The leader in gunshot detection tech rebranded recently. Following several months of sustained negative press, ShotSpotter decided it wanted to be called something else: SoundThinking. But a raffelesia by any other name smells the same. ShotSpotter had experienced a bit of quick uptake by law enforcement agencies, but in recent years, it was more well-known […]
Republican state Rep. Jamie Gragg of Ozark is a freshman lawmaker with no discernible accomplishments on his record. However, it isn’t to say that the man doesn’t break from the party line when it comes to the Republican Party’s fascistic campaign against transgender rights. Gragg introduced House Bill (HB) 2885. It makes it a sex […]
Do you remember Irell & Manella? Of course you do. It’s the formerly well-respected law firm that once brought a lawsuit on behalf of PETA claiming (incorrectly) to represent a monkey, which it claimed (incorrectly) could hold a copyright. As we noted at the time, the whole reason that a respected firm like Irell would […]
Courtesy of Solar Opposites (imho the funniest show on streaming TV), here’s what happens when you teach a cop how to read: To quote the relevant part for those who can’t view the video or would just prefer me to put my cop-hating in plain text, here it is. Yumyulack, an alien, is trying to […]
The American Sign Language Mastery Super Bundle has 13 courses to help you become fluent in ASL. You’ll start by learning 500 basic signs and move on to idioms, phrases, fingerspelling, and more. It’s on sale for $35. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]
I had thought that maybe, just maybe, now that DeSantis had dropped out of the Presidential race, maybe (just maybe?) he’d stop pushing blatantly unconstitutional laws. That’s not to say that DeSantis has any good ideas. But it felt like over the last few years, he really leaned into the nonsense culture wars in an […]
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 […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous reply to a complaint about Biden sinking the ship of the US: Racking up the votes for second place, it’s an anonymous comment about lessons from the Vice Media collapse: That’s the root of 90% of our problems as a nation. Quarter-to-quarter […]
Earlier this week, we announced the winners of the 6th annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! Now, as in years past, for the next few Saturdays we’ll be featuring spotlight posts taking a closer look at each of the winning games (in no particular order). Today, we’re kicking things off with the […]
Usually when you hear the term “trademark bully” tossed around, it’s done so either by members of the media, such as us here at Techdirt, or by defense attorneys making a point before the court. In the case of The Florida Virtual School, however, that moniker was given to the company by the judge that […]
Going way, way back, we’ve talked about the need for protection of journalistic sources, in particular the need for a federal journalism shield law. I can find stories going back about 15 years of us talking about it here on Techdirt. The issue might not come up that often, but that doesn’t make it any […]
As the Vice collapse and Messenger collapse just got done illustrating in glorious technicolor, the problem with online U.S. journalism isn’t that it’s not inherently profitable. The problem is usually that the worst, least competent, shallowest people imaginable routinely fail upward into positions of management, then treat the media companies they acquire and operate like […]
We have pointed out just how ridiculous Elon Musk’s SLAPP lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate is, so much that I supported the filing of an amicus brief in support of CCDH, even as I find CCDH’s positions and research to be generally problematic and misleading. But, even if their research methods aren’t […]
There are a variety of reasons to alter, if not actually end, the Section 702 collection. Whatever value it may have in terms of national security, the very real fact is that it has been endlessly abused by the FBI since its inception. It’s a foreign-facing collection, which means it harvests communications and data involving […]
Headway is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It’s on sale for $49.97. Note: The Techdirt […]
At the Supreme Court’s oral arguments about Florida and Texas’ social media content moderation laws, there was a fair bit of talk about Section 230. As we noted at the time, a few of the Justices (namely Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch) seemed confused about Section 230 and also about what role (if any) it […]
So we’ve noted for a long while that the fixation on China and TikTok specifically has often been used by some lazy thinkers (like the FCC’s Brendan Carr) as a giant distraction from the fact the U.S. has proven too corrupt to regulate data brokers, or even to pass a baseline privacy law for the […]
Full disclosure as a matter of throat-clearing: I generally like BrewDog, a brewery based in the UK. Between really enjoying their beer in the past and the fact that the company underwent a concerted effort to change its previously draconian stance on IP issues, the company has just generally rubbed me the right way, so […]
Very rarely do you see anyone prevail in court when any form of forfeiture is in play. The forfeiture litigation deck is firmly stacked in favor of the government, which rarely needs anything approaching actual proof to walk off with someone’s property. It’s even more rare to see someone awarded damages in a civil lawsuit […]
Much like the phrase “smart technology,” the word “security” just doesn’t mean what it used to. Case in point: last September, owners of Wyze “smart home security cameras” were informed at the company’s forums that the company had “crossed some wires in the backend,” resulting in a glitch that allowed 2,300 users to see the […]
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