Law enforcement needs probable cause to effect arrests and engage in searches. In most cases, a warrant is also required. It’s a bit of paperwork that allows the government to bypass Fourth Amendment protections to serve the greater good, i.e., the invasion of privacy (a search) or the removal of personal freedom (an arrest). For […]
There are supposed to be limits on what the federal government can do with all the data it forces people to hand over in exchange for government services. But much of the limiting appears to be left up to the discretion of federal agencies. Discretion is the better part of valor, as they say. If […]
The early months of 2021, following Trump’s loss at the polls and the subsequent raid of the Capitol building by his supporters, were periodically punctuated by disturbing revelations about the DOJ under the former reality show star. Seeking to plug multiple leaks originating in his administration, the Trump DOJ began targeting journalists, hoping to use […]
Some news outlets engage in journalism. Others just engage in hype. The latter tend to repeat press releases verbatim, only ask for statements from law enforcement when law enforcement screws up, and otherwise cater to the “if it bleeds, it leads” maxim that has allowed mass media to portray America as a criminal dystopia despite […]
Last week, we posted a cheat sheet on how to speedrun the content moderation learning curve. It went a bit viral, but I don’t think Elon got to check it out. In the meantime, he seems to be doing his actual speedrunning in public. Anyhoo… let’s just say that the next few paragraphs are known […]
Micmonster multilingual library is the largest online library of voiceovers. You can find the perfect voice for your project in just a few clicks. Features such as multi-voice and rate/pitch fine-tuning allow you to find just what you’re looking for in your script, whether it be a character or some extra detail. It’s on sale […]
Prior to the turn of the century, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a formative decision that helped craft the contours of Section 230 immunity. The case — Zeran v. America Online — dealt with a tricky question: whether or not a platform’s failure to moderate content (in this case, posts that contained […]
We’d noted a few times how Elon Musk’s Starlink isn’t really as disruptive as it pretends to be. For one, the service keeps getting more expensive thanks to price hikes, and with a $710 first month price tag ($600 hardware fee, $110 a month) it’s too expensive for the struggling rural Americans it’s purportedly aimed […]
This week, both our top comments on the insightful side come from our post about helping Elon Musk speed run the content moderation learning curve. In first place, it’s Christenson responding to a “suggestion” that really appears to be a complaint about Techdirt’s own comment voting system: You are going to have to add some […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, declassified documents revealed the NSA’s efforts to prosecute a journalist for successful FOIA requests, a judge refused a boilerplate request from the DOJ for a gag order, Dianne Feinstein was trying to get Twitter to just hand over a bunch of private communications, and we took a closer […]
It just occurred to me as I was preparing to start writing this post that the volume of trademark conflicts I’ve seen in the craft beer industry seems to have finally calmed the hell down. There are still disputes, obviously, but it used to be that I could count on writing several posts a month […]
This is all kinds of hilarious if you’re aware of the history of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), formerly the MPAA. Basically, the group’s entire existence has been built around lobbying government for ever more ridiculous laws that protect the bottom line of the movie studios. In the late aughts, the studios decided they needed […]
Welcome to America! Fuck everything! And not in the sexual sense, as any person would immediately understand unless, of course, they just want to hit people with criminal charges for maximizing the use of limited space to criticize the government. Local governments tend to get pretty weird about “community standards” and “protecting children,” something that […]
One of the striking features of the copyright industry is the fact that enough is never enough. Give companies stronger enforcement of copyright, and they will still start pushing for more. An example is the EU’s Copyright Directive. Even when upload filters were approved against all expert advice, on the grounds that sufficient safeguards were […]
The Complete Computer Science Master Class Bundle has 11 courses to help you learn various programming languages. Courses cover C#, Scala, JavaScript, Golang, MySQL, and more. You’ll learn how to build a voice app with Amazon Alexa, how to test software, and how to ace programming job interviews. It’s on sale for$39. Note: The Techdirt […]
The Freedom of Information Act was enacted 55 years ago. To its credit, it has resulted in an unprecedented amount of access to documents and communications created by federal agencies. But there has been a lot of resistance. Government agencies continue to abuse FOIA exemptions to withhold documents that shouldn’t be withheld. These efforts far […]
Cable giants like Comcast and Charter continue to struggle to retain traditional TV subscribers, so they’re extracting their pound of flesh from their captive cable broadband customers that have no alternative ISPs to flee to thanks to a continued lack of competition in the United States. Both companies were quick to jack up broadband prices […]
Perhaps the last people who should be asked to define “consent” would be cops. They exist in an alternate reality where only those cuffed and/or beaten to a pulp can plausibly raise a claim that their questioning or search was non-consensual. This possibly explains why so many cops get charged with sexual assault, as well […]
Back in June we wrote about an absolutely ridiculous lawsuit filed by a guy named Andy Stone, but who performs as Vince Vance and the Valiants, against Mariah Carey, claiming copyright infringement from her song “All I Want for Christmas is You.” As we noted at the time, the only similarity between the two songs […]
Big businesses really should know better as to how trademark law works. Or, failing that, their corporate counsels should. And yet we see far too often that big businesses take an aggressive approach to anything remotely resembling trademark infringement that they do not like. Take The Store is Closed, an as yet unreleased video game […]
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