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. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
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The government had a few years to sort this out, but as usual, the final call came down to the last minute. Shortly after Section 702 expired at midnight, April 19, the Senate pushed through a two-year reauthorization — one pretty much free of any reforms. This happened despite there being a large and vocal […]
I’ve mentioned more than a few times how the singular hyperventilation about TikTok is kind of silly distraction from the fact that the United States is too corrupt to pass a modern privacy law, resulting in no limit of dodgy behavior, abuse, and scandal. We have no real standards thanks to corruption, and most people […]
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Google blocking news sites in California because of bad link tax laws, and specifically in reply to a commenter who suggested the link tax would just be “Google giving back” money. In first place, it’s an anonymous reply: What. […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, Starz was going after tweets about a TorrentFreak article, then issuing a laughably unbelievable excuse and apology. The EU nations, as expected, rubber stamped the copyright directive, while the Parliament moved on to the terrorist content regulations and quickly pushed those through too. We learned some more about […]
The Fourth Amendment exists for a reason. It’s supposed to protect our private possessions and data from government snooping, unless they have a warrant. It doesn’t entirely prevent the government from getting access to data, they just need to show probable cause of a crime. But, of course, the government doesn’t like to make the […]
We’ve had plenty of posts discussing all manner of behavior from the Los Angeles Police Dept. and/or the LAPD union here at Techdirt. As you might imagine if you’re a regular reader here, the majority of those posts haven’t exactly involved fawning praise for these supposed crimefighters. In fact, if you went on a reading […]
I think we could witness one of the most important First Amendment legal showdowns ever. The U.S. Supreme Court is being asked to rule on the constitutionality of mandatory age verification for porn websites. If the high court takes up the case, it would queue up a landmark debate pertaining to the First Amendment and […]
Apparently, the TikTok ban bill is back. Speaker Mike Johnson plans to include TikTok divestiture legislation already passed by the House in a fast-moving aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the chamber is set to clear on Saturday. The Senate is expected to quickly take up the measure, and President Joe Biden promised Wednesday […]
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A few months ago, we wondered if Wired had fired its entire fact-checking staff because it published what appeared to be a facts-optional article co-authored by professional consistently wrong Jaron Lanier and an academic I’d not come across before, Allison Stanger. The article suggested that getting rid of Section 230 “could save everything.” Yet the […]
Last month Oregon state lawmakers passed a new “right to repair” law making it easier and cheaper to repair your electronics. The law requires that manufacturers that do business in the state provide users with easy and affordable access to tools, manuals, and parts. It also cracks down on practices like “parts pairing,” which often […]
Cops hate being watched, no matter where they’re located. In the United States, we’ve seen several arrests and prosecutions of journalists and citizens for daring to record public officials performing their public duties. The case law isn’t completely settled in the United States, but in most parts of the country, it’s understood the First Amendment […]
We’ve had several posts on the video game sensation that is Palworld in the past. Given that the game has been described by others as “Pokémon, but with guns”, we kicked things off both wondering if Nintendo was going to try to take some kind of misguided legal action on the game, while also pointing […]
Let’s say I told you a harrowing story about a crime. Criminals from halfway around the world used fraudulent means and social engineering to scam a teenager, causing them to effectively destroy their lives (at least in the mind of the teen). The person whose life was destroyed then took an easily accessible gun from […]
Cops continue to wonder why people don’t trust them. Go figure. At the center of this latest “we’re better than you” posturing by law enforcement is the raid of the wrong house by self-proclaimed “trained and experienced” officers, who mistook one Arab male for another before rushing into a house and pointing guns at everyone. […]
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What do Fentanyl and TikTok have in common? Well, the real answer is absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. But, if you want to push a nonsense moral panic, apparently, you compare the two. While it’s unclear exactly where Congress currently stands on the push to ban TikTok in the US (or, at the very least, […]
One of the key reasons the net neutrality fight even became a thing was widespread concern that big ISPs would abuse their power to behave anti-competitively, picking winners and losers across the internet ecosystem, and nickel-and-diming consumers in a variety of obnoxiously creative ways. Verizon, for example, charges you extra if you want 4K video […]
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