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With Trump’s Bribe Paid, His Lackey FCC Quickly Rubber Stamps CBS Merger

4 weeks ago
With the cowards at CBS/Paramount having paid their $16 million bribe to the King, Trump’s FCC has quickly ended its phony “investigation” into the media giant, and given its rubber stamp approval to the company’s $8 billion merger with Skydance (owned by Trump’s friends in the Ellison family). In a press release, Trump FCC boss […]
Karl Bode

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Live At TrustCon 2025

4 weeks 1 day ago
Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation‘s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed. Our second annual live at TrustCon recording of Ctrl-Alt-Speech! Ben […]
Mike Masnick

You Shouldn’t Have To Make Your Social Media Public To Get A Visa

4 weeks 1 day ago
The Trump administration is continuing its dangerous push to surveil and suppress foreign students’ social media activity. The State Department recently announced an unprecedented new requirement that applicants for student and exchange visas must set all social media accounts to “public” for government review. The State Department also indicated that if applicants refuse to unlock their accounts or otherwise don’t maintain a social […]
Mike Masnick

Trump Sends Medicaid Data To ICE, Turning This Service Into Another Weapon For His Racist ICE Goon Squads

4 weeks 1 day ago
Here we go. Again. Nonstop. The Racist Fucks Regime is at it again, leveraging every piece of data involuntarily collected by the government as a weapon to deploy against brown people. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials will be given access to the personal data of the nation’s 79 million Medicaid enrollees, including home addresses and […]
Tim Cushing

Daily Deal: The Ultimate Oracle, SAP And Salesforce Training Bundle

4 weeks 1 day ago
The Ultimate Oracle, SAP and Salesforce Training Bundle has 6 courses to help you brush up on your CRM knowledge. Courses cover database programming languages, data analysis, Recovery Manager, and more. It’s on sale for $25. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals […]
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Supreme Court To Lower Courts: Ignore Actual Binding Precedent, Follow Our Unexplained Shadow Docket Vibes Instead

4 weeks 1 day ago
The Supreme Court’s shadow docket has become a lawless mess. The justices are issuing extremely consequential rulings with either no explanation at all, or with barely a paragraph of reasoning. No full briefing. No oral arguments. Just vibes-based constitutional law that lower courts are somehow supposed to follow. Now the Court has made this chaos […]
Mike Masnick

Waypoint Writers Quit After Vice’s Chickenshit New Owners Delete Articles Critical Of Steam Policies

4 weeks 1 day ago
Last year you might recall that Vice Media suffered its final collapse after years of mismanagement by incompetent, fail-upward brunchlords. The new owners, Savage Ventures, quickly made it clear they were going to be even worse than past Vice management, firing a ton of talented writers and editors, and shifting Vice’s focus even harder toward […]
Karl Bode

Iceland Foods Fails Again To Claw Back It’s ‘Iceland’ EU Trademark

4 weeks 2 days ago
This saga of dumb began nearly a decade ago, in 2016, when a grocer named “Iceland Foods,” that was somehow granted an EU trademark for “Iceland,” began bullying other EU businesses using that word over supposed trademark infringement. Iceland, the country, caught wind of all of this when the company had the stones to oppose […]
Dark Helmet

As Site Blocking Is Increasing, European Commission Subtly Slaps Down Italy’s Piracy Shield

4 weeks 2 days ago
As numerous Walled Culture posts attest, site blocking is in the vanguard of the actions by copyright companies against sites engaged in the unauthorized sharing of material. Over the past few months, this approach has become even more pervasive, and even more intrusive. For example, in France, the Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare was forced to geoblock more than […]
Glyn Moody

Libraries, Journalists, And Public Interest Groups Oppose Private Control Of Law

4 weeks 2 days ago
On July 8, an expanded coalition of library associations, civil society organizations, journalist groups, and other advocates for information access sent a letter to the House Judiciary Committee explaining their opposition to the Pro Codes Act. This coalition has grown significantly from the original group that opposed the bill, now including major organizations like the […]
Mike Masnick

On The Supreme Court’s Constitutional Vandalism In Service Of Inherited Wealth

4 weeks 2 days ago
Peter Shane’s devastating analysis in The Atlantic has performed the invaluable service of documenting what many suspected but few could prove: that Chief Justice John Roberts has systematically dismantled American constitutional government while claiming to restore it. But Shane’s meticulous account of Roberts’s “proto-authoritarian canon” reveals something even more damning—the entire Unitary Executive Theory project is essentially an exercise […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Microsoft Project Professional 2024

4 weeks 2 days ago
Microsoft Project 2024 Professional is the ultimate project management tool, designed to help professionals plan, execute, and complete projects with precision and efficiency. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, this software is perfect for project managers, team leaders, and executives who need a reliable solution to manage their projects from start to finish. It’s […]
Daily Deal

Restaurant Owner Keeps Getting Denied His Purely Descriptive Trademark

1 month ago
I recognize that trademark law is a nuanced thing and I don’t expect the average person to be familiar with all of its intricacies. Hell, I write about trademarks all the time and I could probably fill a law school gymnasium with what I still don’t know about it. But I honestly am often surprised […]
Dark Helmet

Amazon Ring Cashes In On Techno-Authoritarianism And Mass Surveillance

1 month ago
Ring founder Jamie Siminoff is back at the helm of the surveillance doorbell company, and with him is the surveillance-first-privacy-last approach that made Ring one of the most maligned tech devices. Not only is the company reintroducing new versions of old features which would allow police to request footage directly from Ring users, it is also introducing a new […]
Mike Masnick

Judge Reinstates Fired FTC Commissioner While Everyone (Including The Judge) Knows The Supreme Court Will Overturn

1 month ago
Judge Loren AliKhan knows exactly how this story ends, but she’s going to make the Supreme Court write the final chapter themselves. Her ruling reinstating illegally fired FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter reads like judicial theater—a careful performance of applying precedent everyone knows is doomed. We discussed this a bit when Trump first illegally fired […]
Mike Masnick

Daily Deal: Costco 1-Year Gold Star Membership + $20 Digital Costco Shop Card

1 month ago
Costco is your one-stop shop for everything you want and offers a wide range of merchandise that will likely cover all of your shopping needs! With hundreds of locations across the country, Costco is the ideal place to shop without the hassle of having to run numerous errands around town. A Gold Star Membership includes a FREE […]
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