As I type this, I’m sitting in a (fairly uncomfortable) chair in the lobby of a Holiday Inn, having read through nearly 300 pages of legal filings of sniping between Elon Musk (165 pages) and Twitter (127 pages) trying to figure out how to best explain what’s in the filings in a meaningful and accurate […]
Roughly 83 million Americans currently live under a broadband monopoly. In most instances, their only choice is Comcast or Charter Communications, which sells service under the “Spectrum” brand. And in both cases, users pay significantly higher prices for spotty, slow, service with statistically terrible customer service, because that’s how monopolization works. But the nation’s two […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is an anonymous comment about the EU’s new office in Silicon Valley that aims to work with tech companies on EU law compliance: I know it won’t happen because money, but the tech companies really need to just stop trying to placate these people. If […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Russia banned VPNs, Australian prosecutors were seeking to make it illegal to refuse to turn passwords over to law enforcement, the UK Home Secretary wanted companies to stop offering encryption altogether, and another US federal court said cops can get historic cell site location info without a warrant. […]
We had a depressing number of Techdirt stories on this site that involve Shaquille O’Neal. I say that as a basketball fan who absolutely adores Shaq’s contributions to the TNT studio broadcasts for the NBA. On the other hand, the times Shaq has made it onto our pages hasn’t been for the best of reasons. […]
There are a few questionable assumptions made by the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court in its denial [PDF] of a suppression request, but the opening suggests drug cartels might want to vet their employees a little better. David Sierra Orozco was paid to drive a car with over $100,000 in drug-tainted cash hidden in a secret […]
The EU is well on its way to fundamentally destroying the internet. Two giant new regulations are set to become law soon: the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act. And while neither is ridiculous in the same way that laws in the US and the UK and some other places are just pandering […]
A few years back, the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber-stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding expert warnings that it would stifle competition, kill jobs and eventually raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for these problems: they’d cobble together a fourth major […]
Pretty much everyone who has ever gone to college hates educational publishers. There’s an oligopoly of just five giant publishers, and they long ago learned that they are in the best market ever: the buyers of their textbooks (the students) have no choice and are forced to buy the books if their professors assign them […]
The 2022 Data-Driven Decisions Bundle is designed to help you become a data expert. The courses are self-paced and interactive, so you can begin right away. This data-driven bundle takes you through the step-by-step process of creating, manipulating, and analyzing data. Master data and make better, smarter decisions. It’s on sale for $49. Note: The […]
The Australian government doesn’t care much for encryption. It has, for years, tried to legislate encryption out of the picture. A law passed in 2018 gives the government the power to compel encryption-breaking efforts from tech companies. The law survived a cursory review by the Parliamentary Joint Committee. Its 2021 report said the law was […]
For years, we’ve noted how one of the greasier lobbying tactics in telecom is the co-opting of civil rights groups to provide cover for anti-competitive and anti-consumer policies. Such groups are given cash for a shiny new event center in exchange for parroting any policy position that comes across their desks, even if it dramatically […]
In an extremely rare move, a federal court has ordered a jail into receivership, placing it under the direct control of a court-appointed third party that will (hopefully) carry out the needed changes Hinds County, Mississippi either can’t or won’t do. (h/t Scott Greenfield) Receivership is uncommon. As Hernandez Stroud of the Brennan Center points […]
At this point, every reader here should be aware that YouTube has a copyright/DMCA problem it has yet to solve. Going through the myriad of posts we’ve done about DMCA and ContentID takedowns on YouTube, the theme is abundantly clear: YouTube’s automated systems are wide open for mistakes, fraud, and abuse. If you don’t think […]
When Google Fiber launched back in 2010, it was heralded as a game changer for the broadband industry. Google Fiber, we were told, would revolutionize the industry by taking Silicon Valley money and disrupting the viciously uncompetitive and anti-competitive telecom sector. Initially, things worked out well; cities tripped over themselves offering all manner of perks to the […]
Yes, yes, copyright is a tool for censorship. Contrary to the claims of copyright system supporters that copyright can’t be used for censorship, the reality is that is basically the only thing that copyright is good for. I mean, at this point, you are either not paying attention, or are just outright lying if you […]
Real problems are what legislators are supposed to be solving. The Philippines has plenty of those, ranging from (government-endorsed) extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and drug users to abuses of state power to silence journalists to the actual murders of human rights activists. But legislators with their own axes to grind will always find ways […]
GameGuru is a non-technical and fun game maker that offers an easy, enjoyable and comprehensive game creation process that is designed specifically for those who are not programmers or designers/artists. It allows you to build your own game world with easy to use tools. Populate your game by placing down characters, weapons, and other game items, […]
A while back, we noted that there was something of a Rorschach test in how you viewed basically everything about Nick Sandmann, the MAGA-hat wearing high school student who became front page news after a video of him standing in front of a Native American demonstrator, Nathan Phillips, went viral. Everyone had their own interpretations. […]
INCOMPAS, the DC trade policy and lobbying group primarily steered by tech giants, is urging the FCC to finally boost the U.S.’ pathetic definition of broadband. The FCC’s current definition of broadband, 25 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up, is looking a bit pathetic, particularly on the upstream side. And the lower standard helps the uncompetitive […]
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