Earlier this week, the Biden administration announced a “new” broadband plan that wasn’t actually new. The rose garden event featured executives from twenty ISPs who all got a pat on the back in front of the cameras for voluntarily and temporarily participating in a Biden plan to provide a $30 discount off of the broadband […]
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is home to several gangs. Even though the current sheriff, Alex Villanueva, thinks this is up for debate (via a threatened lawsuit against the LA City Council), enough evidence (anecdotal and otherwise) points to deputies forming cliques that turn the Thin Blue Line from defensive to offensive. Like any gang, […]
Our own Glyn Moody has written several posts about how exceptions that have been made to copyright laws throughout the world have picked up steam, but also appear to have left the visually impaired hung out to dry. That finally began to change in 2013 with the Marrakesh Treaty, which was specifically designed to restore […]
Jurisprudence on warrantless long-term surveillance is still all over the place. On one hand, some courts feel anything observable by passersby shouldn’t be off limits to law enforcement officers who haven’t secured a search warrant. Other courts have determined lengthy surveillance — especially when using cameras that can zoom, enhance, move, and record every minute […]
What the actual fuck, EU? While they pretend to be all about protecting privacy, they then push out this bit of utter nonsense: a bill to “protect the children” by literally requiring online services scan all messaging all the time. In some ways, the bill is similar to the EARN IT Act in the US, […]
We’ve noted repeatedly that despite a steady stream of breathless rhetoric about America’s “dedication to bridging the digital divide,” U.S. government leaders still don’t actually know where broadband is or isn’t available. It only takes a few minutes perusing the FCC’s $350 million broadband map to realize government data completely hallucinates both speeds and competitors, and […]
The Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, Administration, and Security Certification Bundle has 4 courses to help you learn about Azure Cloud Computing Services. You’ll learn how to implement virtual networking, manage access and security, manage storage, and more. It’s on sale for $49. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of […]
So, I already had a quick post on the bizarre decision by the 5th Circuit to reinstate Texas’ social media content moderation law just two days after a bizarrely stupid hearing on it. However, I don’t think most people actually understand just how truly fucked up and obviously unconstitutional the law is. Indeed, there are […]
Florida and Texas both passed blatantly unconstitutional laws limiting the ability of social media websites to moderate. Lawsuits were filed challenging both laws. In both cases, the district courts correctly blocked the laws from going into effect, noting that it was obviously a 1st Amendment violation to tell websites how they could and could not […]
The thing about absolute immunity is it tends to be absolute. Except when it isn’t. This immunity — one that protects prosecutors, judges, and certain politicians — can be stripped, but it happens so rarely it’s little more than a rounding error in the totality of civil rights lawsuits. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, another case involving stripped […]
Malibu Media. Okay, I’ll wait while your eyes finish rolling all the way. Anyway, the makers of porn under the banner of X-Art have also attempted to build a business in the far stickier industry of copyright trolling. Malibu has a long history of using potentially fake witnesses, failing to serve defendants properly, and running […]
The country that promised to allow Hong Kong to choose its own leadership until at least 2047 is putting the finishing touches on its ahead-of-schedule oppression. Pro-democracy protests greeted China’s incursion into the area, alerting the world to the fact the ultra-profitable region was being invaded by forces indistinguishable from those that had turned China […]
Look, we’ve tried to explain over and over again that Elon Musk doesn’t understand free speech or content moderation. He also seems entirely clueless about the incredible lengths that Twitter has gone to in order to actually protect free speech online (including fighting in court over it) and what it has done to deal with […]
Some (mostly) good news has arrived, courtesy of Hayley Tsukayama and Eva Galperin of the EFF. The Maryland legislature has passed a bill that would require law enforcement officers to be trained to better spot stalkerware deployment and give them a better understanding of applicable laws related to electronic surveillance and tracking. The bill, S.B. […]
The Complete Microsoft Windows, 365, and Teams Training Bundle has 7 courses covering all things Microsoft to help you become an MS expert. You’ll learn how to support and configure Windows 10 desktops in an organizational environment, how to plan a mobile application management strategy, how to set up, implement, and manage Office 365 workloads […]
Apparently, I never should have wished on that old monkey’s paw for copyright term reduction. One of the very reasons why Techdirt exists in the first place, and why it was started nearly 25 years ago, was to fight back against over expansive copyright laws, and, as such, we’ve spent many years and many posts […]
As we recently noted, Netflix is preparing for a big crackdown on users who share account passwords with folks outside of their home. When Netflix was a pesky upstart it declared password sharing a good thing and a form of free advertising. Now that it’s facing Wall Street pressure to keep quarterly earnings up in […]
China’s longstanding war on the internet, especially relating to children’s use of it, continues. Readers here will be well aware of the plethora of actions taken by China over the years to limit what its residents can see and do with the internet. From the Great Firewall of China to the country’s more targeted approach […]
Last week the European Union’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), handed down its judgment on whether upload filters should be allowed as part of the EU Copyright Directive. The answer turned out to be a rather unclear “yes, but…“. Martin Husovec, an assistant professor of law at the London […]
From the Internet of very broken things to telecom networks, the state of U.S. privacy and user security is arguably pathetic. It’s 2022 and we still don’t have even a basic privacy law for the Internet era, in large part because over-collection of data is too profitable to a wide swath of industries, which, in […]
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