Once a year like clockwork, the telecom industry trade association releases a study claiming that if you squint just right–broadband prices have dropped year after year. It’s their annual attempt to pretend (and to help the politicians that coddle them pretend) that the U.S. broadband market isn’t heavily monopolized and woefully uncompetitive. Last week, AT&T-backed […]
ShotSpotter may consider itself to be a solid contributor to the fight against crime, but the facts don’t really bear that out. What it is capable of doing is sending cops to any place a gunshot is (possibly) detected, but that hasn’t really shown to have any meaningful impact on solving gun-related crimes, much less […]
One of the copyright world’s key weapons is a constant barrage of propaganda about the alleged benefits of this intellectual monopoly, and of the supposed horrors of its infringement. This is typically conducted through massive lobbying of politicians, funded using the copyright companies’ generous profits that could have been distributed to the poorly paid creators […]
Over the last year, we’ve covered a whole bunch of truly ridiculous, vexatious, bullshit lawsuits filed by school districts against social media companies, blaming them for the fact that the school boards don’t know how to teach students (the one thing they’re supposed to specialize in!) how to use the internet properly. Instead of realizing […]
Plenty of legislators and law enforcement officials seem to believe there’s only one acceptable solution to the CSAM (child sexual abuse material) problem: breaking encryption. They may state some support for encryption, but when it comes to this particular problem, many of these officials seem to believe everyone’s security should be compromised just so a […]
Think about the things you lose most often. Your keys and your phone, right? Well the Nut Find 3 was built to resolve that little forgetfulness issue. Thanks to Bluetooth 4.0 and Smart Anti-Loss, you won’t be anxious about your losing or misplacing your stuff. Just attach the tiny, portable Nut to whatever you lose […]
Play Trust & Safety Tycoon in your browser on desktop or mobile » Today we’re super excited to launch Trust & Safety Tycoon, a video game simulating what it’s like to run a trust & safety team at a fictitious, rapidly scaling social media company called Yapper*. If you’ve ever wanted to see how you’d […]
Last week T-Mobile annoyed customers everywhere by not only informing them they’d soon be facing a steep price hike, but by pretending it wasn’t actually a price hike. The company announced it would be moving customers to a more expensive plan unless they opted out (hoping that users wouldn’t notice the change). Leaked support docs […]
Back in February, a copyright case that somehow made it past me, but embedded below, was filed by BMG against MGA Entertainment over a song the latter used for one of its toys. That song was called “My Poops” and is a parody of The Blackeyed Peas’ “My Humps.” You can go hear the song, […]
This case contains multitudes. Let me explain. There’s an exception to the Fourth Amendment known as “inevitable discovery.” That theory says the evidence obtained by possibly unlawful means would still have been discovered by lawful means. That means the evidence is still usable. The most common source of “inevitable discovery” is the “inventory search.” If […]
Landmark Technology’s U.S. Patent No. 7,010,508, and its predecessor, are very likely two of the most-abused patents in U.S. history. These patents, under two different owners, have been used to threaten thousands of small businesses since 2001. In just one 18-month period, the ‘508 patent was the subject of more than 1,800 patent demand letters sent […]
Way back in 2016, Ken White posted a “lawsplainer” about “opening up our libel laws,’“ as Donald Trump had promised on the campaign trail. In it, he noted that unlike (for example…) Roe v. Wade, there was no decades-long effort by the Federalist Society to undermine 1st Amendment principles, such as those established by the […]
Minors attending public schools may find their rights are limited, due to a variety of factors: school safety, access to learning, etc. But they’re not nonexistent. This much courts have made clear, including the top court in the land. Nevertheless, school administrators seem to feel students should be treated as suspects until proven otherwise. In […]
With its intuitive, immersive training method, Rosetta Stone will have you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time. You’ll start by matching words with images just like when you learned your native language as a child. Then you’ll move onto interactive lessons where speech recognition technology works to evaluate and […]
It seemed pretty blatantly obvious that a state can’t just ban a popular app used for speech, but Montana insisted otherwise earlier this year, and gleefully passed a law banning TikTok. The law was immediately challenged, and there’s been a lot of back and forth on the docket, including a ridiculous amicus brief from Virginia […]
Groups like the National Digital Inclusion Alliance have consistently released studies showing that telecom giants like AT&T, despite billions in subsidies and tax breaks, routinely avoid upgrading minority and low income neighborhoods to fiber. Not only that, the group has documented how users in those neighborhoods even struggle to have their existing (older and slower) DSL lines repaired. Regional […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about disinformation and censorship on ExTwitter: Anyone remember Musk happily censoring content for Modi instead of challenging the censorship order as Dorsi would have? His justification was that he believes in free speech up to, but not beyond, the law (and […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, a federal court dumped another lawsuit accusing Twitter of contributing to worldwide terrorism, a law firm made the stupid decision to threaten Somthing Awful over a hot-linked picture, and it appeared that Epic Games DMCA’d its own Fortnite trailer. Washington State laughed at the federal attack on net […]
It is a deal that has been two years in the making, but Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been completed. If you haven’t followed along for the full play by play of this saga, you can go back and look at all the posts we’ve done on the topic. But the primer on this […]
Body cameras can’t possibly solve all the problems of current US law enforcement. No single thing can. But even though body cameras have so far proven more useful to prosecutors than lawsuit litigants and accountability efforts, that doesn’t mean they’re mostly useless. They’re still capable of creating incontrovertible evidence. That’s why prosecutors love them, even […]
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