AT&T is under fire after a hacker last month posted the personal information (names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers) of roughly 73 million customers to the open web. Troy Hunt, security researcher and owner of data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, notes the data first appeared a few years ago courtesy of […]
This week, our first place winner is an anonymous comment invoking a famous quote in response to Missouri suing Media Matters: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: “There must be in-groups whom the law protectes [sic] but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” –Frank Wilhoit In […]
We’re closing in on the end of our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of the sixth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! We’ve already featured Best Visuals winner Flight from Podunk Station and Best Adaptation winner Mickey Party, Best Remix winner The Burden Of Creation, Best and Deep Cut […]
Almost exactly two years ago, we discussed a strange story in which video game publisher Bungie sued a bunch of John Does specifically for inputting fraudulent DMCA takedown claims on YouTube videos that contained Bungie content. Those notices purported to be from Bungie in some cases, but even Bungie’s own YouTube channel was hit by […]
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, Amazon Music, 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 […]
One of the commonest arguments from supporters of copyright is that creators need to be rewarded and that copyright is the only realistic way of doing that. The first statement may be true, but the second certainly isn’t. As Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) notes, most art was created without copyright, when […]
We know that a lot of politicians (and media folks) in the US are pushing to ban TikTok. It has seemed notable, of course, that European countries don’t seem all that worried about TikTok, which should raise questions about how serious the “threat” really is. However, one major country did decide to ban TikTok a […]
Earlier this week, reporting by Thomas Brewster for Forbes uncovered yet another way law enforcement is expecting companies like Google to perform their investigative work for them. For a few years now, we’ve covered the use of geofence warrants capable of turning multiple people into criminal suspects, as well as the even more dubious “keyword” […]
Headway is the revolutionary app designed to help you turn personal growth into a habit. With a lifetime subscription, you get unlimited access to a huge number of non-fiction bestsellers, summarized into 15-minute reads. Be it personal development, business strategies, or health insights, Headway has you covered. It’s on sale for $60. Note: The Techdirt […]
Here’s how people advocating for internet regulations for “bad speech” think things will work: an enlightened group of pure-minded, thoughtful individuals will carefully outlaw dangerous speech that invokes hatred, or encourages bad behavior. Then, that speech will magically and cleanly disappear from the internet, and the internet will be a better place. What could go […]
Last week you’ll recall that after a closed-door intelligence briefing, some members of Congress leaked word to Axios that they were “shocked” by various TikTok behaviors. Upon closer inspection, most of the stuff TikTok had been up to wasn’t at all different from the behaviors of a wide variety of foreign and domestic telecoms, app […]
The EU’s much-touted Digital Services Act, hailed as the gold standard for whipping those unruly internet platforms into shape, has hit an embarrassing snag. Apparently, the EU forgot to cc a few member states on the ‘Pretty Please Appoint a DSA Regulator’ memo. The internet sites under the thumb of the DSA aren’t allowed to […]
Last month we noted how Mozilla had launched a new privacy protection tool dubbed Mozilla Monitor Plus. According to Mozilla, the new service scours the web for your personal information at over 190 sites where brokers sell information they’ve gathered from online sources like social media sites, apps, and browser trackers. We noted that the […]
How badly did the arguments in the Murthy v. Missouri case go for the states last week? So badly that the FBI has already re-established communications with social media companies that had stopped in light of the earlier rulings in that case. The FBI has resumed some of its efforts to share information with some […]
Earlier this week, we covered a truly insane and insane bill being pushed by the Tennessee State Senate that vowed to ban something that actually isn’t happening and, indeed, has never happened. Stapled to rote effort to ensure the state’s Air Pollution Control Board didn’t remain understaffed for more than 30 days was some batshit […]
What the fuck is wrong with state lawmakers? It seems that across the country, they cannot help but to introduce the absolute craziest, obviously unconstitutional bullshit, and seem shocked when people suggest the bills are bad. The latest comes from California state Senator Steve Padilla, who recently proposed a ridiculous bill, SB 1228, to end […]
Earlier this month we noted how despite all of the sound, fury, and hyperventilation surrounding the push to ban TikTok, most Americans don’t actually support such a move (you know, the whole representative democracy thing). Support is particularly lacking among young Democrats, a demographic the Biden administration has struggled to connect with in the wake […]
Nigeria doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to respecting the speech rights of its own citizens, nor the rights of platforms that its citizens use. By way of examples, there was the time that the country suspended Twitter for several months for the crime of taking down a tweet from its president […]
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