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This Week In Techdirt History: November 24th – 30th
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, the EU was pushing back against the US on the topic of strong encryption, while Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court said compelled password production violates the fifth amendment. We learned more about how freely Amazon gave cops access to Ring doorbell recordings, and about how much California was raking in […]
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Meet The Influencers In One Billion Users, The Social Media Card Game
As you likely know by now, we are running a Kickstarter to fund the release of One Billion Users, our new card game about building the biggest and best social media network. Earlier this week, Mike wrote about the game’s roots in Touring and Mille Bornes and explained some of the new mechanics we’ve added, […]
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Nintendo, Palworld, A GTA 5 Mod, And An Injunction For The Japanese Market
We’re waiting for the lawsuit in Japan between Nintendo, The Pokémon Co., and Pocketpair, the developers of the hit game Palworld to really get going. In the meantime, the public commentary is filling the information void, including commentary from IP experts. The suit revolves around a series of patents the plaintiffs hold that cover a […]
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Biden FCC Boss Rosenworcel To Step Down, Can’t Be Bothered To Express Alarm At What Comes Next
We’ve noted how Trump’s win means that Brendan Carr (R, AT&T) will now be in charge of the nation’s top telecom and media regulator. We’ve also made it very clear his tenure will involve dismantling whatever’s left of FCC broadband consumer protection, killing remaining media consolidation limits, and threatening to pull the broadcast licenses of […]
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Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager To Be America’s Top Censor
When Donald Trump announced that he was appointing current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr to be the next chair of the FCC, it was no surprise. Nor was it a surprise that Trump tried to play up that Carr was a “warrior for free speech.” Commissioner Carr is a warrior for Free Speech, and has fought […]
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You Can’t Do Mass Deportations Without Mass Domestic Surveillance And ICE Is Already Exploring Its Options
ICE has never been opposed to mass surveillance. It has used everything it possibly can to locate Trump’s so-called “bad hombres” and subject them to family separation and a detainment infrastructure incapable of handling the former president’s (and now President-elect) masturbatorial fantasies about “border invasions.” ICE buys location info from data brokers to evade warrant […]
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Daily Deal: The 2024 Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle
The 2024 Microsoft Essential Tools Training Bundle will help you become a Microsoft expert in no time. Courses cover Microsoft 365, Excel, Word for beginners, and Word advanced. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. […]
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And Another Thing, Please Don’t Put In The Lawsuits That I Am Mad About Kendrick Lamar’s Diss Track
When your rap track diss battle ends in whiny proto-SLAPP suits, I’m going to suggest you’ve officially lost. If you ever want to see this dril tweet as a legal filing (two actually), I think it’s in Drake’s semi-SLAPPy demands for discovery and depositions from Universal Music, Spotify, and iHeartRadio for having the temerity to… […]
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Dish, DirecTV Merger Dead Before It Even Has The Chance To Disappoint
After literally decades of rumor and speculation, fading satellite TV companies Dish and DirecTV finally recently announced they had proposed a pointless merger in a last gasp for relevance. Once blocked by regulatory worries about competitive impact, executives at both companies had long dreamed of combining the two companies into one, still broadly unremarkable company. […]
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Katy Perry Wins Trademark Suit Brought By Katie Perry In Australia
It’s been over a year since we last talked about the trademark dispute between Katy Perry, the American pop star, and Katie Perry, an Australian woman with a fashion line. To bring you up to speed, and I’ll use first names here to keep the confusion at a minimum, Katy sold merchandise for her 2014 […]
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NJ Cops Are Suing To Protect Their Exclusive Right To Keep Their Data Out Of Data Brokers’ Databases
I come here not to bury this Wired article, nor to damn it with faint praise. I come to critique it, while realizing the framing and (especially!) the headline may not be the direct responsibility of its author, Paresh Dave. Privacy laws are hit and miss in the United States. Mostly miss. There’s not a […]
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Techdirt Podcast Episode 406: One Billion Users
Support us on Patreon » Last week, we launched the crowdfunding campaign for One Billion Users, our new card game where players compete to build the biggest and best social media network. As is tradition when we launch a new game, myself and our game design partner Randy Lubin joined Mike on an episode of the […]
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‘Bivens Is Dead’ Says The 10th Circuit, Confirming You’re Only Wasting Your Time When Suing Federal Officers
Way back in the day (1971, to be precise), the Supreme Court created a cause of action to sue federal officers over rights violations. The original case, Bivens v. Six Unknown Named Agents, involved Webster Bivens and the warrantless search of his Brooklyn home by FBN (Federal Bureau of Narcotics — the precursor to the […]
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Daily Deal: The Complete ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Training Bundle
The Complete ChatGPT Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Training Bundle has 4 beginner-friendly courses to help you become more comfortable with the capabilities of OpenAI and ChatGPT. You’ll learn how to write effective prompts to get the best results, how to create blog posts and sales copy, and how to create your own chatbots. It’s on sale […]
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If You Like Mille Bornes, You’ll Love One Billion Users
Last week we launched the Kickstarter for our amazing new card game, One Billion Users. It’s a fast, fun card game where players try to build up the biggest and best social media network, while simultaneously trying to undermine the networks the other players are trying to build. In the campaign, we mentioned a couple […]
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Republicans: Helping Poor People And Minorities Afford Broadband Is Illegal Now, Sorry
We’ve noted more than once that the 2021 infrastructure bill is poised to deliver $42.5 billion in broadband subsidies to the states. A lot of that money will be thrown in the lap of incumbents with long histories of empty promises, but a lot of it will be leveraged for genuine, major improvements in broadband […]
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Trump Campaign Settles Post Judgment With Eddy Grant Over ‘Electric Avenue’ Case
There isn’t a ton of new information here to get into, but we might as well close the loop on this episode. Way back during the 2020 Presidential campaign, then-President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign put out an admittedly humorous animated video showing a massive Trump train barreling down the tracks, only to have Joe Biden […]
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Federal Court Blocks Louisiana Law Mandating Posting Of Ten Commandments In School Classrooms
Making the bold assumption their voting bloc could read, Louisiana legislators passed a law earlier this year that mandates the posting of the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom. Building on the inexplicable support of people who would find Trump’s actions and statements reprehensible if they were carried out by anyone else, legislators are […]
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India Punishes Meta For Its ‘Take-It-Or-Leave-It’ Approach To Collecting And Sharing Personal Data
Whether you like the results or not, there’s no denying that the EU’s GDPR legislation has tackled a wide range of privacy problems in the online world. Other countries around the globe — including the US — may lack comparable national legislation but there are alternative ways of protecting people’s privacy, as a recent ruling […]
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Two Missouri Cops Are Facing Criminal Charges For Helping Themselves To Nude Photos Found On Drivers’ Phones
You can’t trust cops around your personal info, data, communications, or pretty much anything. Officers have a lot of power and access to plenty of databases filled with personal info. They abuse this power and access frequently. Here’s some (recent) historical perspective. In July 2024, a female police officer was awarded a $1 million settlement […]
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Daily Deal: Rosetta Stone (All Languages)
Embark on the journey of language learning with the Rosetta Stone lifetime subscription for all languages. Trusted by top-tier organizations like NASA, Calvin Klein, and TripAdvisor, Rosetta Stone has been the go-to software for language learning for the past 27 years. With its immersive and intuitive training method, you might be reading, writing, and speaking […]
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Trump Orders Republicans to Kill Journalism Shield Law They Had Supported
What stupid times we live in. President-elect Donald Trump has ordered Republicans to kill a widely-supported bipartisan journalism shield law that would protect press freedom and whistleblowers. Many people voted for Donald Trump on the false belief that he would “protect free speech.” But in reality, nearly every instinct he has is to stifle free […]
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Whoops: White House Microsoft Cybersecurity Partnership Gave Company An Illegal De Facto Monopoly On Government Services
Look: I think it was nice for a change that the Biden administration at least paid some passing but inconsistent lip service to antitrust reform. It was a lovely change of pace from decades of feckless careerists who pay empty lip service to market innovation while rubber stamping mindless consolidation at every turn. And a […]
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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about Elon Musk’s hypocrisy on the subject of boycotts: Advertisers fleeing Twitter aren’t even boycotting it. They’re just each making their own decisions for themselves. A boycott is a group action in the group’s longer-term interest, even if it is against […]
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Back Our Kickstarter For One Billion Users, The Social Media Card Game
This week, we launched the crowdfunding campaign for our new card game, One Billion Users, where players compete to build the biggest and best social media network. We’ve put a lot of work into designing a fun, fast-paced game and we need your help to produce it — so if you want to try your […]
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KFC Sues Church’s Chicken Over ‘Original Recipe’ Trademark, Which Shouldn’t Be Trademarkable
It’s amazing just how many of the trademark disputes we see and discuss here at Techdirt ultimately result from the USPTO granting trademarks that never should have been granted in the first place. In the food industry specifically, we saw this recently in the whole “Taco Tuesday” episode, in which the Trademark Office granted Taco […]
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Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Nothing To FCC Here
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s 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 roundup of the latest news in online […]
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VPN Company Cyberghost Says We Infringed Its Copyright In An Advertisement We Ran For Them A Decade Ago
I rarely log into Facebook these days, but I happened to do so last week and was a bit surprised to see this pop up saying that an advertising post we had put up for the VPN service CyberGhost nearly a decade ago had to be removed: That’s a notice saying that Facebook had removed […]
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City Of Los Angeles Says Fuck It: No Cops Were Harmed When We Released Their Names And Photos
This is just what I needed to read after a post-election hell week or two. The city of Los Angeles has gone past exhaustion to vindictive irritation after being sued by the same cops it employs because it (legally) handed over photos and names of LAPD officers to journalist Ben Camacho. Ben Camacho then shared […]
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Daily Deal: Xbox Game Pass Ultimate 3-Month Membership
Be the first to play Starfield and Forza Motorsport on day one so you never miss a thing and enjoy hundreds of high-quality games like Minecraft Legends and more with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass Ultimate includes hundreds of high-quality console and PC games, plus online console multiplayer. New games are added all the […]
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Texas AG Declares War On Advertisers Who Snub Musk’s ExTwitter
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton loves to preach about “free speech” and “free markets”—except, apparently, when it comes to his political allies. In a stunningly hypocritical and authoritarian move, Paxton has launched an “investigation” to bully advertisers who have chosen not to support Elon Musk’s troubled ExTwitter platform. This is a chilling attack on both […]
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Oh Look, It Was Trivial To Buy Troop And Intelligence Officer Location Data From Dodgy, Unregulated Data Brokers
There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits this […]
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Sixth Circuit Tosses Evidence After Cop Can’t Find One Credible Reason For Extending A Traffic Stop
This stop may not have been all that pretextual — after all, the officer clocked the driver doing 69 mph in a 55 mph speed limit — but it swiftly turned pretextual for reasons the officer couldn’t competently explain. And that’s what cost the officer (and the prosecution) their evidence. Back in 2015, the Supreme […]
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Sports Psychologist Continues Bullshit Copyright Suits Over Retweets By School Officials
Here we go again. Many years ago, we wrote about how one sports psychologist, Dr. Keith Bell, filed a copyright lawsuit against a college over a retweet. Specifically, the retweet included an image of a single page from Bell’s book, Winning Isn’t Normal. These suits are nonsense, of course, as a retweet is not the […]
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Will The ‘Right To Repair’ Movement Survive Trumpism 2.0?
U.S. consumer protection has been beaten to a pulp over the last few decades. Consumer protection regulators are routinely on the ropes, left understaffed, underfunded, and boxed in by an increasingly corrupt and radical 5th Circuit and Supreme Courts stocked with Trump sycophants. One bright spot, however, has been the “right to reform” movement, or […]
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Hertz Continues To Be Hertz, Threatens Customer With Arrest For Using Too Many Of His ‘Unlimited’ Miles
Somehow, Hertz continues to be an ongoing concern, in both senses of the word. The company that made itself infamous by repeatedly trying to get innocent renters arrested for car theft tried to put all of that behind it with a $168 million class-action lawsuit settlement in 2022. The company then pledged to do better […]
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Daily Deal: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Microsoft Windows 11 Pro is designed with the modern professional in mind. Whether you are a developer who needs a secure platform, an artist seeking a seamless experience, or an entrepreneur needing to stay connected effortlessly, Windows 11 Pro is your solution. This version is designed for PCs that need a new license for Windows […]
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Substackerati’s ‘Grave Concerns’ About White House/Big Tech Collusion Have Disappeared With Elon’s Ascension
For years, a vocal group of self-described “contrarian” Substackified pundits warned about a supposed “censorship industrial complex” involving collusion between the White House and social media companies to set content moderation policies. There was just one problem: it wasn’t even close to true. Now, with Elon Musk owning ExTwitter and Donald Trump heading back to […]
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Net Neutrality Is Dead As A Doornail Under Trump 2.0
While the concept has been endlessly demonized by right wing media (working hand in moist hand with shitty companies like AT&T and Comcast), net neutrality was always well intentioned. It was, in essence, some inconsistent, rarely enforced rules to try and prevent regional broadband monopolies from abusing their regional broadband monopolies to rip off consumers […]
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Molson Coors Appeals The $56 Million Judgement In Stone Brewing Case
When we and others discussed the massive trademark lawsuit between Molson Coors, makers of Keystone beer amongst other brands, and Stone Brewing, it was billed as a David versus Goliath scenario. Now, if I remember my bible studies correctly, once David slung a couple of well-placed rocks into Goliath’s forehead, Goliath didn’t then get up […]
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Texas Ballot Measure Decriminalizes Marijuana Possession, Says ‘Odor Of Marijuana’ Is No Longer Probable Cause
It looks like Dallas, Texas residents aren’t going to wait around for the courts to react to marijuana legalization. They’ve (overwhelmingly) decided to answer one of the legal questions legalization creates by adding the answer to the ballot measure itself. (h/t Jacob Sullum, Reason) Shall the Dallas City Charter be amended by adding a new […]
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Techdirt Podcast Episode 405: Regulating Speech In An Age Of Fake News
Support us on Patreon » We’ve got another cross-post for you this week, and this time it’s also a live panel recording. Recently, Mike joined a panel at Boston University Questrom School of Business which was recorded for WBUR’s Is Business Broken? podcast, alongside professors Marshall Van Alstyne and Nadine Strossen, and moderated by host Curt […]
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It’s Perfectly Fine To Patent Inventions Obtained By Immoral Means Says European Patent Office
Despite widespread beliefs to the contrary, patents are not a measure of innovation, nor are they needed for companies to thrive — something even Elon Musk understands. But one aspect of patents that is rarely considered is their morality. The European Patent Office’s Board of Appeal wrestled with this issue in an interesting case involving […]
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Fifth Circuit Tells MAGA Hat-Wearing Student That Counterspeech Isn’t ‘Racial Harassment’
It should be clear by now that being a fan of one particular politician doesn’t make you a member of a “protected” group. It’s just a stupid as cops claiming they should be given more rights and protections because people just don’t seem to be showering them with unconditional love in recent years. Wearing clothing […]
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Dear Senators Klobuchar & Lujan: Now Do You See Why Letting HHS Censor “Misinformation” Is A Terrible Idea?
You have likely heard that Donald Trump has nominated conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be his next Secretary of Health and Human Services. This is dangerous and cruel for a very long list of reasons, but his nomination also exposes the critical flaws in a bill proposed by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ben […]
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Press Glosses Over Fact Trump’s FCC Pick Will Decimate Consumer Protection, Media Consolidation Limits
We noted earlier this week how Trump had unsurprisingly picked Brendan Carr to head the FCC. We also pointed out how Carr’s “policies” are utterly indistinguishable from the interests of unpopular telecom and media giants like Comcast and AT&T. He’s going to demolish whatever’s left of the FCC’s consumer protection standards and media consolidation limits, […]
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Federal Court Says Qualified Immunity Can’t Shield Cop Who Tased Suicidal Man Soaked In Gasoline
If this sounds familiar, sadly, it is. Three years ago, the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court somehow arrived at the conclusion that tasing someone soaked in gasoline — an act of escalation that not only killed the suicidal person officers were supposed to rescuing but also burned the entire residence to the ground — was not […]
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OK State Superintendent Ryan Walters Wants Even More Bibles, Prayers For The Dear Leader
Whatever your politics, there can be no arguing that the election of Donald Trump once more to the highest office in the land has served as a permission slip for some of the worst people in the country to behave badly. We’re already seeing this in all sorts of ways, from incel fuckwits telling women […]
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Daily Deal: The Learn to Paint Course
Alfred Robert (A.R.) Quinton was an English watercolor artist, famed for his stunning paintings of British landscapes and villages. Following along a professional artist with more than 35 years of experience, the Learn to Paint Course will guide you through painting A.R. Quinton’s Scenes with watercolor and enhancing them using pastel pencils. From the sky […]
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ExTwitter’s New Lawsuit Accurately Argues California Deepfake Law Violates First Amendment, Section 230
Elon Musk’s ExTwitter has filed an important First Amendment lawsuit against California over its unconstitutional law regulating deepfakes. This follows Musk’s earlier successful challenge to the state’s social media “transparency” law. Yes, sometimes Elon Musk actually does file good First Amendment cases that help protect free speech. I’m just as amazed as anyone, but it’s […]
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Introducing: One Billion Users, The Social Media Card Game
We’re excited to announce the launch of the crowdfunding campaign for our new card game: One Billion Users. In this fast-paced and entertaining card game, you take on the role of a social media mogul competing to build the most successful social network. We’ve spent much of this year designing, testing, and refining the game […]
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Streaming TV Enshittification Will Continue Until Morale Improves
We’ve documented in detail how the whole AT&T–>Time Warner–>Warner Brothers Discovery merger process has been a pointless mess, resulting in no limits of layoffs and damage to the underlying brands. What was supposed to be a gambit by these companies to dominate streaming TV, wound up being a very expensive act of seppuku by over-compensated executives clearly out of […]
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Epic Allows Internet Archive To Distribute For Free ‘Unreal’ & ‘Unreal Tournament’ Forever
One of the most frustrating aspects in the ongoing conversation around the preservation of older video games, also known as cultural output, is the collision of IP rights and some publishers’ unwillingness to both continue to support and make available these older games and their refusal to release those same games into the public domain […]
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Texas PD’s Massage Parlor Sting Operation Ends With 13 Officers Disciplined, All 23 Criminal Cases Dismissed
Cops like to pretend they’re winning the war on sex trafficking. Whether or not there’s enough sex trafficking to justify law enforcement expenditures is, at best, still an open question. And most sex trafficking operations tend to end with the arrest of the people they’re supposed to be saving: the sex workers. Then there are […]
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NetChoice Sues California Once Again To Block Its Misguided ‘Social Media Addiction’ Bill
Earlier this year, California passed SB 976, yet another terrible and obviously unconstitutional bill with the moral panicky title “Protecting Our Kids from Social Media Addiction Act.” The law restricts minors’ access to social media and imposes burdensome requirements on platforms. It is the latest in a string of misguided attempts by California lawmakers to […]
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Trump Tags Brendan Carr To Dismantle What’s Left Of Broadband Consumer Protection At FCC
Surprising exactly nobody, Donald Trump has appointed Brendan Carr to lead the nation’s top telecom and media regulator. As we noted last week, there’s zero daylight between Carr’s policies and the policies of unpopular telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast. Carr is as close to the dictionary definition of “regulatory capture” as you’re going to […]
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Police Chief Tries To Defend Torturing A Mentally Ill Man Into Confessing To Committing A Murder That Never Happened
Earlier this year, the city of Fontana, California paid a $900,000 settlement to resident Thomas Perez Jr. because a bunch of Fontana PD “investigators” spent 17 hours torturing Perez into confessing to a crime that hadn’t been committed… by anybody. After discovering his father missing, Perez Jr. — who suffers from several health and mental […]
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Daily Deal: The Complete 2024 Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking Training Bundle
The Complete 2024 Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking Training Bundle has 9 courses to help you learn to fight back against cyber threats. Courses include hands-on lessons on penetration testing for AWS, IoT, and web apps, along with hacking basics and a few certificate exam prep courses. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt […]
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Elon Musk, Who Now Claims Boycotts Are Illegal, Happily Joined The #DeleteFacebook Boycott Himself
Elon Musk’s recent claims that corporate boycotts of social media platforms are criminal reek of hypocrisy, given his own eagerness to join the #DeleteFacebook boycott just a few years ago. In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Musk publicly supported the #DeleteFacebook campaign, even going so far as to remove the official SpaceX and […]
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Pointless DirecTV, Dish Merger Already On The Edge Of Collapse
Culminating a deal that’s been rumored about for the better part of the last twenty years, Dish Network and DirecTV recently consummated a new merger in a doomed bid to try and remain solvent and relevant. The deal involved DirecTV acquiring Dish for one dollar, in addition to $9.75 billion in Dish’s debt. The deal was […]
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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with some pushback on the language we used to describe Marc Andreessen’s hypocrisy and misrepresentation of reality: Stop giving terrible people the benefit of the doubt The word you’re looking for is lie, as in ‘When someone says something that they […]
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This Week In Techdirt History: November 10th – 16th
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Biden was spreading myths about Section 230, Microsoft was giving the go-ahead to California’s new privacy law, and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Google v. Oracle case about APIs and copyright. A copyright troll lawyer faced sanctions and arrest over some courtroom shenanigans, Universal Music was […]
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GOG Decides To Re-Focus In Part On Game Preservation Of Older Games
We’ve talked several times about GOG in the past. The video game storefront was born over a decade ago, originally built on a platform of making older games compatible with modern systems combined with its insistence that any game sold on its storefront be DRM free. In the years since, GOG began to also be […]
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Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Locate Your Nearest X-it
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s 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 […]
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Jawboning In Plain Sight: The Unconstitutional Censorship Tolerated By The DMCA
For better or worse, jawboning has been a hot topic recently, and it’s unlikely that interest will fade any time soon. Jawboning, in broad strokes, is when the government pressures a third party to make that third party chill the speech of another instead of going after the speech directly. Because the First Amendment says […]
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What Free Speech? Trump Ramps Up Threats To Sue Publishers Over Their Speech
We just warned folks that Donald Trump would be one of the most anti-free speech Presidents in history, and he seems to have no qualms living down to that reputation. Donald Trump’s history of frivolous lawsuits against media outlets shows his disdain for free speech, and he shows no signs of stopping. The Columbia Journalism […]
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Daily Deal: The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle
The Ultimate Adobe CC Training Bundle has 12 courses to help you get the most out of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite. Courses cover Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, After Effects, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt […]
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Apple Snuck In Code That Automatically Reboots Idle IPhones And Cops Are Not Happy About It
Detroit law enforcement officials got a bit of shock last week when some seized iPhones rebooted themselves, despite being in airplane mode and, in one case, stored inside a Faraday bag. Panic — albeit highly localized — ensued. It was covered by Joseph Cox for 404 Media, who detailed not only the initial panic, but […]
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Trump May Kill America’s Performative TikTok Ban For The Benefit Of His Billionaire Buddy
We’ve noted more time than I can count how the U.S. ban of TikTok (yes, yes I know, it’s not a ban, it’s a forced divestment ByteDance was never going to agree with) was pointless fucking performance art. Not only was it unconstitutional, it did nothing to actually address the privacy and national security issues […]
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Ukraine Denied EU Trademark For ‘Russian Warship, Go Fuck Yourself’
It’s not an easy thing to be able to find moments of levity in war, particularly one as lopsided as Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine. But one moment that fits the bill was when a Ukrainian soldier stationed on an island in the Black Sea responded to Russian demands of surrender with the now iconic […]
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Good News: Canada Passes Major New ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms
The world might be going to hell, but at least activists’ efforts to protect consumers’ rights to affordable and easy tech repair continue to gain steam. Most recently in Canada, where the country’s Copyright Act was amended by two different bills allowing the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) if done for the purposes of […]
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Seventh Circuit Again Says Long-Term Pole Camera Surveillance Isn’t Unconstitutional
The Seventh Circuit Appeals Court was somewhat hesitant to bless the 18 months of pole camera surveillance in the Tuggle case back in 2021. The reluctance to state affirmatively this sort of surveillance will always be constitutional shows up in its most recent decision dealing with the same subject matter. Here’s the court expressing its […]
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You Don’t Believe In Free Markets And Free Speech If You’re Demanding Criminal Charges Against People For Their Free Market, Free Speech Decisions
Marc Andreessen, the influential venture capitalist, is exhibiting a startling disconnect between his stated beliefs in free markets and free speech, and his recent authoritarian threats against those who disagree with him. In recent statements, Andreessen has threatened criminal charges against advertisers choosing not to associate with certain platforms and accused an imaginary “government-university-company censorship […]
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Daily Deal: Cybersecurity Projects Bundle
The Cybersecurity Projects Bundle offers a hands-on program featuring five real-world cybersecurity projects, totaling 35 tasks. Participants start with an introductory video for each project, detailing objectives and requirements, followed by task completion that mirrors real cybersecurity challenges. Support from industry professionals ensures personalized feedback and guidance. Upon completing the program, participants gain practical experience, […]
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Techdirt |
Criminals Are Still Using Bogus Law Enforcement Subpoenas To Obtain Users’ Info
Maybe if law enforcement didn’t abuse subpoenas so frequently, it might be a little bit more difficult for criminals to do the same thing. Subpoenas can be used to order companies and service providers to turn over user data and information. But they don’t require law enforcement to run this request past a court first, […]
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Techdirt |
Supreme Court Helps AT&T, Verizon Avoid Accountability For Spying On Your Every Movement
We’ve noted for years how wireless companies were at the forefront of over-collecting your sensitive daily movement data, then selling access to any nitwit with two nickels to rub together. That resulted in no limit of scandals from stalkers using the data to spy on women, to law enforcement (and people pretending to be law […]
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Techdirt |
2 Gamers Seek Class Action Suit Against Ubisoft For Delisting, Breaking ‘The Crew’
The whole “You don’t actually own what you’ve bought” mantra we have here at Techdirt is really, really frustrating. It’s become such a regular topic that, in my personal life, I regularly respond to news from friends and family about a digital “purchase” they bought by asking if they actually bought it, or have any […]
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Ohio Law Enforcement Officer Tells Democrats He Won’t Render Aid To Them, Blames Posts On His Sleep Medication
Always great to see another law enforcement officer weaponize his job by letting his politics motivate his actions. We recently saw this in Ohio, when Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski sent out a Facebook post telling residents to write down the addresses of people with Kamala Harris signs in their yards. I’m not going to call this […]
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Techdirt Podcast Episode 404: From The Streisand Effect To Bluesky
Support us on Patreon » It’s been a few weeks, but we’re back! Although the podcast schedule is still going to be sporadic for a little while longer (Mike explains further in the intro) we’ve got a couple cross-post episodes lined up, starting with today’s. Recently, Mike joined Ed Zitron on his Better Offline podcast for […]
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Techdirt |
Judge: Just Because AI Trains On Your Publication, Doesn’t Mean It Infringes On Your Copyright
I get that a lot of people don’t like the big AI companies and how they scrape the web. But these copyright lawsuits being filed against them are absolute garbage. And you want that to be the case, because if it goes the other way, it will do real damage to the open web by […]
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Daily Deal: The 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle
Advance your programming skills and start building responsive apps with the 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle. The 10 courses cover HTML, Bootstrap, CSS, React, MongoDB, Express, NodeJS, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps […]
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Private Prison Companies Are Absolutely Thrilled Donald Trump Won The Election
Well, these entities deserve each other. The problem is we really don’t deserve either of them. Trump spent a lot of his campaign touting a logistical nightmare of a policy that sounded a lot like an collapse-of-the-Weimar-Republic sort of thing: the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, whether they’re here legally or not. All that’s […]
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If You Like Being Ripped Off By Comcast, You’ll LOVE Trump’s Likely New FCC Boss
Current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent much of the last decade positioning himself to be Trump’s likely pick for the next boss of the FCC. He’s likely to get his wish; after spending a lot of time crying about TikTok to get on cable TV and kissing AT&T’s and Comcast’s asses, Carr’s widely considered […]
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Judge In Absolute Bullshit Copyright Case Against Mariah Carey Signals She’s Leaning Carey’s Way
As the saying goes, the arc of morale judgment is long, but it does bend towards justice. And even if we accept such an optimistic worldview is relevant in this year of our lord, 2024, that certainly doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about how long that damned arc is. It’s been over two years since […]
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Techdirt |
Lies, Panic, And Politics: The Targeted Takedown Of Backpage
The case against Backpage was built on lies, innuendo, and a willful misunderstanding of how the internet works. But that didn’t stop the government from destroying the company and its founders’ lives. Over the last few years, we’ve written about how the entire case against Backpage was a travesty of justice. The company actually worked […]
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Threatened With A Ban In India, Wikimedia Agrees To Hand Over Personal Information About Wikipedians To Delhi High Court
As Techdirt stories attest, Wikipedia has been attacked in the past for publishing true information that somebody doesn’t like. As well as wanting articles to be censored, those behind such attacks often also demand the names of those who worked on the article. Something similar is now happening in India, where the Indian news agency […]
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County Pays $300,000 To 11-Year-Old Whose Pet Goat Was Seized And Killed By Cops Because She Backed Out Of A 4-H Auction
Never underestimate the amount of effort law enforcement officers will expend to dispense as much cruelty as possible. And never forget these are the people we are expected to believe are actually there to protect and serve. While it’s great there’s a settlement payment on the way, the fact is that this extremely vindictive and […]
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Daily Deal: Babbel Language Learning (All Languages)
You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]
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Techdirt |
Judge To Zuckerman: Release Your App First, Then We’ll Talk Section 230
The first shot to use Section 230 to force adversarial interoperability on platforms has hit a setback. Earlier this year, we wrote about an absolutely fascinating lawsuit that was an attempt to activate a mostly-ignored part of Section 230 in a really interesting way. Most people know about Section 230 for its immunity protections for […]
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Techdirt |
Streaming Video Prices Rise While Quality Falls, Following Cable TV’s Lead
Streaming video still provides some meaningful advantages to traditional cable: it’s generally cheaper (assuming you don’t sign up for every service under the sun); customer satisfaction ratings are generally higher; and users have more power to pick and choose and cancel services at a whim. But the party simply isn’t poised to last. Thanks to […]
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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Arianity with a comment about Bezos’s endorsement gambit backfiring: In second place, it’s an anonymous reply to someone defending Trump’s lawsuit against CBS: Alright. Let’s see every trump interview over his life released in full and uncensored. For editor’s choice on the insightful side, […]
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This Week In Techdirt History: November 24th – 30th
