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The Collapse Of American Judgment

1 week 2 days ago
Western allies are abandoning American leadership while we stand by, morally bankrupt and intellectually spent, watching children starve in Gaza with weapons we provided to a corrupt authoritarian we’re too cowardly to constrain. Meanwhile, the same brilliant minds who assured us Trump was a master negotiator who’d never actually implement his policies are already preparing […]
Mike Brock

Policy Building Blocks: Preliminary Injunctive Relief

1 week 2 days ago
Few areas of law have lately been as relevant, and the focus of so much dispute, as preliminary injunctive relief. Because the subject has come up so many times already, and is inevitably bound to come up again in the near future, this post takes a moment to discuss what is meant by preliminary injunctive […]
Cathy Gellis

Leaking By Leaving: Guest Finds Trump-Putin Summit Docs In Alaskan Hotel Room

1 week 3 days ago
While this latest bit of low-key embarrassment may not be a black eye for the administration, it certainly isn’t putting any more lipstick on this pig. Whatever you may think about the recent summit meeting between these two international besties, you can be assured that some of the attendees thought even less of it than […]
Tim Cushing

Federal Judge Delivers Judicial Smackdown To FTC’s Politically Motivated Attack On Media Matters

1 week 3 days ago
A federal judge has delivered an extraordinary rebuke to the FTC’s Andrew Ferguson, finding that his investigation into Media Matters was motivated by “retaliatory animus” rather than legitimate antitrust concerns. In a scathing ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan granted Media Matters’ motion for a preliminary injunction, calling out not just the investigation’s pretextual nature, but […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Adobe Acrobat Classic + Microsoft Office Professional License Bundle

1 week 3 days ago
Get Adobe Acrobat Classic 3-Year and Microsoft Office Pro 2021 licenses: your all-in-one bundle for editing PDFs, creating docs, and working smarter on Windows. With Adobe Acrobat Classic, you can easily create, edit, convert, and protect your documents on Windows and Mac without connecting to the cloud. Microsoft Office 2021 Professional is the perfect choice […]
Daily Deal

Net Neutrality Advocates Won’t Appeal Trump Destruction, Say U.S. Courts Are Broken

1 week 3 days ago
A fusion of authoritarianism and corporatism is destroying what’s left of already soggy U.S. federal consumer protection and corporate oversight. You might not know this because the U.S. press and many policymakers genuinely don’t appear to care, but it’s happening all the same. Whether by dodgy Supreme Court ruling, executive order, or captured regulators, the U.S. authoritarians, often […]
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 Strawb with a reply to a couple parts of a comment on our post about “Trump derangement syndrome” turning out to be pretty damn correct: In second place, it’s Rocky with a comment about the FCC installing a babysitter at CBS: And here it […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: August 10th – 16th

1 week 5 days ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, we wrote about how the idea that banning TikTok thwarts Chinese intelligence was ridiculous, and how any real threat probably comes from America’s feebly secured infrastructure. As for failed security, we looked at the incredible waste of Baltimore’s aerial surveillance program, and as for worrying “security”, we looked […]
Leigh Beadon

When Copyright Enters the AI Conversation

1 week 5 days ago
This series of posts explores how we can rethink the intersection of AI, creativity, and policy. From examining outdated regulatory metaphors to questioning copyright norms and highlighting the risks of stifling innovation, each post addresses a different piece of the AI puzzle. Together, they advocate for a more balanced, forward-thinking approach that acknowledges the potential of technological […]
Caroline De Cock

How Age Verification Laws Targeting Online Porn Could Be (And Should Be) Viewed As A Labor Rights Issue 

1 week 5 days ago
Age verification laws and regulations that target online pornography and digital sex work are far from being the “modest” child safety measures intended to protect public decency favored by the far–right. Proponents of these laws benefit from the fearmongering and framing of age verification as a necessity to protect children from inappropriate material found on […]
Michael McGrady

Good News, SCOTUS May Sometimes Still Think The First Amendment Makes Censoring The Internet Illegal, But Good Luck Getting Them To Do Anything About It

1 week 5 days ago
There was a colloquy at oral argument earlier this year in the Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton case between Justice Kavanaugh and FSC that raised the unsettling prospect that at least several of the Supreme Court justices did not understand what preliminary injunctions are for. In that case, the bad Texas law had already been […]
Cathy Gellis

PACER Hacked By Malicious Entities, Briefly Turning It Into A Useful Source For Federal Court Documents

1 week 6 days ago
The US Court system’s electronic filing front-end has always been a mess. Not only is it prohibitively expensive for most casual users, it’s prohibitively dysfunctional even for power users. Whoever isn’t discouraged by the outdated front end will be just as unimpressed by its back end. PACER charges per page like it’s a librarian running […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The 2025 Java Bundle

1 week 6 days ago
The 2025 Java Bundle has 6 courses designed to help you build real projects and fast-track your way to a becoming a Java expert. Courses cover the fundamentals of Java with exercises to help you improve your skills. You’ll learn how to build a website with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. There’s also a course to […]
Daily Deal

Trump’s Military Campaign Against American Cities Expands

1 week 6 days ago
Donald Trump has declared war on American cities, and he’s sending in the troops to prove it. As Rolling Stone rightly notes regarding Trump seizing direct control of DC law enforcement by deploying the National Guard: President Donald Trump has expanded his military campaign against the United States by deploying armed troops to yet another […]
Mike Masnick

Lamar Jackson, Troy Aikman Settle Dumb Trademark Dispute Over The Word ‘EIGHT’

1 week 6 days ago
Almost exactly a year ago, we discussed a really, really dumb trademark fight between NFL quarterback Lamar Jackson and former NFL quarterback Troy Aikman. This got to our attention when Jackson filed an opposition to a trademark application from Aikman. Typically, we go in pretty hard on oppositions to trademark applications, because they are almost […]
Timothy Geigner

Judge Not Buying DOJ’s Claim That Elon Wasn’t Running DOGE

1 week 6 days ago
Remember back in February when the DOJ told a court that, despite multiple public statements from both Elon Musk and Donald Trump to the contrary, Elon Musk was not associated one bit with DOGE and therefore should not be subject to litigation regarding DOGE’s wildly illegal actions? And remember how lots of people just kinda […]
Mike Masnick