The bad times for Unity continue, it seems. Or, at the very least, for the ostensibly hardworking men and women that called the company home. The bad times really began late last summer when Unity decided to drastically change its pricing scheme both for future projects that used the game engine, and, somehow, retroactively as […]
A law passed last year has now taken effect in California. This attempt to limit pretextual stops and biased policing means California law enforcement officers will no longer be able to start every traffic stop with an impromptu Q&A session. They’ll have to get right to the point. Here’s what the law says: (a) A […]
In late 2022, the state of New York finally passed new right to repair legislation after years of activist pressure. The bill, which went live this week, gives New York consumers the right to fix their electronic devices themselves or have them more easily repaired by an independent repair shop, instead of being forced to […]
Among the various promises that Elon made regarding his takeover of ExTwitter, was that he was there to clean up the spam and bot problem. He seemed to think that the previous regime had fallen down on the job, and that somehow he would have the magical answer to dealing with such things. About that. […]
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Law enforcement officers learned long ago that if all they have is a crime scene and no likely suspects, there was no reason to wear out shoe leather beating the streets for alleged criminals. They don’t even need to leave the office. All they have to do is produce a subpoena for certain third-party records […]
Hewlett Packard (HP) has been socked with yet another lawsuit for crippling the printers of consumers who use cheaper third-party ink cartridges. The lawsuit, filed by eleven plaintiffs in US District Court in the Northern District of Illinois, states that HP misleadingly used its “Dynamic Security” firmware updates to “create a monopoly” over replacement printer […]
D&D and Magic: The Gathering publisher, Wizards of the Coast (WotC), has certainly been pissing folks off as of late. Between its attempt to change its OGL license for D&D both in the future and retroactively last year combined with sending the literal Pinkerton Agency after someone who received some unreleased Magic cards in error, […]
Public records requesters in California recently scored a small victory in one of the state’s appeals courts. The EFF, which filed an amicus brief in this case, summarizes the decision at its website. Video footage captured by police drones sent in response to 911 calls cannot be kept entirely secret from the public, a California […]
Last year, soon after Elon completed his purchase of (then) Twitter, I wrote up a 20 level “speed run” of the content moderation learning curve. It seems like maybe some of the folks at Substack should be reading it these days? As you’ll recall, last April, Substack CEO Chris Best basically made it clear that […]
December was not just busy with Supreme Court briefs. The Copia Institute also joined many others, including copyright scholars and public interest organizations, in filing an amicus brief to support the Internet Archive’s appeal at the Second Circuit, seeking to overturn the troubling ruling holding its Open Library to be copyright infringement. We’ve written about […]
Things are still batshit insane in the Florida legislature. Again. Apparently, the state’s government won’t be satisfied until it’s attempted to violate every single constitutional amendment (except the 2nd!) via godawful bills crafted by godawful people. The latest insanity is a bill [PDF] written by state senator Jason Brodeur. It aims to completely rewrite defamation […]
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On Tuesday morning, former politician Tulsi Gabbard, who had to have the 1st Amendment clearly explained to her by a judge after she filed a ridiculous lawsuit to restrict the free speech of others, announced that she had cut a deal with Elon Musk to bring a “news show” to ExTwitter. Hilariously, she claimed that […]
Back in 2019 we noted how the streaming sector risked driving consumers back to piracy if they didn’t heed the lessons of the past. We explored how the rush to raise rates, nickel-and-dime users, implement arbitrary restrictions, and force users toward hunting and pecking their way through a confusing platter of exclusives and availability windows […]
As all manner of content creators will tell us, copyright enforcement is both very important and is at least doable enough that it sure would be nice if platforms like YouTube could do even more to enforce those rights for content creators. This mantra will typically come from those that are the most aggressive and […]
Across the nation, bigoted politicians (of the Republican variety, almost exclusively) are trying to punish and silence content and expression they don’t like. It’s not like it’s even a close question about who’s doing this and why. A slew of bills targeting drag shows and LGBTQ+ writing have been tossed into legislatures all over the […]
We’re back from the holidays, and it’s time for a new episode of the Techdirt Podcast! This week, we’re joined by Ravi Iyer, Research Director for the USC Marshall School’s Neely Center and Managing Director of the Psychology of Technology Institute, to discuss a proposed “design code” that aims to make social media better serve […]
There’s plenty of hypocrisy and bad faith to go around in the ridiculous Claudine Gay plagiarism scandal. While Gay’s accusers are right that she technically violated Harvard’s plagiarism rules by copying phrases either without quotation marks or required attribution, they don’t actually care about plagiarism, only “scalping” Gay. What’s more, their own plagiarism accusations have […]
It was a busy December for the Copia Institute (and me), even just at the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to filing (along with Bluesky and Mastodon admin Chris Riley) an amicus brief supporting NetChoice and CCIA in their combined cases, we also filed another one challenging the bizarre injunction imposed by the Fifth Circuit […]
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