The idea that there is a link between the exclusivity period on patents and higher drug prices is about as noncontroversial as a view can be. It is the easy question on an ECON 101 exam on monopolies, supply and demand. Yet, somehow, this has come under attack thanks to big PhRMA and their minions. […]
An in-depth report on Israeli malware manufacturer NSO Group has (again) exposed the company’s lies about its activities (and the activities of its customers). Here’s what NSO said to Calcalist in July of last year as the steady drip of bad news became a cascade. According to [NSO founder and CEO Shalev] Hulio, “the average […]
Hey, finally time for a little bit of good news in the world of free speech: the Kentucky General Assembly recently passed the Kentucky Uniform Public Expression Protection Act. It’s a kind of anti-SLAPP bill that is based on a model bill, the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (UPEPA), and similar to a bill passed […]
A couple of weeks ago, a police transparency activist caught something on video: a cop trying not to get caught on video. That isn’t the interesting part. Lots of cops hate being recorded, even by their own cameras. This Santa Ana police officer was rolling through a neighborhood — supposedly to investigate a stolen car […]
CramWise has compiled CompTIA certification exam simulators into one comprehensive bundle for your convenience. This bundle includes only exam simulators with Performance-Based Questions (PBQs) and CompTIA labs following the Official CompTIA exam objectives. The bundle includes exam prep for, CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1001), CompTIA A+ Core 2 (220-1002), CompTIA Network+ (N10-008), CompTIA Security+ (SY0-601), CompTIA […]
For all the talk of how Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter to make it more supportive of free speech, there remain a ton of questions about what it will actually mean in practice. I’ve explained why his conception of free speech is incredibly naïve and his ideas around content moderation are not just outdated […]
U.S. wireless company T-Mobile hasn’t had what you’d call a stellar track record on privacy or security. Last year, the company was forced to acknowledge that hackers had obtained the personal details (including social security numbers) of more than 53 million T-Mobile customers, the sixth time the company had been meaningfully compromised in as many […]
It really feels like we shouldn’t have to have discussions about how companies should handle information that leaks onto the internet in 2022. Or, to be more precise, we should at least not have to remind them that attempting to re-bottle the leak-genie just isn’t going to work and will almost certainly have the opposite, […]
Feeling the crunch of this economy? Why not leverage government power to create a sustainable revenue stream? That’s the plan in Vietnam, a country not unfamiliar with regular deployments of censorial efforts by the government. The Vietnamese government keeps the internet — and its citizens — on a short leash. Only so much free expression […]
We’ve written numerous posts about the EU Copyright Directive, because it contains two extremely harmful ideas. The first is the “snippet tax“, an attempt by some press publishers to make sites like Google pay for the privilege of displaying and linking to newspaper publishers’ material – an assault on the Web’s underlying hyperlink technology. The second […]
In recent months, a lot of attention has been paid to private companies who assist governments with surveillance. Most of this has been focused on companies like Clearview (a company that scrapes the public web for data to sell to its customers) and NSO Group (an Israeli company that sells powerful cell phone exploits to […]
With it looking almost certain that Elon Musk will own Twitter in the very near future, a lot of people are freaking out, and I did think it was worthwhile to explore ways in which this might actually be good. At this point, I think it’s quite clear that Elon Musk’s comments about Twitter show […]
The 2022 Ultimate Ethical Hacker Training Bundle gives you access to 13 courses focused on bug bounty hunting and penetration testing. You’ll learn about Python, Kali Linux, Burp Suite, Nmap, and more. To keep up with the ever-evolving digital world, all future updates for all courses are included for free. The bundle is on sale […]
For many, many, many years we’ve been talking about the idea of advertising as content and content as advertising on Techdirt. The basic idea is that in today’s world, where there are so many things competing for our attention, rather than trying to force annoying ads on people, advertisers should look to turn their advertising […]
We’ve noted for a long time how data makes it clear that, contrary to claims by telecom monopolies, community broadband networks are hugely beneficial. They generally offer faster speeds at lower prices with better customer service than regional monopolies, and they also tend to push said monopolies to try a little harder to compete on […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Naughty Autie with a comment about Peter Brimelow and VDARE, and specifically their past statements about how “America is not a melting pot”: Correct, America is not a ‘melting pot’. However, it has been multicultural ever since white people first invaded and occupied it […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, new CIA director Mike Pompeo went on a hypocritical rant about Wikileaks and free speech, the administration killed Open.Gov, and the DOJ boss was railing against encryption. Tech companies were fighting against Trump’s travel bans in two different courts, and Roku was getting into the lobbying world to […]
A case involving a DUI stop that somehow morphed into the search of a passenger has earned a couple of cops a rebuke from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and a couple of handy reminders in a precedential decision that will make it that much tougher for law enforcement officers in this circuit to […]
Well, this one is moving fast. It was only a few days ago that we talked about a lawsuit filed by Sycamore Brewing against Stone Brewing for what sure looked like a pretty blatant ripoff of the former’s trademarked slogan, “Keep It Juicy”. What made this story notable was that Stone Brewing is just coming […]
Law enforcement officers are more used to violating rights than having theirs violated, so this case — brought to us by Courthouse News Service — is something of an anomaly. But it is a good discussion of some issues that don’t receive a lot of attention. Like, how is “reasonable” defined in terms of searches […]
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