It’s your right to request records from public agencies. That fact cannot be disputed. The Freedom of Information Act guarantees it in regards to federal agencies and every state has their own laws that guarantee access to public records. The town of Irvington, New Jersey apparently believes it only has to do so much when […]
Editor’s Note: After publication, we were alerted the that key story about the councilwoman, was actually from a few years ago, not recently. We regret the mistake and will make efforts to avoid such mistakes in the future. We’re leaving the original article below. On the one hand, you have a wireless industry falsely claiming […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment on our post about why moderating content does more to support free speech: People want different content, gaming or tech forums host tech or gaming duscussions or comments,for example if you post weird extremist content or political content it will be […]
We’re now past the halfway point in our series of posts about the winners of the fourth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1926. So far, we’ve looked at The Wall Across The River, The Obstruction Method, and Dreaming The Cave. Today, the spotlight falls on the winner of Best Visuals: Mr. Top […]
Cops lie. It’s a fact. It’s called testilying and it happens so often hardly anyone can even be bothered to act surprised when these lies are exposed. This case — coming to us via FourthAmendment.com — contains yet another cop’s lies. This particular cop, Amtrak Police Officer Brandt Bartman, has just seen his train station […]
The US Department of Justice has entered into many consent decrees with many, many abusive law enforcement agencies. These decrees have the force of law, supported by court orders. They’re contractual obligations with the federal government — agreements that swear local agencies will comply with directives and do their part to respect not only the […]
One year ago today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project. The decision provided a reset to a seventeen year long legal dispute over the FCC’s media ownership rules that had its inception in the Third Circuit in 2004. In 1996, the Telecommunications Act included substantial revisions to the […]
The problem with electing abusive assholes is you may not know they’re abusive assholes until after you’ve elected them. Then you have a problem on your hands, at least until the next election cycle. Until then, rights get violated and people get victimized. And while these abusive officials spend tax dollars getting “I didn’t choose […]
Vote On the Final Four Now! And here we are. The inaugural Techdirt Legal March Madness is down to its Final Four! There are just four concepts left, and (to be honest) none are that surprising. The 1st Amendment faces off against RICO and Free Speech faces off against Section 230. I don’t think any […]
The Mac Productivity App Bundle And StackSkills Subscription has 3 apps to help you get more done, and unlimited access to StackSkills to help you learn new skills to help you personally and professionally. Text Workflow removes the need to perform repetitive tasks manually on your text. File List Export an easy-to-use application that will help […]
I have to admit that it’s been somewhat amusing watching Truth Social flop. After months of rumors (and a variety of competitors targeting the Trumpworld), Trump announced plans for his own Twitter clone, Truth Social, in October of last year, using a sketchy financial instrument to fund it. He found a perfect dupe in Congressman […]
For decades now, a favorite DC lobbying tactic has been to create bogus groups pretending to support something unpopular your company is doing. Like “environmentalists for big oil” or “Americans who really love telecom monopolies.” These groups then help big companies create a sound-wall of illusory support for policies that generally aren’t popular, or great […]
The EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market contains two spectacularly bad ideas. One is the upload filter of Article 17, which will wreak havoc not just on creativity in the EU, but also on freedom of speech there, as algorithms block perfectly legal material. The other concerns the “snippet tax” of Article 15, more […]
In tech policy, as with any policy, we often talk about liability. Basically, should X liable to Y, why, and with what consequence? Figuring out good policy is often a matter of figuring out how those questions should be answered. Because sometimes it might be good for society if X could be held liable for […]
While Elon Musk often crows about his disdain for subsidies, Musk companies routinely hoover up billions in government assistance. For example, Starlink gamed the FCC’s Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) subsidy auction to nab nearly a billion dollars to deploy broadband to areas that didn’t need it: including some airport parking lots and a few […]
We’ve already detailed why the latest bill from Senators Thom Tillis and Pat Leahy, the SMART Copyright Act, is dangerous to the future of the internet. You can read that earlier article, but the short summary is that it would deputize the Copyright Office every three years to arbitrarily bless certain “technological measures” that websites, […]
Courthouse News Service (CNS) is (again) suing to block court administrators from deliberately withholding filed documents from the press. CNS has sued several other state court systems over the same misbehavior by clerks and the administrators overseeing them. Last summer, CNS — which obviously relies on prompt access to maintain its reporting edge — obtained […]
TabsFolders lets you save, manage, synchronize, and share bookmarks at a lightning-fast speed. TabsFolders sees your countless tabs and raises you one easy-to-use tool that organizes all the information you need. As soon as you add the extension to your browser, you’re on your way to peak internet efficiency. Using TabsFolders’ drag-and-drop interface, you can […]
Late last year, a coordinated messaging campaign emerged on the anniversary of the repeal of net neutrality. Numerous pundits and right-wing news outlets all simultaneously issued reports on the same day claiming that because the Internet hadn’t exploded in a rainbow, that the FCC’s extremely unpopular 2017 decision to gut oversight of predatory telecom monopolies […]
For decades, local law enforcement agencies have blown off requests from the FBI and DOJ to report use of force incidents by officers. This has led to a very incomplete picture of force deployment in the United States — a form of proxy opacity that has allowed agencies to ignore problematic cops and problematic actions. […]
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