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This report [PDF], obtained by the newly-formed 404 Media, contains a lot of what we know, some of what we don't know, and confirms a lot of suspicions. The reliance on data brokers for cell location data very likely predates the Supreme Court's 2018 Carpenter decision. But it's safe to assume this market really took [...]

As a reporter who has covered telecom for the better part of two decades, I've spent much of that time watching broadband giants like AT&T and Comcast sock their captive customers with a wide variety of bullshit, sneaky fees designed to help them advertise one price, then charge you with a higher rate. It's a [...]

It's been a bad run of weeks lately for the company behind game engine Unity, stemming from a ham-fisted plan to drastically alter its pricing model for developers. When that plan was announced, which involved previously free tiers of the engine going away or being changed, per-install fees to developers that could essentially bankrupt a [...]

There's a whole chapter of Walled Culture the book (free digital versionsavailable) devoted to the serious attack on libraries and their traditional functions that is being carried out by major publishers. The latter are using digital copyright law to take advantage of the shift to eBooks by moving from one-off sales to a recurrent licensing [...]

I realized recently that I had now passed 30 years on the internet, having obtained my first internet access in August of 1993 - the same year that many consider to be the year that the internet became commercial. That was back when you had to obtain access to the internet, rather than just... having [...]

Last week, we highlighted how it appears that exTwitter's ad revenue remains in freefall. We noted that exTwitter CEO-in-name-only Linda Yaccarino had just gone on stage at the Code Conference to try to dismiss the idea that the ad revenue was in trouble, claiming that reports of a 60% decline were months and months old" [...]

As was always going to be the case with tech that can more reliably identify white middle-aged males than anyone else, another minority has been nabbed because of a facial recognition fuck up. The only good news pertains to the city of Detroit and its law enforcement agencies, which are finally not the perpetrators in [...]

The Internet is extremely important in modern life today and this reliance is only predicted to continue with the growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the next few years. The Cisco CCNA 200-301 Exam Complete Course will teach you how networks actually work and how you are able to connect to websites like [...]

Some of us have been warning about the dangers of the Digital Services Act (DSA) in the EU for quite some time, and pointed out that Elon Musk was effectively endorsing censorship in May of 2022 (after announcing his plans to purchase then-Twitter) by meeting with the EU's Thierry Breton and saying that the DSA [...]

AT&T spent $200 billion to acquire Time Warner and DirecTV, believing this would turn the dodgy old phone company into an innovative new media juggernaut. But despite$42 billion in tax breaksand oodles ofregulatory favorsfrom the Trump administration (like killing net neutrality), AT&T simply couldn't overcome its own nature as a bumbling, government-pampered telecom monopoly. As [...]

There is so much nuance to trademark law that it's not surprising when some in the public don't understand how it all works. This leads to all kinds of mistakes in terms of people thinking trademark law works in ways it does not. But the worst of these aren't mistakes, but instead when opportunists think [...]

There's no reason to make fascist small talk a reality, but sometimes folks just do what they do. Six weeks ago, a small town police department raided a small town newspaper in a vicious demonstration of boots-on-a-human-face-forever thuggery. The supposed crime? Digging up public records showing a local business owner in search of a liquor [...]

Last week I found myself assigned to speak on a streaming piracy" panel that had gotten bolted onto an event otherwise focused on trademark counterfeiting, despite the latter being a completely separate legal issue connected with a completely separate legal doctrine. It was all part of the USPTO's roundtable on future strategies in anti-counterfeiting and [...]

The DOJ - following a period of questionable leadership under Donald Trump - said it has little interest in prosecuting journalists. It has also made it clear it will not abuse the CFAA to punish people who did nothing more than access sites in ways not intended by the sites' creators. Why? Because there are [...]

From very early on in Elon Musk's ownership of exTwitter a few things became clear regarding his understanding of the FTC. First, he clearly had no idea that the company has a consent decree with the FTC (the kind of thing you learn about during due diligence, which he waived in the purchasing process) and [...]

The Apple Watch Wireless Charger Keychain is the perfect accessory for Apple Watch users on-the-go. With a built-in 950mAh lithium-ion battery, it can charge all series of Apple Watch. The technology allows it to be used as a base for a bedside table or table for convenient charging. Its portable, pocket-size design makes it easy [...]

Two years ago we wrote about Rep. Jerry Nadler's SHOP SAFE Act, which we noted would basically cement into place Amazon's position as a dominant online marketplace, because no one else would be able to afford the associated liability. The bill is based on the massively exaggerated claims that online marketplaces are full of counterfeit" [...]

Generally, when you talk about disinformation or propaganda, big tech" companies like Facebook, or media giants like Fox News get the lion's share of the attention. But as I've often noted, local news outlets in the U.S. were hollowed out years ago by mindless consolidation, and were ultimately replaced with something thatlookslike news, but is [...]

This week, Stephen T. Stone takes both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it's a comment about Yelp asking the court to stop the Texas AG from suing them because they warn users about Crisis Pregnancy Centers, in response to a (snarky) question about what the issue is: Sincere answer to what [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the DOJ filed a new net neutrality lawsuit against California that was a giant middle finger to consumers and competition, while the entire broadband soon followed suit with its own lawsuit. On another front, the DOJ failed at another attempt to obtain an encryption-breaking precedent in federal court. [...]

We tend to talk a lot around here about advertising, given how closely intertwined tech and digital industries tend to be with ads and the like. And frankly, given how often we've beat the drum that advertising is content and content is advertising, it's become all the more clear in these modern times that good [...]

Although copyright is mainly thought of as concerning books, music and films, it applies to other kinds of creativity in a fixed form. That includes apparently trivial material such as early commercial television programs. These are important cultural artefacts, but unlike books, music or films, there are very few formal schemes for collecting and conserving [...]

Using Protect the children!" as their rallying cry, red states are enacting digital pornography restrictions. Texas's effort, H.B. 1181, requires commercial pornographic websites-and others, as we'll see shortly-to verify that their users are adults, and to display state-drafted warnings about pornography's alleged health dangers. In late August, a federal district judge blocked the law from [...]

In August we wrote about a rumored plan of Elon Musk to remove headlines from the TwitterCards (are they now X-cards? who the hell knows?), basically making the site completely useless for news consumption. At the time Musk claimed it was somehow more aesthetically pleasing. Because that's what everyone looks for in their news links: [...]

Former officer/current prisoner Derek Chauvin decided to personify endemic police racism by pressing his knee to the neck of an unarmed black man for nearly ten minutes. This display of power continued for three minutes after another officer told Officer Chauvin he could no longer detect a pulse. This act saw Officer Derek Chauvin join [...]

Last week, exTwitter's CEO-in-name-only Linda Yaccarino gave what is the cringiest interviews I've ever seen at the Code Conference. Multiple people told me they couldn't watch more than a few minutes of it. It's so bad. She is barely listening, extremely dismissive of important questions, and acting as if people are lucky to hear her. [...]

During peak pandemic, the FCC launched the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB program), giving lower income Americans a $50 ($75 for those in tribal lands) discount off of their broadband bill. Under the program, the government gave money to ISPs, which then doled out discounts to users if they qualified. But (and I'm sure this will [...]

Adidas has a reputation as a jealous defender, and at times is better described as an aggressor, when it comes to enforcing its trademark rights, specifically around its admittedly famous 3 stripes logo. Famous mark or not, the company has far too often shown itself willing to go to absurd ends in protecting those marks. [...]

Elon Musk really seems to hate paying legal bills (or, really, any bills), but now he's got a few more to cover. Bloomberg reported earlier this week that Kathaleen McCormick, Chancellor of the Delaware Court of Chancery (who is quite familiar with Elon Musk and Twitter) has ruled that exTwitter has to cover the legal [...]

A federal district judge in Louisiana dismissed a lawsuitchallenging the state's mandatory age verification statute in order to access adult content on the internet. The lawsuit was brought by the Free Speech Coalition and stakeholders in and adjacent to the adult entertainment industry. Plaintiffs intended to block the age verification statute passed by the state [...]

I've been asked a few times now what to do about online safety if the Kids Online Safety Act is no good. I will take it as a given that not enough is being done to make the Internet safe, especially for children. I think there is enough evidence to show that while the Internet [...]

Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about theComplete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you'll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting [...]

There's no way to write this article without some people yelling angrily at me, so I'm just going to highlight that point up front: many, many people are going to disagree with this article, and I'm going to get called all sorts of names. I actually avoided commenting on this topic because I wasn't sure [...]

Clearly keen to not miss another opportunity to show how they're slowly turning into Comcast, Netflix this week indicated they'd be pushing yet another price hike in the wake of the recently successful writers' strike: Netflix is planning to increase the cost of its streaming service yet again,according to a report fromThe Wall Street Journal. [...]

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about how Bethesda's latest opus, Starfield, was shipping without support for Nvidia's DLSS technology, but did have a deal to support AMD's version of that upscaling technology. And after plenty of commenters pointed out that I was coming at that post from the wrong angle, I jumped [...]

While technologies like low orbit satellite can help shore up broadband access, they come with their own additional challenges. One being that services like Space X's Starlink have causepotentially unavoidable light pollution, harming scientific research. The other being the exponential growth in space detritus, aka space junk, that will make space navigation increasingly difficult. The [...]

Look, I don't want to suggest that maybe the 5th Circuit's analysis on issues in the Missouri v. Biden case is not particularly well considered, but, um, it's not at all clear that the 5th Circuit's analysis on the Missouri v. Biden case is well considered. After all, the original ruling made a series of [...]

For the children. For the children. For the children. That's all we hear. And it's always from people arguing to expand government power. It's never from anyone who actually cares about protecting children from their government. Instead, it's almost always used as leverage to increase government power using the theory that only a monster would [...]

This DevDojo Pro subscription gives you access to a set of tools to help you build your next great idea. Start with the Page Creator, where you'll find Tailwind CSS Page Builder, a tool for crafting beautiful landing pages. Then, move on to Wave SAAS Starter Kit, where you'll learn how to build your Software [...]

I know many of you have heard this before, but Cory Doctorow's enshittification" concept is such a useful framework to think about things: first, companies are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value [...]

The modern authoritarian GOP knows its radical policies are widely unpopular, which is why it increasingly needs to rely on propaganda. That's also why the party pretends that absolutely any effort to moderate online political propaganda is censorship." With young voters turning away from the GOP in record numbers, propaganda, gerrymandering, and race-baiting anti-democratic bullshit [...]

Roughly a year ago, we discussed one of a few instances of a company filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against its own employees as a retaliation tactic for those employees forming a union. In this specific case, it was the company behind Medieval Times, an organization that builds fake castles and sells food and drink [...]

Adding to the case law of small, but significant, Fourth Amendment law is this decision [PDF] handed down by a Maine federal court. (h/t FourthAmendment.com) The Fourth Amendment makes things pretty clear: to perform invasive searches, cops need warrants. But over the years since the erection of that standard, we've seen it loosened. A host [...]

To hear Texas legislators (and the 5th Circuit) view the world, it is apparently wholly unconstitutional to share information from the government with websites in any manner that might pressure them in how they moderate, yet at the same time, the government is absolutely free to compel companies to post messages that they want on [...]

Dominating a field is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it gives you extensive reach, immensely profitable products, and - if you're just too good at it - the horrific realization your brand name has been commodified to the point that hundreds of millions of people now use your proper noun as a verb. (It [...]

The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Certification Bundle has 9 courses that cover topics like AI, deep learning, machine learning, neural networks, and more. You'll also learn Python, PyTorch, Keras, 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 [...]

At this point, any Senator signing on to support KOSA cannot deny that the bill has been written explicitly to suppress LGBTQ+ voices. The Heritage Foundation said so directly earlier this year. And Senator Marsha Blackburn flat out said that KOSA was important in order to protect minor children from the transgender [sic] in our [...]

We've noted a few times now how as the streaming sector consolidates and grows, it's becoming more and more like the traditional cable industry it disrupted. This enshittification includes a lot of endless price hikes, a steady degradation of product quality, pointless mergers that cause endless layoffs, and the implementation of new restrictive efforts to [...]

ShotSpotter has long presented itself as a reliable detector of gunshots. Mileage, however, has varied. Law enforcement customers that have gotten disgruntled with this limited service have pointed out - en route to terminated contracts - that (a) detected gunshots are not always gunshots, (b) detected gunshots are rarely useful intel, and (c) detecting gunshots [...]

The fallout from game engine Unity's decision to try to cram a completely new and different pricing structure down the throats of game developers continues. Originally announced in mid-September, Unity took a bunch of its tiered structures of its offerings and suddenly instituted per-install fees, along with a bunch of other fee structures and requirements [...]