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It’s been twelve years since the big SOPA/PIPA fight. I’ve been talking with a few folks lately about how it feels like many people have either forgotten that story or weren’t paying attention when it happened. Two years ago, we did a 10-year retrospective on the fight, and it feels like some people need a […]
However terrible telecom monopolies are in the free world, they’re arguably worse in prisons. For decades, journalists and researchers have outlined how a select number of prison telecom giants like Securus have enjoyed a cozy, government-kickback based monopoly over prison phone and teleconferencing services, resulting sky high rates (upwards of $14 per minute at some prisons) for […]
The shift from analogue to digital has had a massive impact on most aspects of life. One area where that shift has the potential for huge benefits is in the world of academic publishing. Academic papers are costly to publish and distribute on paper, but in a digital format they can be shared globally for […]
The best place to be the sort of cop who thinks it’s a good idea to associate yourself with the Punisher remains the Fifth Circuit. Cops in Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana are blessed with the most forgiving appellate court in the land — one even capable of irritating the same Supreme Court that has spent […]
One very important thing to understand in the conversation about online speech is that there are many different kinds of online communities, big and small, and they all have their own needs when it comes to rules and governance. This fact is a key element of a new book, Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online […]
This headline is like a version of Mad Libs for Techdirt titles. We’ve been covering the problem of copyright trolls for many years. And lately, we’ve been covering the scammy uses of generative AI tools. And we’ve absolutely covered quite a few SEO scam stories, where people try to use some scam or another to […]
I guess being incarcerated isn’t dehumanizing enough. Being treated like barely sentient meat deserving of any abuse perpetrated by guards or other inmates just isn’t enough oppression, apparently. This country talks a big game about rehabilitation and “paying your debt to society,” but when it comes to the day-to-day business of incarcerating people at a […]
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Over the last few years, Elon Musk has repeatedly said that his definition of free speech means “that which matches the law.” He says this whenever anyone calls out that he’s not actually the free speech absolutist he claims to be. He regularly and expeditiously caves in to censorship demands, without any protest, from authoritarian […]
The FCC is expected to vote to restore net neutrality rules on April 25. And while there’re early indications that the rules may be slightly weaker than those stripped away by the Trump administration — and absolutely no indication the rules could meaningfully impact telecom revenues — telecom giants have already begun their whining about […]
In all of the posts we have done on the topic of video game preservation, I have often made the point that it’s probably long past time that there be some sort of political action to address the real or potential disappearance of cultural output that is occurring. The way this works far too often […]
While it’s not ultimately a factor in the court’s decision, it’s nice to see a court call out biased policing while discussing the merits of the case. This decision [PDF], handed down by an Illinois state appellate court, makes it pretty clear the court believes this stop would never had happened if the driver happened […]
As Mike has already chronicled, Meta has managed to alienate itself from reasonable people by first suppressing links to an independent Kansas journalism outlet, then links to others reporting on the suppression, and eventually entire accounts discussing the episode. I tend to be of the view that what happened was an error caught in a […]
Every few years, it seems, we’re reminded of the incredible number of dependencies built into the software we all rely on. Remember kik? Or Chef Sugar? Or any number of similar situations? The xkcd comic on dependency is so well known for a reason. So, the backdoor that was discovered in xz utils a week […]
While it’s understandable to desire someone be held responsible for brutal acts of terrorism, the responsibility for those actions lies with those who committed them. That’s hardly satisfying because it can be almost impossible to extract anything from the terrorists themselves, other than the limited recompense of seeing them arrested and jailed. And that’s something […]
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Truth matters. Even if it’s inconvenient for your narrative. I’m going to do a question and answer style post, because I want to address a bunch of questions that came up on this story over the weekend, but let’s start here. So what happened? Last Thursday, the Kansas Reflector, a small local news non-profit in […]
You might recall that, back in February, Senator Ron Wyden’s office revealed how a data broker named Near Intelligence had collected the data of women visiting abortion clinics, then sold that data (via a proxy) to right wing activists. Those activists then turned around and used it to target vulnerable women with health care misinformation. […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about Jim Jordan demanding major ad companies explain why they won’t advertise on Truth Social: Far right: we support free speech and free markets!Businesses: We’ve decided it’s not in our best interest to advertise on this far-right website.Far right: Advertise there […]
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