Let’s be honest, Christopher Rufo is the ratfucking king. While I don’t agree with him about anything, when it comes to dirty tricks, nobody does it half as good as him, he’s the best. Whenever Rufo releases a new report, the “woke” tremble, and pray he’s targeting someone else. Rufo’s current crusade is focused on […]
The Fifth Circuit Appeals Court continues to hand down dumb decisions rewarding law enforcement for rights violations. And the Supreme Court — yes, this Supreme Court — keeps sending those decisions back for a do-over. In December 2017, Laredo PD officers arrested local independent journalist, Priscilla Villarreal, for the alleged crime of “misusing official information.” […]
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Often when internet companies change their terms of service, there will be a short freakout from people overreacting and not really understanding the language of what’s in there. We see these stories every so often, frequently around things like licensing terms (which sites are effectively required to have to get permission to host user-generated content). […]
For much of the last decade, cable giants like Comcast (Xfinity) and Charter (Spectrum) have been protected from TV “cord cutting” by one simple fact: they enjoyed a monopoly over broadband access across vast swaths of the U.S. That monopoly means that if a customer ditched traditional TV, Comcast or Charter could recoup any losses […]
The Supreme Court’s Carpenter decision created a warrant requirement for obtaining location data from service providers. It was a limited ruling, albeit one that has had far-ranging implications. Thanks to this ruling, law enforcement agencies have started buying location data from third-party brokers, rather than suffer the apparent indignity of having to ask a judge […]
I’ve talked about Shawn Layden before. And in admiring terms, too. In the wake of the much of the industry consolidation we saw in the video game space last year, his comments about both what that would mean for creativity within gaming, the creation of entirely new titles, and even moreso what he said about […]
Fortunately, not everything the Supreme Court does these days is absolutely horrible. In this case (handled by the Institute for Justice) a Missouri man can resume his lawsuit against the officer who arrested him for… well, for reasons the cop ginned up well after the arrest had already happened. Mason Murphy was minding his own […]
Remember a few weeks ago when Elon Musk misleadingly claimed that George Soros was secretly “buying a propaganda machine to influence how you think”? Can you imagine the kind of shitstorm that would be playing out on ExTwitter and Fox News if George Soros were out there offering $1 million per day to people to […]
What an absolute shocker. What a completely unexpected turn of events. Oh how will we, as Americans, process this latest in a never-ending string of abuses of trust by law enforcement. What a time to be alive. Etc. Cops are always trying to hide the tech they use from criminal defendants, even when plenty of […]
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In a stunning display of technological and regulatory ineptitude, Italy’s ‘Piracy Shield’ law has managed to block access to Google Drive, apparently confusing the popular cloud storage service with a hotbed of illegal activity. Bravo, Italy, bravo. Earlier this year, we wrote about Italy’s new “Piracy Shield” nonsense, in which the country’s telecom regulator, AGCOM, […]
As we recently noted, the FCC has announced that’s finally “taking a look at” broadband usage caps. We’ve noted for decades how such limits are completely artificial, technically unnecessary constructs that exist specifically so your local telecom monopoly can rip you off. They don’t “manage congestion,” they exist exclusively to price gouge captive broadband customers […]
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about the judge who smacked down Florida’s attempt to censor abortion initiative ads. In first place, it’s an anonymous comment about our description of the legislature being “confused” about the first amendment: Make no mistake: They know exactly how it […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, states were rushing to protect net neutrality followed by the court ruling that shot down the FCC’s attempt to prevent them. Marc Benioff was being extremely hypocritical about Section 230, the guy who tried to extort YouTubers with bogus DMCA takedowns agreed to a settlement, and a guest […]
I have to admit, the volume of trademark dispute stories in the brewing industry I’ve done over the course of these many years here at Techdirt have surprisingly slowed down the last few years. I’m not sure if this is a function of the slowdown in industry growth in the craft brewing industry, market consolidation […]
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 […]
Professor Eric Goldman continues to be the best at tracking any and all developments regarding internet regulations. He recently covered a series of cases in which the contours of Section 230’s liability immunity is getting chipped away in all sorts of dangerous ways. As it’s unlikely that I would have the time to cover any […]
For many, many years we’ve pointed out that broadband usage caps are hugely profitable bullshit, used by regional telecom monopolies to rip off captive customers. The limits serve no technical purpose outside of price gouging. ISPs like Comcast spent years pretending they were necessary to “manage network congestion,” but after numerous journalists, academics, executives, and […]
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