We’ve written a bunch about how Ed Sheeran recognizes how batshit crazy current copyright law is. One of the most successful recording artists today, you’d think that maybe he’d be a copyright maximalist, and yet copyright just seems to keep getting in the way of his creativity. Sheeran has admitted that piracy made him successful. […]
The public domain is the natural state of creative material. It’s where creations end up once copyright’s monopoly has expired. Crucially, it is the quid pro quo for that monopoly. The deal is that the creator of a work is granted a government-enforced intellectual monopoly for a limited period, after which the work enters the public domain for anyone […]
GameGuru is a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an easy, enjoyable and comprehensive game creation process that is designed specifically for those who are not programmers or designers/artists. It allows you to build your own game world with easy to use tools. Populate your game by placing down characters, weapons, and other game items, […]
Back in March, we noted that the EU and US had announced that they had come to an agreement on transatlantic data flows. This is actually a really big and important story that gets almost no attention, because “transatlantic data flows” sounds boring. However, it’s really, really big and matters for the future of a […]
It will never stop being bizarre to me that a social media app tried to claim ownership of VR, AR, and effectively every next-gen, Internet-related technology under the “Metaverse” brand… and the entirety of the tech press just simply… went along with it. As a result, we’ve spent the better part of the last few […]
It seems that trademark shenanigans are becoming something of a corporate tradition for the folks over at Oatly. The Swedish oat-milk maker, backed by several celebrities, last made it onto our pages first for suing another oat-milk producer essentially for having the word “oat” in its brand name… and then for losing that lawsuit because […]
We’ve been writing about journalist Jason Leopold for many years, either focused on his FOIA adventures or the amazing (and important) scoops he achieves through them. If you look back through our archives, you’ll see that Leopold knows how to use freedom of information laws basically better than anyone, and thus wields them effectively to […]
The Uvalde (Texas) PD’s response to a school shooting was to show up and then do nothing for more than an hour. Nearly 400 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies hung back as a gunman terrorized a classroom full of elementary school students, ultimately killing 19 kids and two teachers. The officers at the scene […]
At this point, it seems exceptionally likely that Elon Musk will own Twitter within a few weeks. Because nothing is predictable in this saga, you never know, but the odds are that by Halloween Twitter will be Muskville. We’ll have plenty of time to talk about what that means, but in our post about Musk’s […]
People come up with some really strange stuff to do when they have a modicum of power and apparently no idea how to utilize it responsibly. Such is the case at Northeastern University, a research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. A few days ago, students and faculty noticed a new addition to their desks: motion […]
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Over the years, we’ve posted so many different stories about questionable decisions by PayPal to cut off services from users it objected to, or even seizing the money in their account that it’s impossible to dig up all of those stories. But, by now, we’ve seen well over a decade of PayPal acting as some […]
Back in 2016, Alphabet executives made it pretty clear they had grown tired of trying to disrupt the U.S. broadband industry with Google Fiber. Executives were fired, hundreds of employees were laid off, and any real expansion in the project was effectively frozen. Alphabet and Google Fiber executives then just pretended none of this had […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about publishers claiming that their lawsuit against the Internet Archive won’t impact any of its services beyond the Open Library: About as believable as Putin’s claim tat 96% of those polled wanted to become Russians. In second place, it’s a lengthy […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, ISPs were ignoring the death of “six strikes” and still threatening to disconnect accused pirates, and also taking their third shot at getting the Supreme Court to kill net neutrality, while broadband lobbyists were gushing over the re-appointment of Ajit Pai, who was himself busy blasting Apple for […]
If you’ve ever tried to build a “smart home” you’ve probably run face first into no shortage of problems. Gear is expensive, overly complicated, and more often than not different devices don’t play well together. It’s a sector filled with various walled gardens by gatekeepers looking to lock you into one ecosystem, placing the onus […]
Every unhappy populace is unhappy in its own way, but every autocratic regime is the same. Vietnam may have embraced a form of capitalism that made it inviting to foreigners, but the government’s embrace has always been a bit on the strangulation side. Sure, Vietnam citizens may have more opportunities for earning money than running […]
Why won’t this tattoo copyright thing die? We’ve talked about several instances over the past few years involving someone famous having their likeness faithfully reproduced, in an authorized fashion, in video game media. Take-Two has been involved in more than one of these disputes, which tend to amount to a tattoo artist or company claiming […]
These days, the conspiracy-minded GOP candidates (who seem to be an increasing majority of the party right now) seem to believe that there needs to be a conspiracy against them or they’re just not that important. It can be the deep state, big tech, or the “woke banks” or whatever, but someone must be coming […]
The FBI has always played it fast and loose with FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) requirements. It tries to get away with it by shifting its self-perception as needed. When asked why it’s bypassing limitations on backdoor searches, it will plead ignorance, gesturing with its massive hairy hands thoughtfully and saying it’s nothing more than […]
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