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The state of Texas was sued in a federal district court by the Free Speech Coalition, a trade group representing the adult entertainment industry, and a slate of other companies including subsidiaries of Canadian firm MindGeek (owner of Pornhub). Other plaintiffs include the parent companies of popular adult sites like XVideos and Bang Bros, and [...]

Ah, copyright. Eric Goldman alerts us to to a new bit of copyright nonsense. Jieun Kiaer, an Oxford professor of Korean linguistics, recently published an academic book called Emoji Speak: Communications and Behaviours on Social Media. As you can tell from the name, it's a book about emoji, and about how people communicate with them: [...]

Donald Trump can't win consecutive elections. And he certainly can't win lawsuits. Pretty much every bit of litigation Trump has engaged in since he was elected president has been tossed out on its proverbial ear, the completely expected outcome for lawsuits engaged in angrily, but not coherently. About a year ago, Trump's legal team issued [...]

A few weeks ago, the Progress Action Fund released a political ad in Ohio that went somewhat viral on social media. I saw one person refer to it as the most effective political ad" they'd ever seen. And, I mean, even if you don't agree with the message, you have to admit that (1) it [...]

Originally developed for the software industry, Agile is the project management methodology that leverages quick, iterative sessions to rapidly identify defects and improve a product. Now that more companies are going digital, Agile is seeing even more popularity in the working world. The Agile Expert Project Management Bundle will get you up to speed with [...]

Lots of discussion about Wikipedia's public utility has occurred since its inception. On one hand, it's true: just about anyone can make edits to the information, unlike physical encyclopedias or websites owned by the former purveyors of these informative hardbound reams of paper. On the other hand, the editing process is not some Wild West. [...]

More than 600 communities across the U.S. have decided to build their own broadband networks after decades of predatory behavior, slow speeds, and high prices by regional telecom monopolies. That includes the city of Bountiful, Utah, which earlier this year voted to build a $48 million fiber network to deliver affordable, gigabit broadband to every [...]

And here we go again. we've been talking about how copyright has gotten in the way of cultural preservation generally for a while, and more specifically lately when it comes to the video game industry. The way this problem manifests itself is quite simple: video game publishers support the games they release for some period [...]

Over the last few years, as we've seen state legislatures and governors focusing on culture war legislating, rather than sensible policy legislating, one thing that's become popular - kicked off by Texas's anti-abortion law, but gladly embraced by Democrats as well - is the idea of trying to avoid judicial scrutiny by taking enforcement out [...]

As information started to leak out from the... everywhere about NSO Group's secondhand contribution to surveillance abuses all over the world, the world (except for the worst of NSO's customers) began taking action. Even the government that facilitated many of NSO's sales to human rights violators decided it might be time to toss a few [...]

The lawsuits against Elon Musk's ex-Twitter continue to pile up, but here's one where the law itself is ridiculous and unjust. As you'll recall, the EU Copyright Directive included a link or snippet tax for news (which they call a neighboring right") similar to the link taxes we've discussed in Australia and Canada. The main [...]

Designing a game world takes time and can get quite repetitive. Why not have the game build its world for you? That's the goal of procedural content generation, and you'll come to grips with it in the Complete Unity Game Developer Course. Focusing on the tile-based method for procedural level creation, you'll explore how to [...]

The best Streisanding is the Streisanding you give yourself, as the adage goes. The adage is even enshrined at Wikipedia, where it points to the creator of the term: Mike Masnick. Perhaps you've heard of him. The best thing to do to counter negative content is presenting your own side of the case. The worst [...]

For the better part of the decade, the generally feckless FCC has been trying to require that broadband ISPs be alittlemore honest about broadband fees and limits at the point of sale. So they cooked up the idea of a nutrition label for broadband," detailing all of the little caveats and restrictions (real world speeds, [...]

The gears of justice turn slowly, but they do turn. Late last year we discussed a delightful gentleman named Roland Macher, who goes by Spanky", because of course he does. Spanky was a restaurant owner and real estate businessman who found himself in prison for over 2 years because paying your taxes is hard or [...]

Some unfortunate news. AZ Central reported yesterday that James Larkin, who was a free speech pioneer who built an alt-weekly newspaper empire, and then spun out the controversial classifieds ads site Backpage, died by suicide, one week before his latest trial. While there's been plenty of discussion about Backpage, related to questions around Section 230, [...]

For years, we've pointed out that the FBI is more interested in easy wins than actually securing the nation. And for years, the FBI has maddeningly refused to take our harsh criticism into consideration. It has done its own thing, because of course it has. Who could possibly stop it? A mass violators of rights [...]

This is not a surprise, because the company made it clear it planned to do exactly this, but Meta has now begun the process of stopping links to news sources from appearing in Canada, something that Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez insisted would never happen. The company says it will take a few weeks to [...]

For several years, the government was able to route around the Fourth Amendment by turning cell service providers into proxy tracking devices. Thanks to the Third Party Doctrine, location data generated by cell phones wasn't given an expectation of privacy. A Supreme Court decision handed down in 2012 strongly suggested the government needed to obtain [...]

MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, [...]

The grand old enshittification curve strikes again. Remember, as stated by Cory Doctorow, the process of enshittification entails these steps: first, they 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 for themselves. Way [...]

While Elon Musk's Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) broadband technology is too expensive and capacity-constrained to seriously put a dent in US broadband problems, it's helpful in low connectivity situations like disasters, select parts of rural America, or the war in Ukraine. But Musk's growing power over the fledgling LEO satellite sector has started to [...]

More than a decade ago, it came to our attention that the NFL was out in the streets of New Orleans threatening small businesses for the crime of using New Orleans related language alongside the use of images of the fleur de lis. Those actions were quite silly, given that the symbol and much of [...]

Last month we noted how media reform activists had petitioned the FCC to revoke Fox News' local broadcast license in Philadelphia. More specifically, the group argued that Fox News' rampant election fraud propaganda technically violated the character clause" embedded in the Communications Act the FCC is supposed to use to determine whether an organization should [...]

We've long believed in the power of online platform interoperability and the power it gives to users to curate their own experiences. One of the prime examples of this is Block Party, created by Tracy Chou, which has had to suspend its operations following ExTwitter's API changes. Tracy joined us on the podcast once before [...]

There's so much to dig into on this one. First off, just to state my own bias upfront, I'm not a fan of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Literally just a few days ago I wrote about one of its highly questionable studies and how it's being used (badly) to justify a terrible [...]

Censorship has always been the name of the game when governments push fake news" laws. First of all, laws like these allow governments to decide which news is fake" and which news is credible." Those pushing these laws claim they just want to ensure citizens aren't misled. But, in reality, governments just want more options [...]

The Little Wonder Solo Stereo Bluetooth Speaker may look small, but it produces as clear and powerful a sound as any other speaker. It comes in a a variety of colors that are great for any setting and decor and you can connect multiple speakers together. Connect this speaker to your smartphone or tablet via [...]

Speech has consequences. Elon Musk has decided to reenable accounts suspended for posting CSAM while at the same time allowing the most basic of CSAM scanning systems to break. And, that's not even looking at how most of the team who was in charge of fighting CSAM on the site were either laid off or [...]

Transparency is good, actually. For decades numerous sensitive infrastructure, military, and first responder systems in Europe and the U.S. have utilized a radio standard dubbed TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio), which is used in radios made by Motorola, Damm, Hytera,and other major vendors. For 25 years secrecy surrounding the encryption algorithms used in TETRA kept researchers [...]

As some of you might have seen, this past weekend, the NY Times ran a very nice profile about me, written by Kashmir Hill. There's not much to say about it, other than it was an interesting (if somewhat awkward-feeling) experience to be the subject of a story, rather than the journalist covering it. But [...]

It has been a busy day for Arkansas. Pornhub.com geo-blocked IP addresses in Arkansasin the latest protest against unworkable age verification laws. Arkansas is the fifth state to have an age-gating statute enter force and is the fourth to be geo-blocked by the parent company of Pornhub, the Montreal-based firm MindGeek owned by Ethical Capital [...]

I didn't think we had much reason to write about all of the Harlan Crow / Clarence Thomas stuff that I'm sure you've read elsewhere. But the latest (in a now increasingly long series) of mind-blowing revelations from ProPublica regarding the relationship between the billionaire and the Supreme Court Justice... actually has a somewhat bizarre [...]

The regulation will continue until internet freedom improves, apparently. Last year we wrote about Senator Michael Bennet pushing a terrible Digital Platform Commission" to be the new internet speech police, and now we have the bipartisan free speech hating duo of Senators Elizabeth Warren and Lindsey Graham with their proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection [...]

The self-proclaimed free speech warriors of the Republican party have spent much of the past half-decade trying to find some way to force social media platforms to carry their often-objectionable speech. That's what these asshats and hypocrites consider to be the real censorship:" the actions of private companies these same people have long stated should [...]

The Ultimate UX/UI Designer Bundle has 8 courses to help you start to develop user friendly websites. Courses cover HTML5 Canvas, Bootstrap4, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD, and more. These beginner-friendly courses are designed to get you building modern, beautiful, fully functional websites with absolutely zero experience required.The bundle is on sale for $30. Note: The [...]

We've talked a few times about California's Age Appropriate Design Code." This is a bill in California that was sponsored" and pushed for by a UK Baroness (who is also a Hollywood filmmaker and has fallen for moral panic myths about evil technology). As we explained there is no way for a site like Techdirt [...]

Under the Communications Act, the FCC is supposed to occasionally survey the state of the broadband industry to ensure that affordable broadband is being deployed on a reasonable and timely basis," and do something about it if it isn't. Of course the captured, bumbling agency doesn't actually do that. Despite spending $400 million on the [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is ThatOneOtherGuy with a simple response to the push in California for protect the children" internet regulations: The argument everyone forgets... The PROMISE of safety of children (or any other group) is not more important than the Rights of the whole. The only thing that [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, a bad new bill sought to create a nationwide exception to subpoena and warrant requirements for cellphone location data, while a court in Canada was affirming that there's still an expectation of privacy in devices being repaired by third parties, and FBI boss Chris Wray infamously called for [...]

There's an interesting post on TorrentFreak that concernsso-called pirate" subtitlesfor films. It's absurd that anyone could consider subtitles to be piracy in any way. They are a good example of how ordinary people can add value by generously helping others enjoy films and TV programs in languages they don't understand. In no sense do pirate" [...]

Copyright royalty collection societies don't exactly have a stellar reputation for operating on the ethical up and up. Our pages are filled with these collection societies pulling all sorts of bullshit. Some of my favorites are things like when one society insisted on collecting royalties from a bar that was shut down due to COVID, [...]

One of a long series of laws written to limit police officer accountability has been not only rejected by a federal judge, but also the cops it was supposed to protect" and Arizona's top prosecutor. Last March, the Arizona legislature decided cops simply can't do their job with the public looking over their shoulders. So, [...]

It's no secret that Elon Musk is desperate for advertisers to return to the platform. He just recently admitted that the company is still cashflow negative and that around 50% of advertisers have left (other reports say the number is bigger). This is despite his earlier claims that the company would break even on a [...]

Here's Part Two of my two parter about the Satanic Panic-level moral panic that has befallen the disconnected-from-reality California legislature (in a bipartisan way) as they seek to destroy the internet to protect the children). In my previous post, I covered the opening remarks by California Senator Nancy Skinner in support of her bill, SB [...]

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What you see below is part one of a two parter about a terrible bill in California. It started out as a single post, but there was so much nonsense, I decided to break it up into two parts. Stay tuned for part two. You may recall last year that California, in addition to the [...]

Elon Musk's companies are routinely heralded for unbridled innovation, but when it comes to very basic customer service, most of them are an incompetent nightmare. Starlink customers looking for refunds after being on waiting lists for years are routinely ghosted. Tesla Solar customers often have it even worse; shelling out huge sums of money only [...]

Over the last decade, a small handful of large platforms have become de facto arbiters of how people communicate and share information with one another. As concerns about that concentrated power and those platforms' decisions have piled up, so too have calls for greater competition and choice in social media and other services for communication [...]

And here we go again. We have been talking about both the concept of video game preservation being lost to the copyright gods, as well as how copyright often prevents fan-made creations and content around game franchises, for years and years now. Both topics are quite frustrating and both serve as examples of how copyright [...]