, federal judge John Mendez has already [...]

As noted a few times, recent Supreme Court rulings have thrown most U.S. regulatory enforcement into operational and legal chaos. The dismantling of Chevron in particular now dictates that regulators can't implement new rules or reforms without the explicit approval of Congress. Two problems there: one, regulators ideally have very specific subject expertise Congress doesn't [...]

Going all the way back to 2020, we have been discussing one of a series of copyright disputes centered on video games and their faithful depictions of real-life tattoos within them. While the first of these were related to depictions of NBA players in Take-Two's NBA2K series, which the company generally successfully defended, one outlier [...]

The Institute For Local Self Reliance (disclosure: I have done writing and research for them) has released an updated interactive map of every community-owned and operated broadband network in the U.S. All told, there's now 400 community-owned broadband networks serving more than 700 U.S. towns and cities nationwide, and the pace of growth shows no [...]

These days, there's a formula for articles pushing the unproven claims of harm from social media. Start with examples of kids harming themselves, insist (without evidence) that but for social media it wouldn't have happened. Throw some shade at Section 230 (while misrepresenting it). Toss out some policy suggestions without grappling with what those policy [...]

There is no crime apocalypse impending, incipient, or in progress in the United States. But you wouldn't know by listening to Trump and his supporters. Former President Donald Trump is wildly distorting new statistics on immigration and crime to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump falsely claimed Friday and Saturday that the statistics are specifically [...]

The 2024 Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle will help you become a Microsoft expert in no time. Courses cover Microsoft 365, Excel, Word for beginners, and Word advanced. It's on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. [...]

Well, that was quite the end to last night's Vice Presidential debate. While the overall debate was pretty boring (though hilarious when JD Vance flipped out and whined that the moderators had promised not to fact check him), towards the very end they had what might be the dumbest possible exchange regarding free speech. It [...]

CNN, like most cable news networks, professes to provide users access to journalism. Instead, what you'll most consistently find is a sort of generic drivel with the rough edges (read: truth) sanded off. On any given day you'll find a rotating parade of lazy view from nowhere" journalism that doesn't inform so much as it [...]

Taylor Swift isin the news, and not just because she has become themost decorated solo artist of all time. The fact that Taylor Swift has already been mentionedmultiple timeson Walled Culture underlines that she is also an important - if surprising - figure in the world of copyright. That's because Swift has beenre-recording her albumsin [...]

This isn't a good look for the Las Vegas Metro PD, even if it's completely supported by court precedent. No matter how often law enforcement agencies sling around the phrase protect and serve," they have almost no legal obligation to do either of those things. Sometimes a failure to intervene" allegation might undermine a cop's [...]

Culminating a deal that's been rumored about for the better part of the last twenty years, Dish Network and DirecTV have struck a new merger in a bid to try and remain relevant. It's not going to help. The deal involves DirecTV acquiring Dish for one dollar, in addition to $9.75 billion in Dish's debt. [...]

We have a hero in our midst, one that is responsible for freeing up the term superhero" from its previous trademark imprisonment. If you don't recall, Scott Richold is a British comic artist who produces the Superbabies line of comic books. Richold applied for a trademark for his comic only to find it opposed by [...]

Forget defund the police." Let's just get rid of the sheriffs. Or, at the very least, change how the job is handled. Sheriffs are elected, which means a lot of sheriffs are less interested in providing good law enforcement than ensuring they've catered to their voting bases enough that they'll be re-elected. And since it's [...]

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 [...]

In this stupid partisan world we live in, the MAGA world has decided that simply accurately explaining that the First Amendment does not allow for the suppression of speech (which is a good thing!) is somehow a call for abolishing the First Amendment. This isn't even blaming the messenger." It's misinterpreting the messenger and demanding [...]

Analysts (and Musk himself) had beenquietly notingfor a while that Starlink satellite broadband service would consistently lack the capacity to be disruptive at any real scale. As it usually pertains to Musk products, that analysis was generally buried under product hype. A few years later, and Starlink users are facingobvious slowdownsand a steady parade of [...]

There's that well known adage that if you want to teach a child not to touch a hot stove, just let them touch it once and that will be all the teaching needed to have them never do so again. Whoever came up with that saying obviously has never met my children, for starters. And [...]

Well, I hope it was worth it, Rudy. You sold out completely, offering up every last bit of your integrity for the chance to push election conspiracy theories in court on behalf of a man who won't even bother to look in your direction now that you've professionally disgraced yourself on his behalf. No matter [...]

I don't think I've ever seen quite as much hype about a state bill as California's SB 1047, a pretty terrible AI Safety" bill. Its supporters were a really weird combination of AI doomers, AI haters (not the same as the doomers), technically illiterate concern trolls... and a few people with legitimate interests about how [...]

It seems so long ago that people weretrying to stopthe worst aspects of theEU Copyright Directive. It was quite a battle, as Chapter 6 of Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) recounts in detail. The final legislation was passed in March 2019, but it is important not simply to accept what happened and move [...]

Advance your programming skills and start building responsive apps with the 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle. The 10 courses cover HTML, Bootstrap, CSS, React, MongoDB, Express, NodeJS, and more. It's on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps [...]

It probably will not shock you to find out that big tech's promises to never again suppress embarrassing leaked content about a political figure came with a catch. Apparently, it only applies when that political figure is a Democrat. If it's a Republican, then of course the content will be suppressed, and the GOP officials [...]

As we've mentioned a few times, $42.5 billion in taxpayer-funded broadband subsidies will soon start hitting the states next year courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill's Broadband, Equity And Deployment (BEAD) program. Efforts to expand affordable fiber access don't get all that much press attention in the AI hustlebro era, but the impact will be [...]

This week, both our winners on the insightful side are invocations of established maxims. In first place it's an anonymous comment about people flipping opinion of hacked materials between Hunter Biden and JD Vance: How many times must I tap the sign? Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we learned more about how easy it was to buy access to people's movements from companies gathering license plate data, while AT&T was proclaiming that it could not be sued for selling customer location data just as readily. A big EU ruling thankfully said the right to be [...]

Scientists say that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations being built by Amazon, Starlink, and AT&T pose a dire threat to astronomy and scientific research, and that too little is being done to address the issue. Back in 2022, scientistsdeclaredStarlink satellite constellations an existential threat for astronomy," noting that the reflection and light pollution (Musk [...]

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 [...]

PEN America published recent data on book bans and removals just in time for Banned Books Week. Key findings indicate that most books challenged by censorship advocates this past year focus on LGBTQ+ subject matter. Additionally, Iowa and Florida are currently the two worst states for book bans amid Republican-backed content restriction laws. The PEN [...]

This would seem like a truly extraneous nail in the coffin of ShotSpotter deployment in Chicago, but there are far too many city council members still willing to prop up under-performing tech with faith-based arguments. And there's the company itself, which has shifted narratives (along with redoing the company letterhead) over the past several months [...]

This 2-in-1 Keychain Wireless Charger with 2,500mAh battery will charge your Apple Watch 3-5 times on a full charge. Its magnetic design ensures perfect alignment and it works seamlessly with all Apple Watch series. It features Type-C port for versatile charging options for other devices. It's on sale for $19. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store [...]

It's been all of [checks calendar] one freaking day since we wrote about Elon Musk's hypocrisy on free speech compared to the old Twitter regime, and he has to go and make another example. Twitter, under old management: Briefly limits sharing of (at the time) unverified Hunter Biden laptop story. Elon: Outrageous censorship!" and possibly [...]

Telecom lobbyists have been working overtime in both theUSandEU, trying to get policymakers to force internet companies to pay them billions of extra dollars for no coherent reason. These efforts, routinely dressed up as serious adult policy, usually involve false claims that tech companies are getting a free ride" on the Internet, and should therefore [...]

TheGates Foundationis one of the most influential funding bodies in the world. According to one ranking, it is thesecond largest charitable foundation, and as of 31 December 2023 had an endowment of around$75.2 billion. That makes a shift in its publishing policy hugely important. An article in Chemical & Engineering Newsexplains that hitherto the Gates [...]

Here's a phrase I have to use but hate doing so: let's go back to the 2020 presidential campaign. During what was essentially a multi-year advertisement for just how absolutely petty, stupid, and disingenuous a political system could possibly be, the 2020 American presidential election also featured a video sent out by the Trump campaign [...]

Remember DoNotPay"? They were the company, run by Joshua Browder, claiming to be the world's first robot lawyer." There were all sorts of sketchy things going on, some of which dated back to DoNotPay's" earliest days. But things really came to a head last year when legal investigator extraordinaire, Kathryn Tewson, started digging in and [...]

One of the most horrific acts of police brutality has now resulted in two DOJ investigations. The first concerned the torture of Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker by six white deputies who referred to themselves as the Goon Squad" for their willingness to break rules and violate rights. The first investigation involved the incident itself [...]

uTalk can help you start speaking like a native within minutes. Using the uTalk learning App you can listen to real native speakers to help you navigate through your next vacation or business trip.With more than 2,500 words and phrases to learn in each of our 140+ languages, the app gives you a running start [...]

Among the key reasons Elon Musk insisted he had to buy Twitter were (1) that it was too political in how it was managed and how content moderation was done, (2) the company was not as transparent as it should be, and (3) it was too quick to censor. Since taking over, Elon has been [...]

Two years ago, Techdirt's Copia Institute released a report discussing how open access fiber networks were a potential path toward boosting fiber competition in the United States. Such networks, sometimes community owned, involve collaboratively building a centralized fiber infrastructure that multiple competitors can come in and compete over. In instances where this has been successfully [...]

We've talked a great deal about the trademark adventurism of famed burger chain In-N-Out. While In-N-Out has shown itself to be a happy trademark bully in several ways, most of our posts on the company have to do with the trademark tourism it engages in. This is the process by which the company puts up [...]

Efforts in Congress to ban the use of AI in political ads have largely stalled. So, naturally, the White House is attempting an end-around through the Federal Communications Commission. While not an outright ban, the FCC's proposal to regulate the use of artificial intelligence in political ads is an example of Washington bureaucrats not understanding [...]

This is pretty harrowing all the way through. No one's getting away with anything, so there's that small comfort. But what motivates a well-liked sheriff of a small county in Kentucky to cross every possible line and kill a judge in his own chambers? The facts, as they were first presented by numerous sources, did [...]

One of the reasons that today's copyright is such a bad fit for the modern digital world is that its roots lie deep in 18th-century law and analogue objects like books. This fact has created a kind of legislative drag that means copyright is always decades behind the latest technological developments. A case in point [...]

In my time covering internet speech issues, I've seen some truly ridiculous arguments regarding Section 230. I even created my ever-handy Hello! You've Been Referred Here Because You're Wrong About Section 230 Of The Communications Decency Act" article four years ago, which still gets a ton of traffic to this day. But I'm not sure [...]

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 [...]

Well, it worked. We'll have to see how this plays out in the lawsuit WhatsApp brought against NSO Group, but it has managed to shed one litigant thanks to intervention from the home team: the Israeli government. In July, documents obtained by Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDoS) revealed the desperate measures NSO Group deployed to [...]

Back in 2017, the Trump administration signed new rules banning Russian-based Kaspersky software on all government computers. Last June, the Biden administration took things further and banned distribution and sale of the software, stating that the company's ties to the Russian government made its intimacy with U.S. consumer devices and data a national security threat. [...]

I don't know why the press feels the need to provide cover for law enforcement officers who screw up so badly they injure innocent people and their own coworkers. But they do. It's not even the view from nowhere." It's the view mostly likely to exonerate cops by the end of the headline." And since [...]