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Texas Appeals Court Upholds Dismissal Of Voice Actor’s Bogus Defamation Lawsuit

2 years 2 months ago
Vic Mignogna is an American voice actor specializing in English dubs of Japanese anime. His career dates back to the early 2000s. Unfortunately for Mignogna, he’s now mostly known as a serial sexual harasser. Those accusations began surfacing in 2019, with some accusations dating back nearly a decade before he became a successful voice actor. […]
Tim Cushing

Age Verification Providers Say Don’t Worry About California Design Code; You’ll Just Have To Scan Your Face For Every Website You Visit

2 years 2 months ago
If you thought cookie pop-ups were an annoying nuisance, just wait until you have to scan your face for some third party to “verify your age” after California’s new design code becomes law. On Friday, I wrote about the companies and organizations most likely to benefit from California’s AB 2273, the “Age Appropriate Design Code” […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Code Direct Python Interactive Coding

2 years 2 months ago
Learning Python online has never been easier. If you’re a beginner developer looking to brush up on your Python skills, then CodeDirect is the place for you. We provide 16+ Python lessons, 100+ hands-on exercises, and solutions to all of them. You’ll also get up-to-date lessons covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more! The lessons cover […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Appeals Court Tells Government It Needs Actual Evidence If It Wants To Keep The $70,000 It Seized During An Accident Investigation

2 years 2 months ago
It’s not often you see a civil forfeiture case handled by an appeals court. Most cases are never given their day in court. Many go completely unchallenged. The evidentiary bar for the government is low and the obligations placed on those whose property has been taken is high. Most people can’t afford to fight forfeitures, […]
Tim Cushing

New FCC Broadband Maps Are A Bit Of A ‘Train Wreck’

2 years 2 months ago
We’ve noted a few times how there’s an absolutely historic amount of money being thrown at the U.S. broadband “digital divide” this year. The broadband infrastructure bill alone designates $42 billion to expanding broadband access. Billions more in COVID relief money started flowing this week courtesy of the Treasury Department. But there’s a tiny problem. Despite a […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

2 years 2 months ago
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about the impossibility of complying with the child protection bill being pushed in California. In first place, it’s That One Guy with a comment focusing on the carve-out for telcos and broadband providers: ‘They paid us off so of course […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: August 21st – 27th

2 years 2 months ago
Five Years Ago As you probably know, this week was Techdirt’s 25th anniversary! And this week in 2017, of course, we were marking the 20th anniversary (and also published a podcast reflecting on the history of the site). As for other events this week in 2017: we saw yet another example of the problems with […]
Leigh Beadon

MoviePass Returns After Its Disastrous, Comical Implosion

2 years 2 months ago
After imploding in a spectacular fireball several years ago, MoviePass is giving things another try. The service has announced that it’s preparing to relaunch on Labor Day, nearly three years after the company was effectively shamed out of existence in spectacular fashion. While the remnants of MoviePass were sold to a private equity firm in […]
Karl Bode

Who Would Benefit From California’s Age Appropriate Design Code? Apparently Porn Companies, Privacy Lawyers, And Medical Disinfo Peddlers. But Not Kids

2 years 2 months ago
This week we’ve been writing about California bill AB 2273, a dangerous bill that has effectively sailed through the California legislature with little pushback, because it’s wrapped up in “protect the children” language and no one wants to be seen as not wanting to “protect the children.” But, like so many bills that frame themselves […]
Mike Masnick

UK Privacy Group Says Police Are Abusing Stop And Search Powers To Hassle Protesters

2 years 2 months ago
Most protest activity targets government entities. So, it’s really no surprise that government entities prefer to target protesters. While most “free” nations won’t go so far as to introduce life sentences for protesting and/or fire a majority of local officials and replace them with handpicked loyalists, the general understanding is that protests targeting government entities […]
Tim Cushing

Delaware Chancery Court Keeps Pushing Back On Elon Musk’s Legal Arguments As He (Mostly) Loses His Discovery Battles

2 years 2 months ago
As was to be expected, the Twitter / Elon Musk showdown has been zooming ahead. With a trial set for mid-October (after the Chancellor overseeing the case mostly sided with Twitter on the preferred timeline), we’re deep in the discovery process, and there have been some disputes over how that’s going. On Wednesday, there was […]
Mike Masnick

Huge News: Biden Administration Announces All Publicly Funded Research Should Be Available For Free To The Public

2 years 2 months ago
Here’s some amazingly good news amidst all of the nonsense of late. On Thursday, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) at the White House announced that they were updating policy guidance to mandate that all taxpayer-supported research should be immediately available to the public at no cost. According to the actual policy guidelines, […]
Mike Masnick

5G Wireless Nibbles Away At Cable Industry’s Broadband Dominance

2 years 2 months ago
Thanks to their dominance over broadband access in the U.S., cable companies had spent the last decade seeing significant broadband subscriber growth each and every quarter, since, well, there weren’t any other options. That ended during the second quarter of 2022, when companies like Comcast failed to add any new broadband subscribers for the first […]
Karl Bode

Xbox Chief: Exclusives Aren’t the Future, Pay No Attention To All These Exclusives

2 years 2 months ago
Xbox’s management team’s inability to put out a clear public message regarding exclusive titles is becoming a real thing. When the season of acquisitions kicked off last year and Microsoft bought up Zenimax/Bethesda studios, the muddled messaging began. First were conflicting statements over the exclusivity of those studios’ titles, then came Microsoft saying those titles […]
Dark Helmet

Sixth Circuit: Equal Access To Court Proceedings Only Applies To Those More Equal Than Others

2 years 2 months ago
There’s presumptive access to court records under the First Amendment. But that presumption presumes a lot of other things, as this recent Sixth Circuit Appeals Court ruling demonstrates. Just because something is open doesn’t necessarily mean it’s accessible. But the Sixth Circuit has decided access (no matter how limited) is still access, and that’s all […]
Tim Cushing

Fifth Circuit: It’s Very Fucking Definitely A Rights Violation To Arrest A Journalist For Asking Questions

2 years 2 months ago
Four years ago, the Laredo Police Department arrested a citizen journalist for the crime of receiving an answer to a question she asked. Priscilla Villarreal patrols the streets of Laredo with her camera, reporting on police activity simply by turning on her camera during traffic stops, arrests, and other incidents, and providing commentary. Her reporting […]
Tim Cushing