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Australia’s Next Target In The War On Kids Online: Your VPN

1 week 3 days ago
We — and plenty of others — have been warning that the global rush to mandate age verification wouldn’t stop at “let’s make sure kids can’t see porn” or even just “keep kids off of social media.” It would inevitably expand into treating anonymity and privacy tools themselves as the enemy. Australia is now proving […]
Mike Masnick

Brendan Carr Is Illegally Dismantling U.S. Media Consolidation Law

1 week 3 days ago
Brendan Carr and the Trump FCC are finalizing plans to illegally eliminate what’s left of the country’s already barely functional media consolidation limits; a specific gift to Trump-friendly right wing broadcasters that are hoping to monopolize what’s left of local U.S. broadcast news so they can more efficiently spread propaganda and kiss the president’s ass. […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 week 4 days ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Thad with a simple comment about the judicial smackdown of Trump’s IRS settlement: Bar referrals. Finally. In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone with a comment about J. K. Rowling threatening to sue Amnesty International: Transphoba destroys an otherwise normal person from the inside […]
Leigh Beadon

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Putting Some Meat On The Bans

1 week 6 days ago
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. To get extended episodes with additional coverage, support us on […]
Mike Masnick

JK Rowling Threatens To Sue Amnesty International Into Oblivion For Expressing An Opinion About A Charity She Funds

1 week 6 days ago
JK Rowling has spoken about how she wrote the first Harry Potter book while she was employed at Amnesty International and how much that experience influenced her writing, and how she learned “the power of human empathy” from working there. Rowling was also, you’ll recall, one of the high profile signers of the infamous Harper’s […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: 6-in-1 Magstand Mini Magnetic Charge Station + Bedside Lamp

1 week 6 days ago
Simplify your daily charging experience and replace most of the chargers and cables on your desktop, with this one mini station that does it all. The 6-in-1 Magstand Mini Magnetic Charge Station is a mini charging station that gives you full control over how much your favorite gadgets get charged. It features 3 wireless charging […]
Daily Deal

The Documents Trump Declassified To Blame China For The 2020 Election… Actually Show Russia Was The One Meddling For Him

1 week 6 days ago
You might have heard that Donald Trump gave a weird, rambling, nonsense speech last night full of misinformation and lies, trying to spread distrust in our electoral process ahead of the 2026 midterms — so that when Republicans likely lose some of the power they currently wield across the government, Trump and his allies can […]
Mike Masnick

Trump Just Made It Easier For Your ISP To Rip You Off With Bogus Fees

1 week 6 days ago
Here’s a short crash course in U.S. telecom policy. Giant and very unpopular companies like Comcast, AT&T, Verizon, and Charter created regional monopolies that work tirelessly to erode all meaningful competition and oversight, resulting in high prices, spotty service, slower speeds, and abysmal customer service. They also pay a bunch of dodgy pseudo-academic “free market” […]
Karl Bode

FCC Officials Took Pricey Gifts From Paramount As The Company Needed Approval For Billion-Dollar Deals

1 week 6 days ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. The rich and famous who filed into the Kennedy Center’s opera house in December were there to enjoy one of the nation’s most exclusive celebrations of the performing arts: the center’s annual honors gala. The black-tie event, hosted by President Donald Trump, prioritized tickets to people […]
Corey G. Johnson

Cops Continue To Prove They Can’t Be Trusted With Surveillance Tech

2 weeks ago
This is probably nothing more than another data point in a deluge, but it’s worth pointing out because it’s instructive. Cops are using a whole lot of surveillance tech these days. Flock Safety has been especially aggressive in pursuing the law enforcement market, offering cops access to a nationwide network of cameras, including many owned […]
Tim Cushing

Florida’s Stop WOKE Act Shut Down (Again) By Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court

2 weeks ago
Florida Republicans’ bigoted little piece of speech policing — the former “Stop WOKE Act” — has already been terminated multiple times by federal courts. Two lawsuits with two sets of plaintiffs have generated the same results: a ruling declaring the law unconstitutional and an injunction blocking the state from enforcing it. The law aims to […]
Tim Cushing

Writers Guild Of America Also Sues Paramount, Citing Looming Merger Layoff Bloodbath

2 weeks ago
Not long after twelve states sued Paramount claiming its $111 billion merger with Warner Brothers would harm market competition, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed their own lawsuit, warning that the massive debt load from the media industry’s latest megamerger will result in an ocean of layoffs for an already reeling U.S. entertainment industry. […]
Karl Bode

A Troubling Milestone: Most Supreme Court Rulings Are Secretive Votes With Little Justification

2 weeks ago
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In its term that ended last October, the Supreme Court passed an important milestone that went unnoticed: For the first time, it decided more cases by secret ballot, and with few signed opinions, than it did for cases argued in open court. These decisions, which make […]
Ken B. Morales