The Third Party doctrine has helped invert/pervert probable cause. Third parties (Google, AT&T, Facebook, etc.) gather tons of data that can be useful to law enforcement. When cops are looking for suspects but have no idea who to suspect, they turn to these third parties. In some cases, they can get plenty of data with […]
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We spent a few years warning people about the terrible EU Terrorist content regulation law, but as of this week, it’s now in effect, and websites will have one hour to remove any terrorist content that is flagged to them by any government official. If they fail to remove the content, they could face fines […]
For years we’ve written about how unchecked telecom and media monopolization and consolidation results in all manner of problems, from sparse broadband connectivity to high prices. We’ve also discussed how the speed of that consolidation over the decades, combined with Wall Street’s insatiable thirst for quarterly returns at any cost, comes with a sacrifice of […]
While trademark disputes regularly annoy me for a variety of reasons which I cover on this site, the most annoying ones of all are usually over trademarks that the USPTO never should have granted in the first place. Remember the Square Donuts thing? That mark was descriptive. ESPN’s “Saturday Night Football” mark? Also descriptive. Or […]
Last chance to get your boxed copy of CIA: Collect It All! Two months ago, we posted what seemed like a last call on selling out the remaining stock of our version of the CIA’s card training game (that we originally Kickstarted a few years ago). A few people complained that they didn’t want to […]
We’ve been talking about the problems of the US government setting up a copyright trolling small claims court for over a decade now. But, Congress finally passed a law to create one (with no debate and no hearings) by sneaking it into a “must-pass” funding bill at the end of the year in 2020. It’s […]
The federal government has unlimited money to burn. That’s how we end up here with the federal government being told for a second time that it can’t walk away from a civil lawsuit just because it unilaterally decided to stop violating the plaintiff’s rights. US citizen Yonas Fikre’s lawsuit made its way to the Ninth […]
Could Paramount Pictures have actually lost the copyright to Top Gun, even as it was releasing a new Top Gun movie? That’s the claim in a new lawsuit that goes pretty deep into the copyright weeds, touching on two ridiculous topics that we like to write about on Techdirt: termination rights and movie rights. For […]
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With the whole Congressional January 6th Committee effort moving into prime time this week, this is probably pretty far down on the list of issues around it, but apparently Twitter is quietly fighting demands from the Committee to reveal internal communications. The social media giant is asserting a First Amendment privilege to push back on […]
Antitrust and telecom experts warned anybody who’d listen that the Sprint and T-Mobile merger (which reduced the number of major U.S. wireless players from four to three) would eventually result in layoffs and higher prices for everybody. The layoffs were quick to arrive (T-Mobile laid off more than 5,000 employees before the ink was dry), […]
Too often we assume that copyright is something that only concerns Western nations like the US and EU. But it’s important to remember that copyright has been exported all around the world. Moreover, when Western nations make copyright worse, they then try to convince other countries to adopt the same bad ideas, for example through the […]
We’ve noted for a few months how telecom and media giants are engaged in a full court press to scuttle the nomination of popular anti-monopolist and reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. Sohn’s broadly popular and highly qualified, so the telecom lobby has taken to running a broad smear campaign falsely accusing her of hating […]
Finding people near you with shared interests, and talking to them, has a very long history in human culture. We’re social animals. We need to find other people close to us to work together with, play games with, and build relationships and families with. Modern online social networks are built on top of those basic […]
We’ve pointed this out a few times over the past year. The main antitrust bills that are floating around both the House and the Senate only have Republican support because they have a trojan horse hidden in them that will make it much more difficult for the biggest websites to do any moderation on Republican […]
This kind of hubris can only be explained by massive self-delusion. It’s not pretty but at least the denouement is wholly justified. Last January, Kashmir Hill published an investigation that uncovered the source of serial, widespread online defamation. The perpetrator was Toronto resident Nadire Atas, who engaged in a one-woman war against everyone she felt […]
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Okay, so, it was just a few weeks ago that a teenager went into an elementary school and killed 21 people, including 19 children. You might think there are important things about that which should draw the attention of the state’s top lawyer. Attorney General Ken Paxton is a busy man. He’s running for a […]
During the crypto, NFT, and “web3” era there’s been no limit of hype regarding the (largely money making) potential of the ever-evolving internet. Less cared about during the metaverse hype era has been foundational but less sexy policy issues like anti-monopolization, or affordable and even broadband coverage. That’s once again evident by the news that […]
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