A couple of months ago, the parents of a 10-year-old who died of asphyxiation while allegedly “participating” in a “blackout challenge” sued TikTok, alleging their child’s death was directly related to the social media platform’s moderation efforts (or lack thereof) and content recommendation algorithms. The suit, filed in a Pennsylvania federal court, claimed the death […]
As we fully expected, Twitter is going to the Delaware Court of Chancery to force Elon Musk to give them the $44 billion he promised. There’s a lot of misinformation being spewed about this case, but let’s go through the details of why Musk is basically in deep shit, and will be lucky if he’s […]
If you’re a publicly traded company, it’s not enough to make a decent profit selling products people like. You have to deliver endless quarter over quarter improvements to please investors. So countless companies engage in an act of self-cannibalization, where they begin to cut back on things like customer service (see: U.S. telecom), or annoy […]
Over the past couple of years, we’ve discussed several battles in the war on the modding community Take-Two and Rockstar Games launched. I’ve never seen a coherent explanation for why this war was needed at all, from either the publishers or speculators. Almost without warning, Take-Two went on a DMCA blitz on sites hosting these […]
The FBI has switched to a new crime reporting system to collect crime data from all over the nation. Despite being given a long runway (the 2021 switch was announced in 2015), the FBI is still seeing an incredible lack of contribution. The new system is more granular, eliminating the past reduction of crime reporting […]
As advocates of decentralization and a protocols-not-platforms approach to the web, there’s a lot about the concept of Web3 that sounds appealing to us at Techdirt — but the details usually leave a lot to be desired. A new project called TBD from Block aims to move beyond all that, and while its invocation of […]
No one is ever going to confuse Hollywood giant Universal Studios with, say, EFF’s view on more permissive copyright. However, Polygon recently had a really interesting article on how Universal’s comparatively minimal focus on cracking down on the incidental (and fun) uses of its Minions characters have made the characters well known, ubiquitous… and well […]
The government of India continues to hew closer to the ideals of nearby China, led by the Mohdi government, which has been pushing for greater control of the country’s population. Its favorite means and methods are surveillance and censorship — the tool set of authoritarians all over the world. Indian citizens may have greater access […]
Microsoft Office Home and Business for Mac 2021 is for families, students, and small businesses who want classic MS Office apps and email. It includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneNote. A one-time purchase installed on 1 Mac for lifetime Microsoft Office use at home or work. It’s on sale for $40 (available for […]
How many times can we write about bananas and copyright? Even assuming the monkey selfie case doesn’t count, it’s come up surprisingly often here on Techdirt. A few years ago, there was a high profile copyright case about whether or not a banana Halloween costume was covered by copyright (it was). But, this latest case […]
For decades, entrenched U.S. regional monopolies have refused to deliver affordable, reliable, fast broadband in any sort of uniform way. That’s just kind of how monopolies work. In response, roughly a thousand towns and cities have decided to build their own broadband networks instead, either themselves, via a local cooperative, through a city-owned utility, or […]
Cops kill pets. This is an inarguable fact. None other than the US Department of Justice has declared the (unofficial) War on Dogs to be a law enforcement epidemic. If a cop encounters a family dog while doing cop stuff, chances are the dog is going to die. Sure, some people may claim cops encounter […]
It amazes me that the narrative is still out there about how China is an “intellectual property thief” and that the US and other western nations need to “convince China to respect intellectual property.” We heard that for decades, but for over a decade now, we’ve been pointing out that China responded to all that […]
The problem with gathering tons of sensitive data and storing it indefinitely is sooner or later someone with even worse intentions is going to come looking for it. And China’s massive surveillance apparatus collects oh so much data. It’s far too tempting to resist. Someone with the guts and audacity to go after one of […]
We have done many, many posts explaining how, unfortunately, it seems the idea of a person owning the things they’ve bought has become rather passe. While in the age of antiquity, which existed entire tens of years ago, you used to be able to own things, these days you merely license them under Ts and […]
The internet is about speech. That’s basically all the internet is. It’s a system for communicating, and that communication is speech. What’s becoming increasingly frustrating to me is how in all of these attempts to regulate the internet around the globe, policymakers (and many others) seem to ignore that, and act as if they can […]
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Cops have been running to Google for years, warrants and subpoenas in hand, asking the data behemoth to give them info they can sift through to find criminal suspects. Location data is a big one. Comparable to cell phone tower dumps, geofence warrants allow law enforcement to obtain a certain amount of data on every […]
T-Mobile hasn’t been what you’d call competent when it comes to protecting its customers’ data. The company has been hacked numerous different times over the last few years, with hackers going so far as to ridicule the company’s lousy security practices. A responsible company might slow down on data collection until it was certain it […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is That One Guy with a comment about how Murdoch-pushed social media news taxes in some countries have made Facebook lose interest in news: Appeasement doesn’t work? What a surprise Give an inch and they demanded a mile, who could have seen that coming from […]
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