If you hadn’t noticed, the U.S. doesn’t give much of a shit about this whole privacy thing. Our privacy regulators are comically and intentionally understaffed and underfunded, we still have no meaningful privacy law for the Internet era, and when regulators do act, it’s generally months after the fact with penalties that are easily laughed […]
Following the murder of unarmed black man George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, the streets of the city erupted in protest. Police responded accordingly. Which is to say indifferently. Rather than rein in the violence that had triggered the protests, many officers felt they needed to make protesters pay for their ungrateful response […]
Online platforms often give access to digital material that is under copyright. If any of that content is infringing, then potentially the platform would be liable as well as the person who uploaded it. Online companies naturally want to be immune to the consequences of any copyright infringement committed by their users. However, companies in […]
The problems with copyright have been a subject of coverage here at Techdirt since the beginning, and for most of that time it has been largely a non-partisan subject. At the moment, however, that isn’t so much the case thanks to Josh Hawley’s war with Disney, which has created a situation where some copyright reform […]
Have politicians all gone mad? On the Republican side, we have Texas and Florida trying to stop websites from moderating content, while on the Democratic side, we have New York and elsewhere trying to blame them for not moderating content. And then we have… California. Back in March we had warned about AB 2408, ostensibly […]
“You can remember it for us wholesale.” – the government of India, probably. The Indian government has been working for years to ensure it has complete control of constituents’ use of the internet. It has been steadily increasing its stake in internet use for years, ensuring its interests (especially those of Narendra Modi, who has […]
Take a deep dive into Machine Learning and Data Analysis across 7 courses for only $39 for a limited time. The A to Z Data Science and Machine Learning Bundle will introduce you to Python, NumPy, and Keras. You’ll learn the basics of the Matplotlib library, statistics techniques, how to build and share data applications using […]
I’ve been trying to explain this in all sorts of ways: Elon Musk’s understanding of free speech does not have anything to do with actual free speech. And, for the most part, it seemed that people who understand this stuff got that. But I remain surprised at how many otherwise intelligent people seem to be […]
For more than forty years, the GOP (and to a more sporadic degree the DNC) mindlessly supported giant corporations, consolidation, and monopolization. The evidence is everywhere (banking, insurance, health, air travel, energy), but particularly obvious in telecom. The GOP has endlessly, ceaselessly, cheered on telecom monopolization, and all it usually entails (high prices, poor service, […]
Back in September we wrote about a lawsuit between Flying Dog Brewery and the state of North Carolina over the latter’s Alcohol Beverage Control Board (ABC Board) denying a beer label for use within the state. The ABC Board refused to certify the label for use on the grounds that it was vulgar and offensive, […]
Earlier this year, we wrote about how the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, better known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses — despite a long history of litigating many, many important 1st Amendment cases — had thrown away its reputation as a staunch defender of free speech rights by massively abusing the DMCA 512(h) subpoena process […]
Mike Lindell just used to be a guy selling overpriced pillows to people who liked to buy overpriced pillows. But when Donald Trump was elected, he threw his entire company under the Trump campaign bus, making it clear Lindell was willing to ride The Donald’s coat tails into relevance. What used to be just a […]
There are many good things to say about the Eleventh Circuit’s decision on the Florida SB 7072 social media law, including that it’s a very well-reasoned, coherent, logical, sustainable, precedent-consistent, and precedent-supporting First Amendment analysis explaining why platforms moderating user-generated speech still implicates their own protected rights. And not a moment too soon, while we […]
Well, well. As we still wait to see what the Supreme Court will do about the 5th Circuit’s somewhat bizarre, and reasonless reinstatement of Texas’ ridiculously bad social media content moderation bill, the 11th Circuit has come out with what might be a somewhat rushed decision going mostly in the other direction, and saying that […]
The Bose Series 2 Bluetooth Headset provides up to 4.5 hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby time so you can keep in touch with friends, family, and business associates when you’re on the go. The Bluetooth wireless headset is engineered to automatically adjust as noise levels change so that you can hear […]
The much-abused Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (passed in 1986) will no longer be abused quite as much… at least by the Department of Justice. The DOJ recently issued a revised policy [PDF] on CFAA prosecutions — one that states the DOJ will no longer bring charges against security researchers operating in good faith. The […]
At some point U.S. regulators effectively declared that it was okay to rip off consumers with a dizzying array of bogus fees, letting companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock you with a bunch of additional surcharges when the bill comes due. That’s particularly true of the cable and broadband industry, which has saddled consumers […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about New York’s blatantly unconstitutional investigation into online platforms in the wake of the Buffalo shooting: So, what the’re saying is… This guy was able to leave a HUGE trail of information about his hate crimes… But now they want to […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the NSA was pushing for a smooth renewal of Section 702 while more details were revealed about the process, and more info was emerging on the agency’s abuse of other programs. Meanwhile, we looked at the FCC’s efforts to make net neutrality supporters seem unreasonable, even though it […]
You will recall that we have been discussing a trademark suit between Sycamore Brewing and Stone Brewing recently. As you can see in images in the post we did about the lawsuit, and then the follow up post on the battle over an injunction requiring Stone Brewing to sticker over the offending branding, it’s pretty […]
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