The self-proclaimed free speech warriors of the Republican party have spent much of the past half-decade trying to find some way to force social media platforms to carry their often-objectionable speech. That’s what these asshats and hypocrites consider to be the real “censorship:” the actions of private companies these same people have long stated should […]
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We’ve talked a few times about California’s “Age Appropriate Design Code.” This is a bill in California that was “sponsored” and pushed for by a UK Baroness (who is also a Hollywood filmmaker and has fallen for moral panic myths about evil technology). As we explained there is no way for a site like Techdirt […]
Under the Communications Act, the FCC is supposed to occasionally survey the state of the broadband industry to ensure that affordable broadband is being deployed on a “reasonable and timely basis,” and do something about it if it isn’t. Of course the captured, bumbling agency doesn’t actually do that. Despite spending $400 million on the […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is ThatOneOtherGuy with a simple response to the push in California for “protect the children” internet regulations: The argument everyone forgets… The PROMISE of safety of children (or any other group) is not more important than the Rights of the whole. The only thing that […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, a bad new bill sought to create a nationwide exception to subpoena and warrant requirements for cellphone location data, while a court in Canada was affirming that there’s still an expectation of privacy in devices being repaired by third parties, and FBI boss Chris Wray infamously called for […]
There’s an interesting post on TorrentFreak that concerns so-called “pirate” subtitles for films. It’s absurd that anyone could consider subtitles to be piracy in any way. They are a good example of how ordinary people can add value by generously helping others enjoy films and TV programs in languages they don’t understand. In no sense do “pirate” […]
Copyright royalty collection societies don’t exactly have a stellar reputation for operating on the ethical up and up. Our pages are filled with these collection societies pulling all sorts of bullshit. Some of my favorites are things like when one society insisted on collecting royalties from a bar that was shut down due to COVID, […]
One of a long series of laws written to limit police officer accountability has been not only rejected by a federal judge, but also the cops it was supposed to “protect” and Arizona’s top prosecutor. Last March, the Arizona legislature decided cops simply can’t do their job with the public looking over their shoulders. So, […]
It’s no secret that Elon Musk is desperate for advertisers to return to the platform. He just recently admitted that the company is still cashflow negative and that around 50% of advertisers have left (other reports say the number is bigger). This is despite his earlier claims that the company would break even on a […]
Here’s Part Two of my two parter about the Satanic Panic-level moral panic that has befallen the disconnected-from-reality California legislature (in a bipartisan way) as they seek to destroy the internet “to protect the children). In my previous post, I covered the opening remarks by California Senator Nancy Skinner in support of her bill, SB […]
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What you see below is part one of a two parter about a terrible bill in California. It started out as a single post, but there was so much nonsense, I decided to break it up into two parts. Stay tuned for part two. You may recall last year that California, in addition to the […]
Elon Musk’s companies are routinely heralded for unbridled innovation, but when it comes to very basic customer service, most of them are an incompetent nightmare. Starlink customers looking for refunds after being on waiting lists for years are routinely ghosted. Tesla Solar customers often have it even worse; shelling out huge sums of money only […]
Over the last decade, a small handful of large platforms have become de facto arbiters of how people communicate and share information with one another. As concerns about that concentrated power and those platforms’ decisions have piled up, so too have calls for greater competition and choice in social media and other services for communication […]
And here we go again. We have been talking about both the concept of video game preservation being lost to the copyright gods, as well as how copyright often prevents fan-made creations and content around game franchises, for years and years now. Both topics are quite frustrating and both serve as examples of how copyright […]
The DOJ promised it wouldn’t target journalists and their sources during leak investigations. It also said wouldn’t engage in questionable CFAA prosecutions that appeared to involve nothing more than unapproved (or unexpected) access to data. Both of those self-imposed restrictions seem to have been ignored in a case involving former Deadspin contributor Tim Burke and […]
You may recall that early on in Elon’s ownership of Twitter, he insisted that “removing child exploitation is priority #1” while exhorting his supporters to “reply in the comments” if they saw any. Leaving aside that this is a ridiculously terrible process for having people report potential CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material) or, as some […]
A few months ago, Jack Yan pointed out to me that if they did a search for Techdirt on DuckDuckGo, it showed only one single link which was (bizarrely) to a random story from like eight years ago. There were literally no other results for Techdirt. I replicated it, but was travelling, and by the […]
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