Stone Brewing, Sycamore Brewing Now Battling It Out Over Preliminary Injunction
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Now this one surprises me. We’ve been talking recently about a trademark infringement suit brought against Stone Brewing by Sycamore Brewing, a much smaller brewery. Fresh off a massive win against Molson Coors over its decision to alter the branding for Key Stone beer to feature the word “stone” in very big letters, Stone Brewing […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Apr-2022
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How Far We've Come: How One Musician Became A Star On TikTok
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There was recently an absolutely fascinating episode of the NPR podcast Planet Money, all about how Tai Verdes became a pop star. It actually appears to be a rerun of a different podcast, called Switched On Pop, which originally ran back in December of last year, but I first heard it on Planet Money. The […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 30-Apr-2022
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Wisconsin Town Lawyer Lies To Journalist, Sues Activist Who Pointed Out His Lie
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Bogus lawsuits are a form of bullying. (Hence the need for a federal anti-SLAPP law.) Some lawsuits are merely frivolous, filed by people who have no idea how the law works. Others, like this one, are filed solely to silence critics and remind them who actually has the power in this relationship. That’s what has […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 29-Apr-2022
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Blizzard's Plan To Combat Emulation Of New 'Diablo' Title: Just Release It On PC
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Over the past few years, we’ve seen a flurry of activity centering around video game emulation. Much of that has been focused on how a few companies, namely Nintendo, have reacted to emulation sites. Almost universally, these companies see emulation as a threat and try to get them shut down. Often times those same companies […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 29-Apr-2022
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Sega Does A Nintendo: Company Pulls Older Sonic Games Ahead Of Anthology Release
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I’ll admit I’ve written some posts of praise here for Sega, usually due to the company’s more lax attitude on fan-made creations alongside the company’s habit of making fun of Nintendo for going the opposite route. But taking a look at the wider number of posts we’ve done involving Sega, the company is by and […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 28-Apr-2022
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Field Drug Test Turns Diesel To Meth, Takes Away Six Weeks Of The Truck Driver's Freedom
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Field drug tests are awful. They’re insanely unreliable. Sure, sometimes the tests are correct: the suspected drugs are actual drugs. Broken clocks and all that. But they’re so often wrong they should be considered as scientifically sound as hiring a full-time psychic and promoting them to detective. Here’s a short list of things drug field […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 28-Apr-2022
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Yes, Of Course Drug Patents Drive Up Drug Prices; Why Is This Even Up For Debate?
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The idea that there is a link between the exclusivity period on patents and higher drug prices is about as noncontroversial as a view can be. It is the easy question on an ECON 101 exam on monopolies, supply and demand. Yet, somehow, this has come under attack thanks to big PhRMA and their minions. […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Apr-2022
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Paradox Fully Embraces Fan-Games With Developer Affiliate Program
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When it comes to fan-created video games utilizing established IP, the vast majority of instances tend to result in a narrow set of responses from the original creators or publishers. The Nintendo route is to go fully nuclear as often and immediately as possible, destroying any and all attempts. Take 2 follows a similar path, […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 27-Apr-2022
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EA Streisands Leaked 'Skate 4' Footage Into The News
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It really feels like we shouldn’t have to have discussions about how companies should handle information that leaks onto the internet in 2022. Or, to be more precise, we should at least not have to remind them that attempting to re-bottle the leak-genie just isn’t going to work and will almost certainly have the opposite, […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 26-Apr-2022
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Vietnam Government Pushing Law That Would Require Social Media Companies To Remove 'Illegal' Content Within 24 Hours
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Feeling the crunch of this economy? Why not leverage government power to create a sustainable revenue stream? That’s the plan in Vietnam, a country not unfamiliar with regular deployments of censorial efforts by the government. The Vietnamese government keeps the internet — and its citizens — on a short leash. Only so much free expression […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 26-Apr-2022
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This Week In Techdirt History: April 17th - 23rd
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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, new CIA director Mike Pompeo went on a hypocritical rant about Wikileaks and free speech, the administration killed Open.Gov, and the DOJ boss was railing against encryption. Tech companies were fighting against Trump’s travel bans in two different courts, and Roku was getting into the lobbying world to […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 24-Apr-2022
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Stone Brewing Forced To Cover Up 'Keep It Juicy' On Trade Dress As Lawsuit Kicks Off
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Well, this one is moving fast. It was only a few days ago that we talked about a lawsuit filed by Sycamore Brewing against Stone Brewing for what sure looked like a pretty blatant ripoff of the former’s trademarked slogan, “Keep It Juicy”. What made this story notable was that Stone Brewing is just coming […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 23-Apr-2022
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Appeals Court Reminds Cops They Can't Create Their Own Exigency To Justify A Warrantless Search
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A case involving a DUI stop that somehow morphed into the search of a passenger has earned a couple of cops a rebuke from the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and a couple of handy reminders in a precedential decision that will make it that much tougher for law enforcement officers in this circuit to […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 23-Apr-2022
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Angry Joe Threatens To Sue CBS Over Continued DMCA Claims On 'Halo' TV Show Review Videos
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Angry Joe, real name Jose Antonio Vargas, has appeared on our pages several times in the past. In addition to being a famed YouTube creator with a huge following, Angry Joe also regularly rages against the DMCA machine. Whether he’s criticizing Twitch’s takedown policies, swearing off Nintendo for being bullies, or battling CBS over television […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Apr-2022
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DOJ Agrees To Return Cash Seized From Company Transporting Proceeds From Sales Of Legal Weed
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In February, cash transport business Empyreal Logistics sued the DOJ and a California sheriff for the lifting of nearly $1.2 million in cash from its drivers during two traffic stops. Empyreal, which notes that it follows all federal guidance for the transport of cash generated by legal marijuana sales, was hit twice in California, resulting […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 22-Apr-2022
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'Cristal' Champagne People Opposing Trademark For Oregon Winery's 'Crystal Visions' Wine
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What is it about producing champagne that turns you into a trademark bullying jackwagon? Readers here will know that the Comite Champagne, or CIVC, is purely a trademark bully for champagne producers out of France, policing the rest of the world to ensure nobody dares call anything not produced by one of its constituents anything […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 21-Apr-2022
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Court Tells Cops That Legally Owned Guns Are Evidence Of Nothing, Order Return Of Seized Money
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The opportunistic actions of drug warriors has often been encouraged by courts, which have been willing to grant considerable leeway to law enforcement, even when their articulated suspicion is contradictory or could be read to cover nearly 100% of the American public. (And when that fails, there’s always the ever-popular “odor of marijuana” claim which […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 21-Apr-2022
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Honda Just Declared War On 3D Printer Makers Community
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It’s been a bit since we’ve talked about 3D printing, which I mostly took to mean that the world realized that there was no massive threat here and that we all collectively decided to make this a non-controversy. Early on there was some noise made about larger companies viewing the ability for the public to […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 20-Apr-2022
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Telecom Lobby Targets Senators Manchin, Kelly, And Cortez Masto In Bid To Scuttle Sohn FCC Nomination
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We just got done noting how the telecom industry has been pushing misleading editorials in Arizona to derail the nomination of popular and well-qualified telecom and telecom reformer Gigi Sohn to the FCC. The editorials are full of false claims that Sohn has a terrible track record on media diversity, shoveled by organizations with longstanding […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 20-Apr-2022
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New Study Shows Section 230 Protects Small Companies Much More Than Big Ones
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We’ve tried to make this point many times before. A few months back I wrote a detailed post in response to a famed economist who kept insisting that repealing Section 230 would hurt Facebook, that the reality is the opposite. If you understand the mechanisms by which Section 230 actually works, the key is that […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Apr-2022
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DOJ Hits Springfield, Massachusetts Police Department With Wide-Ranging Consent Decree
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Praise be to the various gods! (Shout out to Tiamat!) The DOJ is back in the busting up local PD business, something it largely abandoned while Donald “A Police State Is The Best State” Trump held office for a single term. The DOJ Civil Rights Division was relegated to the furthest back burner during Trump’s […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 19-Apr-2022
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Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Nude On A Yellow Sofa
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Here we are at the last 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, Dreaming The Cave, Mr. Top Hat Doesn't Give A Damn!, and A Drunk Man Looks at […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 17-Apr-2022
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Cops Lie: Falsifying Traffic Stops Edition
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Cops lie. It’s a statement more factual than statements cops — the people given the biggest benefit of a doubt in “your word against mine” courtroom showdowns — tend to make when testifying or filling out reports. Here’s the most recent example of cops lying. And it’s only one of several. A Missouri State Highway […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Apr-2022
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Minneapolis Limits No-Knock Warrants As Prosecutors Decide Cop Can't Be Charged For Killing Amir Locke During A No-Knock Raid
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On February 2, 2022, Minneapolis PD officers executed a no-knock raid on an apartment. Officer Mark Hanneman then summarily executed Amir Locke within seconds of his entry into the apartment. The Minneapolis PD suggested Amir Locke had plenty of time to realize police officers were in the apartment. The body cam time stamps showed something […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 16-Apr-2022
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Fifth Circuit Says No Immunity For Officer Who Framed A Man By Claiming The Man Framed Himself
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This reads like a film script and plays like a farce. It is one of the most insane decisions you’ll ever read. And it’s not because the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court did something insane. It’s because everything leading up to the decision plays out like a Coen brothers crime film and keeps escalating from there. […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 15-Apr-2022
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It's Still Stupidly, Ridiculously Difficult To Buy A 'Dumb' TV
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Historically, “smart” TVs aren’t always particularly smart. They’ve routinely been shown to have lax security and privacy standards. They also routinely feature embedded OS systems that don’t age well, aren’t always well designed, don’t perform particularly well over time, are slathered with ads, and are usually worse than most third-party game streaming devices or video […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 15-Apr-2022
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The Constitutional Challenge To FOSTA Hits A Roadblock As District Court Again Ignores Its Chilling Effects
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The constitutional challenge to FOSTA suffered a significant setback late last month when the district court granted the government’s motion for summary judgment, effectively dismissing the challenge. If not appealed (though it sounds like it may be), it would be the end of the road for it. What is most dismaying about the decision - […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 14-Apr-2022
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Eleventh Circuit Strips Immunity From Deputy Who Saved A War Vet From Self-Harm By Breaking His Neck
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One of the many symptoms of the many, deep-rooted, law enforcement sicknesses is how often officers decide to “help” people by harming them. That’s why some cities have chosen to redirect mental health issues to mental health professionals, rather than to armed officers who view anything they can’t immediately address with yelling and pointing of […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 14-Apr-2022
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Techdirt Podcast Episode 317: Algorithmic Destruction
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 13-Apr-2022
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Depressing: Ed Sheeren Films Songwriting Sessions Due To All The Copyright Suits
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Ed Sheeren 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 Sheeren has settled such disputes out of court before, he […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 13-Apr-2022
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Stone Brewing, Fresh Off Trademark Win Against Keystone, Sued For Blatant TM Infringement
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Apr-2022
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U.S. Buries Fact It Gave Elon Musk $3 Million To Send Satellite Dishes To Ukraine
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 12-Apr-2022
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Game Jam Winner Spotlight: A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle DECODED
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We’re nearing the end of 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, Dreaming The Cave, and Mr. Top Hat Doesn't Give A Damn! Today, we move on to the winner […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 10-Apr-2022
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WatchGuard Plays The Ostrich, Patches Exploit Without Informing Customers
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Firewalls. You know, boring old IT stuff. So why are we talking about them at Techdirt? Well, one thing we regularly talk about is how companies tend to respond to exploits and breaches that are uncovered and, far too often, how horrifically bad they are in those responses. Often times, breaches and exploits end up […]
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posted at: 12:01am on 09-Apr-2022
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Checking In On Twitter's Attempt To Move To Protocols Instead Of Platforms
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With Elon Musk now Twitter’s largest shareholder, and joining the company’s board, there have been some (perhaps reasonable) concerns about the influence he would have on the platform — mainly based on his childlike understanding of free speech, in which speech that he likes should obviously be allowed, and speech that he dislikes should obviously […]
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posted at: 12:01am on 09-Apr-2022
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Bar Security Camera Exposes Off-Duty Officers' Lies About Their Unprovoked Assault Of Another Bar Patron
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Cops lie. That’s just the way it is. It shouldn’t be this way. Cops are given an incredible amount of power and expected to handle it responsibly. But when they start doing things they shouldn’t be doing, out come the lies. Accountability may as well be a foreign term of legal art because cops understand […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 08-Apr-2022
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Shifting Sands In The Tech Sector
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In the U.S., politicians are itching to disrupt Big Tech. In January, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, introduced by Senator Klobuchar in October 2021, which would prohibit large technology companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google from preferencing their own products and services. Senator Grassley celebrated the bill […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 08-Apr-2022
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UFO Magazine Sues Showtime Networks Over 'UFO' Series For Trademark Infringement
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Long, long time readers here may remember that I have had something of a fascination in the past with subjects such as conspiracy theories and UFOs. Not that I’m much of a believer in the former, mind you, but I consider these forays into the occult to be wildly interesting on a variety of levels. […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 07-Apr-2022
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Vosburg V. Putney, Leg Amputations, And The Overly-Censorial DMCA Notice
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There was a case I remember reading in law school, about intentional torts, that stuck with me, for reasons that will probably be obvious once I tell you about it here. But first a word about what we mean by the policy building block “intentional torts.” In general, torts are laws that help people be […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 07-Apr-2022
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Monster Energy Suing A Fishing Gear Company Claiming Customer Confusion
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Normally when discussing a company that has appeared on our pages before for being a trademark bully, I like to list off and link to a few examples. Monster Energy, the company that makes fizzy caffeine bombs in liquid form, makes that all very silly. You need only look at all the stories we’ve done […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 06-Apr-2022
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Clearview AI Walks Back Earlier Claims, Is Now Willing To Sell Its Sketchy Product To Anyone With Money And A Pulse
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If only Clearview had managed to remain under the radar. If it had, it could have been the stealth privacy assassin multiple entities (both public and private) desire, but are unwilling to admit to using publicly. Even the rest of the facial recognition tech field wants nothing to do with Clearview and the billions of […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 06-Apr-2022
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Top Court In Massachusetts Says Cops Unconstitutionally Obtained Cell Tower Dumps In Homicide Case
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The courts in Massachusetts continue to set the standard for privacy protections. They have handed down several rulings that have expanded residents’ reasonable expectations beyond the baseline set by the Fourth Amendment and federal court rulings. The courts in the state erected a warrant requirement for cell site location data four years ahead of the […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 05-Apr-2022
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Notorious Human Rights Abuser Is One Of NSO Group's Main Investors
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It’s more difficult to choose your investors than your customers. Maybe this isn’t entirely NSO’s fault, but it certainly helped make it easier to sell powerful zero-click exploits to the governments most likely to abuse them. Here’s Kaye Wiggins and Mehul Srivastava for the Financial Times. An Abu Dhabi state-owned investment company has been an […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 05-Apr-2022
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Game Jam Winner Spotlight: Mr. Top Hat Doesn't Give A Damn!
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 03-Apr-2022
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DC Federal Court Says Lying Amtrak Officer Can't Have His Inconsistent Statements And His Evidence Too
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 02-Apr-2022
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Yes, It's Difficult To Change Cop Culture, But Let's Not Pretend It's Too Expensive Or Impossible To Achieve Quickly
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 02-Apr-2022
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Why The Snippet Tax In The EU Copyright Directive Is Pointless And Doomed To Fail
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 01-Apr-2022
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Policy Building Blocks: What Do We Mean When We Talk About Liability
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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 […]
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posted at: 12:00am on 01-Apr-2022
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