Josh Hawley sucks. I disagree with him on about just about everything. And I am appalled by his support of the rioters who invaded the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021. It’s disappointing and shameful that a United States Senator would endorse a riot, especially a riot intended to challenge the indisputably legitimate election of […]
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Here we go again. It’s a plan that almost never works but one that legislators and the special interest groups pushing for it continue to believe will shower them with untold riches from billion dollar tech companies that they blame for the destruction of local content creation. I mean, they’re not entirely wrong… at least […]
On any given day you can find a stellar array of phenomenal reporting in the pages of the New York Times. On any other day you can also find a rotating crop of terrible gibberish, from COVID coverage that large swaths of the medical community say borders on journalistic malpractice, to numerous examples of “view […]
As Mike noted the other day, state after state has been playing “fuck around and find out” with all sorts of bills that fundamentally interfere with the First Amendment and Section 230. So far Florida has already wasted over $700k in taxpayer dollars trying to defend their indefensibly censorial law. And now Texas is setting […]
Ed Sheeran has made it onto Techdirt’s radar many, many times. What started as his reasonable views on how “piracy” actually kickstarted his career has unfortunately turned into several posts on how he’s been targeted himself or sticking up for others in copyright disputes. While Sheeran has settled such disputes out of court before, he […]
People often talk about some kind of “right to deletion” as an approach to fixing online privacy issues. This construct can create problems, as we’ve seen with Europe’s version, but newer proposals don’t seem to consider these lessons. A recent paper by law professor Tiffany Li looks at another angle on the issue: how data […]
We’ve noted for years that the adtech sector is a convoluted, unregulated hellscape, where consumer data is bought and sold with nothing remotely close to competent oversight. The end result is just about what you’d expect: a percussive parade of massive scandals in which location, financial, and other sensitive data is bought, sold, leaked, abused, […]
Rental car company Hertz has put the “hurt” back in, um, “Hertz.” The company recently declared itself bankrupt, something that presumably only referred to its balance sheet. But Hertz has more problems. In 2021 (the same year Hertz “emerged” from bankruptcy), the company was sued by a man who could have been cleared of murder […]
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We’ve talked about the many, many problems of the “SMART Copyright Act” from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, and highlighted how a ton of public interest groups, academics, companies, and more have spoken out against the bill. Perhaps realizing that their dream of sneaking through legislation that will mandate upload filters is facing a […]
As Russia has faced a flood of sanctions for its brutal invasion of Ukraine, many telecom companies, like Lumen and Cogent, also stopped feeding and financing key Internet transit routes into the country. Other companies, like domain registrar Namecheap, made the choice to stop doing business with any current residents of Russia. While severing Russia […]
You may have heard that Stone Brewing Co., once a scion and protector of the craft beer industry, won a trademark lawsuit against Molson Coors due to the latter’s rebranding of its “Keystone” brand to more prominently feature the word “STONE” on cans and labels. We didn’t write about the case, though that doesn’t mean […]
A couple months back, Starlink and Elon Musk got several weeks of press adulation for shipping thousands of low orbit satellite terminals to Ukraine. The units, generally capable of 100 Mbps speeds with low latency, were likely a huge help to locals struggling to maintain Internet access while under Russian assault (with the small caveat […]
I’ll admit this recent decision sort of passed me by. My brief read of it suggested nothing more was happening than an affirmation of preexisting law via lots of procedural discussion. There are plenty of hoops people who have been falsely accused of crimes need to jump through before a court will even entertain their […]
George Galloway is a UK politician with, well, something of a reputation. Anyway, recently, he got very, very upset, because Twitter labeled his account as being “Russia state-affiliated media.” That tweet shows the addition by Twitter of the “Russia state-affiliated media” and then says: Dear @TwitterSupport I am not “Russian State Affiliated media”. I work […]
Some of you may recall that, back in July of 2020, there was one of those interminably long “tech CEO” hearings in front of Congress that appear to serve only to make politicians look foolish, out of touch, and technically illiterate. Among the most laughable moments was when Rep. Greg Steube wasted everyone’s time by […]
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We may supposedly be a nation of equals but some people will always be more equal than others. The justice system has multiple tiers. This has always been the case, despite the best efforts of the founding fathers. Rich people view some laws as optional, since they can easily absorb the fines and fees. Laws […]
We’ve already noted how U.S. broadband maps aren’t just terrible, they’ve laid the foundation for terrible policy. When your maps falsely overstate competition and broadband coverage, it makes it easy to downplay or ignore the primary reason U.S. broadband stinks: regional monopolization and the state and federal corruption that protects and enables it. But the […]
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