That Time The Former White House Photographer Was Threatened By A Copyright Troll Over His Own Public Domain Photo

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We’ve talked in the past about the fact that creative works of the federal government are in the public domain and cannot be covered by copyright. This is pretty explicit in the law. Back in 2009 we had called out the fact that the Obama White House was (usefully!) posting images taken by the White […]

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Third Culture Bakery Celebrates Loss Of 'Mochi Muffin' Trademark With Giveaway

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This will be a short one, but the reputation rehab project for Third Culture Bakery has begun. If you don’t recall that name, it’s a baker business in California that somehow convinced the USPTO to issue it a trademark for “mochi muffin“. Mochi is a rice paste popular in Japan for making small baked goods […]

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Belly Buttons And Napolean Poses: Google Play Flags Android Game For Inappropriate Content

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We’ve talked a great deal about the impossibility of getting AI or other automated systems to properly police content for moderation purposes. While all kinds of content fits into this generally, we can pick on the topic of nudity or sexual content to demonstrate the point. We have a slew of posts on the topic, […]

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Rep. Ken Buck's Irrational Spite Of Tech Companies May Have Screwed Up Another Antitrust Bill

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It’s kinda weird how the GOP’s pure hatred and spite towards tech companies, and their desire to exact maximum punishment rather than make good policy, keeps blowing up bills that might otherwise pass. We’ve talked plenty about how Republicans have effectively torpedoed the big tech antitrust bill by insisting that it must include provisions that […]

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1,000 Deaths In Custody Went Unreported Last Year Because US Justice System Doesn't Care About The People It Jails

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Tossing people into prison is throwing them away. They’re no longer real human beings. They’re just items being processed, moved through the system at whatever pace the system feels is appropriate. And once you’ve begun dehumanizing the people in your care, you can easily stop caring about them. A recent report [PDF] by the Government […]

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Best Selling Organic Chemistry Textbook Goes Open Access After Professor Regains The Copyright

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It's well known that textbook prices are generally high. That's in part because academic publishers effectively have a monopoly when it comes to standard texts. Very often, these are texts that students simply must have as part of their course, which means they will pay even exorbitant prices. One such book was John McMurry's Organic Chemistry. […]

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The FCC Finally Starts Taking Space Junk Seriously

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While technologies like low orbit satellite can help shore up broadband access, they come with their own additional challenges. One being that services like Space X’s Starlink have cause potentially unavoidable light pollution, harming scientific research. The other being the exponential growth in space detritus, aka space junk, that will make space navigation increasingly difficult. […]

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Appeals Court Bizarrely Redacts Qualified Immunity Decision To Hide How Compliant The Plaintiff Was

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This is truly strange. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals somehow decided it was a good idea to redact its decision finding (partially) in favor of a person whose rights were violated by DC Metro police officers. What could have been a straightforward recognition that cops exceeded their boundaries was, at least temporarily, presented misleadingly, […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: September 18th - 24th

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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, the Senate was moving ever closer to passing SESTA, as it held a hearing that showcased the issues with the bill. We wrote about the many reasons it was so terrible, and noted that it put just about every single online service at risk, but Senator Blumenthal seemed […]

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The Most Famous Blunder Of Content Moderation: Do NOT Quote The Princess Bride

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We’ve written stories about people having difficulty recognizing people joking around quoting movies. Sometimes it ends up ridiculously, like the guy who was arrested for quoting Fight Club and had to spend quite some time convincing people he wasn’t actually looking to shoot up an Apple store. We’ve also talked a lot about the impossibility […]

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Fifth Circuit Grants Immunity To Cop Who Decided To Violently Arrest Family That Called To Report A Crime

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If you want your rights violated, all you need to do is call a cop. If you want your rights upheld, you’ll probably want your rights to be violated in another federal circuit. We can learn something from this decision. But it won’t be things we want to learn. Instead, it shows how courts (especially […]

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5th Circuit Awards Immunity To Cop Who Decided A Suicidal Man Should Be Tased While He Had A Noose Around His Neck

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Oh, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Whatever will you do next? The qualified immunity complaints of Judge Don Willett notwithstanding, the Fifth Circuit is where you go if you want batshit decisions that run contrary to common sense, much less established constitutional law. If you need a decision that sides with the government — no […]

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New Data From The Bureau Of Prisons Indicates Bail Reform Won't Make Americans Less Safe

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Along with the call for law enforcement reforms following the inflection point created by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd, there has been increasing demand for bail reform. Bail reform isn’t new. It’s something activists and politicians have attempted to achieve for years. The problem with bail is that it exacerbates what’s […]

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Ohio Supreme Court Says There's Nothing Wrong With Cops Seizing A $31,000 Truck Over An $850 Criminal Offense

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In 2019, the Supreme Court of the United States resolved a long-running lawsuit over asset forfeiture. Indiana resident Tyson Timbs had his $42,000 Land Rover seized by law enforcement following his sale of $260 of heroin to an undercover officer. The basis of his challenge were the 8th and 14th Amendments of the US Constitution, […]

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Warner Brothers Discovery Merger Continues To Be A Shitshow For The Ages

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Remember when AT&T spent more than $200 billion to acquire Time Warner and DirecTV in the belief it would help the telecom dominate video advertising? Then remember when company leadership was so monumentally incompetent they had to run to the exits in terror? Good times. After AT&T’s gambit fell apart, the company returned to what […]

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Rockstar Tries To Bury 'GTA6' Leak With DMCAs, Streisands Them Instead

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At this point, we probably have enough stories about companies trying to bury leaked information or content that hasn’t been publicly released via DMCA takedowns that it warrants its own metatag. It’s both amazing and frustrating that this is still a tactic companies, particularly tech companies, think somehow works. It doesn’t. Once a leak is […]

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Security Experts Ask UK Government To Roll Back Old Computer Abuse Law That Harms Security Research

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The US government passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986, years before computers became something everyone had at home and carried around in their pockets every day. The CFAA had a purpose, but its value declined as computing advanced. The abuse it was written to address tended to take a backseat to abuses […]

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Hundreds More Cases Linked To Dirty NYPD Cops Dismissed By Prosecutors

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No matter how expensive law enforcement is, it can always get more expensive. Most agencies demand outsized portions of local budgets. That’s just the ground floor. Cops want more money and less accountability. Perpetually. The cost of keeping bad cops on the payroll is far, far more than their paychecks. Bad cops generate lawsuits, which […]

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EA Announces New Anti-Cheat Tech That Operates At The Kernel Level

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It seems anti-cheat technology is the new DRM. By that I mean that, with the gaming industry diving headfirst into the competitive online gaming scene, the concern over piracy has shifted into a concern over cheating making those online games less attractive to gamers. And because the anti-cheat tech that companies are using is starting […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: September 11th - 17th

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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Comcast sued Vermont to try to get out of having to expand its broadband network, while it was also continuing to insist its sneaky, misleading fees were a form of transparency. Charles Harder lost a defamation lawsuit against The Deal, while the infamous Monkey Selfie case reached a […]

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Florida Dept. Of Law Enforcement Edits Racial Bias Training To Be Less Stupid After Journalists Start Asking Questions

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Racism is a human problem. When that problem wears badges, carries guns, and has the power to deprive people of life and liberty, it’s a much more serious problem. Many US law enforcement agencies have racist roots, agencies formed for the purpose of catching escaped slaves to return them to their white owners. Not every […]

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5th Circuit Rewrites A Century Of 1st Amendment Law To Argue Internet Companies Have No Right To Moderate

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As far as I can tell, in the area the 5th Circuit appeals court has jurisdiction, websites no longer have any 1st Amendment editorial rights. That’s the result of what appears to me to be the single dumbest court ruling I’ve seen in a long, long time, and I know we’ve seen some crazy rulings […]

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UK Restaurant Threatens Other UK Restaurant Over Trademark On 'Taqueria'

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One of the cornerstones of trademark law in most countries is that you cannot trademark descriptive terms or words. The reason for this should be obvious. If I start a search engine and want to trademark my company name, calling it “Google” differentiates me from the rest of the market. But if I named my […]

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UK Pressing Forward With Online Safety Bill

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Well, this is unfortunate. We’ve already highlighted the many, many problems with the Online Safety Bill in the UK, which will be a massive attack on free speech, in that (among many other problems) it seeks to force websites to remove content even if it’s “lawful,” meaning that they will massively overcensor. As I’ve pointed […]

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Gavin Newsom Signs Hugely Problematic 'Transparency' Bill Into Law

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We’re still waiting to see if California Governor Gavin Newsom will sign the California Age Appropriate Design Code (AB 2273) into law, though all indications are that he will. However, he has now signed a different bad bill into law. He has happily signed what he calls the “nation-leading social media transparency measure” AB 587 […]

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Luka Doncic's Trademark Dispute With His Mother Is In Uncharted Trademark Territory

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Normally when we talk about trademark disputes, they tend to look fairly similar. Some entity is upset and/or sues over a trademark they have and we spend some time analyzing whether the trademark itself ever should have been granted, whether there is true customer confusion to worry about, whether the plaintiff is simply bullying, etc. […]

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The Absurdity Returns: Iceland Foods Appeals Invalidation Of Its Trademark

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I really cannot believe we’re back here. Way back in 2016 we wondered aloud who gets to trademark the word “Iceland”. Confused? Well, Iceland Foods is a grocery in the UK that’s been around since the 1970s. Iceland is also the name of a sovereign nation established in the early 1900s. In 2016, Iceland Foods […]

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Behind Washington's Antitrust Gambit

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Summer is nearly over, but, for many politicians, destructive tech regulations are always in season. Congress is back from recess, and the American Innovation and Choice Online Act (AICOA) is once more under consideration.  Senator Amy Klobuchar's antitrust pet project would crack down on the five biggest tech giants Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and […]

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The Extreme Weight Of Large Electric Vehicles Is Going To Be A Very Dangerous Problem

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The United States is already a global leader in traffic-related fatalities, with a thirty-percent jump in the last decade. That’s in contrast to every other developed country, which saw a decline. With that as backdrop, there’s some growing concerns about not just the safety of undercooked autonomous driving, but the extreme weight of larger electric […]

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Dissent Calls Out Appeals Court, New York Prosecutor For Denying A Prisoner His Right To Challenge His Conviction

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The operative word in the phrase “criminal justice system” isn’t “justice.” As much as we tip our hats to enshrined rights and ideals like “innocent until proven guilty,” the operative word remains “system.” And like any system, the justice system is mostly there to process those accused of crimes, rather than act as a check […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: September 4th - 10th

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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, Apple sort of threw its support behind net neutrality, while the CEOs of large ISPs and tech companies were absent from a round of public hearings, and Senators were blasting the FCC for weakening its definition of broadband. A court found the FBI’s malware deployments to be perfectly […]

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iPhone 14 Thankfully Accelerates The Shift To eSIM

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One of the more notable announcements at Apple’s event this week was that the iPhone 14 lineup won’t have a physical SIM tray to swap out SIM cards. Instead, the devices will embrace eSIM, a technology that's supposed to make it easier than ever to switch carriers without consumers needing to buy and install a […]

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Sony Claps Back At Microsoft Over Limited Promise For 'CoD' Cross-Platform Plans

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And here we are again, with more exclusivity drama coming out of the recent acquisitions Microsoft has undertaken in the video game space. After the announcements of the Zenimax/Bethesda and Activision Blizzard acquisitions, which are still going through review, Microsoft came out with a bunch of conflicting statements on what those buys would mean for […]

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Court: Yeah, No One's Going To Feel They're Free To Go When Cops Are Firing Bullets Through Their Front Door

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Consent can mean a lot of things when you’re accosted by cops. Law enforcement officers tend to feel it’s always voluntary, even when you’re sitting in an interrogation room for what the “good cop” refers to as a “friendly chat” meant to “clear everything up.” Whenever a seizure is challenged, if cops didn’t have the […]

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Copyright Troll In Taiwan Accused Of Uploading Movies Itself To Entice, Sue, And Threaten 'Pirates'

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It’s no secret that copyright trolls have been a scourge on many countries for some time now. The typical method of the copyright troll is quite simple. You buy or acquire the rights to some media, you watch for any of that media to show up on the internet illicitly, and then you attempt to […]

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Law Firm, Families Send Texas School Districts C&D Over 'God' Posters

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This keeps getting better and better. We have been discussing a Texas law requiring that a school district display any posters that are donated by outside parties, so long as they follow a couple of defined rules. Those rules are that the posters can display no words beyond “In God We Trust”, that it must […]

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Can We Save A Truly Global Internet?

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As we’ve been noting for years now, the global internet is at risk. China walled off its part of the internet early on, and other authoritarian regimes followed suit, with Russia and Iran taking the lead. But, at the same time, we’ve seen other regimes start to layer on their own regulatory regimes that effectively […]

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Your Law Enforcement Dollars At Work: Deputies Drive 500 Miles To Seize A Young Girl's Pet Goat

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I’m not going to open this by stating I assume the Shasta County (CA) Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) has better things to do with its time. I know it has better things to do with its time. I’m also not going to pretend the SCSO didn’t have enough personnel to deal with local crime while sending […]

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New Jersey Supreme Court Says Hot Pursuit Warrant Exception Doesn't Apply To Traffic Offenses

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Cops love a good warrant exception. Anything that allows them to bypass the Constitution is considered a pretty good deal (I mean… at least for cops). Good faith? Love it. Plain view? Fantastic. Odor of marijuana? Your car is getting tossed, buddy. Exigent circumstances? Don’t even know what the word means, but let’s get it […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: August 28th - September 3rd

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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, experts were weighing in on how SESTA would harm trafficking victims, while the California case against Backpage moved forward over money laundering claims. A look at the original comments sent to the FCC showed that 98.5% of them were opposed to killing net neutrality rules, and even many […]

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Ubisoft Backtracks After Backlash To Make DLC Permanently Downloadable Despite Server Shutdown

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You may recall that a few weeks back we discussed Ubisoft’s decision to shutdown game servers for several titles, including major AAA titles like Assassin’s Creed 3 and Far Cry 3. While server shutdowns are the norm after some period of time, as is the loss of certain online gaming features, notable in Ubisoft’s announcement […]

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Appeals Court: No Immunity For School Cop Who Assaulted A Student Over Perceived Disrespect

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Putting cops in schools is still a bad idea. It turns regular disciplinary problems — ones handled for decades by administrators, teachers, and parents — into police matters, subjecting students to the whims of armed officers who have been trained to react with violence to nearly any misbehavior. That’s what happened in this case [PDF] […]

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Ohio Court Says Distance Learning 'Room Scans' Violate The Fourth Amendment

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The COVID pandemic changed the way America does business. And that includes the educational business. Many schools are publicly funded but those public funds are used to purchase intrusive surveillance tools for the sole purpose of preventing distance learners from somehow “cheating” on their own education. Never mind the fact that cheating doesn’t guarantee success. […]

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Texas School Violates Texas Law By Refusing To Display 'In God We Trust' Poster Written In Arabic

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Well, that was quick. We had recently discussed an athiest activist who had planned to have some fun pointing out the veiled nature of a Texas law that requires a school to display any donated poster featuring the phrase “In God We Trust” along with the American and Texas flags. How was the fun to […]

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France Uses AI To Find Swimming Pools For Tax Purposes

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As humanity marches on towards the expansion of artificial intelligence, we are finding many ways to use this technology while waiting for it to get smart enough to kill us all and bring on the Age of the Robot. Platforms have attempted to solve the impossibility of moderation at scale by employing AI, with no […]

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Alabama Town Disbands Police Force After Racist Text Message Surfaces

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Were you ever so terrible at your job that your entire place of employment was put out of business? Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that none of you are that inept or unprofessional. But it only takes one bad apple to result in the tossing of the whole bunch, provided that the […]

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