Welcome to the golden age of corruption. Last year I warned repeatedly how a concussive series of Supreme Court rulings like Loper Bright were poised to dismantle already shaky regulatory authority and corporate oversight, turning most U.S. regulators into the legal and policy equivalent of decorative seasonal gourds. It was the ultimate victory in a […]
For twenty years, a great war has raged. A console war, between the two great powers, Sony and Microsoft. Sure, there were other regional powers in play, such as Nintendo. And it’s true that Sony won nearly every campaign in this war, to varying degrees. But the war raged on right up until this week, […]
Donald Trump spent the four years between presidential terms complaining about a “stolen” election. He — and his enablers — made multiple baseless claims about election fraud and claimed the entire system was rigged against him. His lawyers and supporters suggested voting machines were so insecure that the Venezuelan government itself might have been involved […]
Automation can be helpful, yes. But the story told to date by large tech companies like OpenAI has been that these new language learning models would be utterly transformative, utterly world-changing, and quickly approaching some kind of sentient superintelligence. Yet time and time again, data seems to show they’re failing to accomplish even the bare […]
Last November you might recall that Wired released an excellent report documenting how it was trivial to buy the sensitive and detailed movement data of U.S. military and intelligence workers as they moved around Germany. The culprit, as usual, was a global collection of super dodgy data brokers and adtech firms that see little in the way […]
Long time readers of Techdirt will recall the deluge of posts we did years ago on trademark disputes within the craft beer industry. While trademark issues in that industry certainly haven’t gone entirely away, they are nothing like what was occurring between 2015 and 2020. In that time period, it felt like I was writing […]
The NYPD is proving it’s impossible to fix an entity that doesn’t want to improve. It has engaged in more than a decade of straight-up ignoring court-ordered reforms of its stop-and-frisk program. The program’s original form was declared unconstitutional in 2013. Since then, it has only marginally improved. And much of that improvement is probably […]
You probably saw that one of Donald Trump’s early executive orders was to demand that the Gulf Of Mexico be renamed the Gulf Of America. It’s pointless pseudo-productivity, and an obvious effort to excite his base’s nationalist and racist tendencies. Amoral cowards at Google got right to work making the change in their map products, […]
I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a fairly wild suggestion: if you spend years calling yourself a “free speech absolutist” while decrying “government censorship,” maybe one of your first moves after taking over the government shouldn’t be demanding prison sentences for journalists who report things you don’t like. But that’s […]
Germany’s history informs its current laws. That much is undeniable. But it doesn’t excuse the over-correction applied by legislators in hopes of heading off another Hitler. And it certainly doesn’t excuse prosecutors who are prosecuting “hate speech” in Germany. The country’s hate speech law has been problematic since its inception. Within days of its debut […]
Become a language expert with the Babble Language Learning deal. However you choose to access your 10K+ hours of online language education, you’ll be able to choose from 14 languages. Want to try your hand at all of them? Knock yourself out — you’ll have a lifetime to get it done. And you can tackle […]
Here’s a silly thing that happens sometimes: A powerful person says something obviously false, and everyone pretends not to notice. This is the plot of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where an entire kingdom maintains a collective delusion until one child (who, importantly, hasn’t yet learned the sophisticated art of lying to yourself) points out that […]
Suing Elon Musk and DOGE has finally led to at least one thing: the White House now finally defining Musk’s role in government. On Monday night, in the New Mexico v. Musk, it claimed him as a “an employee of the White House Office” with only “the ability to advise the President, or communicate the […]
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is MrWilson with a comment about the Trump administration suing Illinois over state laws around immigration enforcement: Republicans believe in states rights up until states start doing things Republicans don’t like. In second place, it’s Maura with thoughts on whether or not people voted for […]
Five Years Ago This week in 2020, copyright troll Richard Liebowitz dropped a case after suing on behalf of the wrong party and trying to swap plaintiffs, while copyright troll Strike 3 got shut down by a judge and hit with $40k in legal fees. We looked at how US antitrust enforcement was clearly broken, […]
I’m going to keep pounding the drum for personal liability against Musk and DOGE, partly to scare them into backing off from their unlawful seizure of our government, and eventually to compensate us for the immense harm they’ve caused. So far it doesn’t seem like anyone has tried to personally sue them for damages, but […]
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. In this week’s round-up of the latest news in online […]
Updated: make sure you read the update at the end of this story. Here’s a fun thing about corruption investigations: Usually when prosecutors uncover one quid pro quo, they don’t resolve it by offering an even bigger quid pro quo. And yet, that appears to be exactly what’s happening with NYC Mayor Eric Adams, who […]
Perhaps the only headline just as repeatable as “‘No Way to Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens” is this other banger from The Onion: Drugs Win Drug War. 50+ years of hardline prohibition have only resulted in better prices, better purity, and a slew of states legalizing or decriminalizing personal use amounts […]
When you’re playing with house money, playing one losing hand after another isn’t a sign of tenacity. It’s just a way of signaling you can’t be trusted with the house’s money. That’s why appeal after appeal from government entities don’t tend to indicate that they’re in the right. It just means they don’t care how […]
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