At some point U.S. regulators effectively declared that it was okay to rip off consumers with a dizzying array of bogus fees, letting companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock you with a bunch of additional surcharges when the bill comes due. That’s particularly true of the cable and broadband industry, which has saddled consumers […]
Over these many years, we’ve talked about a myriad of ways in which people and companies can respond to copyright infringement. The common reaction, and probably the one most natural, is for those copyright holders to absolutely freak out, scream about lost sales and “teh pirates!!1!”, and then turn to their lawyers. Others take a […]
NSO Group has gone from being an under-the-radar spyware darling selling powerful phone hackery to some of the absolutely worst governments in the world to being an extremely exposed malware pariah which has sold powerful phone hackery to some of the absolute worst governments in the world. A data dump last summer served as a […]
It is bizarre that the California legislature, in a state that has produced most of the biggest internet companies out there, has apparently decided it wants to destroy them all in a flood of purely vexatious litigation. There are a whole series of bills that the legislature is reviewing, and so many of them are […]
ShotSpotter — the gunshot analytic company with the rather sketchy reputation — is, once again, endearing itself to the public by doing things that seem… well… sketchy. On Friday, an attorney representing ShotSpotter, a gunshot-detection technology company, made the unusual request that a judge in a criminal case hold the company in contempt of court […]
Over the last few months, we’ve been covering a ridiculous situation in which Republicans are trying to force their spam into your inboxes. It began with a study that some Republicans misread (or deliberately misinterpreted) to claim that Google was “censoring” their political mailings. That study showed that for an untrained, brand new mailbox, Google […]
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The only surprise in this decision isn’t that the court ruled the way it did. It’s that the Grand Rapids, Michigan police department apparently believed it wasn’t a violation of rights. Here are the origins of the case, as summarized by ABC affiliate WZZM. (WZZM apparently feels no one needs to read the actual opinion […]
Democrats have a “strategy” they really love to employ that involves pushing bills they know will never pass. The idea is that while the bill may not pass, it will bring extra attention to whatever issue they’re pushing, and force the GOP to put their opposition to (policy X) on the record, shaming them publicly. […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment on our post asking why the media is lamenting Disney’s loss of copyright instead of celebrating the public domain: ‘Copyright is for companies, not the public!’ The US spent so long with nothing entering the public domain and […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Senator Wyden was seeking answers about how many times Americans have been targeted by one of the least-discussed NSA surveillance programs, while we noted the silence from tech companies as the clock ticked down on Section 702 renewal (while newly released documents showed even more violations by the […]
I’ll preface this post with this short bit of throat-clearing: no writer or reader of this site should expect the average person on the street to understand the nuances of intellectual property at the same level of those of us interested in the topic. The law is complicated and nuanced, and the layperson is simply […]
Sometimes you’ve got to shoot a few civilians to make the public safe. (h/t Maggie McNeill) More often than not, police do not stop a mass shooting. In Denver over the weekend, they actually started one. According to the Denver Post, police in the Lower Downtown area opened fire to stop a man who allegedly pulled a […]
Ever since Reality Winner was arrested, we’ve written about the ridiculousness of her case. It was yet another in a long line of cases using the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who aren’t spies, but are actively trying to do the right thing — and, as per the Espionage Act — not even allowed […]
You might recall that John Oliver bit years ago about how Americans fall asleep when they hear the word “infrastructure.” We’ll obsess for hours over Elon Musk showmanship, or the innovative potential of NFTs, but the U.S. press in particular falls into a lazy stupor any time actual, essential infrastructure is mentioned. It’s a problem […]
Donald Trump, whose supporters still pretend is a “free speech” champion, has regularly been known to sue news organizations that are mildly critical of him. You may recall that back in 2020 he hired notorious-lawyer-for-suing-media-companies (yes, he once was the lawyer in a case against us), Charles Harder, and sued both the NY Times and […]
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Ring has been bedding down as many law enforcement partners as possible, turning cops into brand evangelists with the implicit (and sometimes, explicit) promise they’ll have access to private citizens’ recordings. Ring likes this because it increases its market share. Cops like it because it gives them more camera coverage in the areas they patrol, […]
Comcast had a particularly ugly second quarter, according to the company’s latest earnings report. The nation’s biggest cable giant not only lost half a million pay TV subscribers as the cord cutting trend continued, it failed to add any new broadband customers for the first time in company history. Users are increasingly cutting the cable […]
Swatting is truly heinous. People angry about video game playing somehow believe they’re justified in attempting to end their opponents’ lives, literally. Toxic sub-humans who can’t handle losing turn to secondhand killing to get their revenge. Absolutely abhorrent behavior that plays into law enforcement’s shoot-first, handcuff-the-corpse-later warrior mentality. In this case, originating in a Wichita, […]
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