Every year a little after New Years, I do a post about the previous year of Techdirt traffic and comments, looking at what people were interested in, what commenters were highly rated, etc. I know most sites put this out towards the end of the year, but I remain a purist and wait until after […]
Even though the blog is now often given over to “Trump did nothing wrong” posts and suggestions that social media services engage in “censorship” of so-called “conservatives” (and don’t even think about wandering into the comment section), Eugene Volokh’s Volokh Conspiracy still surfaces some very interesting cases. And this one has a lot going on. […]
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On Monday, Elon Musk tweeted “To fear parody or criticism is a sign of weakness.” If true, then this is Elon admitting to an astounding level of weakness. I mean, we’ve been chronicling for nearly two years now how Elon Musk talks a good game on free speech, but at every opportunity he’s had, he […]
It’s extremely weird that we’ve somehow normalized the fact that scammers, scumbags, debt collectors, and marketers have made the U.S.’ primary voice communication platform largely unusable. There is some good news: according to data from the YouMail Robocall Index, U.S. consumers received just under 3.8 billion robocalls during the month of December, a 16.3% decrease […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the dangerous “protect the children” ballot initiative in California: That is not a protect the children law, that is an I hate social media and it must be destroyed law. In second place, it’s Blake Stacey passing on the […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at how Ajit Pai’s FCC often battled FOIA requests for no reason, while the Department of the Interior was trying to rewrite FOIA law to make it easier to reject requests. We saw fresh examples of copyright abuse as a means of silencing criticism of a […]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has something of a rollercoaster history when it comes to the enforcement of its real, or perceived, intellectual property rights. On the one hand, the church has occasionally been quite lenient when it comes to not trying to battle every use of its name, traditions, or religious […]
Dating can be difficult, but there are certain things you can do to not make things worse on yourself. Don’t be a creep. Be kind. Take no for an answer. Actually listen to the people you date. I mean, that’s kinda the standard stuff. But also, if things go bad and they complain about you […]
Everyone’s aware (or should be) that all calls made from jail are monitored. Not all calls are recorded. There are exceptions, with the biggest being the one for calls made to attorneys representing jailed people. Those are completely off-limits. These are privileged communications that cannot be monitored or recorded by the government. And yet, it […]
It’s pretty amazing to me just how wrong one Senator can be about the internet for years and years and years. But we’ve been writing about Senator Richard Blumenthal and never, ever letting his own confusion about the internet get in the way of him boldly making foolish claims about the internet since before he […]
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There are lots of things you can call veteran Cincinnati police officer Ryan Olthaus. Some people called him a racist, after he appeared to flash the “ok” sign (something associated with [but not limited to] white supremacists) at anti-police violence protesters. You can also call him a coward. After all, he couldn’t be bothered to […]
We’ve long noted how the U.S. has generally proven too corrupt to pass even a baseline privacy law or regulate data brokers. The result has been a long line of companies that over-collect all manner of sensitive consumer location and behavior data, fail to secure it, and sell access to it to pretty much any […]
The bad times for Unity continue, it seems. Or, at the very least, for the ostensibly hardworking men and women that called the company home. The bad times really began late last summer when Unity decided to drastically change its pricing scheme both for future projects that used the game engine, and, somehow, retroactively as […]
A law passed last year has now taken effect in California. This attempt to limit pretextual stops and biased policing means California law enforcement officers will no longer be able to start every traffic stop with an impromptu Q&A session. They’ll have to get right to the point. Here’s what the law says: (a) A […]
In late 2022, the state of New York finally passed new right to repair legislation after years of activist pressure. The bill, which went live this week, gives New York consumers the right to fix their electronic devices themselves or have them more easily repaired by an independent repair shop, instead of being forced to […]
Among the various promises that Elon made regarding his takeover of ExTwitter, was that he was there to clean up the spam and bot problem. He seemed to think that the previous regime had fallen down on the job, and that somehow he would have the magical answer to dealing with such things. About that. […]
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Law enforcement officers learned long ago that if all they have is a crime scene and no likely suspects, there was no reason to wear out shoe leather beating the streets for alleged criminals. They don’t even need to leave the office. All they have to do is produce a subpoena for certain third-party records […]
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