[INT: Midwestern living room, Christmas morning 2022]: Children: Thanks for all of these consumer goods, Daddy. We know you mean well. But we just want to know whether we’ll ever see free access to federal courtroom documents in our lifetime. Me: [long pause while stroking my magnificent beard] I don’t know, kids. I just don’t […]
Hopefully, you already know who Tom Lehrer is, and are already familiar with his music, but if you’re somehow in the dark, I suggest you read this excellent profile, or visit his unofficial official YouTube channel. Or, visit his website where you can download everything for free (he even begs you not to send him […]
Back in June we wrote about a blockbuster article in Buzzfeed by Emily Baker-White detailing how ByteDance engineers in China were still accessing data on US TikTok users. That was notable, given that ByteDance had signed this big deal with Oracle, while former President Trump held a proverbial gun to its head, to try to […]
A private company can legally declare it has the right to refuse service to anyone (with a very small number of limitations under the law, mostly around discrimination against protected classes). The application of facial recognition tech makes it much easier to do. Rather than post photos and bad checks on the back wall to […]
The 2023 Ultimate Cybersecurity Analyst Bundle has 8 courses to help you become a cybersecurity expert. You’ll learn about social engineering, working with enterprise architecture, bug hunting, penetration testing, ethical hacking, and more. The bundle is on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all […]
Soon after Elon took over Twitter and fired everyone, we wondered (somewhat jokingly) if there was anyone left at the company who was aware of the FTC’s consent decree with the company, signed originally in 2011, but which runs for 30 years, and which was updated back in May of 2022. These documents have some […]
The UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office published new piracy guidance this week claiming that Netflix password sharing is illegal. Back when Netflix was a pesky upstart trying to claw subscribers away from entrenched cable providers, the company had a pretty lax approach to users who shared streaming passwords. At one point CEO Reed Hastings went so far […]
Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io » It’s that time of year! Ever since works in the US finally started entering the public domain again, we’ve been hosting an annual game jam for designers to create games based on the year’s newly copyright-free works. This year, it’s Gaming Like It’s 1927! There […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is rinzewind (shout out for the Discworld reference!) with a simple comment about the Twitter Files: The most disappointing thing of this whole Twitter Files fiasco, for me, has been Taibbi. He had made some questionable editorial decisions as of late, but this has already […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the chips started to fall in the wake of the net neutrality appeal. A tonedeaf video starring Ajit Pai led to one of those internet situations where everyone is wrong, while Pai was insisting net neutrality supporters were wrong about everything since Twitter hadn’t immediately died. Comcast began […]
You will hopefully recall our ongoing discussions about one of the strangest trademark disputes I’ve ever encountered between Iceland Foods, a grocer in the EU, and Iceland, the country. Way back in 2016, Iceland petitioned to remove a trademark Iceland Foods had for its company name, arguing that the trademark had allowed the company to […]
The deliberate “failure” of a Vallejo, California police officer to respect the rights of a Marine veteran filming him from his own porch will cost city residents $300,000. And that’s on top of the money the city spent defending Officer David McLaughlin from the lawsuit filed by the victim of his brutality, Adrian Burrell. Here’s […]
Elon Musk keeps trying to tell people that he’s saving Twitter. But, he may have just accidentally admitted how much he’s screwed it up. In yet another Twitter Spaces where he spoke about things happening at the site, he actually provided some numerical details, as covered by the Financial Times. He said that the platform […]
You may have noticed the world getting excited about the capabilities of ChatGPT, a text-based AI chat bot. Similarly, some are getting quite worked up over generative AI systems that can turn text prompts into images, including those mimicking the style of particular artists. But less remarked upon is the use of AI in the […]
AirPods are pretty great, but they also require a little TLC to keep them in top-notch shape. They’re constantly in your ears, and you don’t want to be the person who reaches for their headphones only to find that they’ve turned into a dirty mess—or worse, that their battery is dead. That’s why we’ve put […]
This is an unwelcome development. The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court is already the home of Rights Roulette. Everyone is free to take it for a spin, but should be aware the odds heavily favor the house. The government comes out a winner more often than not, no matter how long the odds may seem when […]
Back in June New York state was the first state in the country to pass “right to repair” legislation taking direct aim at repair monopolies. The bill mandates that hardware manufacturers make diagnostic and repair information available to consumers and independent repair shops at “fair and reasonable terms.” The final version of the bill enjoyed rare bipartisan support, […]
We’re a tad early for our annual season in which we point out that the NFL likes to play make believe as to its trademark rights for the Super Bowl. You can go read through the history of our posts on the topic, but essentially the NFL seems to think that its trademark rights allow […]
We finally have an interesting edition of the Twitter files! When the Twitter Files began, I actually expected something interesting to come out of them. All of the big tech companies have been unfortunately unwilling to be as transparent as they could be about how their content moderation practices work. Much of the transparency we’ve […]
Back in 2014, the Chicago PD’s chief of detectives had this to say about Apple’s plan to roll out device encryption by default: “Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile,” said John J. Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicago’s police department. “The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got […]
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