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In 2018, the Supreme Court of the United States overrode the Third Party Doctrine to declare cell site location info (CSLI) off-limits without a warrant. Recognizing the fact that ubiquitous cell phone use was generating reams of data daily that would allow law enforcement to engage in long-term tracking of people’s movements, the Supreme Court […]

If you’re an automaker or oil giant keen on slowing the rise of electric vehicles, there’s no shortage of captured lawmakers ready and willing to implement your terrible ideas, however harmful or impractical. In North Carolina, Republican leaders have pushed a bill demanding locals destroy any free electric vehicle stations on public land, if local authorities don’t […]

The people who claim to be confused about social media services and the First Amendment are never truly confused. It’s always the people you expect to claim they’re “confused.” Most social media users understand they’re playing on someone else’s playground. They know that if they act like inveterate assholes, the social media company will repeatedly […]

Sometimes it feels like we need to keep pointing this out, but it’s (1) often forgotten and (2) really, really important. Section 230 doesn’t just protect “big tech.” It also doesn’t just protect “small tech.” It literally protects you and me. Remember, the key part of the law so that no provider or user of […]

Get more out of your gaming experience with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. With over 100 high-quality games and new titles added all the time, you’ll always have something new to play with friends on console, PC, mobile devices or tablets. Plus, you get instant access to EA Play and other cool member benefits to create […]

The FBI has long enjoyed its close relationship with the NSA… or at least the NSA’s collections. Data and communications collected under the NSA’s Section 702 program contain plenty of “incidental” snooping on Americans. That’s because even though it’s a foreign-facing collection, Americans who communicate with people outside of the United States are swept up […]

Federal law specifically bans Federal Communications Commission (FCC) employees from owning “any stocks, bonds, or other securities of [any company] significantly regulated by the Commission.” That’s apparently news to FCC employees. A new report (hat tip, Ars Technica) by nonprofit watchdog group Campaign Legal Center found that numerous employees hold stock in Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is CSMcDonald with a comment about the comparison between Ron DeSantis attacking Disney and Gavin Newsom attacking Walgreens: One difference.. I don’t like Newsom’s posturing, but he’s just refusing do do business with a company. DeSantis is threatening to ruin a company by not allowing […]

So far in our series of posts on showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927, we’ve featured Best Remix winner Lucia and Best Visuals winner Urbanity. Today, we’re taking a closer look at the winner of the Best Adaptation category: To And Again […]

Walled Culture is a big fan of the public domain. The amazing artistic uses that people are able to make of material only once it enters the public domain are an indication that copyright can act as an obstacle to wider creativity, rather than something that automatically promotes it. But there’s a problem: because the public […]

Ring offers security products. Shame they’re not all that secure. Sure, things have improved in recent years, but there was nowhere to go but up. In December 2019, multiple reports surfaced of Ring cameras — most of them inside people’s houses — being hijacked by malicious idiots who used the commandeered cameras to yell nasty […]

Mainstream political news outlets like Axios have long been accused of “both sides” or “view from nowhere” journalism where they bend over backward to frame everything through a lens of illusory objectivity as to not offend. This distortion is then routinely exploited by authoritarians and corporations keen on normalizing bigotry, rank corruption, or even the […]

Question Presented: Does Section 230 Protect Generative AI Products Like ChatGPT? As the buzz around Section 230 and its application to algorithms intensifies in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s response, ‘generative AI’ has soared in popularity among users and developers, begging the question: does Section 230 protect generative AI products like ChatGPT? Matt Perault, a […]

Late last year, we wrote about the extremely misleading discussion around “shadow banning” on Twitter. The history of the term is important, as it originated as a tool to defeat trolls, and it had a very specific definition: making users who were deemed problematic to a site think their posts were still getting through, when […]

Project Management Institute Training Bundle has 2 courses to help you become a project management expert. The first course focuses on the basic principles and the lifecycle of project management. You’ll learn about group interactions, managing cost factors, managing risk factors, and more. The second course focuses on Agile project management. It’s on sale for […]

In 2014, Twitter sued the DOJ over its National Security Letter (NSL) reporting restrictions, which limited the company from producing transparency reports with much transparency in them. NSLs were only allowed to be reported in bands. And what broad bands they were. If Twitter received 20 NSLs, it had to report it as 0-499. If […]

A bipartisan coalition of Senators including Roger Wicker (MS), Todd Young (IN), Mark Kelly (AZ) and Ben Ray Luján (NM) are poised to reintroduce legislation supported by telecom monopolies that could ultimately result in tech giants paying telecom giants billions of dollars for no coherent reason. The soon to be reconstituted FAIR Contributions Act, word […]

We haven’t always spoken in glowing terms about Bungie, the game studio behind the Destiny franchise. That being said, in more recent days, Bungie has also taken some very positive steps when it comes to protecting its fans from copyright takedown abuse, while also highlighting for the record that the DMCA takedown process employed by […]

The Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles is pretty much just renting a car from Hertz. Participating in either system greatly increases your chances of spending time jailed for crimes you didn’t commit. Hertz’s inability to perform basic inventory control functions means renters in good standing are being treated to guns out traffic stops and felony […]

Earlier this month we noted how a sleazy telecom and media giant smear campaign successfully derailed the FCC nomination of popular reformer Gigi Sohn, keeping the agency gridlocked (quite intentionally) without the voting majority to do much of anything deemed “controversial” by industry. While the GOP and telecom giants deserve the lion’s share of the […]

You may have heard that the Biden administration has told TikTok that it must be divested from ByteDance or it will be banned in the US. At least that’s what TikTok said the administration has said. The end result of this might well be that ByteDance divests of TikTok, but we should be clear: the […]

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Well… fuck the Supreme Court, I guess. That’s how law enforcement is working these days, bypassing the restraints of the Carpenter decision to do what they want, when they want, with whatever location data they can purchase from private third-party brokers. It’s the “third party” that counts. It’s also the narrower aspects of the Supreme […]

We’ve noted for a while that the performative histrionics surrounding TikTok are really just a distraction from our corrupt failure to police dodgy data brokers or pass even a basic privacy law for the internet era. U.S. companies don’t want to lose money by empowering consumers or being ethical, and the U.S. government doesn’t want […]

Microsoft continues to make moves to get its purchase of Activision Blizzard past the various regulatory bodies that have voiced their concerns. While there are plenty of signs that the EU regulators are getting ready to approve the deal, there is still the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) […]

One of the life’s certainties is that copyright maximalism will continue to encourage absurd rulings by complaisant courts. Here’s a rather spectacular case from Germany. It involves a “photo wallpaper”. For those of you who – like me – aren’t quite sure what that means, it is the name given to wallpapers that are essentially […]

Misunderstandings (honest or otherwise) about Section 230 abound — across the political spectrum and, of course, in Congress. Each side believes weakening or eliminating the law will achieve its own distinct goals, and both sides are wrong. Following the most recent (but far from the first) very frustrating congressional hearing about Section 230, this week […]

The UK government is entertaining even more plans to undermine (or actually outlaw) end-to-end encryption. And it’s not gaining any support from the multiple services (and multiple people) these efforts would harm. Both Signal and Proton have made it clear they’ll pull their services rather than weaken their encryption to comply with UK government demands. […]

There’s been a lot of discussion of late, especially because of the various Twitter Files, regarding where the line is between governments simply flagging content for social media websites to vet against their own policies as compared to unconstitutional and impermissible suppression of speech in violation of the 1st Amendment. As we’ve highlighted over and […]

The Premium Ethical Hacking Bundle has 8 courses to help you master ethical hacking and cybersecurity. You’ll learn about penetration testing, social engineering, server security, and more. It’s on sale for $60. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The […]

I don’t know, maybe don’t do this? A Tarrant County man is suing Dallas County and a sheriff’s deputy after he says his personal information was revealed to more than 100 people after the deputy livestreamed a traffic stop through TikTok. So, there’s a lot going on here, most of it in favor of the […]

Last week, Congress failed to shake off corruption and buckled to a telecom industry’ smear campaign to scuttle the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the FCC. This week, the government body shifted from corruption to ordinary incompetence, after it failed to renew the FCC’s Spectrum Auction authority for no coherent reason. The FCC is in […]

Back in the early days of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, one of the most captivating stories was that of Snake Island, a small island in Ukrainian territorial waters. Under constant radioed threats from a Russian cruiser, Ukrainian border guard Roman Hrybov uttered his now iconic response to the warship: “Russian warship, go fuck […]

Another FOIA lawsuit has paid off for the ACLU. But there are no real winners here, since the documents pried from the government’s grasp detail a bunch of stuff we all wish the government wouldn’t be doing with its time and our money. Here’s Drew Harwell with the details for the Washington Post: The FBI […]

The AT&T Time Warner and DirecTV mergers were a monumental disasters. AT&T spent $200 billion to acquire both companies thinking it would dominate the video and internet ad space. Instead, the company lost 9 million subscribers in nine years, fired 50,000 employees, closed numerous popular brands (including Mad Magazine), and stumbled around incompetently for several years […]

For years, we’ve written about the many, many, many ways in which people are wrong about the 1st Amendment, from trotting out the “fire in a crowded theater” line (for which we have a t-shirt, mug, pillow, and notebook) or how people falsely believe that hate speech is not protected by the 1st Amendment (it […]

Massive sports events tend to make everyone crazy. The NFL has turned the Super Bowl into The Game That Must Not Be Named (without express written [and paid] permission) by unapproved advertisers and promoters. The Olympic Committee has abused pretty much every available IP law to ensure the Olympic brand remains known as… a massive […]

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There has been some back and forth over the past week regarding Walgreens and how it’s handling the distribution and dispensing of the pharmaceutical Mifepristone, which is prescribed by doctors for early term abortions. In February, a bunch of anti-abortion Attorneys General sent Walgreens a letter threatening the company if it chose to make the […]

It’s time once again to play: “things that probably wouldn’t happen if the U.S. wasn’t too corrupt to pass a decent internet-era privacy law.” Last week, The Washington Post revealed that a group of conservative Colorado Catholics spent millions of dollars to purchase user location data to single out priests that had used gay dating […]

For the most part, police unions are a net negative for both the police and the policed. They tend to excuse the worst behavior of their members while showing genuine disdain for anyone who dares to question an officer’s actions. Police unions have actively contributed to the mess US policing is and not a single […]

It was a couple of weeks back when we highlighted the story of how one game, Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic, was suffering as the victim of very clear DMCA abuse. If you don’t recall the post, you can get all the details in the link. The short version of it is: a fan of […]

In 2015, the Supreme Court finally addressed reality: people were carrying around computers in their pockets capable of accessing, storing, and maintaining far more information than could be expected to be found in their physical houses. The government sought to compare cell phones to pocket contents or whatever might be found in the trunk of […]

When Elon Musk moved to take over Twitter, Jack Dorsey, who endorsed the deal, talked to him about making the site more open, specifically turning it into a protocol that anyone could build on. This would have been a good plan. Indeed, it’s one that seems to now be gaining traction for basically every company […]

Everybody agrees child sexual abuse material is a serious problem. Unfortunately, far too many supposedly serious people are coming up with very unserious “solutions” to the problem. Pressure applied by lawmakers and law enforcement led to Apple deciding to get out ahead of the seemingly-impending mandates to “do something” about the problem. In August 2021, […]

The UPERFECT 15.6″ Portable Monitor lets you stream content or play games from your phone to a portable, bigger screen. It delivers stunning FHD 1920*1080 resolution visuals with awesome color reproduction. Equipped with an LCD HDR screen, this monitor ensures you enjoy zero distortion and sharp image quality. No need for additional devices, too; it […]

We were already expecting a lawsuit to be filed against DoNotPay, the massively hyped up company that promises an “AI lawyer” despite all evidence suggesting it’s nothing of the sort. Investigator and paralegal (and Techdirt guest author and podcast guest) Kathryn Tewson had already filed for pre-action discovery in New York, in the expectation of […]

Back in 2016, we noted how Florida utilities had resorted to creating fake consumer groups to try and scuttle legislation aimed at ramping up solar competition and adoption in the state. The tactic is generally used to create the illusion of support for shitty, anti-competitive policies, and it’s been a common tactic in the U.S. […]

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone with a comment on our post comparing Twitter’s alleged help for democrats to Murdoch’s real help for Trump: On top of “every accusation, a confession” being a thing, what Republicans do when they make these accusations is create a worldview where […]

Last week, we had the first of our series of posts showcasing the winners in all six categories of the fifth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927, and the spotlight was on Best Remix winner Lucia. This week, we’re taking a look at the winner of the Best Visuals category: Urbanity by […]