Elon Musk fought the Brazilian law, and it looks like the Brazilian law won. After making a big show of how he was supposedly standing up for free speech, Elon caved yet again. Just as happened back in April when he first refused to comply with court orders from Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, […]
Cable broadband giants like Charter Communications (Spectrum) and Comcast (Xfinity) generally don’t have to try very hard, because they enjoy a monopoly over broadband access across vast swaths of the U.S. That lack of competition traditionally results in high prices, spotty access, slow speeds, and some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any sector […]
Oh, these “law and order” types. What a joke. The self-proclaimed “law and order” candidate is Donald Trump, a convicted felon and open supporter of those who committed federal crimes during the January 6th raid of the Capitol building. And, of course, he’s earned the endorsement of another “law and order” figurehead, the Fraternal Order […]
The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with a thirty-percent jump in the last decade. That’s in contrast to every other developed country, which saw a decline. 40,000 Americans die every year in traffic fatalities. And while tech advancements have made life safer for drivers and passengers, the same can’t be true for […]
Well, it took awhile, but we finally got here. Earlier this year, we discussed the game Palworld shortly after its release. It made our pages because the game is clearly partially inspired by the Pokémon series of video games, with some very stark differences. Similarities aside, the characters in the game are certainly different than […]
As California edges closer to enacting SB 1047, the state risks throwing the entire AI industry into turmoil. The bill has already cleared the legislative process and now sits on Governor Newsom’s desk, leaving him with a critical decision: veto this ill-conceived policy or sign away the U.S.’ future in AI. While Newsom appears skeptical […]
The FBI and DOJ have always felt comfortable going after Islamic extremists. That’s the sort of thing they like to do. They like it so much they’ll radicalize vulnerable people for the sole purpose of locking them up for multiple decades. A lot of digital ink has been spilled covering the FBI’s success rate in […]
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Automation and language learning models aren’t inherently bad. But when half-cooked automation is layered on top of very broken systems by greedy, incompetent people, it certainly can be. See, for example, the way brunchlords are using “AI” to cut corners or undermine labor in journalism, or the way insurance companies are using it to automatically […]
Have you been missing patent trolls destroying innovation and making products you like more expensive? Have you felt that, maybe, some lawyers who did nothing but send extortionate shakedown letters weren’t getting rich enough? Well then, good news for you, Congress is looking to bring all that back! In the early years of Techdirt, we […]
Update: Annnnnnnnd… Cloudflare has already said it will isolate and block Brazilian IP addresses from reaching ExTwitter. Original story below. It appears that Elon has decided to take the Brazilian hornet’s nest he’d already kicked over the last few weeks and start slamming it with a baseball bat. It’s unlikely this will end well. I’ve […]
This morning, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a pretty long markup about KOSA, COPPA 2.0, and other bills. The quick summary is that both of those bills passed out of committee and could be taken to the House floor this session. The longer version, though, is that cracks in the coalition pushing these […]
Wikipedia seems such an essential and benign aspect of the online world that it is hard to understand why people would want to attack it in the courts. But it is nonetheless subject to lawsuits that try to force it to censor its articles because they contain facts that are inconvenient for someone. The Wikimedia […]
Florida’s legislative antipathy towards free speech and general overall bigotry has generated plenty of bad laws and plenty of fully justified lawsuits. Earlier this month, the state’s quasi-book bans became the defendant in a federal lawsuit filed by multiple big-name publishers. But that was just the latest lawsuit, and the first to actually sue the […]
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Back in 2022, you might recall that ex-Moviepass executives Theodore Farnsworth and J. Mitchell Lowe were charged by the DOJ for wire and securities fraud, after it was found they’d repeatedly misled investors about the profitability of their “all you can eat” movie ticket efforts. Lowe this week pleaded guilty to a securities fraud conspiracy […]
If you had that Congress was going to take bad “protect the children” bills and make them worse on your bingo card, congratulations, you’ve won this week’s easiest prediction. This seems like a not great situation. As mentioned, the House Energy & Commerce Committee is holding a markup today for a bunch of bills. Yesterday, […]
It’s amazing just how many of the trademark disputes we cover here are only disputes because the USPTO granted a trademark that it shouldn’t have. The examples of this sort of thing are legion, but they typically revolve around trademarks that are either generic, descriptive, or both. Which brings us to Chickie’s and Pete’s, a […]
Thierry Breton has finally taken the next logical step in his role as the EU’s censor: he’s talked himself out of his job. Over the last few years, Thierry Breton, the former CEO of France Telecom, has spent the last few years as the Commissioner for the Internal Market in the EU, where he has […]
If you’re a Techdirt reader (or any tech news reader) you’ve already heard a lot of stories about the chaos of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, but no matter how much you know, there’s a lot to learn in a new book that hits the shelves today. Character Limit: How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter, by […]
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