Thanks to industry consolidation and saturated market growth, the streaming industry has started behaving much like the traditional cable giants they once disrupted. As with most industries suffering from “enshittification,” that generally means steadily worse service at higher prices as it tries to appease Wall Street’s demand for improved quarterly returns at any cost (even […]
We’ve got another double winner this week, with the same anonymous comment taking first place for insightful and second place for funny. It comes in response to a joke about Republicans in the zombie apocalypse: Republicans will be the zombies because when an outbreak happens, the government will tell people to avoid the zombies, and […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, there was another failed attempt to hold Twitter responsible for terrorism, while we were taking a closer look at the massive influence campaigns and coordinated election interference happening on the platform. AT&T began kicking pirates off the internet, the Supreme Court rejected the telecom industry’s calls to hear […]
One of the longest standing jokes in professional sports is labeling the NFL, or National Football League, the No Fun League, instead. This typically has to do either with the way the league has legislated a lot of what fans love about the game off the field in the name of player safety, which isn’t […]
Last week in our Error 402 series on the history of web monetization, we covered how early paywalls for content almost universally failed. We’ll explore a bit more of the why later, but first we need to talk about internet ads. Because they basically sucked up all of the oxygen in the online monetization world. […]
We’ve dealt with plenty of outlandish government behavior here at Techdirt over the years. But, every so often, something clears that high bar — something that hits you square in the jaw and makes you take a step back. You’ll never know what your government employees feel they’re entitled to do until they actually do […]
Look, I get that Rep. Jim Jordan is going to just keep on Jim Jordaning up the joint, and making statements that are blatantly untrue in an effort to chill speech he doesn’t like. But, for fuck’s sake, the media doesn’t need to repeat it. Of course, in this case, “the media” is the NY […]
As the completely normal parents of two completely normal teen boys, I was sincerely hoping I would never have to write about Fortnite again. This is not to say there’s anything particularly wrong with Fortnite, the free-to-play arena shooter/Minecraft that took the online world by storm. Epic Games recognized its new field of cash cows […]
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This is what I get for praising a move by the FTC earlier this week. It repays me by pushing out a batshit crazy statement regarding AI and copyright. As we’ve been discussing over the past week, the Copyright Office’s request for comments regarding AI and copyright has been leading to some odd comments, including […]
Amazon is now charging Prime customers an extra $3 a month to avoid ads that didn’t used to exist. Netflix is charging password sharers extra for sharing passwords, in addition to yet another looming price hike. Apple just doubled the price of Apple TV on the heels of price hikes by Disney, Hulu, and ESPN. […]
Usually when we’re talking about a trademark dispute, never mind a lawsuit, there is some level of anger, frustration, or animosity between the two parties. The reason for that is pretty obvious: nothing puts you on negative footing towards another quite like getting sued or getting threatened with a lawsuit. But, and I cannot stress […]
We’ve noted many times that there are two major reasons that the U.S. still hasn’t passed even a basic privacy law for the internet era or regulated data brokers. One, the U.S. government is corrupt, and has repeatedly buckled to the lobbying of multiple industries that find the current dysfunction very profitable. Two, the government […]
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Fucking finally. I’ve been somewhat critical of the glaring failures of this FTC, which has been something of a mess, seemingly spending more time on questionable academic theories, rather than focusing on all sorts of obvious low-hanging fruit, clearly within its authority to protect consumers. So, it was nice a few months ago to see […]
Adding to the unearned wins racked up by cops is this decision [PDF] from the Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court. According to the court, figuring out digital stuff is just too complicated. And if it can’t handle the nuances, it certainly can’t expect cops to follow the constitutional rules. And who can blame it? The guidance […]
Last week we wrote about our comments submitted to the Copyright Office’s request on copyright and AI. We tried to make it clear that copyright had no place in the data that is used to train AI, and that computers simply consuming data shouldn’t require any kind of special copyright protection or licensing. It’s not […]
Aging satellite TV provider Dish Network is supposed to be undergoing a major transformation from tired old satellite TV provider to streaming and wireless juggernaut, but it’s… not going well. The company’s latest earnings report indicates it lost another 284,000 video subscribers during the quarter. That includes a loss of 197,000 satellite TV customers, as […]
When it comes to the big 3 of the video game industry — Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony — the circle is now complete when it comes to integrations with ExTwitter. Late last year, Nintendo killed off parts of its own integration not just with then-Twitter, but with Facebook as well. But then ExTwitter abruptly announced […]
A few months ago, the Marion, Kansas police department made the immediately regrettable decision to raid the office of the local paper, as well as the home of the paper’s owner. According to Police Chief Gideon Cody, this was the proper thing to do. The paper’s journalists were suspected of breaking state laws pertaining to […]
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