One of the more famous, and my favorite, quotations attributed to Winston Churchill is: “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” My second favorite Churchill quote, by the way, is: “Dammit, I can’t decide between these three fingers of whiskey and this tankard of champagne!” Anyway, the point […]
One of things we enjoy here at Techdirt is when even those with legitimate gripes about trademark law take a bemused view about the whole thing, rather than immediately jumping to angry and overly aggressive threats. No one likes a trademark bully, even when the trademark holder might have a legitimate claim. A few weeks […]
A few months ago a California court of appeals issued a really terrible decision in Liapes v. Facebook. Liapes, a Facebook user, was unhappy that the ads delivered to her correlated with some of her characteristics, like her age. As a result there were certain ads, like one provided by an insurer offering a particular […]
The Stored Communications Act — enacted in 1986 — is not only outdated, it’s also pretty weird. An amendment to the ECPA (Electronic Communications Privacy Act), the SCA added and subtracted privacy from communications. It’s the subtractions that are bothersome. Law enforcement wasn’t too happy a lot of electronic communications were now subject to warrant […]
So, we already wrote about the biggest headline grabbing moment from Elon Musk’s Dealbook interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin yesterday, but there was another crazy, Techdirt-relevant one involving copyright and AI. As we’ve explained over and over again, copyright is the wrong tool to use to regulate AI, and using it will lead to bad […]
The Complete Photoshop Master Class Bundle has 6 courses designed to help you become a Photoshop expert. You’ll start with and introductory course and move on to learning about light effects then on to building 7 different web sites. It’s on sale for $30. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. […]
I’m not sure Elon quite understands the concept of “damage control.” Advertisers are bailing, and the rate increases every time he says something stupid or endorses this or that conspiracy theory. It’s costing the company tons of money, but he still can’t admit that he’s the problem. So, instead, he’s blaming everyone else. And sometimes […]
The 2021 infrastructure bill set aside an historic $42.5 billion for broadband deployment. It also tasked the FCC with creating rules aimed at ending decades of race and class based-discrimination in broadband deployment, which have been well documented by The Markup, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), and others. The goal was to try and […]
Unity has had a tough time of it recently. After the company decided to put in place a major pricing scheme shift for users of its game engine back in September, the company has since experienced all kinds of fallout over the changes, ousted its CEO, and has generally been vilified for not bothering to […]
There are few things I enjoy more than watching cocksure cops trip over their own hubris. And it happens so often. Cops believe that since they are (affirmatively) law enforcement officers and the people they target are (only allegedly) criminals, they are firmly in the right, no matter what they do or what rights they […]
Copyright policy is a sticky tricky thing, and there are battles that have been fought for decades among public and corporate interests. Typically, it’s the corporate interests that win — especially the content industry. We’ve seen power, and copyrights, collect among a small group of content companies because of this. But there is one significant […]
I mean, it’s not like we didn’t warn Elon Musk. Free speech is not about creating a single private space where everyone gets to speak, because that doesn’t support free speech. It enables the worst of society to browbeat, harass, and abuse anyone they dislike, creating a total garbage dump that drives people away and […]
MagStack is the perfect on-the-go wireless charging station that also transforms into a floating stand for smartphone FaceTime or video playback while charging. This 3-in-1 foldable design featuring 3 wireless charging spots, enables charging for up to 3 devices simultaneously, including iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods Pro, AirPods with Wireless Charging Case, other Qi-compatible Android phones, […]
For decades, the government has used the Third Party Doctrine to obtain massive amounts of phone records without a warrant. Even prior to the creation of the Third Party Doctrine by the Supreme Court in 1979, government agencies were obtaining phone records using pen register requests that provided them with info on numbers called and […]
The rushed integration of half-baked “AI” (aka not at all sentient language learning models) into journalism has been a gargantuan mess. Execs at companies like Red Ventures (CNET) and G/O Media (Gizmodo) have made it very clear they see LLMs primarily as a way to attack labor and cut corners, resulting in soulless and low […]
The problem with putting cops in schools isn’t necessarily that there are never things that happen in schools that require a law enforcement response. (Unfortunately, a lot of those things are school shootings, which cops aren’t all that capable of responding to.) The problem is that school administrators tend to think that because they have […]
Back in 2015, Techdirt wrote about one of China’s many attempts to control the online world, in this case by requiring everyone to use real names when they register for online services. As that post noted, the fact that the Chinese authorities had announced similar initiatives several times since 2003 suggests that implementing the policy […]
The world of generative AI has been changing rapidly, and that’s not something that’s going to stop any time soon. Today, we’re joined on the podcast by Jonathan Ross, founder and CEO of Groq (no, not Elon Musk’s new bot called Grok) — a company working on a new technology stack that drastically speeds up […]
We keep pointing out just how incredible it is that Elon Musk is personally responsible for the destruction of so much of ExTwitter’s business model. Even if you believe that the company was too bloated, or that it’s business model needed to change, as you look at how the company is flailing, it can be […]
New York City residents will, once again, be asked to foot the bill for NYPD efforts that solely benefit the nation’s largest police department. It’s not enough that they’ve been asked to spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to bail out officers hit with civil rights lawsuits. It’s not enough that they’ve been […]
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