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Florida Man Wants $2 Million From Rockstar Over Parody Appearance In GTA6 Trailer

1 year 8 months ago
The folks behind the Grand Theft Auto franchise are certainly no strangers to lawsuits and complaints over publicity rights issues. GTA5 famously found the publishers of the game in court defending itself against the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Karen Gravano, ultimately winning both cases. Anyone familiar with the GTA franchise will have a sense […]
Dark Helmet

How Copyright Exceptionalism In France Risks Undermining The EU Legal System

1 year 8 months ago
Back in May, Walled Culture wrote about an important case before the EU’s top court, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). It involved the “High Authority for the dissemination of works and the protection of rights on the Internet” (Haute Autorité pour la diffusion des œuvres et la protection des droits sur […]
Mike Masnick

Internet Archive Files Opening Brief In Its Appeal Of Book Publishers’ Win

1 year 8 months ago
A few weeks ago, publishing giant Penguin Random House (and, yes, I’m still confused why they didn’t call it Random Penguin House after the merger) announced that it was filing a lawsuit (along with many others) against the state of Iowa for its attempt to ban books in school libraries. In its announcement, Penguin Random […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: The Complete 2024 Microsoft Tech Certification Training Super Bundle

1 year 8 months ago
The Complete 2024 Microsoft Tech Certification Training Super Bundle has 11 courses focusing on Microsoft tech. It includes courses such as Microsoft 365 Identity & Services (MS-100), Designing Microsoft Azure Infrastructure Solutions (AZ-305), MD-100: Windows Client, AZ-500: Microsoft Azure Security Technologies, Microsoft Azure Administrator (AZ-104), and more. It’s on sale for $80. Note: The Techdirt […]
Gretchen Heckmann

Knoxville Is Building The Biggest Community-Owned Broadband Network In U.S. History

1 year 8 months ago
Knoxville, Tennessee is making progress on an ambitious, $700 million plan to deliver $65 gigabit fiber connections to every last city resident. With no usage caps, weird fees, or long-term contracts. Once completed, the city-owned fiber network, run through the city’s existing city-owned electrical utility, will be the biggest community-owned broadband network in the U.S. […]
Karl Bode

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

1 year 8 months ago
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Strawb with a response to someone claiming there’s no first amendment issue with Ken Paxton’s investigation into Media Matters: That’s because you don’t understand the first amendment, Koby. For those of us that do, there’s very much a violation going on here. In second […]
Leigh Beadon

This Week In Techdirt History: December 10th – 16th

1 year 8 months ago
Five Years Ago This week in 2018, the Australian government passed a law forcing tech companies to break encryption, Hollywood and record labels were quietly asking congress to bring back SOPA, and the UK intelligence community said it was moving on from bulk data collection in favor of bulk equipment interference. The latest EU copyright […]
Leigh Beadon

Newspaper Publishers’ Obsession With Link And Snippet Taxes Is Bad For Society — And Bad For Them

1 year 8 months ago
Traditional newspapers have been complaining about the rise of the digital world for decades. Their discontent derives from the fact that they failed to recognize opportunities early on, leaving the field open for a new generation of born-digital companies to meet the demand for alternative ways to access the news. Rather than trying to understand […]
Mike Masnick

Sports Illustrated Owner Fires CEO, COO After Bungled ‘AI’ Adoption

1 year 8 months ago
Last month, Sports Illustrated found itself at the center of a firestorm after it was busted using fake computer-generated authors and (shitty) computer-generated content — without telling employees and readers. The scandal came shortly after Gannett (which likely owns whatever’s left of your hometown newspaper) was busted doing the exact same thing. We’ve noted how […]
Karl Bode

NSO Group May Be On Its Way Out But There’s No Shortage Of Competitors To Take Its Place

1 year 8 months ago
The Italians are the new Israelis… at least in terms of hawking phone exploits and other spyware. NSO Group crashed hard following leaks showing its customers (many of which were, shall we say, questionable) were targeting political rivals, dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, lawyers, and religious leaders with powerful exploits that completely exposed the contents […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Complete Python Programmer Bundle

1 year 8 months ago
The Complete Python Programmer Bundle has nine courses to help you learn more about programming. This bundle starts with fundamental Python functionality such as arithmetic, conditional statements, and working with basic data structures. It then expands upon your working knowledge of data structures to work with full-blown datasets in the Pandas package. You’ll learn all […]
Gretchen Heckmann

What’s Left Of Cable TV Is Slowly Going To Hell

1 year 8 months ago
We just got done noting how 2023 was finally the year that streaming fully surpassed traditional TV in terms of overall paying subscribers. A very obvious “cord cutting” trend that executives spent years claiming was fake or a fad is now the majority norm. But what’s left of traditional cable TV isn’t doing so well.  Broadcast […]
Karl Bode