In the wake of a Supreme Court case built on grifters peddling nonsense evidence, it’s only fitting that some media reporting is buying into the same fantasy-land narrative at the heart of the case. You would hope that professional journalists would do better, but apparently that’s too difficult. Earlier this week, we covered the Murthy […]
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You just can’t tell Florida “no,” which is a bit ironic. The state obviously feels it can say “no” to all sorts of things, even if doing so means violating the Constitution. Another dumbass bill written by dumbass legislators and signed into law by the state’s dumbass governor, Ron DeSantis, continue to bleed money from […]
Paramount (CBS) Corporation this week simply erased decades of music journalism in the blink of an eye. Last year the company shut down MTV News and fired all its staff as part of a “strategic realignment.” This week, without warning, the company deleted the entirety of the MTV News archives, erasing decades of music journalism […]
[screaming at my mute laptop screen]: WHO GOT TO YOU This isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way. In 2022, the Fifth Circuit got a decision very right. It said it was very fucking definitely a rights violation to arrest a journalist for publishing information she had received from a law enforcement source. Rather […]
Techdirt has been covering the disgraceful attempts by the EU to break end-to-end encryption — supposedly in order to “protect the children” — for two years now. An important vote that could have seen EU nations back the proposal was due to take place recently. The vote was cancelled — not because politicians finally came […]
There have been a bunch of lawsuits over the last couple of years from traditional content industries suing AI providers, claiming copyright infringement. We’re still a long way from figuring out how all of these lawsuits will shake out. We’ve made it clear that we’re skeptical of these lawsuits, largely because you would have to […]
The murder of Democratic National Committee employee Seth Rich ignited a massive wave of conspiracy theories. The murder is still unsolved, but was considered by law enforcement to be the violent outcome of an attempted robbery. Despite the lack of supporting evidence, a bunch of right-wing conspiracy theorists began suggesting Rich was murdered because of […]
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Actual free speech survives for yet another day as the Supreme Court has rejected a bunch of fantasy-land nonsense in a case in which Trumpists were absolutely positive they’d caught the government “censoring” speech on social media. But every time we looked at the actual evidence, all we saw was “lizard people” level conspiracy theory […]
If there’s been one recurring theme during the “AI” (read, language learning models) revolution, it’s that the tech sector and greedy financiers are prematurely rushing undercooked technology to market. We’ve seen it broadly across industries, whether it’s fabulism-prone fake journalists, automated health insurance systems with 90% error rates, or Google telling people to eat rocks […]
The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court is one of the better circuits when it comes to holding the government accountable for the violence it inflicts on citizens. It’s pretty much the polar opposite of the Fifth Circuit, which can’t seem to forgive cops quickly enough. This lawsuit, springing from the shooting and killing of Francis Calonge […]
The recent publication of Griner v. King seems to have just about everything: an iconic meme (Success Kid!), a troll-ish politician, charges of political censorship, and an application of the latest big Supreme Court opinion on fair use, Warhol v. Goldsmith. Oh my! But the most important thing for friends of fair use to know […]
We weren’t planning to do a series, but after our last two episodes with Alice Marwick and then Candice Odgers, things have lined up nicely for a trifecta of episodes about the current moral panic around kids and social media. This week, we’re joined by Dr. Devorah Heitner, an expert on kids and technology and […]
Does Elon Musk control all of his companies as if they’re a single entity where he can shift resources between them with no restrictions? Certainly, there has been a lot of reporting to that effect over the years, and now that might have some legal consequences, though perhaps not the ones you’d expect. Media Matters […]
Yet another attempt to mandate broken encryption has been disrupted. The Australian government has long held the belief that broken encryption would be a net win for citizens. Or, at the very least, it’s pretty sure it will be a huge win for law enforcement, which won’t have to deal with encrypted communications or devices. […]
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The Julian Assange saga has finally reached its absurd conclusion with a plea deal. But while Assange may be heading home to Australia, the implications for press freedom remain as dire as ever. The U.S. government has successfully criminalized a core function of journalism – working with sources to obtain and publish information in the […]
When it comes to China, the U.S. likes to pretend its business policies are well-crafted, logic-driven decisions based on the welfare of the markets and the public, but very often that’s simply not the case. We’ve already noted how the TikTok ban is an unconstitutional mess that doesn’t have the public’s support, in large part […]
I’m going to quote at length from this decision because the things said by the officer who killed one person and wounded two others said so many amazing (in the pejorative sense) things while explaining and defending his actions. (h/t FourthAmendment.com) Now, the Fifth Circuit often chooses to side with cops. That’s just the way […]
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