TechDirt 🕸

If you love to irrationally hate, you’ll hate this. The Iowa legislature recently shat out a bill that allowed the state to start punishing people for not being straight and/or white. It was signed into law by another hateful person, Governor Kim Reynolds — the head of (this) state that recently made it clear she’s […]

On January 1, 2024, the parent company of Pornhub.com geo-blocked adult users in the states of Montana and North Carolina. Aylo, the site’s corporate parent, said they did so in protest to laws these states adopted requiring adult platforms to verify their users’ ages through various age-check tools. This isn’t the first time Aylo geo-blocked IP […]

Master the core concepts of coding with the 2024 Intro to Coding & Development Bundle. You’ll learn to work with some of the world’s most popular languages, including C++, Java, Swift, Kotlin, Python, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Plus, you’ll explore these fundamentals and more while learning to build portfolio-ready apps, games, and websites — testing […]

Regulatory agencies can often be an essential part of day-to-day life, preventing people from engaging in activities they have no expertise in — something that could potentially endanger a lot of people. But they can also be overbearing brutes whose only concern is whether or not they’ve managed to extract as much money as possible […]

Well, this is dumb. As detailed by NBC News, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Lawrence Riff has rejected a perfectly reasonable attempt by SnapChat to have a lawsuit thrown out on Section 230 grounds. The case involves family members of kids who overdosed on illegal drugs like fentanyl, suing Snap for apparently providing the connection […]

During Trump’s tenure, his FCC took at absolute hatchet to what was left of media ownership limits. Those limits, built on the back of decades of bipartisan collaboration, prohibited local broadcasters and media from growing too large, trampling smaller (and more diversely owned) competitors underfoot. The Trump FCC stripped away a lot of the rules […]

Let’s roll into the new year by saying what needs to be said: if you’re arguing against government transparency, you’re on the wrong side of history. But being on the wrong side of history is just something cops love to do. They figure the short term wins — if there are any — might somehow […]

As you well know, the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse is now in the public domain in the US, meaning you can use a version of that Mickey (or any other newly public domain work) in our Gaming Like It’s 1928 Public Domain Game Jam. Also, we’re already seeing some of the expected effort […]

Thanks to politicians (including a former president) being overly willing to scratch the bigoted itch of a voting bloc that appears to prefer the brutal caress of fascism to the freedoms of a democratic republic, far too many state and local legislators are crafting and enacting laws designed to relegate a whole lot of the […]

A few months ago we noted that Fidelity, which had contributed over $300 million to help Elon purchase Twitter a little over a year ago, had already marked down its investment by 65%. This news came out at basically the same time that Elon himself admitted the company’s value was down 56% (from $44 billion […]

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 […]

Israeli malware developer NSO Group found itself the subject of international headlines a couple of years ago. Not the good kind either. A leaked document apparently showed who was being targeted by the company’s cell phone exploits — a long, disturbing list that contained journalists, lawyers, activists, dissidents, religious leaders, and plenty of politicians. The […]

Last month we noted how a program aimed at helping low income Americans afford broadband was at risk of being dismantled thanks to congressional incompetence and corruption. The FCC program, dubbed the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), was part of the 2021 infrastructure bill. It provides low-income Americans $30 off their monthly broadband bill. 22 million […]

Readers here shouldn’t need to be reminded that the Tolkien Estate, through its company Middle-Earth Enterprises, is known to be extremely aggressive with its enforcement of intellectual property over anything remotely to do with The Lord of the Rings. The estate appears to operate under the notion that it has control over words via trademark […]

Last year we were dismayed (and somewhat annoyed) to see the FTC step way beyond its bounds and expertise by issuing a ridiculous comment to the US Copyright Office regarding questions around AI and copyright. In it, the FTC (which has no authority — or expertise — regarding copyright law) argued that fair use was […]

2023 is over. Taylor Swift was Time’s Person of the Year, beating out candidates like Jerome Powell, who may have stuck the economic soft-landing, but can’t hit the high notes. Only a fool would challenge the decision, but I would like to nominate 2023’s Unperson of the year – ChatGPT; the neural-network based, Large Language […]

Facial recognition tech works best on white, male faces. White males have historically been the immediate beneficiaries of public policy, as well as those put in place by private companies. I say “historically,” but this advantageous situation has mostly proven incapable of being disrupted by tech advances. Facial recognition tech has taken an existing problem […]

Back in September we praised Elon Musk for deciding to challenge California’s new social media transparency law, AB 587. As we had discussed while the bill was being debated, while it’s framed as a transparency bill, it has all sorts of problems. It would (1) enable the California government officials (including local officials) to effectively […]

For years, the cable industry has dreamed of a future where they could use your cable box to actively track your every behavior using cameras and microphones and then monetize the data. At one point way back in 2009, Comcast made it clear they were even interested in using embedded microphones and cameras to monitor […]

Join our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1928! » Happy new year, everyone — and happy public domain day! That’s right: today’s the day that works from 1928 exit copyright protection and become public domain in the US, and that means it’s time for the latest edition of our annual public domain game […]