Afew weeks ago, Walled Culture wrote about Hadopi, France’s infamous copyright enforcement mechanism. The so-called “graduated response” – aka “three strikes and you are out” – has been around for over 15 years now, has cost French taxpayers a fortune, and has never achieved any of its aims. As the Walled Culture post suggested, the latest […]
Last week the FTC decided to file an obviously censorial, legally baseless lawsuit against an educational non-profit in an attempt to punish the organization for its speech in a manner that is clearly way outside the bounds of the FTC’s authority. The case serves no purpose other than to punish an organization for its speech… […]
Yeah, that’s a shame. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy bigger asshole. It’s as if Trump asked his underlings to generate the perfect metaphor for his second administration and they fucking nailed it. Trump has tried to impose his self-gratification on an event even he can’t possibly hope to destroy: the 250th anniversary […]
The Modern No-Code Creator Bundle is an extensive online curriculum specifically developed to enable individuals to construct professional websites, applications & automated workflows without the necessity of writing any code. It has five courses, covering leading no-code platforms and tools like ChatGPT, Mendix, and Tabnine. It is ideally suited for novices and non-technical professionals, empowering […]
England imposing the Stamp Act on the American colonies back in 1765 was one of the final moves that pushed those colonies into open revolt for their independence. The law sought to tax printed communications, and England justified it by saying it was needed to pay for British soldiers in the colonies. That it also […]
ABC continues to send signals that it actually intends to fight back against Brendan Carr’s clumsy efforts to censor the network’s comedians and journalists. As Mike noted last week, the public had until Monday, June 22 to file public comment with the FCC about the agency’s ongoing censorship efforts. Part of those efforts have involved […]
Well, this is very disappointing. Over the first half of this year, we’ve talked about the resurgence of the Stop Killing Games movement, which aims to push various governments to legislate out the practice of video game publishers sunsetting their games and making them unplayable afterwards. The aims of the movement are simple: publishers can […]
What do EFF staffers Sarah Chen, Javier Morales, Caitlin Chin, Emma Rodriguez, and Mikko Kopponen have in common? For one thing, they don’t exist. For another, all have been quoted as EFF experts in articles published in the past two months on a site called News-USA Today, which describes itself as “an independent news publisher focused on clear, accurate, and useful journalism.” Uh… (Please […]
In mid-May, the Todd Blanche-run DOJ agreed to “settle” the fake case Donald Trump had brought against his own IRS. The “settlement”? A $1.776 billion fund to pay reparations to the MAGA faithful. Much of that money was expected to flow to January 6th insurrectionists — many of them convicted of actual crimes that Trump […]
The Trump Organization still hasn’t shipped their promised Trump “made in America” phone to most of the customers who laid down a $100 deposit a year ago. But they did recently start to ship early review copies to a handful of outlets and preferred cultists. What outlets generally found wasn’t surprising: it’s a pretty substandard […]
MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, […]
The Sixth Circuit just handed Ohio a win on its social media law restricting minors, and reading the majority opinion, it’s immediately obvious why: the court fell hook, line, and sinker for the moral panic that social media is inherently poisonous to children. The first few pages of the decision are nothing but cherry-picked, out-of-context […]
It’s no secret ICE officers are using their phones and their tech toys to do way more than they’ll openly admit to doing. Tech tools that can be abused will be abused. And ICE has plenty of those, including an app that’s supposed to be used for “verification” of migrant status, but is just facial […]
This week, MrWilson takers both top spots on the insightful side. In first place, it’s a comment about the growing global threat of internet age gates: One of the biggest benefits of the internet is the ability to talk to people outside your personal sphere. It’s similar to the exposure to diversity that a lot […]
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 […]
I can’t say I know for sure that Stephen Colbert is a Techdirt reader, but I very much believe he is. His interests align somewhat with ours, he often comments on some of the same topics we do, and, it turns out, he decided to troll his previous employer during his last show in a […]
In a voice vote last week, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 6028, the “Legislative Branch Agencies Clarification Act.” The legislation is presented as a technical reorganization of some government agencies, but it’s much more than that. H.R. 6028 would fundamentally change the U.S. Copyright Office, and not in a good way. The bill removes the […]
Senators Ron Wyden and Ted Cruz have released the JAWBONE Act (“Justice Against Weaponized Bureaucratic Overreach to Networked Expression Act”) as a way to prevent government suppression of speech. While some of the premises behind it are silly and nonsensical, the actual law is not bad. Of course, if it became law, the Trump admin […]
Here it is: the dumbest defense of automatic license plate readers I’ve ever read. While we can subtract some points because the person writing it has no power to install/un-install/cover in garbage bags surveillance tech, he’s a regular contributor to a long-running newspaper in a major city. And since this paper is still willing to […]
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