If cops screw up enough, they may get blacklisted by prosecutors. These lists — known as “Brady” or “Giglio” lists (depending on jurisdiction) — inform prosecutors that they may not want to ask these officers to testify due to their long histories of misconduct. Most lawsuits generated by cops appearing on these lists deal with […]
Back in March, we discussed a fairly silly request, made by several film producers who are suing RCN for not being their copyright police, that the court subpoena Reddit to unmask 9 users of that site. There were several aspects of the request that made it all very dumb: half the Reddit users never mentioned […]
U.S. telecom monopolies like AT&T and Comcast spent millions of dollars and several decades quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in around twenty states that either banned or heavily hamstrung towns and cities from building their own broadband networks. Even in instances and areas where AT&T and Comcast have repeatedly failed to upgrade or expand their broadband […]
It seems like every day this week a new bill has been introduced in Congress with the grandstanding politicians behind the bill insisting that it’s necessary to protect the children online. It seems like no elected official wants to be left behind on this particular moral panic train. The latest, from Senators Ed Markey and […]
Never mind the Supreme Court. Never mind the case law finding warrantless phone tracking not quite constitutional. Never mind the self-imposed restrictions enacted by federal law enforcement agencies that place warrant requirements on real-time location tracking or the federal court decisions codifying these voluntary efforts. Forget all of that. North Carolina is going to go […]
This LED Bluetooth speaker is built to last and strike a chord with your friends. With its 1800mAh battery capacity, you can enjoy music for up to 10 hours of continuous playtime, making it perfect for outdoor use. The speaker also has a TF memory card slot, allowing you to listen to your favorite beats […]
A few weeks ago I wrote about an interview that Substack CEO Chris Best did about his company’s new offering, Substack Notes, and his unwillingness to answer questions about specific content moderation hypotheticals. As I said at the time, the worst part was Best’s unwillingness to just own up to what he was saying were […]
The cable and broadband industry spent the better part of a decade pretending that “cord cutting” (ditching traditional television in favor for streaming or antenna-based alternatives) either didn’t actually exist or was a fad that would end when Millennials started procreating. Now, they like to pretend they saw the trend coming all along. With most […]
Money can’t buy you everything. Not even the kind of money that’s apparently infinite, if our current federal deficit is any indication. The US Marshals Service was hit with ransomware in February. And, despite drastic measures being taken by the USMS, the breached system still has yet to return to service. And it wasn’t just […]
There are all sorts of anti-internet bills making the rounds lately, and one of the many on the docket and apparently set to move quickly is the Cooper Davis Act, which aims to create a mandatory reporting rule for websites where promotion of the sale of illegal drugs may occur. As with basically any law […]
We’re getting into the warmer seasons, which means AAA games are coming up for release dates. It also means that leaks of content, or sometimes the entire games, for those AAA games are coming out as well. We just talked about several leaks coming out for Nintendo’s latest Zelda title. And now, right on the […]
It’s truly incredible what a childish person Elon Musk can be. As you’ll recall, he thought it was the funniest thing in the world to misleadingly label NPR as “state affiliated media,” a label that had been previously reserved for media organizations that were voices of the state, rather than independent. He did it because […]
In 2005, the US Postal Service (USPS) began to get into the crowdsourcing business. For a fee, anyone could create custom stamps that could be sold through the government’s approved stamp portal (Stamps.com), provided they survived a cursory review by inattentive public servants. While internet-as-tapwater was still on the cusp — not quite everywhere but […]
Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about the Complete Video Production Super Bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and in these 10 courses you’ll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics to the advanced shooting […]
Over the last few months we’d been wondering if it was worth pulling Techdirt posting from Twitter altogether, but had been too busy with other stuff to make a decision, and now it looks like Twitter has made the decision for us. Last week, Automattic informed us that Elon Musk was demanding a ridiculous amount […]
The US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of “broadband.” Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, […]
Nintendo hates whenever it loses even a modest amount of control over its properties. Lately, Nintendo has been making a ton of noise bullying YouTubers over all kinds of uses of Zelda content, with Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom having been slated for release mid-May. The company even attempted to subpoena Discord to unmask a […]
Passing blatantly unconstitutional dangerous laws “to protect the children” based on totally unsubstantiated moral panics appears to be part of a bipartisan mass hysteria these days. The Kids Online Safety Act, or KOSA, is officially back. And, with it, the recognition that over a quarter of the Senate has bought into this dangerous, unconstitutional nonsense: […]
On May 3, a new law restricting porn access in Utah will go Into effect. The response is going to be epically controversial as angry porn consumers in the state will soon lose access to much more than a few household adult entertainment industry brand names like Pornhub. In a move that was no surprise […]
Some politicians get elected and think they’re heading up the musical equivalent of vaporware. Just a heads up: you may have more power than you’re used to but it’s constrained by the Constitution: both the one ratified by the nascent US federal government and the one adopted by individual states, which are required to use […]
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