Mandatory age verification rules are entering force in Mississippi and Virginia. Mississippi has a population of barely 3 million people. Virginia has a population of over 8.6 million people. Like Utah (population over 3 million) back in May, one of the world’s most popular adult tube websites chose to block IP addresses from both of […]
Lots of states are pitching, passing, or enacting bills effectively banning drag shows. Piggybacking on existing regulations governing adult entertainment, hateful people are seeking to punish people who don’t happily abide by the “there are two genders” social construct. Fortunately, these people are losing. A federal court recently dumped Utah’s attempt to punish drag performers […]
This isn’t a huge surprise, as they’d already suggested they would do this, but Google has announced officially that it will block news links in Canada to avoid having to pay to send traffic to Canadian news sources. We have now informed the Government that when the law takes effect, we unfortunately will have to […]
An anonymous Louisiana cop who sued, in this order: still manages to have a viable lawsuit seven years later. It boggles the mind. Officer John Doe was policing an anti-police violence protest allegedly organized by activist Deray Mckesson. This demonstration resulted in the blocking of a freeway, resulting in a significant police presence. Someone in […]
This Lamp Depot Minimalist LED Corner Floor Lamp is a beautifully designed, space-saving lamp that fits perfectly in the corners of your living room, dining room, bedroom, guest room, or office. This minimalist lamp features soft-white, integrated LEDs that will provide hours of customized illumination. The easy-to-use remote control makes it simple to shuffle through […]
You don’t need to be some fortune teller to predict some of this stuff. A year ago, after he had announced his plans to buy Twitter (but before he tried to back out, and then was eventually forced to complete the purchase), we were horrified to see Elon Musk meet with the top EU’s Commissioner […]
We just got done noting how the AT&T—>Time Warner—>Warner Bros Discovery mergers just keep on demonstrating the absolutely pointlessness of most media mergers. The combined companies spent hundreds of billions of dollars on elaborate, costly acquisitions that never got close to delivering the kind of “synergies” dealmakers promised. Instead, the string of mergers resulted in […]
We’ve spent a good deal of time talking about burger chain In-N-Out’s habit for engaging in trademark tourism all over the globe. If you’re not familiar with how this works, the company will apply for a trademark in various countries, all of which typically have use requirements in order to maintain the mark, and then […]
There are some fairly strict rules about communicating with government agency employees regarding some matter that they’re adjudicating, without making those communications public. We want whatever administrative state we have to have any attempts to influence outcomes to be public for all to see. That’s why agencies have rules regarding what’s known as “ex parte” […]
For years we’ve noted how cable companies routinely screw you over with all manner of bullshit fees. One Consumer Reports study found that roughly 25 percent of your cable bill is made up of completely nonsensical fees, designed to let companies advertise one rate, then sock you with a much higher bill. It’s estimated this […]
The landed gentry are only in charge until the king comes to town and chops off a few heads. At least that seems to be the case at Reddit, where CEO Steve Huffman pretended his complaints about current moderators — who were protesting his decision to effectively cut off API access to tons of useful […]
When I was but a wee Techdirt boy, the FBI was telling cop shops that had borrowed or obtained Stingray devices they’d best not talk about it in court or it would be their NDA’ed ass on the line. In 2015, documents the FBI hoped no one would see (and actually told local cops they […]
Open Ear Stereo Wireless Headphones are lightweight and comfortable to wear while walking or jogging without the fear of losing them. Made from soft plastic, these headphones can be charged with a USB charger and play 6 hours of continuous playback. These dual bud, bone conduction headphones connect via Bluetooth to any device that is […]
I don’t know how many times it needs to be said, but since so many are still insisting the opposite is true, I guess many more times: Twitter’s moderation policies were not driven by some anti-conservative bias, nor were they pushed by the government to block Trump or his supporters. We have, of course, discussed […]
This week the Biden administration basically re-announced the $42.5 billion in broadband funding that will soon start flowing to the states to shore up U.S. broadband access. Despite press reports that this funding is somehow new, it came as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Not too surprisingly, numerous Republicans that voted […]
Back in January, Walled Culture wrote about an interesting initiative by the German online audio distribution platform and music sharing service SoundCloud, with its Fan-Powered Royalties (FPR) approach. At the time, we noted that it was a kind of halfway house to the true fans idea this blog has promoted many times. We also pointed out that one […]
Look, we were not kind when Genius first accused Google of copying lyrics from its site. The only interesting bit was the cleverness with which Genius figured out Google had copied the lyrics from its site, by sneakily adding in curved or non-curved apostrophes to see if the same ones showed up in Google’s version […]
We just got done noting how the FCC has spent most of the last decade under the bootheel of the telecom lobby, and in an era where all DC policy is fixated on “big tech,” (often for very good reasons) nobody much seems to care or have noticed. For four years under Trump, the FCC […]
Lately, concerns about allowing minors to use social media have been front and center in the public discourse, but ways in which they use it productively have been absent from the conversation. My own anecdotal experience does not constitute comprehensive data, but it’s important to understand how social media can be extremely useful for teens […]
The UK government desires direct control of the internet. This has been the plan for years. A bill that would criminalize encryption while mandating client-side scanning to control the spread of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) has been on the front burner for years. The bill would also turn hate speech into a crime and […]
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