Techdirt

Last week, Utah’s “porn license” age verification law went into effect, and the largest (by far) adult content company on the internet, Mindgeek (which runs Pornhub and a bunch of other sites), had all of its sites go dark for any Utah-based IP address. If someone visited from those sites, they got a video explaining […]

Despite oodles of regulatory favors and millions of dollars in spectrum sales, Sinclair Broadcasting is shuttering what passes for local “news” in another five markets, continuing a wave of layoffs making an already bad problem worse. You might recall that Sinclair’s long been under fire for heavily consolidating a very broken local news sector, often […]

When Putin decided to show the world that his government is so wildly incompetent that it turned what was supposed to be a weeks long takeover of Ukraine into a prolonged conflict in which Russian victory of any kind is very much an open question, he also attempted to keep the truth from reaching Russians. […]

BE THE TERRORISM YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD. FBI motto (ca. 2001) The FBI’s penchant for self-ownership dates back to its reinvention as a counter-terrorism agency, a move that followed a bunch of power and budget expansions for any federal agencies that might help George W. Bush avenge his father’s loss in the […]

There have been numerous stories about the new generation of AI chatbots lying when asked questions. This is rightly perceived as a big issue for the technology if it is to become routinely used and trusted by members of the public, as some intend. But in China, the problem is not that chatbots lie, but […]

To hear the recording industry tell the story, copyright is the only thing protecting musicians from poverty and despair. Of course, that’s always been a myth. Copyright was designed to benefit the middlemen and gatekeepers, such as the record labels, over the artists themselves. That’s why the labels have a long history of never paying […]

The internet has revolutionized communications, sales, and information distribution, and has enabled historic levels of porn consumption. These are all unequivocally good things. (Fight me.) What it has also done is revolutionize court precedent. Prior to internet ubiquity, courts were sometimes more receptive to plaintiffs attempting to hold third parties responsible for content generated by […]

Companies big and small count on project managers to ensure their initiatives arrive on time and on budget, which is why these professionals routinely earn six figures for their services. From setting up projects in JIRA to streamlining pipelines with Agile and Scrum, the Complete Project Management Bundle boasts 11 courses to get you up […]

It remains kind of shocking just how badly Elon Musk has screwed up Twitter. He drove away somewhere between 40% and 70% of the advertisers on the site before he took over. And the advertisers have been pretty blunt that the problem is that Elon Musk himself is a real liability. He’s made advertising on […]

Microsoft has apparently realized that it’s just good business sense to get itself on the right side of history, and the right side of the growing “right to repair movement.” The company has increasingly been urging lawmakers to support the Washington State Fair Repair Act, which would ensure that consumers and indie repair shops have […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a comment simply highlighting one of the details in the story about Elon Musk threatening to give away NPR’s Twitter account: In an email sent at 2:19 a.m. EST after the story was originally published, Musk wrote a message without any text […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we took a closer look at how the sex trafficking statistics used to justify FOSTA/SESTA were made up. Epic was doubling down on its legal crusade against a 14-year old who cheated in a video game, Microsoft was defending putting a computer recycler in jail, and the FTC […]

There have always been panics. And those panics are often the result of government entities deciding now is the time to be alarmed by things someone claimed they saw on social media. All panics are overblown. What government officials declare to be the next threat to public safety is often something most social media users […]

The hyperbolic rhetoric that is a feature of the copyright industry, which tries absurdly to characterize making an additional digital copy as “theft”, can lead to some serious legislative harm. For example, Germany is currently aiming to bring in a new law against “digital violence” – things like bullying and stalking, but also identity abuse […]

I’m a weird guy, but you all knew that already. One of the ways in which I’m particularly weird is that I have not used any sort of an alarm clock in roughly 20 years (I’m in my 40s). For whatever reason, I can decide in my mind when I want to wake up and […]

At this moment, Bluesky has caught lightning in a bottle. It’s already an exciting platform that’s fun and allows vulnerable communities to exist. This sense of safety has allowed folks to cut loose, and people are calling it a “throwback to an earlier internet era.” I think that’s right, and in some respects that retro […]

Lots of people thought they could create a better Twitter after they (incorrectly) assumed Twitter was violating their First Amendment rights (lol) by refusing to host their Nazi-adjacent banter. A handful of people mistook froth for cream and decided they’d welcome the worst of the worst social media users. Shortly after that, they realized they’d […]

Cloud computing has revolutionized industry and changed the way businesses manage their digital infrastructure. As it relies on a massive sharing of resources across a network, the opportunities and challenges for developers and network administrators are growing rapidly. Over the 9 courses in the Cloud Computing Architect Bundle, you’ll go from cloud computing zero to […]

We’re in the midst of a full blown mass hysteria moral panic claiming that the internet is “dangerous” for children, despite little evidence actually supporting that hypothesis, and a ton arguing the opposite is true. States are passing bad laws, and Congress has a whole stack of dangerous “for the children” laws, from KOSA to […]

Last year BMW took ample heat for its plans to turn heated seats into a costly $18 per month subscription in numerous countries. As we noted at the time, BMW is already including the hardware in new cars and adjusting the sale price accordingly. So it’s effectively charging users a new, recurring fee to enable […]

If cops screw up enough, they may get blacklisted by prosecutors. These lists — known as “Brady” or “Giglio” lists (depending on jurisdiction) — inform prosecutors that they may not want to ask these officers to testify due to their long histories of misconduct. Most lawsuits generated by cops appearing on these lists deal with […]

Back in March, we discussed a fairly silly request, made by several film producers who are suing RCN for not being their copyright police, that the court subpoena Reddit to unmask 9 users of that site. There were several aspects of the request that made it all very dumb: half the Reddit users never mentioned […]

U.S. telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast spent millions of dollars and several decades quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either banned or heavily hamstrung towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly failed to upgrade or expand their broadband […]

It seems like every day this week a new bill has been introduced in Congress with the grandstanding politicians behind the bill insisting that it’s necessary to protect the children online. It seems like no elected official wants to be left behind on this particular moral panic train. The latest, from Senators Ed Markey and […]

Never mind the Supreme Court. Never mind the case law finding warrantless phone tracking not quite constitutional. Never mind the self-imposed restrictions enacted by federal law enforcement agencies that place warrant requirements on real-time location tracking or the federal court decisions codifying these voluntary efforts. Forget all of that. North Carolina is going to go […]

This LED Bluetooth speaker is built to last and strike a chord with your friends. With its 1800mAh battery capacity, you can enjoy music for up to 10 hours of continuous playtime, making it perfect for outdoor use. The speaker also has a TF memory card slot, allowing you to listen to your favorite beats […]

A few weeks ago I wrote about an interview that Substack CEO Chris Best did about his company’s new offering, Substack Notes, and his unwillingness to answer questions about specific content moderation hypotheticals. As I said at the time, the worst part was Best’s unwillingness to just own up to what he was saying were […]

The cable and broadband industry spent the better part of a decade pretending that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional television in favor for streaming or antenna-based alternatives) either didn’t actually exist or was a fad that would end when Millennials started procreating. Now, they like to pretend they saw the trend coming all along. With most […]

Money can’t buy you everything. Not even the kind of money that’s apparently infinite, if our current federal deficit is any indication. The US Marshals Service was hit with ransomware in February. And, despite drastic measures being taken by the USMS, the breached system still has yet to return to service. And it wasn’t just […]

There are all sorts of anti-internet bills making the rounds lately, and one of the many on the docket and apparently set to move quickly is the Cooper Davis Act, which aims to create a mandatory reporting rule for websites where promotion of the sale of illegal drugs may occur. As with basically any law […]

We’re getting into the warmer seasons, which means AAA games are coming up for release dates. It also means that leaks of content, or sometimes the entire games, for those AAA games are coming out as well. We just talked about several leaks coming out for Nintendo’s latest Zelda title. And now, right on the […]

It’s truly incredible what a childish person Elon Musk can be. As you’ll recall, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world to misleadingly label NPR as “state affiliated media,” a label that had been previously reserved for media organizations that were voices of the state, rather than independent. He did it because […]

In 2005, the US Postal Service (USPS) began to get into the crowdsourcing business. For a fee, anyone could create custom stamps that could be sold through the government’s approved stamp portal (Stamps.com), provided they survived a cursory review by inattentive public servants. While internet-as-tapwater was still on the cusp — not quite everywhere but […]

Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete 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 […]

Over the last few months we’d been wondering if it was worth pulling Techdirt posting from Twitter altogether, but had been too busy with other stuff to make a decision, and now it looks like Twitter has made the decision for us. Last week, Automattic informed us that Elon Musk was demanding a ridiculous amount […]

The US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of “broadband.” Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, […]

Nintendo hates whenever it loses even a modest amount of control over its properties. Lately, Nintendo has been making a ton of noise bullying YouTubers over all kinds of uses of Zelda content, with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom having been slated for release mid-May. The company even attempted to subpoena Discord to unmask a […]

Passing blatantly unconstitutional dangerous laws “to protect the children” based on totally unsubstantiated moral panics appears to be part of a bipartisan mass hysteria these days. The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is officially back. And, with it, the recognition that over a quarter of the Senate has bought into this dangerous, unconstitutional nonsense: […]

Some politicians get elected and think they’re heading up the musical equivalent of vaporware. Just a heads up: you may have more power than you’re used to but it’s constrained by the Constitution: both the one ratified by the nascent US federal government and the one adopted by individual states, which are required to use […]

Portable, sleek and sophisticated, the Nix Mini 2 Color Sensor is engineered with life in mind. It’s perfect for those who find inspiration wherever they go. The Nix Mini can easily identify any color with a simple scan, ideal for those who work with color, or for those who simply want to bring it into […]

We’ve already talked about Montana’s extraordinarily unconstitutional “ban TikTok” bill that raises a huge number of constitutional issues. Lots of individuals and organizations pointed this out to governor Greg Gianforte (who came to office as a former tech exec of an internet company, and was supposed to be someone who understand the internet). Gianforte has […]

We’ve noted repeatedly how Netflix’s password sharing crackdown is a stupid cash grab that alienates and annoys loyal customers, duplicates existing efforts to restrict “freeloaders,” won’t give the company the financial windfall it thinks, and just generally represents how the company has inevitably shifted from innovative disruptor to the kind of tone deaf cable giants […]

A few weeks back, we talked about a lawsuit Chipotle filed against Sweetgreen, a restaurant chain dedicated mostly to serving salads and grain bowls. The suit centered on Sweetgreen announcing a new menu item: a “Chipotle Burrito Bowl.” We found the entire suit quite odd, given that Sweetgreen’s menu item is named in a way […]

Only people can get patents. There’s a good reason for that, which is that the patent grant—a temporary monopoly granted by the government—is supposed to be given out only to “promote the progress of science and useful arts.” Just like monkeys can’t get a copyright on a photo, because it doesn’t incentivize the monkey to take more photos, […]

The GOP is currently trying to hold the global economy hostage by using the debt ceiling debate as a bludgeon. Mostly to implement budget cuts nobody likes (like major budget cuts at the VA, or cuts to vast swaths of the country’s already faltering social safety net). If it goes badly, economists warn the net […]

Recently, I wrote for Lawfare about Sen. Dick Durbin’s new STOP CSAM Act bill, S.1199. The bill text is available here. There are a lot of moving parts in this bill, which is 133 pages long. (Mike valiantly tries to cover them here.) I am far from done with reading and analyzing the bill language, […]

There are few things I enjoy writing about more than cops who feel waving around a piece of paper will ensure they can get what they want. I’ve handled a few of these stories before, most of them centered on Signal, the little messaging service that could — one that does not collect user data […]

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To hear Elon and his biggest fans tell the story, pre-Elon Twitter was a hellhole of censorship often driven by government demands, and he had to take over the company to “bring free speech back.” As astute observers not easily misled by nonsense peddlers knew, however, in actuality, old Twitter was actually one of the […]