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Section 702 Gets Four-Month Extension At The Last Minute

1 year 5 months ago
Just when it finally looked like the FBI’s year of abuse might catch up to it, it (along with the NSA and other beneficiaries of this surveillance authority) has been granted a four-month reprieve. The FBI made a lot of enemies with its continuous abuse of this surveillance authority — a foreign-facing “collect it all” […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Award-Winning Luminar Neo Bundle

1 year 5 months ago
Luminar Neo is an easy-to-use photo editing software that empowers photography lovers to express the beauty they imagined using innovative AI-driven tools. Luminar Neo was built from the ground up to be different from previous Luminar editors. It keeps your favorite LuminarAI tools and expands your arsenal with more state-of-the-art technologies and important changes at […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Leading ‘Save The Kids!’ Advocate Pushing Absolutely Dangerous ‘Protect The California’ Ballot Initiative That Will Do Real Harm To Children

1 year 5 months ago
Over the last few years we’ve pointed out time and time again that the evidence regarding the supposed “harm” of social media to teen mental health just isn’t supported by the data. But it seems it’s never enough to stop savior-complex folks in the media, the advocacy community, and the political class from insisting it […]
Mike Masnick

U.S. ‘Cord Cutting’ Sets New High. Again.

1 year 6 months ago
Back in 2019, Charter CEO Tom Rutledge proudly declared that the trend of cord cutting — or people ditching traditional cable television and switching to streaming — was finally coming to an end. According to Rutledge, the worst was now behind the cable industry, and the trend was finally slowing down. Yeah, about that. According […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 year 6 months ago
This week, both our winning comments on the insightful side come in response to worrisome ruling in California that denied Section 230 protections to Snapchat because it has disappearing messages. In first place, it’s radix with thoughts on the potential implications: I can’t wait for every document shredding company to be swept up in every […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: December 31st – January 6th

1 year 6 months ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we kicked off the new year with a copyright lawsuit over dance moves in Fortnite, while the EU made its first attempt at listing pirate sites and included a bunch of non-infringing sites. Similarly, we looked at how antipiracy outfits routinely claim copyright infringement against sites that simply […]
Leigh Beadon

Police Union Defends Forfeiture By Saying Anyone Carrying A Bunch Of Cash Is Probably A Criminal

1 year 6 months ago
I’m always heartened to see another local news team start digging into asset forfeiture. Especially the ones that don’t sugarcoat the findings with headlines that read like they were crafted by law enforcement officials. Charlotte, North Carolina’s NBC affiliate, WCNC, tells it like it is. Although it puts quotes around a couple of phrases, it […]
Tim Cushing

Company Threatens To Sue Cyclist For Trademark Over ‘Near Miss’ YouTube Video

1 year 6 months ago
It’s no secret that there are mountains of examples of companies and individuals attempting to use intellectual property laws merely to silence critics and disappear information from the internet. While I’m sure this sort of thing must somtimes work, it’s also quite common for these would-be censorial folks to be introduced to the Streisand Effect […]
Dark Helmet

Copyright Liability On LLMs Should Mostly Fall On The Prompter, Not The Service

1 year 6 months ago
The technological marvel of large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, developed by AI engineers and experts, has posed a unique challenge in the realm of copyright law. These advanced AI systems, which undergo extensive training on diverse datasets, including copyrighted material, and provide output highly dependent on user “prompts,” have raised questions about the bounds […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2024 Complete Godot Stack Development Bundle

1 year 6 months ago
Dive into Godot – a rising star in the game engine world. You’ll learn to create platformers, RPGs, strategy games, FPS games, and more as you master this free and open-source engine with easily expandable systems. Plus, you’ll also explore techniques for game design and game asset creation – giving you the ultimate techniques to […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Utah Governor Absolutely Positive That Social Media Harms Kids Despite Study After Study After Study After Study After Study Saying He’s Wrong

1 year 6 months ago
Okay, look, at this point, we need to start calling out those in positions of power who insist that it’s unquestionable that social media is harmful to kids when the don’t present any evidence at all to back up those assertions. Because as we’ve been documenting, every single study that comes out these days seems […]
Mike Masnick

Prepare For A Ton Of Dumb, Counterproductive Streaming Video Mergers

1 year 6 months ago
While Comcast’s streaming service Peacock has now reached 30 million subscribers, Comcast has been taking an absolute bath on the proposition. Comcast CEO Mike Cavanagh says the company lost nearly $3 billion dollars on the effort last year alone. The other streaming giants haven’t fared a whole lot better. Warner Bros Discovery, Disney, and Paramount all […]
Karl Bode

Chinese Official Fired After Backlash Over Latest Gaming Industry Regulatory Plans

1 year 6 months ago
The war on China’s video game industry by the Chinese government continues, but it appears that its casualties aren’t only within the industry itself. Over the last couple of years, the Chinese government has put more and more restrictions on the gaming industry, primarily aimed at youths, that were designed for everything from restricting how […]
Dark Helmet

Millions Of People Are Blocked By Pornhub Because Of Age Verification Laws

1 year 6 months ago
On January 1, 2024, the parent company of Pornhub.com geo-blocked adult users in the states of Montana and North Carolina. Aylo, the site’s corporate parent, said they did so in protest to laws these states adopted requiring adult platforms to verify their users’ ages through various age-check tools. This isn’t the first time Aylo geo-blocked IP […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The 2024 Intro to Coding & Development Bundle

1 year 6 months ago
Master the core concepts of coding with the 2024 Intro to Coding & Development Bundle. You’ll learn to work with some of the world’s most popular languages, including C++, Java, Swift, Kotlin, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Plus, you’ll explore these fundamentals and more while learning to build portfolio-ready apps, games, and websites — testing […]
Gretchen Heckmann

California Judge Says Because Snapchat Has Disappearing Messages, Section 230 Doesn’t Apply To Lawsuits Over Snapchat Content

1 year 6 months ago
Well, this is dumb. As detailed by NBC News, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff has rejected a perfectly reasonable attempt by SnapChat to have a lawsuit thrown out on Section 230 grounds. The case involves family members of kids who overdosed on illegal drugs like fentanyl, suing Snap for apparently providing the connection […]
Mike Masnick

FCC Protects What’s Left Of Media Ownership Limits After Trump Attacks

1 year 6 months ago
During Trump’s tenure, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to what was left of media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely owned) competitors underfoot. The Trump FCC stripped away a lot of the rules […]
Karl Bode