It’s no secret that Nintendo is extremely draconian when it comes to all things intellectual property concerning its assets. You can simply follow that backlink for a list of tons and tons of posts on Nintendo doing Nintendo things, which mostly amount to shutting down any use of its property, no matter how small, no […]
Redaction isn’t terribly difficult to do correctly. And yet, it often seems to be beyond the grasp of government officials who really, really want to withhold information, but just can’t seem to do it. For instance, litigants asked the court to redact information in an FTC suit against Amazon. The court clerk apparently thought utilizing […]
Earlier this year you may have heard that there were a few lawsuits filed over generative AI platforms, with two big cases targeting Stability AI, makers of Stable Diffusion, in particular. I’d been meaning to write about these cases, and why they’re so problematic, but things have been busy and I didn’t get a chance. […]
Germany’s awkward relationship with the internet continues. On one hand, the German government has told the EU government it’s not willing to follow orders that involve criminalizing encryption or mandating client-side scanning. On the other hand, it does things like blacklist Techdirt (this happened in 2012) for supposedly offering up too much porn and violence. […]
The All-in-One American Sign Language Bundle has 13 courses to help you learn ASL. Courses cover the origins of the language, the alphabet and finger-spelling, colors, animals, foods and drinks, family signs, feelings, verbs, and key nouns. It’s on sale for $19.97. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion […]
Rep. George Santos remains a fascinating study in how far you can get if you have zero shame about just making shit up constantly. By now you must know his backstory (er… stories) and how basically nothing he seems to say checks out. And now he’s actually trying to get legislation passed. Specifically he’s announced […]
Netflix executives this week announced that they would finally be putting their traditional DVD rental service out to pasture starting on September 25 after 25 years of little, red envelopes. From a blog post by Netflix co-CEO Ted Serandos’ intern: Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members but as […]
It’s been quite some time since we’ve talked about Denuvo and its once-vaunted anti-piracy DRM for video games. If I’m being totally honest, I had thought that part of the company’s business was simply gone, so poorly did the DRM perform. By the end, cracking groups were getting around Denuvo-protected games in days, sometimes a […]
We just wrote about Substack’s issue with content moderation and the Nazi bar problem. As I highlighted in that piece, any centralized service is going to be defined by their moderation choices. If you cater to terrible, abusive people, you become “the site that caters to terrible abusive people.” That’s not a comment on “free […]
Starting next year, Colorado farmers will have a much easier time repairing their equipment thanks to a new state law protecting their “right to repair.” Colorado’s new bill, the Consumer Right to Repair Agricultural Equipment Act, requires that agricultural equipment giants like John Deere provide consumers and independent repair shops the “parts, embedded software, firmware, […]
Elon Musk seems to take a personal affront to anyone who says “dude, we’re not going to pay your crazy prices for stuff.” For example, he pulled the NY Times “verified” badge weeks before everyone else was set to lose it after they announced they wouldn’t pay. Now, Microsoft has announced that it is dropping […]
A number of stupid lawmakers have attempted to basically outlaw filming cops by proposing imaginative legislation that would prevent all but the most ineffective documentation of public employees performing their public duties. You can’t outlaw filming police. The First Amendment pretty much prevents that, even if case law in judicial circuits is still not completely […]
The benefits of learning to speak a second language (or third) are immeasurable! With its intuitive, immersive training method, Rosetta Stone will have you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time. You’ll start by matching words with images just like when you learned your native language as a child. Then […]
Elon Musk has been on a tear of late, attacking the “mainstream media” at every turn. It’s true that this started about five years ago, when Tesla started getting some negative press (after about a decade of extremely positive press), and Musk seemed to absolutely lose his shit. It kinda comes with the territory, though, […]
We’ve long noted how entrenched broadband providers have historically refused to upgrade areas that don’t deliver immediate, favorable returns (quite often poor, minority, and low income neighborhoods). That, combined with a monopoly assault on competition and regulatory oversight in most markets, has left the U.S. with patchy, substandard broadband networks we’re still struggling to track […]
It’s nothing new that famous and recognizable sports figures have gotten into the business of filing all kinds of trademarks around their names, nicknames, and other terms and phrases associated with them. Anthony Davis trademarked “Fear The Brow” as a result of his identifiable unibrow, for instance. Remember Jeremy Lin? You might not if you’re […]
The nonsense never ends. As you’ll recall, there was a big kerfuffle (that still hasn’t fully ended) over a decision by Twitter in October of 2020 to block the sharing of a NY Post article about the contents of what was then alleged to be (and since mostly confirmed) Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop hard drive. […]
You know you’re fucked when the only way out of your current SEO/PR nightmare is to distance yourself… well, from yourself. Some of this predates Google’s search engine stranglehold. But altering public perception sometimes means hoping someone will look at your shiny new logo, rather than your disturbing past. After killing innocent people while providing […]
One of the central arguments for a recent rash of age verification laws across the country is to “protect the children.” Utah Gov. Spencer Cox called his signing of controversial social media laws a means for “protecting our kids from the harms of social media.” Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a press conference that her […]
It’s always a mixed bag when entertainment industry stars get roped into supporting this or that internet regulation. Remember how there was a Hollywood-backed campaign to have a bunch of big name stars support FOSTA, the bill that sounded good to people who didn’t understand intermediary liability law, but has literally ended up killing women […]
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