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TechDirt 🕸

FTC Takes Personal Aim At Drizly CEO For Crap Security Practices

2 years 8 months ago
Thanks to our corruption-fueled failure to pass even a basic privacy law for the internet era, the US has seen a steady parade of privacy scandals, hacks, and data breaches. More often than not involving companies with pathetic privacy and security standards, which are dinged repeatedly with pathetic wrist slap fines that are just absorbed […]
Karl Bode

Yes, Chances Are Elon Musk Will Make Twitter Way Worse, But He Could Make It Better

2 years 8 months ago
To date, Elon Musk has shown very little inclination to actually understand Twitter and why it has been such a useful platform to many. His understanding of free speech and content moderation hasn’t just been generally lacking, but ridiculous. And that’s not even getting into his apparently purposely obtuse misunderstanding of spam/mDAU issues. And, so, […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: OnlineCourseHost

2 years 8 months ago
OnlineCourseHost.com is the easiest to use online course platform on the market, and is specifically designed for course creators with no design or technical skills. It’s extremely simple to create a course using OnlineCourseHost.com. Just fill in a simple form and you will have a beautiful courses sales page up and running in minutes, without needing […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Netflix Kicks Back At Big Telecom’s Plan To Tax Big Tech In US And EU

2 years 8 months ago
Telecom lobbyists have been working overtime in both the US and EU, trying to get policymakers to support the idea of “Big Tech” paying “Big Telecom” billions of additional dollars for no coherent reason. This taxation effort always involves some variant of the claim that popular tech services are getting a “free ride” on the […]
Karl Bode

Anti-Cheat Software Continues To Be The New DRM In Pissing Off Legit Customers

2 years 8 months ago
Long-time readers here will know that one of the consistent themes over the years when it comes to video game DRM has been the absolute plethora of anecdotal stories you get about how DRM screwed up the playing experience for legitimate customers. Performance issues, inability to play online or single-player campaigns due to DRM failures, […]
Dark Helmet

Ohio Supreme Court Tells Cops They Can’t Hide All Their Use Of Force Reports Under Investigatory Records Exemption

2 years 8 months ago
Open records laws were passed because governments simply aren’t interested in voluntarily sharing their documents with the people that foot the bill for both the people and the paper. But governments have to pass these laws, in essence forcing transparency upon themselves. Since most governments seem to be more interested in opacity, massive holes in […]
Tim Cushing

Donald Trump Tells The Supreme Court That Social Media Is A Common Carrier; Never Mentions His Own Social Media Site

2 years 8 months ago
Last month, Florida officially asked the Supreme Court to review the detailed 11th Circuit ruling which mostly upheld the district court ruling saying that Florida’s social media content moderation law was unconstitutional under the 1st Amendment. Earlier this week, NetChoice and CCIA argued that the 11th Circuit was (mostly) correct in trashing the law, but […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: PlayStation Plus Essential 12-Month Subscription

2 years 8 months ago
Unleash the power of PlayStation and explore hundreds of incredible games with a new choice of membership plan. With PlayStation Plus Essential, you’ll get to enjoy all the core PlayStation Plus benefits: join your friends in online multiplayer, add new games to your collection every month, get incredible deals from PlayStation Store, and more. Relive some […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Unfortunately, Paying For The Public Domain Already Exists In Many Countries

2 years 8 months ago
A couple of weeks ago, we reported on a terrible idea in France: requiring companies to pay for the use of public domain material. As the post explained, this is a subversion of what it means for something to enter the public domain, and a betrayal of the implicit bargain of copyright. Fortunately, the plan was dropped, […]
Mike Masnick

Signal Says It Will Exit India Rather Than Compromise Its Encryption

2 years 8 months ago
Signal ensures its users’ security and privacy by encrypting their messages and refusing to collect a bunch of data governments or malicious hackers might find useful or interesting. That hasn’t made it many friends in governments (except with government officials who utilize the service to dodge public records requests). An FBI official once compared Signal […]
Tim Cushing

Why Embedding Content Matters

2 years 8 months ago
Imagine waking up in the morning, grabbing your hot cup of coffee, and scrolling your favorite blog post or website, only to find it looking like this: Images are missing. Video content is not there. Nothing but an empty black void staring back at you. This is what could happen if a recent case brought […]
Mike Masnick

Brazil’s Governments Amps Up Anti-Free Speech Tactics Ahead Of National Election

2 years 8 months ago
The Brazilian government — under the “leadership” of Donald Trump Mutual Admiration Society member Jair Bolsonaro — has been steadily cracking down on free speech under the guise of saving the public from “fake news” and other misinformation. Over the past few years, it has ramped up efforts to eradicate content and reporting that it […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: Restflix — Restful Sleep Streaming

2 years 8 months ago
Restflix is a revolutionary streaming service designed to help users fall asleep faster and rest better. With 10+ personalized channels full of sleep meditations, bedtime stories, calming visuals, and binaural beats to harness the brain’s responsiveness to sound and help create a meditative, restful state. Through the use of sleep meditations, bedtime stories, peaceful and […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Comcast Forces Users To Buy Comcast Hardware If They Want Faster Upload Speeds

2 years 8 months ago
For decades, consumers have mostly wanted one thing from their ISP: a semi-affordable dumb pipe connection for the Internet. For just as long, US ISPs have bucked this demand, routinely trying to saddle users with higher costs and additional services consumer never asked for, while finding strange new ways to make an additional buck on […]
Karl Bode