Most courts recognize prior restraint as a First Amendment violation. Most courts. Not all. And the lower you go on the judicial organization chart, the more likely you are to run into a judge who doesn’t seem to realize the Constitution exists. The problem for people being sued in state and county courts is that […]
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If you buy products on Amazon, you’re well aware of the Amazon brand spammers. These tend to be drop shippers or small (often Chinese) operations trying to sell knockoffs of whatever products might sell. But the products need brand names. In early 2020, the NY Times did an article about the phenomenon, “All Your Favorite […]
While the telecom industry did manage to successfully defang U.S. consumer protection regulators for the better part of the last decade, they’re still facing some notable headwinds. Broadband growth has dramatically slowed, cable TV customers are leaving in droves, and while they are getting a ton of new subsidies via the infrastructure bill, a lot of that money is […]
Techdirt has been covering the UK’s awful Online Safety Act for nearly five years now. During that time it has changed name — it was originally called the Online Harms Bill — but the many bad ideas have remained. Some have even become worse. For example, the UK government said that it wouldn’t enforce the […]
We’ve expressed our displeasure with geofence warrants multiple times. I’ve often referred to them as “reverse” warrants, a term that implies how these warrants invert probable cause. Those in the business of protecting rights (ACLU, EFF) aren’t fans of that term, but it is useful shorthand. Rather than show a court probable cause exists to […]
Every year a little after New Years, I do a post about the previous year of Techdirt traffic and comments, looking at what people were interested in, what commenters were highly rated, etc. I know most sites put this out towards the end of the year, but I remain a purist and wait until after […]
Even though the blog is now often given over to “Trump did nothing wrong” posts and suggestions that social media services engage in “censorship” of so-called “conservatives” (and don’t even think about wandering into the comment section), Eugene Volokh’s Volokh Conspiracy still surfaces some very interesting cases. And this one has a lot going on. […]
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On Monday, Elon Musk tweeted “To fear parody or criticism is a sign of weakness.” If true, then this is Elon admitting to an astounding level of weakness. I mean, we’ve been chronicling for nearly two years now how Elon Musk talks a good game on free speech, but at every opportunity he’s had, he […]
It’s extremely weird that we’ve somehow normalized the fact that scammers, scumbags, debt collectors, and marketers have made the U.S.’ primary voice communication platform largely unusable. There is some good news: according to data from the YouMail Robocall Index, U.S. consumers received just under 3.8 billion robocalls during the month of December, a 16.3% decrease […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is a simple anonymous comment about the dangerous “protect the children” ballot initiative in California: That is not a protect the children law, that is an I hate social media and it must be destroyed law. In second place, it’s Blake Stacey passing on the […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2019, we looked at how Ajit Pai’s FCC often battled FOIA requests for no reason, while the Department of the Interior was trying to rewrite FOIA law to make it easier to reject requests. We saw fresh examples of copyright abuse as a means of silencing criticism of a […]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has something of a rollercoaster history when it comes to the enforcement of its real, or perceived, intellectual property rights. On the one hand, the church has occasionally been quite lenient when it comes to not trying to battle every use of its name, traditions, or religious […]
Dating can be difficult, but there are certain things you can do to not make things worse on yourself. Don’t be a creep. Be kind. Take no for an answer. Actually listen to the people you date. I mean, that’s kinda the standard stuff. But also, if things go bad and they complain about you […]
Everyone’s aware (or should be) that all calls made from jail are monitored. Not all calls are recorded. There are exceptions, with the biggest being the one for calls made to attorneys representing jailed people. Those are completely off-limits. These are privileged communications that cannot be monitored or recorded by the government. And yet, it […]
It’s pretty amazing to me just how wrong one Senator can be about the internet for years and years and years. But we’ve been writing about Senator Richard Blumenthal and never, ever letting his own confusion about the internet get in the way of him boldly making foolish claims about the internet since before he […]
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There are lots of things you can call veteran Cincinnati police officer Ryan Olthaus. Some people called him a racist, after he appeared to flash the “ok” sign (something associated with [but not limited to] white supremacists) at anti-police violence protesters. You can also call him a coward. After all, he couldn’t be bothered to […]
We’ve long noted how the U.S. has generally proven too corrupt to pass even a baseline privacy law or regulate data brokers. The result has been a long line of companies that over-collect all manner of sensitive consumer location and behavior data, fail to secure it, and sell access to it to pretty much any […]
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