We’ve noted for a very long while how most of the explanations that corporations use to insist that your privacy is protected are effectively worthless. For example, corporations will routinely inform you that it’s no big deal that they’re over-collecting and selling access to your browsing or location data to any idiot with a nickel […]
The Streisand Effect. Some folks know it. Some folks even think that some people that know it use it purposefully to their own advantage. Other times people who should know better simply flail around and end up turning content viral which they had intended on burying. So, whenever we do these kinds of posts, someone […]
U.S. consumer protection in general has had an ugly few decades. One bright spot however has been the shift in the “right to repair” movement from niche nerdy fare to the mainstream. Not only have corporate efforts to monopolize repair resulted in a flood of proposed state and federal laws, the Biden Administration’s executive order on monopoly power […]
Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), passed in 2008, continues to be the Little Legislation That Could. While occasionally hijacked by opportunistic litigants whose privacy hasn’t actually been violated, it’s also been used to achieve some objective good. In 2020, the law played an instrumental part in wresting a $550 million settlement from Facebook over […]
It’s getting to be somewhat exhausting watching people who don’t understand Section 230 insisting they have a simple solution for whatever problems they think (mostly incorrectly) are created by Section 230. And, of course, the NY Times seems willing to publish all of them. This is the same NY Times that had to run a […]
The UK government has made no secret of its desire to convert providing encryption into a criminal act. The fact that some things are beyond the government’s reach is unacceptable. While lawmakers may suggest this will only target “criminal” purveyors and users, there’s no reason to believe this won’t be expanded every time law enforcement […]
The GameCreators Mega Maker Pack Bundle will help you develop your own dream video game, and publish it on multiple platforms with thousands of royalty-free, 2D and 3D assets. You get AppGameKit Studio, a fully featured game development toolset with two asset packs. The bundle also has GameGuru, a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an […]
Last summer, we wrote about New York’s law to require websites to have “hateful conduct” policies, noting that it was “ridiculous” and “likely unconstitutional.” The law was passed in the wake of the horrific Buffalo super market shooting, where the state’s Governor and Attorney General sought to blame the internet, rather than the government’s own […]
Former T-Mobile CEO John Legere repeatedly promised in print that the Sprint merger would result in a massive surge in new jobs. In a rambling missive that took aim at critics of the deal, who predicted job losses, the charming potty-mouth CEO proclaimed that critics were lying, and that the deal would be “job positive from day one” and […]
We’ve been talking a lot about video game preservation and strategies for maintaining as much of this cultural output as possible in an industry where the norm is to sunset games after a certain period of time. Most recently, we discussed the comments made by legendary game designer John Carmack, prescribing how game publishers and […]
To be clear, Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband service is great if you have no other options and can afford it. Especially if you’ve spent an eternity stuck on an expensive 3 Mbps DSL line straight out of 2003, or a traditional, capped, expensive satellite broadband connection. The ability to get somewhere between 10 and 100 […]
Donald Trump and his supporters are unable to process facts. That inability led to many of them engaging in questionable election-related lawsuits and extremely questionable election-related public statements. Alleging a “stolen” election, Trump and his backers claimed, without any supporting evidence, voting machines/software made by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic conspired to rob the lame […]
Last year, Techdirt was one of only a very few sites where you could find out information on California’s AB 2273, officially the “California Age Appropriate Design Code” or “Kid’s code.” As with so many bills that talk about “protecting the children,” everyone we talked to said they were afraid to speak up, because they […]
While we’re all waiting to see if the Supreme Court is willing to destroy Section 230 immunity the way it did abortion rights, more bad news has been delivered by the top court in the land. Hidden among the list [PDF] of dozens of cases the Supreme Court will not be reviewing is this one, […]
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Despite the Supreme Court hearing what could be the most consequential case regarding the future of the internet in decades, I decided to log off for most of Tuesday and go do something fun, far away from any internet connection. I didn’t listen live to the oral arguments, but rather chose to listen (at 3x […]
Colorado is the latest state to move forward on new “right to repair” legislation despite a growing and sustained lobbying effort by industry. The Colorado House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Consumer Right to Repair Agricultural Equipment Act (HB23-1011) with a 44-17 vote on Tuesday, the first major right to repair legislation to be passed […]
For years, law enforcement agencies converted themselves into quasi-military agencies with the assistance of the Defense Department. Whatever the military no longer needed, cops could have for cheap or free, as long as they remembered to say things about “national security” when filling out their 1033 program requisitions. Unsurprisingly, the acquisition of warrior gear (camouflage […]
Karl just wrote about CNET, a once-vaunted resource for tech journalism, absolutely stepping on every rake it could find by using AI-generated content that was absolutely laughable: the content tended to be inaccurate, plagiarized, or otherwise so full of mistakes that an army of editors had to rework the content, largely wiping away any cost […]
If you’ve been reading Techdirt recently, you probably know all about supposed “AI Lawyer” service DoNotPay and the tireless investigation of the company undertaken by Kathryn Tewson, who has written a couple of Techdirt posts about the saga. This week, Kathryn joins us on the podcast for a long and entertaining discussion about the entire […]
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