In tech policy, as with any policy, we often talk about liability. Basically, should X liable to Y, why, and with what consequence? Figuring out good policy is often a matter of figuring out how those questions should be answered. Because sometimes it might be good for society if X could be held liable for […]
While Elon Musk often crows about his disdain for subsidies, Musk companies routinely hoover up billions in government assistance. For example, Starlink gamed the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidy auction to nab nearly a billion dollars to deploy broadband to areas that didn’t need it: including some airport parking lots and a few […]
We’ve already detailed why the latest bill from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, the SMART Copyright Act, is dangerous to the future of the internet. You can read that earlier article, but the short summary is that it would deputize the Copyright Office every three years to arbitrarily bless certain “technological measures” that websites, […]
Courthouse News Service (CNS) is (again) suing to block court administrators from deliberately withholding filed documents from the press. CNS has sued several other state court systems over the same misbehavior by clerks and the administrators overseeing them. Last summer, CNS — which obviously relies on prompt access to maintain its reporting edge — obtained […]
TabsFolders lets you save, manage, synchronize, and share bookmarks at a lightning-fast speed. TabsFolders sees your countless tabs and raises you one easy-to-use tool that organizes all the information you need. As soon as you add the extension to your browser, you’re on your way to peak internet efficiency. Using TabsFolders’ drag-and-drop interface, you can […]
Late last year, a coordinated messaging campaign emerged on the anniversary of the repeal of net neutrality. Numerous pundits and right-wing news outlets all simultaneously issued reports on the same day claiming that because the Internet hadn’t exploded in a rainbow, that the FCC’s extremely unpopular 2017 decision to gut oversight of predatory telecom monopolies […]
For decades, local law enforcement agencies have blown off requests from the FBI and DOJ to report use of force incidents by officers. This has led to a very incomplete picture of force deployment in the United States — a form of proxy opacity that has allowed agencies to ignore problematic cops and problematic actions. […]
In our somewhat limited discussions about video game publisher Bungie, our remarks about the company certainly haven’t always been positive. And perhaps that colored my thinking when I recently wrote about a DMCA takedown blitz occurring among the Destiny community, with all kinds of uploads from fans being on the receiving end of takedowns on […]
We [waves flattened palm parallel to the floor in circular motion meant to demonstrate the encompassing nature of the rest of this sentence] the People of this United States have seen some shit. This faaaaaaaaaaarrrr surpasses anything we’ve seen before. By shit, I am referring to the gobsmackingly inane, incredibly insane garbage law enforcement passes […]
One of the striking features of the copyright industry is its insatiability. No matter how long, broad and strong copyright becomes, the copyright world wants it to be yet longer, broader and stronger. It seems companies simply cannot conceive of any point where there is “enough” copyright in the world. A good example is in the […]
Never mind the economy. The real inflation is coming from government agencies seeking to justify their waste of taxpayers’ money. While not otherwise occupied killing state residents with electric grid mismanagement or passing laws restricting their speech, Texas governor Greg Abbott has been touting the success of his personal border surge program — one he […]
Go Vote On the Elite 8! The inaugural Techdirt Legal Misunderstanding March Madness is getting to crunch time. In the Sweet 16 we had our first number 1 seed fall to a challenger. Here’s the latest bracket: In the Sweet 16 the first major upset happened when HIPAA lost (just barely) to Free Speech. HIPAA […]
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Obviously over the past few years there’s been all of these debates about the content moderation practices of various websites. We’ve written about it a ton, including in our Content Moderation Case Study series (currently on hiatus, but hopefully back soon). The goal of that series was to demonstrate that content moderation is rarely (if […]
Telecom giants are no strangers to helping governments spy on journalists, activists, and their own citizens. AT&T, for example, is effectively so bone-grafted to the NSA here in the States, you literally cannot physically tell where the government ends and the telecom giant begins. Chinese companies like Huawei have also jumped to the head of […]
I guess we can’t have nice things. You know, little things… like adherence to the Fourth Amendment. In Wisconsin, the state’s top court says [PDF] cops don’t need to worry too much about suppressed evidence if there’s another way to acquire it. (via Courthouse News Service) Daniel Van Linn was convicted of driving under the […]
One of the central “justifications” for copyright is that it is indispensable if creativity is to be viable. Without it, we are assured, artists would starve. This ignores the fact that artists created and thrived for thousands of years before the 1710 Statute of Anne. But leaving that historical detail aside, as well as the […]
We’ve noted for a while now how Elon Musk’s Starlink low-orbit satellite broadband service isn’t going to be the miraculous revolution many people think. For one thing, the service can currently only provide service to a maximum of around 800,000 subscribers globally. For context, around 20-40 million people in the U.S. lack broadband, and 83 […]
Last week, the EU and the US announced something important that sounds pretty boring — a new “privacy shield” agreement. You should know it’s important, because in the midst of dealing with everything else, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, President Biden actually made a public statement with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen […]
It appears several legislators haven’t learned anything from the months of anti-police violence protests that spread across the nation in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. What should have provoked a reassessment of law enforcement’s contribution to society, and a closer examination of their means and methods, […]
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