Maybe if law enforcement didn’t abuse subpoenas so frequently, it might be a little bit more difficult for criminals to do the same thing. Subpoenas can be used to order companies and service providers to turn over user data and information. But they don’t require law enforcement to run this request past a court first, […]
We’ve noted for years how wireless companies were at the forefront of over-collecting your sensitive daily movement data, then selling access to any nitwit with two nickels to rub together. That resulted in no limit of scandals from stalkers using the data to spy on women, to law enforcement (and people pretending to be law […]
The whole “You don’t actually own what you’ve bought” mantra we have here at Techdirt is really, really frustrating. It’s become such a regular topic that, in my personal life, I regularly respond to news from friends and family about a digital “purchase” they bought by asking if they actually bought it, or have any […]
Always great to see another law enforcement officer weaponize his job by letting his politics motivate his actions. We recently saw this in Ohio, when Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski sent out a Facebook post telling residents to write down the addresses of people with Kamala Harris signs in their yards. I’m not going to call this […]
Support us on Patreon » It’s been a few weeks, but we’re back! Although the podcast schedule is still going to be sporadic for a little while longer (Mike explains further in the intro) we’ve got a couple cross-post episodes lined up, starting with today’s. Recently, Mike joined Ed Zitron on his Better Offline podcast for […]
I get that a lot of people don’t like the big AI companies and how they scrape the web. But these copyright lawsuits being filed against them are absolute garbage. And you want that to be the case, because if it goes the other way, it will do real damage to the open web by […]
Advance your programming skills and start building responsive apps with the 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle. The 10 courses cover HTML, Bootstrap, CSS, React, MongoDB, Express, NodeJS, and more. It’s on sale for $40. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps […]
Well, these entities deserve each other. The problem is we really don’t deserve either of them. Trump spent a lot of his campaign touting a logistical nightmare of a policy that sounded a lot like an collapse-of-the-Weimar-Republic sort of thing: the mass detention and deportation of immigrants, whether they’re here legally or not. All that’s […]
Current FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr has spent much of the last decade positioning himself to be Trump’s likely pick for the next boss of the FCC. He’s likely to get his wish; after spending a lot of time crying about TikTok to get on cable TV and kissing AT&T’s and Comcast’s asses, Carr’s widely considered […]
As the saying goes, the arc of morale judgment is long, but it does bend towards justice. And even if we accept such an optimistic worldview is relevant in this year of our lord, 2024, that certainly doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about how long that damned arc is. It’s been over two years since […]
The case against Backpage was built on lies, innuendo, and a willful misunderstanding of how the internet works. But that didn’t stop the government from destroying the company and its founders’ lives. Over the last few years, we’ve written about how the entire case against Backpage was a travesty of justice. The company actually worked […]
As Techdirt stories attest, Wikipedia has been attacked in the past for publishing true information that somebody doesn’t like. As well as wanting articles to be censored, those behind such attacks often also demand the names of those who worked on the article. Something similar is now happening in India, where the Indian news agency […]
Never underestimate the amount of effort law enforcement officers will expend to dispense as much cruelty as possible. And never forget these are the people we are expected to believe are actually there to protect and serve. While it’s great there’s a settlement payment on the way, the fact is that this extremely vindictive and […]
You probably already know the benefits of learning a language, so let’s focus on the app. Right off the bat, let’s be clear about one thing: When we say “app” we don’t mean that you’re limited to using Babbel on your phone. You can use Babbel on desktop, too, and your progress is synchronized across […]
The first shot to use Section 230 to force adversarial interoperability on platforms has hit a setback. Earlier this year, we wrote about an absolutely fascinating lawsuit that was an attempt to activate a mostly-ignored part of Section 230 in a really interesting way. Most people know about Section 230 for its immunity protections for […]
Streaming video still provides some meaningful advantages to traditional cable: it’s generally cheaper (assuming you don’t sign up for every service under the sun); customer satisfaction ratings are generally higher; and users have more power to pick and choose and cancel services at a whim. But the party simply isn’t poised to last. Thanks to […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Arianity with a comment about Bezos’s endorsement gambit backfiring: In second place, it’s an anonymous reply to someone defending Trump’s lawsuit against CBS: Alright. Let’s see every trump interview over his life released in full and uncensored. For editor’s choice on the insightful side, […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we noted how the FCC’s freakout about Huawei was out of step with the way it ignored the internet of broken things. We were not shocked to learn ISPs were cutting back 2020 investment plans despite all the tax breaks and the death of net neutrality, and not […]
If you’ve followed along with our coverage on the hit video game Palworld, developed by Pocketpair, you will know that Nintendo and the Pokémon Co. has sued Pocketpair for patent infringement. Prior to the suit, there had been a ton of speculation that a lawsuit would be filed, but that it would be a copyright […]
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 […]
stLouIST