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Having clearly not learned many lessons from the ongoing and growing repercussions for false claims of election fraud, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindelllast week unveiled his new plan (see video) to monitor" election polling places by using... drones. According to Ars Technica, Lindell claimed he'd developed a first-of-its-kind drone technology to monitor for election fraud: [...]

Writing as much as I do about trademark disputes and, more specifically, lawsuits, these are always the most frustrating ways for these disputes to end. I will spend some time examining a dispute, analyzing the merits on both sides, only to find that the suit is settled without any of the pertinent details of the [...]

As you'll surely recall, Elon's first big brilliant idea upon taking over Twitter was to conflate two separate offerings that Twitter had: Twitter Blue, a premium upsell with extra features (some of which were useful) with Twitter's blue check verification program, which was created to help more well known users avoid impersonation. The original blue [...]

For all of the hype Silicon Valley gets as the birthplace of American technological innovation, the broadband networks in cities like Palo Alto have never kept pace. Like most towns and cities across the U.S., Palo Alto residents have long complained about the slow speeds, high prices, and comically terrible customer service they get from [...]

This is just so painfully obnoxious. The legacy news media, spurred on by a welfare system that pretend free market supporter Rupert Murdoch dreamed up and convinced governments to implement, whereby the government would force internet companies, which had innovated and created new business models that worked, to suddenly be required to pay for sending [...]

This is a bit of an oddity. We've seen lots of lawsuits against social media services filed by bigots who are upset their accounts have been banned or their content removed because, well, they're loaded with bigotry. You know, conservative views," as they say. This one goes the other direction. It claims YouTube's moderation algorithm [...]

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Look, I know some folks get annoyed that I write as much about Elon Musk and exTwitter as I do, but he's really been the most fascinating case study in sheer wrongness regarding the running of a modern internet company and it's just endlessly fascinating. And, really, if he just stopped doing stupid things, I [...]

We've noted a few times that there are two major reasons that the U.S. still hasn't passed even a basic privacy law for the internet era or regulated data brokers. One, the government is corrupt, and has repeatedly buckled to the lobbying of multiple industries that find the current dysfunction very profitable. Two, the government [...]

Well, that was quick. We had just been discussing the encouraging news that Rockstar had scooped up Cfx.re, a community dedicated to roleplaying within GTA and Red Dead Redemption games, as well as several mods made within that community. The only thing that made this newsworthy at all is that Rockstar has had an awful [...]

If you've never watched it, Kirby Ferguson's Everything is a Remix" series (which was recently updated from the original version that came out years ago) is an excellent look at how stupid our copyright laws are, and how they have really warped our view of creativity. As the series makes clear, creativity is all about [...]

It's been clearly acknowledged by a majority of courts (but not the Supreme Court, alas) that filming cops while they perform their duties is protected by the First Amendment. Most legislators know this. But some legislators still yearn to protect cops from accountability. So, they push bills that install time and place" restrictions in hopes [...]

You might have heard late last week or over the weekend, that Elon was getting rid of the block" feature on exTwitter. Elon had tweeted on Friday claiming Block is going to be deleted as a feature", except for DMs." But, uh, he had said basically the same thing back in June. I know this [...]

Customer service matters. Suing patients unhappy with your work just ain't it. That's what Texas cosmetic surgeon Dr. Wilbur Hah has just learned, after being handed a loss in four concurrent opinions dealing with four anti-SLAPP motions filed by unhappy patients the (allegedly not-so-good) doctor sued for daring to besmirch his reputation with social media [...]

Noiselab is an online community dedicated to Ableton producers and electronic musicians. With a team of experienced instructors, including Ableton Certified Trainers and industry-recognized producers, Noiselab offers high-quality Ableton tutorials, sample packs, loops, and an extensive sound library. Joining the Noiselab community gives you unlimited access to over 500 lessons and resources to enhance your [...]

A few days Elon Musk tweeted that X as humanity's collective consciousness" and then pinned that meaningless platitude that would only sound profound to a stoned high schooler. Anyway, if you're going to be humanity's collective consciousness" you should maybe try to to avoid making years worth of images inaccessible. But that's what Musk did [...]

When it comes to obnoxious DRM and bizarre, greedy restrictions, nobody does it better than printer manufacturers. The industry has long waged a not-so-subtle war on its own customers, routinely rolling out firmware updates or DRM preventing them from using more affordable, competitor printer cartridges. A few years ago, printer manufacturers took this tactic one [...]

This week, we've got a double winner on the insightful side with Stephen T. Stone taking both top spots. In first place, it's a comment about how, whatever you might think about old Twitter, its moderation practices were sure better than they are now: Maybe I didn't hear about it, but I don't recall any [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we looked forward to the Senate oversight committee hearing that would force Ajit Pai to explain why the FCC made up a DDoS attack, but were disappointed (if not at all surprised) when it utterly failed to hold him accountable. Pai was also busy opposing the effort to [...]

As a writer of opinion pieces, sometimes you go hard in the paint and the result isn't precisely what you expected. Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote about Netflix's announced decision to dip its toe into the video game market. At that point, word had gotten out about it all, though that word can [...]

XKCD has multiple comics about how hacking isn't quite the way they make it out to be in movies: And: Both of these demonstrate how actual hacking is often a lot less sophisticated than people make it out to be. And, indeed, for years we've pointed out that social engineering is generally more effective than [...]

Just fucking weird. Seems illegal. How do we get away with this in a constitutional republic? Rights exist. And et cetera. Those are the responses that tend to be generated by anyone attempting to explain civil asset forfeiture to normal people who just assume the government needs to prove something, anything before taking money (or [...]

We've covered the many problems of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) for years now (this is the second Congress it has been introduced in), and it appears that more and more people are realizing the myriad problems with the bill which, ridiculously, has broad bipartisan support, with an astoundingly disappointing 43 cosponsors in the [...]

Jordan will never be mistaken for a human rights haven. The State Department's assessment of the kingdom of Jordan's human rights environment is, at best, extremely dismal. Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: torture and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment by government authorities; arbitrary arrest and detention; political prisoners or [...]

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Let's start from the basics here: if you tax something, you will get less of it. That's how taxes work. If you want less of something, you add a tax to it. In Canada, some very, very clueless politicians (pushed by the news media) passed a tax on Facebook and Google linking to news. Both [...]

For thirty-plus years, giant telecom monopolies have worked tirelessly to crush all broadband competition. At the same time, they've lobbied state and federal governments so extensively, that the vast majority of politicians are feckless cardboard cutouts with little real interest in market or consumer health. The result has been fairly obvious: Americans pay some of [...]

In our Moderator Mayhem mobile browser game that we released back in May, there are a couple of rounds where some AI is introduced to the process, as an attempt to help" the moderators. Of course, in the game, the AI starts making the kinds of mistakes that AI makes. That said, there's obviously a [...]

One of the common tests for whether something is trademark infringement is whether or not the public will be confused as to association between the infringer and another trademark owner. This typically comes down to several factors, such as the similarity within the uses and, importantly, whether the two entities compete in the same marketplace. [...]

A few weeks ago, the NY Times published a very nice profile piece about me, which starts off with the story of how I recently got pulled into a group chat with a bunch of Hollywood writers, directors, and actors, who were trying to understand how to deal with the rise of generative AI tools. [...]

Does watching porn threaten your masculinity? Science says it doesn't. Is porn addictive? No, it's not. Is sexual expression that is consenting legally protected by the First Amendment? Yes, it is. So, why do Republicans fight to restrict or outlaw pornography across the United States? There are several reasons. First, religious conservatives have long argued [...]

Last week, cops in a small Kansas town decided they'd just toss aside the First Amendment and raid a local newspaper. There were competing narratives. The first was that the paper was in possession of information related to the drunk driving arrest of local business owner Kari Newell, who had allegedly been convicted of DUI [...]

The 2023 Complete Python Boot Camp Bundle has 12 courses to help you strengthen your Python coding skills. Python is a high-level, general-purpose language with an emphasis on readability and extensibility. Its versatility provides developers with a robust skill-set that can be adapted to numerous projects, making it a highly desirable language to pursue. Whether [...]

Elon Musk hired Linda Yaccarino to be CEO" of exTwitter (despite saying he doesn't believe in the role of a CEO) because he desperately needed someone who worked well with advertisers to try to lure back some of the many, many, many advertisers who had fled the platform in disgust at what Elon has done [...]

The 2021 infrastructure bill did some very good things for broadband. Not only did it include a massive, $42 billion investment in broadband deployment and require better mapping, it demanded that the FCC impose a new nutrition label for broadband," requiring that ISPs be transparent about all of the weird restrictions, caps, fees, and limitations [...]

Let me do a bit of throat-clearing at the top of this post. As a reminder, the general purpose of trademark laws around the world is to serve as a source-identifier for the public in those markets. In other words, allowing someone to trademark a unique identifier as to a source of a good or [...]

I don't think this is a surprise to anyone, but the SEC and the CFTC combined to issue fines on a bunch of Wall Street firms for execs communicating across encrypted messaging in a manner that wasn't recorded and preserved as required. Being in a regulated industry means having to deal with all sorts of [...]

Late last month, a report was released showing Connecticut State troopers were routinely faking stop data to avoid further scrutiny over biased policing efforts. According to the state governor's own statements, it appeared clear hundreds" of troopers faked tens of thousands" of traffic stops in order to make it look like they weren't just targeting [...]

Similar to the Age Appropriate Design Code" (AADC) legislation that became law last year,California's latest effort to regulate online speech comes in the form ofSB 680, a bill by Sen. Nancy Skinner targeting the designs, algorithms, and features of online services that host user-created content, with a specific focus on preventing harm or addiction risks [...]

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Welp, here we go again. Last month I wrote about how Techdirt had been deleted from both Bing and DuckDuckGo. Over on the discussion at HackerNews, DDG's CEO and founder, Gabriel Weinberg, jumped in to the conversation to note that this wasn't intentional (which we never suspected it was). The resulting conversation on HackerNews is [...]

For a long while now, we've pointed out how the privacy hyperventilation over singular threats like TikTok are a huge distraction from the fact Congress is simply too corrupt to pass even a baseline privacy law for the internet era. Or regulate the massive number of dodgy data brokers that buy, sell, and trade in [...]

More and more, as the video game industry matures, we find ourselves talking about game preservation and the disappearing culture of some older games as the original publishers abandon them. Often times leaving the public with no actual legit method for purchasing these old games, copyright law conspires with the situation to also prevent the [...]

Elon Musk's commitment to free speech and the free exchange of ideas has always been been a joke. Despite his repeated claims to being a free speech absolutist," and promising that his critics and rivals alike would be encouraged to remain on exTwitter, he has consistently shown that he has a ridiculously thin skin, and [...]

If you didn't know who Gigi Sohn was before her stalled-out FCC nomination and the ridiculous smear campaign that came with it, you surely do by now. And if you read Techdirt, you know she's one of the most experienced and passionate experts around when it comes to broadband. This week, she returns to the [...]

When will the legacy entertainment industry get it through their thick skulls that recording content is legal. We've done this. We've done it at the highest level. Tools that have substantial non-infringing uses are legal. Well, at least in the US. Which explains why the legacy companies often go overseas to do their dirty work. [...]

At one point, we had a functioning Constitutional Republic. Sure, it wasn't an actual democracy - the Electoral College still elected our president - but it seemed to function about as well as any major nation's government does, if not better on most occasions. Then things changed. For reasons I still can't understand, a failed [...]

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This one will take a bit of background to explain where things stand. As you likely know, two years ago first Florida and then Texas each signed laws that would restrict social media companies and how they moderate content on their platforms. Both laws were quickly challenged by two trade associations for internet companies: NetChoice [...]

Every few months a media outlet will get a staffer to write an inane story about how if you subscribe to every streaming service in existence, you'll unsurprisingly wind up paying almost as much as you'd pay for cable TV. The underlying message is usually that we haven't actually made real progress and that gosh, [...]