Techdirt

The Coding 101 Bootcamp Beginners Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn all about coding. Courses cover C++, Node.js, HTML, CSS, Python, Kotlin, and more. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products […]

So, we were just talking about the Supreme Court agreeing to take some cases that could determine the future of the internet (as in, potentially ruining it), but before that it may be on the path to could destroy some of the basics of art. Next week, the Supreme Court will be hearing oral arguments […]

After an inexplicable year-plus delay, the FCC is finally circulating a new order that should help dramatically reduce the number of illegal, annoying, and scam robotexts received by wireless subscribers. The FCC order, which was introduced more than a year ago, was only finally voted on and approved this week. The order begins the process […]

We’ve talked about Authentic Brands Group here a couple of times and never for good behavior. The company that manages the rights for several living and deceased celebrities is also a notorious trademark troll and enforcer. Most recently we discussed a bizarre trademark opposition brought against Shaqir O’Neal, Shaq’s son, who had the trademark application […]

There are a number of different tools out there that let you download YouTube videos. These tools are incredibly useful for a number of reasons and should be seen as obviously legal in the same manner that home video recording devices were declared legal by the Supreme Court, because they have substantial non-infringing uses. But, […]

When last we checked in with One America News (OAN), it was trying (with the help of numerous Republican AGs) to pretend that DirecTV’s decision to boot the barely watched conspiracy network from its cable lineup was part of a vast, diabolical cabal to censor conservatives (it wasn’t). It then decided to attack Verizon, right before that […]

Rap music has long conveyed the narrative of the streets. As such, its subject matter often details violence, police oppression, and criminal activities. And the expression itself often provides the only legitimate potential source of income for people living in impoverished, high-crime areas. But it’s only in recent years that cops and prosecutors have decided […]

Enjoy convenient charging and fast data transfer with the Mini 5-in-1 Type-C to USB Hub. The cable is coated in 4.5mm of thick PVC material and has reinforced joints making it durable and able to withstand heavy use. The galvanized wire core, aluminum alloy, and multi-layer shielding help provide a fast, stable data transmission. Plug […]

I’m only a human being, and not a machine, so it’s beyond my ability to keep track of all the times that Donald Trump has threatened to sue CNN for defamation, or actually carried through, on his threat. I will just note that it seems to happen a lot. None of these lawsuits have actually […]

Last year we noted how FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr had launched a bad faith effort suggesting that “big tech” gets a “free ride” on the internet, and should be forced to fund broadband expansion. This argument, that tech giants like Google and Netflix somehow get a free ride (they don’t) and should “pay their fair share” to […]

Cops kill dogs literally all the time. It happens so often even the DOJ has taken notice. Laurel Matthews, a supervisory program specialist with the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (DOJ COPS) office, says it’s an awful lot. She calls fatal police vs. dogs encounters an “epidemic” and estimates that 25 to 30 […]

It is difficult to understate how downright evil the big book publishers are. If you think the RIAA and MPA are bad (and, they are), the book publishers take it to new super villain, mustache-twirling levels. George Washington University libraries have put out an alert to students and faculty that Wiley, one of the largest […]

The FCC is finally starting to toughen up when it comes to tackling our nationwide robocall scourge. The agency announced this week that it will soon kick seven voice-over IP providers out of its database of trusted carriers if they continue to fail to implement safeguards against robocalls: “This is a new era. If a […]

So… this is a thing that happened. Adam Satariano reports for the New York Times: The coroner overseeing the case, who in Britain is a judgelike figure with wide authority to investigate and officially determine a person’s cause of death, was far less circumspect. On Friday, he ruled that Instagram and other social media platforms […]

The Mobile Pixels Mini Mouse is a comfortable mouse built for your PC or notebook. Its great build quality encourages long-term use, and the ultra-thin profile makes it easy to store as well. This mini wireless mouse features Bluetooth connectivity, so there’s no need for any unnecessary cords. You can use the integrated red laser […]

I know that Elon claims he’s decided he might actually live up to what he promised to do in the binding contract he signed to buy Twitter, but I still wanted to discuss some of the text messages that became public last week as part of the case, showing text messages between Musk and various […]

Last week we noted how Google’s streaming game service, Stadia, is finally being shut down. Google had initially tried deny the obvious last July when rumors began circulating that the company was preparing its exit strategy. This denial apparently resulted in many of the service’s own developers being left in the dark, given they were […]

You will hopefully recall our recent discussion about a taco restaurant, or taqueria, in the UK being bullied by Worldwide Taqueria because the latter had somehow gotten a trademark on the word “taqueria.” As we pointed out in the original post on the topic, everything about this is ridiculous. First, it’s absurd that the company […]

As you probably already know, Techdirt recently marked its 25th anniversary and celebrated the occasion with an online party for our Insider subscribers. At the event, Mike was joined by Techdirt co-founder Dennis Yang for an interview conducted by Alex Feerst of Murmuration Labs, in which they looked back on the history of the site […]

So this was unexpected (well, perhaps not that unexpected) but Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter last night stating he now intends to move ahead with the original deal to buy Twitter, with no changes to the terms. Gentlemen: On behalf of X Holdings I, Inc., X Holdings II, Inc. and Elon R. Musk […]

Engaging in performative litigation may be fun to do and score points with your fan base. But, sooner or later, these theatrical productions tend to generate actual costs — something that can’t be offset with shares and retweets, or even votes at the polls. Laura Loomer, an alt-right personality mostly known for ineffectively handcuffing herself […]

In most cases, it does not do you any good to try to be funny in legal filings. In most cases, judges will not be that amused (even if those same judges sometimes try to make jokey rulings). In the world of the courts, the judges can be funny, but no one else should try. […]

This Apple Watch Portable USB Charger allows you to charge anytime, anywhere. With a built-in magnetic adsorption module, you can charge your watch immediately after contact. This charger has the ability to charge your watch within 2 to 3 hours fully. It’s lightweight and portable, so you can charge your watch while traveling, when working […]

So, plenty of Supreme Court watchers and Section 230 experts all knew that this term was going to be a big one for Section 230… it’s just that we all expected the main issue to be around the Netchoice cases regarding Florida and Texas’s social media laws (those cases will likely still get to SCOTUS […]

Despite being hugely qualified and popular across both sides of the aisle, Congress still hasn’t approved Gigi Sohn to the FCC, leaving the agency without the voting majority to do anything popular or even remotely controversial, such as restoring net neutrality, the FCC’s consumer protection authority, or the media consolidation rules stripped away during the […]

The long saga of one of the most infamous internet “Karens” has come to a close as New York City resident Amy Cooper, a.k.a. “Central Park Karen,” has lost her defamation lawsuit against her former employer. (h/t Volokh Conspiracy) The same day unarmed black man George Floyd was being murdered by a white police officer, […]

I get that stock photos are a thing and that political campaigns or teams may be pressed for time, but some things really shouldn’t be so hard. If you follow politics, you may be aware that House Republicans, led by Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, unveiled an agenda for 2023 politics it’s calling “Commitment to America.” […]

For years, defenders of pharma patents loved to claim that the reason that they needed patents and the reason they had to charge extortionate rates for drugs was because of the high cost of R&D for new drugs. The numbers keep going up. When I first started covering pharma patents, the number bandied about was […]

People who fail to understand the basics of supply and demand continue to insist suppliers want to kill potential customers. The DEA is leading the charge, engaging in hysterics while pretending to present facts, claiming that recent busts involving multicolored fentanyl indicate drug dealers are targeting children — children prone to ingesting pills that look […]

With this 13-in-1 docking station, you can use all of your devices while they stay connected and ready to use. Not only is it equipped with 13 ports but is also compatible with numerous connections to the latest USB-C hardware and technology, including USB 3.0, HDMI ports, SD card, and gigabit Ethernet port. All of […]

On Friday, we wrote about hundreds of authors signing a letter calling out the big publishers’ attacks on libraries (in many, many different ways). The publishers pretend to represent the best interests of the authors, but history has shown over and over again that they do not. They represent themselves, and use the names of […]

You might recall that the Trump administration “fix” to the competition and layoff problems created by the Sprint T-Mobile merger (which consolidated four major wireless players into three major players) was to have Dish build a new 5G network. But the effort has been a sloppy mess from the start, and three months into its […]

This week, our first place winner is an anonymous comment about Texas’s content moderation law, responding to the claim on Twitter that Wikipedia could easily comply with it by being more open and transparent: Tell me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works without telling me you don’t understand how Wikipedia works. I mean, Wikipedia is […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the SESTA fight continued, and we took a look at how Google would survive the law, but startups might not, and how much of the supposed sex trafficking epidemic driving the bill simply didn’t exist. Ajit Pai’s FCC amusingly declared victory over wireless competition issues, the streaming exclusivity […]

Pretextual stops are an unfortunate side effect of American law enforcement. When cops want to question people or root around in their cars, they’ll find another reason to make the stop and hope the eventual searches make it all worthwhile. This law enforcement activity has been repeatedly blessed by courts, which tend to view it […]

While Google’s Stadia game streaming service arrived with a lot of promise, it generally landed with a disappointing thud. A limited catalog, deployment issues, and a quality that couldn’t match current gen game consoles meant the service just never saw the kind of traction Google (or a lot of other people) originally envisioned. Developers have been […]

Lots of people are still trying to mentally process the bizarrely confused 5th Circuit ruling that has reinstated Texas’ social media content moderation law. I wrote an initial analysis of the ruling here, and then a further analysis of just some of the most egregious problems with it over at The Daily Beast. This week […]

With a gorgeous, ultra-thin design, the Apple MacBook Air 13.3-inch notebook is designed to take on today’s most demanding tasks without compromising on portability and usability. This refurbished Apple MacBook Air has an integrated 720p FaceTime HD webcam for video chats and communication. The combination of the stunningly beautiful Retina display, high-performance Core i5 processor, […]

Everyone’s got a hunger for data. Constitutional rights sometimes prevent those with a hunger from serving themselves. But when they’ve got third parties on top of third parties, all Fourth Amendment bets are off. Data brokers are getting rich selling government agencies the data they want at low, low prices, repackaging information gathered from other […]

We keep pointing out that publishers hate libraries. Oh, they’ll pretend otherwise, and make broad platitudes about libraries and the good of society. But, it’s clear in how they act that they think of libraries as dens of piracy. They’re now using the ebook revolution as a chance to harm, or even wipe out, libraries. […]

We’ve noted how, as Netflix gets bigger and more powerful, it has increasingly behaved more like the cable giants (Comcast) it used to disrupt. For example, once it was big enough to pay telecom giants their pound of flesh, it stopped caring about stuff like net neutrality. But there’s no better example of Netflix’s pivot […]

This will be a short one, but the reputation rehab project for Third Culture Bakery has begun. If you don’t recall that name, it’s a baker business in California that somehow convinced the USPTO to issue it a trademark for “mochi muffin“. Mochi is a rice paste popular in Japan for making small baked goods […]

We’ve talked in the past about the fact that creative works of the federal government are in the public domain and cannot be covered by copyright. This is pretty explicit in the law. Back in 2009 we had called out the fact that the Obama White House was (usefully!) posting images taken by the White […]

Despite Elon Musk’s disdain for the press, his legend wouldn’t exist without the media’s need to hyperventilate over every last thing that comes out of the billionaire’s mouth. We’re at the point where the dumbest offhand comment by Musk becomes its own three week news cycle (see the entire news cycle based on Musk’s comments […]

It really does feel like the legislative process regarding the tech world and privacy is a complete mess. While politicians are right that it would be good if we got a comprehensive privacy bill in place, they seem to have no idea what that even means. Actually, it seems like they don’t even know what […]

The HP ProBook X360 11-G1-EE (refurbished) is a Windows 10 Professional laptop with an 11.6″ display and a resolution of 1366×768 pixels, providing the ultimate user experience. This laptop is powered by an Intel Pentium dual-core processor that optimizes your work for better productivity. It also comes with 8GB RAM for faster and smoother performance. […]

Russia’s Roskomnadzor never used to be a powerful government thug. It used to be almost nothing at all. It was an afterthought — a regulatory agency created to cover things hardly anyone considered to be important. It was formed in 2008 and asked to oversee radio signals, telecom, and the Russian mail service. But then […]

We’ve noted repeatedly how the massive freak out over TikTok is kind of dumb and myopic, with folks singularly fixated on TikTok, but not the lax global adtech, data broker ecosystem we built that helped create it in the first place. We’ve also noted that most of the U.S. policy solutions for the supposed threat […]

We’ve talked a great deal about the impossibility of getting AI or other automated systems to properly police content for moderation purposes. While all kinds of content fits into this generally, we can pick on the topic of nudity or sexual content to demonstrate the point. We have a slew of posts on the topic, […]

It’s kinda weird how the GOP’s pure hatred and spite towards tech companies, and their desire to exact maximum punishment rather than make good policy, keeps blowing up bills that might otherwise pass. We’ve talked plenty about how Republicans have effectively torpedoed the big tech antitrust bill by insisting that it must include provisions that […]