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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 […]

We live in strange times. It used to be that you could set your watch to one simple thing: any time any government agency or policymaker had any question about whether or not we needed to expand copyright laws, Hollywood would answer with a resounding “YES, ABSOLUTELY!” Over the years, copyright has expanded massively, and […]

The First Amendment provides broad protections for journalists, not only as to what they publish, but also how they collect information. For instance, publishing leaked government documents is protected, even if the acts that provided journalists with these documents may be subject to criminal proceedings. In recent months, however, a couple of law enforcement agencies […]

MATLAB allows matrix manipulations, plotting of functions and data, implementation of algorithms, creating of user interfaces, and interfacing with programs written in other languages. That’s all well and good, but it means nothing if you don’t have a firm grasp of the data types used within MATLAB. In the Complete MATLAB Programming Master Class you’ll […]

While I often disagree with Tim Wu, I like and respect him, and always find it interesting to know what he has to say. Wu was also one of the earliest folks to give me feedback on my Protocols not Platforms paper, when he attended a roundtable at Columbia University discussing early drafts of the […]

We just got done noting how pretty much all of the criticism of the Sprint T-Mobile merger by economists and consumer advocates wound up being true. The deal has resulted in more than 10,000+ eliminated jobs, steady price hikes, annoying new fees, a weaker T-Mobile brand, and a lower quality product overall. It also clearly […]

It truly is amazing that the video game industry is so heavily divided on the topic of user-made game mods. I truly don’t understand it. My take has always been very simple: mods are good for gamers and even better for game makers. Why? Simple, mods serve to extend the useful life of video games […]

A few weeks ago we had a story from Glyn Moody about how some people were effectively spamming music streaming services like Spotify with “functional music,” tracks designed to get plays solely for the sake of royalties. Glyn, reasonably, called for an “overhaul,” in how these systems worked. And apparently some people were thinking similarly? […]

In the latest chapter of my laziness writing on the crazy escapades of anti-porn Republicans for Techdirt, I wish to introduce you to Ohio state Rep. Steve Demetriou, who represents Bainbridge Township. Rep. Demetriou introduced the Innocence Act, or House Bill (HB) 295, on October 11, 2023. I wrote about the bill over at AVN.com and […]

This week, our top comments on the insightful side both come in response to Elon Musk’s plans to turn X into a financial app, and the question of whether you’d trust him with your money. In first place, it’s an anonymous comment: Given how well that Elon complies with consent decrees, I suspect his compliance […]

Five Years Ago This week in 2018, we wrote about a session of our election simulation game, Machine Learning President, that we played in Chicago. The EFF sued cops in California for refusing to hand over stingray documents, a Florida appeals court said handing over passwords is protected by the fifth amendment, and Senator Wyden […]

This is not a fun case. It’s instructional, but it involves some pretty noxious criminal behavior. And that’s how these things work, usually. People who aren’t facing criminal charges rarely need to challenge warrants. They never need to challenge the evidence used against them because, well, no one’s using any evidence against them. (h/t FourthAmendment.com) […]

After being discussed for years and years, the Online Safety Act in the UK is now law, after receiving “royal assent” last week. Hilariously, the UK’s announcement declared that children and adults will now be safer online, as if that’s absolutely true. It’s not, though. The law includes many provisions that will make both children […]

These days everyone seems to be talking about AI, and the Copyright Office is no exception, although it may make sense for it to speak here because people keep trying to invoke copyright as a concept implicated by various aspects of AI, including, and perhaps especially, with regard to “training” AI systems. So the Copyright […]

The EU is currently updating eIDAS (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services), an EU regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European Single Market. That’s clearly a crucial piece of legislation in the digital age, and updating it is sensible given the fast pace of development in the sector. But […]