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The Chinese government wants the money that flows through Hong Kong. It has no desire to put up with the freedom and democracy Hong Kong has enjoyed since being freed of its colonialist overlords. The UK government exited Hong Kong only to see the Chinese government replace it as the new colonialists. The Chinese government [...]

We've noted for years how you no longer really own the things you buy. Whether it's smart home hardware that becomesuseless paperweightswhen the manufacturer implodes, or post-purchase firmware updates that activelymake your device less useful, you simply never know if the product you bought yesterday will be the same product tomorrow. Now a coalition of [...]

This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come in response to the Second Circuit's ruling against the Internet Archive. In first place, it's MrWilson with some thoughts on libraries: The vast majority of authors face an issue with obscurity in the vast sea of available works that is the book market. Libraries [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Apple bowed to some pressure from the right to repair movement, while Sony was continuing to battle with Vita tinkerers despite the device being discontinued. The EU copyright industry was continuing to demonize internet companies while we looked at how Section 230 enabled Pinterest's content moderation efforts, and [...]

I absolutely hate it when I have to write yet another trademark bullying works" post. For the better part of a decade now, we have been writing about disputes between the Ravinia Festival Association, which operates the large outdoor concert venue and eatery north of Chicago, and Ravinia Brewing, a brewery based out of the [...]

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 [...]

Elon Musk's Twitter takeover was supposed to be a slam dunk. It was famously revealed during his legal fight to get out of the deal that Elon was getting overwhelmed with people texting him, willing to casually offer hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars, in support of his takeover. But some of them [...]

The FBI keeps telling anyone who will listen that it wants more responsibilities. Despite having failed to end organized crime or to even slightly diminish the power of international drug cartels, the FBI is always asking for more to do, especially if it means more funding and surveillance powers. It set itself up to be [...]

The Six Sigma Green and Yellow Belt Training Bundle has 2 courses to help you learn the ins and outs of Six Sigma. Six Sigma is a detail-orientated crafted set of tools and techniques that help improve processes within an organization. You will receive an introduction to the tools and methods that are necessary to [...]

Everything's bigger in Texas, including the legislature's willingness to pass laws that clearly violate the First Amendment rights of websites. In the last three years, this is now the third law directed at website moderation practices to be thrown out by a district court as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. You'd think maybe [...]

Tell me if you've heard this one before: a major U.S. regional telecom monopoly is looking to buy another major U.S. regional telecom monopoly in a massive transaction that both companies insist holds vast benefits for American consumers. This time it's Verizon stating it intends to purchase Frontier in a massive $20 billion deal that [...]

As we've covered the era of cord-cutting from traditional cable television packages and the rise of streaming platforms, one of the areas I have focused on is the world of live sports. And in the world of sports, the NFL is king. If you were to look up the most viewed broadcasts on any given [...]

Over the past year, two dozen AI-related lawsuits and their myriad infringement claims have been winding their way through the court system. None have yet reached a jury trial. While we all anxiously await court rulings that can inform our future interaction with generative AI models, in the past few weeks we have suddenly been [...]

You might recall how Gannett, which owns USAToday (and probably the half-assed remains of whatever's left of your town's local newspaper), spent much of last year mired in a major AI" scandal. Company executives apparently thought it would be a good idea to use half-cooked automation to create fake journalists and lazy clickbait without telling [...]

What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn't bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You'd probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the [...]

Far too many states have decided to engage in censorship, urged on by an alarmingly large voting bloc that truly appears to be on the side of fascism, so long as that fascism appears to be on their side. Since this is, for the moment, still the United States of America, home of several enshrined [...]

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We've explored multiple times now why Elon Musk is no friend to free speech. He has regularly threatened and sued others for their free speech, and indeed, he has an ever-growing list of such lawsuits. But every once in a while, he gets one right, and this time, he's helped get a bad California law [...]

Last November, Maine residents voted overwhelmingly (83 percent) topass a new state right to repair lawdesigned to make auto repairs easier and more affordable. More specifically, the law requires that automakers standardize on-board diagnostic systems and provide remote access to those systems and mechanical datato consumers and third-party independent repair shops. But like so many [...]

Techdirt has been reporting on the rotten state of academic publishing for more than ten years. Abuses include publishers willing to publish anything for a fee, and the sale of nonsense papers so that they can be used to bulk up an academic's CV. But the world moves on, and Nature has a report about [...]

Confirmation bias. It's expensive. Just ask David Love, who has written out a $100,000 check to two drag performers for defamatory comments he made - more than once! - while supposedly serving his constituents in his position as a New Hampshire state rep. New Hampshire residents Robert Champion, who performs under the stage name Monique [...]

Earlier this year, we discussed an example of the Streisand Effect in action when a large home builder, Taylor Morrison, petitioned the Arizona Board of Technical Registration to discipline Cy Porter, a home inspector who has built up a large online following by posting videos of his inspections. He does that to educate Arizona homebuyers [...]

Can the fear of students using generative AI and the rise of questionable AI checker" tools create a culture devoid of creativity? It's a topic that is curiously one worth delving into a bit more deeply, in part because of something that happened this weekend. Earlier this year, we had a post by Alan Kyle [...]

Having completely shit the bed in its handling of a recent ransomware act, the city of Columbus, Ohio has decided the person who must be silenced - and, hopefully punished - should be the person who informed city workers and residents their PII was available on the dark web. The messenger hasn't been shot quite [...]

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In today's episode of Won't Someone Think of the Children?!', celebrity attorney David Boies is leading a baseless charge against Meta, claiming Instagram is inherently harmful to kids. Spoiler alert: it's not. This one was filed last month and covered in the Washington Post, though without a link to the complaint, because the Washington Post [...]

Despite the best efforts ofautomakersand companies likeApple, states continue to push forward with popular right to repair" reforms that make it easier and more affordable for consumers to repair tech they own. While they vary in potency, New York, Oregon, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota have all now passed some flavor of right to [...]

The fractured entertainment streaming environment we're currently in continues to be a problem. Where's that thing you want to watch? Well, not only could it be in one of a dozen places today, depending on what agreements have been worked out with content owners, but where that content can be streamed might also change in [...]

In the ongoing battle between Elon Musk and the Brazilian Supreme Court, it appears that Elon was the first to blink. At least a little bit. What started to shape up as a new front in the battle, with Elon's SpaceX defying the order to block X on its Starlink satellite internet service, crumbled on [...]

When it comes to Judge Reed O'Connor, the only thing more predictable than his partisan rulings is the Supreme Court overturning them. But that hasn't stopped him from giving the green light to Elon Musk's ridiculous SLAPP suit against Media Matters. O'Connor's problematic decision basically means that Elon has won. Even if the eventual case [...]

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit concluded, in Anderson v. TikTok, that algorithmic recommendations aren't protected by Section 230. Because they're the platforms' First Amendment-protected expression, the court reasoned, algorithms are the platforms' own first-party speech," and thus fall outside Section 230's liability shield for the publication of third-party speech. [...]

Well, here's a not-so-fun new twist in the search-and-seizure narrative. Car owners are being deprived of their vehicles just because cops think footage of a crime may have been captured by the car's on-board cameras. Tesla's vehicles carry more cameras than most. Added to the cars as a way to protect owners - either by [...]

Level up your creative projects with this Adobe Elements Bundle. If you are new to it, or even a seasoned pro, the intuitive tools are designed to edit your photos and videos with precision. Photoshop Elements 2023 allows you to easily combine your photos into a collage, enhance them with artistic effects, and create overlays [...]

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's a good thing when political leaders go around calling for the arresting or punishing of people for their speech, even when that speech is terrible. But apparently, former Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich feels differently. Indeed, it would be nice if the leadership of either major political [...]

Last March Oregonbecametheseventhstate to pass right to repair" legislation making it easier, cheaper, and more convenient to repair technology you own. The bill's passage came on the heels of legislation passed in Massachusetts (in 2012 and 2020), Colorado (in 2022 and 2023), New York (2023), Minnesota, Maine and California. All told, 30 states are considering [...]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about Oklahoma revoking the license of a teacher who pushed back against state censorship: The only acceptable political agenda in the classroom is a conservative one!' There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda [...]

Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the Ninth Circuit was putting at least some limits on warrantless device searches at the border, while the EFF sued CBP and ICE for refusing to hand over GPS tracking device policies. The judge in one of Devin Nunes's lawsuits asked for the identity of the famous Twitter [...]

In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, the biggest losers are Brazilians. They are now at risk of being stripped of VPNs while facing massive fines if they somehow get around a countrywide ban on ExTwitter. Yesterday, I wrote about the standoff between Elon Musk and Brazil, and [...]

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 [...]

In June of this year, the Supreme Court sent the Murthy case back to the lower courts. The Court argued that the plaintiffs all appeared to lack standing to sue the Biden administration over claims of social media censorship. While the Court focused on the standing issue, the majority opinion also made abundantly clear that [...]

Well, here's some more flavor to add to this horrendous mix of irresponsibility and privilege put in motion by Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina's multiple moving violations earlier this year. Here's a pretty solid recap of the incident, composed by a pretty solid writer, if I may be so bold and self-serving: Let's run this [...]

Was Mark Zuckerberg's cringey spinelessness just an attempt to grovel before Donald Trump to avoid a vindictive criminal lawsuit? Given the timing of the letter coming out just before Trump's new book that threatens to imprison Zuckerberg in a bout of authoritarian vindictiveness, it sounds like the reason Zuck is feeding the MAGA conspiracy theories [...]

As a trusted ally" in the government's vast and unaccountable domestic surveillance programs, AT&T receives oodles of government favors. From broad and often mindless deregulation and massive deployment subsidies to $42 billion in tax breaks in exchange for doing absolutely nothing, the U.S. government adores slathering its patriotic partner with cash. Which makes it all [...]

Let's dial the clock all the way back to 2007 for just a moment. Beyonce was topping the charts with Irreplacable. Nicholas Cage, the greatest actor of all time, helped make National Treasure: Book of Secrets a hit at the box office. And Apple finally settled a years-long lawsuit against a website called Think Secret, [...]

Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the well-known car manufacturer Volkswagen (VW). An article in the German Auto Motor und Sport magazine reports on a major shift in the way that VWFS, and hence VW, wants to operate (all translations by DeepL): Volkswagen Financial Services (VWFS) is planning to introduce a new [...]

There was a long period where journalists writing about failing media ventures loved to imply that these collapses meant online journalism was no longer profitable. In reality, the industry had simply become overly infected by waste and mismanagement at the hands of unqualified, affluent incompetents. Smaller worker-owned outlets are now trying to reverse the trend [...]

In the battle between Elon Musk and Brazil, there are no heroes - only two sides engaged in an epic display of hypocrisy and overreach. You may have heard that Brazil is threatening to ban ExTwitter from the country, possibly by tonight. This comes after Elon said that it was shutting down all operations in [...]

Whew. Not a great look there, Mr. Senatorial Candidate. Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde has launched a lawsuit against several Wisconsin television stations and a Democratic Party aligned PAC for running ads that he claims defamed him. The ad states that Hovde, the CEO and chairman of the board for Sunwest Bank, and his [...]

Step aside Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, there's a new contender in town for who will give us the most batshit crazy opinions regarding the internet. This week, a panel on the Third Circuit ruled that a lower court was mistaken in dismissing a case against TikTok on Section 230 grounds. But, in order to [...]

For years, the cable industry has dreamed of a future where they could use your cable box to actively track your every behavior using cameras and microphones andthen monetize the data. At one pointway back in 2009, Comcast made it clear they were even interested in using embedded microphones and cameras to monitor the number [...]