Twitter Tumbleweed Watch

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I just want to share some back-of-the-envelope math. I'm increasingly convinced that Twitter (or at least the network neighborhoods that comprise my Twitter experience) is becoming a ghost town. Here's why: A couple months ago, I spoke with Nancy Scola for her story about why DC-types can't seem to quit Twitter. One of my comments […]

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DoNotPay's CEO Appears To Modify Donation Receipt After Being Called Out On Unfulfilled Promise

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We’ve written a few stories lately about DoNotPay, the “robot lawyer” service whose gimmick of an automated AI-driven tool that would help users deal with challenges like getting out of parking tickets or cancelling subscription services that are difficult to get out of sounds like a really enticing idea. But there have long been questions […]

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AI Lawyer Has A Sad: Bans People From Testing Its Lawyering After Being Mocked

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Well, a lot has happened since I first started looking into the “World's First Robot Lawyer,” from DoNotPay. First, Joshua Browder, DoNotPay’s CEO, reached out to me via direct message (DM) and told me he would get me access to my documents by 2 PM the next day - Tuesday, January 24th - saying that […]

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YouTube's New Content Policies Around Mature Content Results In Chaos

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You will recall that we spent a great deal of words and posts in 2021 discussing the problems Twitch created for itself by deciding to suddenly change the way it enforces copyright infringement claims for its streaming community, mostly without informing that community of those changes and remaining extremely opaque and vague about the standards […]

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Facebook And Instagram Agree To Restore Trump's Accounts

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In a move that shouldn’t really surprise anyone, Meta has said that both Facebook and Instagram will be restoring Donald Trump’s accounts, which it had “indefinitely” suspended in the wake of the January 6th insurrection two years ago. As you’ll recall, after that suspension, the Oversight Board had agreed to hear Trump’s appeal of the […]

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Companies that change the game can change the world

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How can companies tackle big societal problems while creating value? Three PwC authors show how a select group of companies--dubbed game changers--can harness powerful technologies and marry them to a disruptive business model. They demonstrate how companies in the healthcare sector are already using exponential technologies such as AI and big data, which scale rapidly, to attack the thorniest healthcare challenges.

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DirecTV Kicks Right Wing Newsmax Off Its Cable Lineup, Prompting More Baseless GOP Whining About 'Censorship'

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You might recall how struggling satellite TV network DirecTV recently kicked right wing propaganda channel OANN off of its cable lineup because it simply wasn’t profitable. That prompted weeks of performative hysteria by the GOP about how they were being “unfairly censored,” even prompting involvement of numerous Republican AGs who apparently had nothing better to […]

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Square Enix Gets Twitch Strike For Streaming 'Forspoken' During Embargo, Thanks To Time Zones

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One of the more annoying aspects of how the video game industry conducts its relationships with gaming journalists is the concept of embargos. The idea goes something like this: publishers will furnish journalists and/or game streamers with advanced copies of games, but include an embargo on any reporting, reviews, or streaming those games prior to […]

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If The AI Lawyer You Built Can't Keep You Out Of Jail, Maybe It's Time To Hire A Real Lawyer

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So, we’ve written a few times about DoNotPay, the supposedly AI-powered “robot lawyer” that was initially designed to help you contest parking tickets but then expanded to helping (usefully) with a bunch of consumer annoyances, like cancelling accounts, obtaining owed refunds, and the like. But it’s also got some shadiness in its past, like the […]

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Rockstar Releases Same Buggy, Broken 'GTA Trilogy' Game To Steam But On Sale!

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Over a year ago, we discussed an annoying and strange set of actions taken by Rockstar and Take2, the companies behind the popular Grand Theft Auto series of games. Two actions were taken in sequence by those companies that were clearly related. First was that they worked to get a fan-made GTA 4 mod taken […]

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The World's First Robot Lawyer Isn't A Lawyer, And I'm Not Sure It's Even A Robot

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Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread. I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay and its founder/CEO Joshua Browder for the past couple of days, and I’ve had a lot of people defending the service, saying that it could be a real boon to those who can’t otherwise […]

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Nevada's Top Court Says Cops Can Now Be Sued For Rights Violations, Won't Have Access To Qualified Immunity

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Cops in Nevada had better start behaving. The state’s Supreme Court has handed down a ruling that not only guarantees residents the right to sue under state law, but won’t allow officers to easily escape lawsuits by asking for qualified immunity. Here’s the background of the case, as summarized by Nick Sibilla at Forbes: What […]

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Communities Are Bonding Together In Vermont To Meaningfully Challenge Telecom Monopolies

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We’ve long covered the trend of communities building their own broadband networks. It’s a movement directly created by decades of anger at telecom market failure, poor service, and monopolization. But since 2015, Vermont officials have taken things to an entirely different level. In 2015, the state legislature greenlit the creation of Communications Utilities Districts (CUDs). […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: January 15th - 21st

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Five Years Ago This week in 2018, Rep. Marsha Blackburn was pushing a fake net neutrality law, while the Senate push to save net neutrality was one vote short, and lawsuits were lining up against the FCC over the repeal: first from 22 state Attorneys General, and then from Mozilla and consumer groups like Public […]

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Another Israeli Exploit Developer Caught Selling Malware To Blacklisted Countries

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Maybe it’s time for the Israeli government to put a moratorium on Mossad-based startups. Israeli intelligence services have been the petri dishes for a particular strain of techbro — ones who have the smarts to create zero-click exploits but none of the common sense needed to cull baddies from their customer lists. The Israeli government […]

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Starlink Is 'Forced' To Finally Start Caring About The System's Light Pollution And Harm To Scientific Research

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For years, scientific researchers have warned that Elon Musk's Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband constellations are harming scientific research. Simply put, the light pollution Musk claimed would never happen in the first place is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated. Musk […]

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Dear Supreme Court: Judicial Curtailing Of Section 230 Will Make The Internet Worse

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Every amicus brief the Copia Institute has filed has been important. But the brief filed today is one where all the marbles are at stake. Up before the Supreme Court is Gonzalez v. Google, a case that puts Section 230 squarely in the sights of the Court, including its justices who have previously expressed serious […]

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Developers Of Stadia Exclusive Hide Game Inside Other Steam Game To Preserve It

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This is one of those interesting times when multiple topics we regularly cover here at Techdirt converge. Readers here will recall all the posts we did on the rollout and eventual demise of Google’s Stadia product. Stadia was primarily to be a game streaming service for existing games. That being said, the service also signed […]

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Pittsburgh PD Decides It Can Ignore Ordinance Banning Traffic Stops For Minor Plate Violations

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It’s hard to find people who care less about the law than law enforcement. Most traffic stops are pretextual. A real (or fake!) moving violation is an opportunity to go fishing for bigger fish. Conversations with drivers move from the standard requests for licenses and registrations towards anything that might broaden the scope of the […]

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UK's Online Safety Bill Gets Ridiculous: Includes Jail Time For Tech CEOs

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For years now we’ve written about the problems of the UK’s latest (in a long line) of attempts to “Disneyfy” the internet with its Online Safety Bill. While the bill had faced some hurdles along the way, made worse by the ever-rotating Prime Minister position last year, there was talk last week that some more […]

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Privacy Advocates Continue To Warn That Modern Toys Are A Privacy Mess

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A decade or so ago there was a wave of warnings by privacy advocates about how modern toys had become major surveillance devices. Makers of voice recognition toys in particular had a nasty habit, researchers warned, of collecting everything your child says, poorly “anonymizing” the data (a meaningless term), then failing to secure that data […]

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Louisiana Sheriff's Office Illegally Destroyed Misconduct Records For More Than A Decade

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Shirking accountability is a standard law enforcement pattern and practice. Those enforcing laws often feel they’re not obligated to follow the law. This attitude is internalized in every sense of the word. It’s not just blowing off outside oversight. The police refuse to police themselves, allowing good officers to go bad and bad officers to […]

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There's Still Time To Join The Public Domain Game Jam!

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At the beginning of the year, we launched the latest edition of our public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1927! We’re calling on game designers of all stripes to build analog or digital games based on the works that have entered the public domain this year, including: Check out Duke’s Public Domain Day articleorCopyright […]

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Techdirt 2022: The Stats

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Every year, a little after New Years, I try to do a post looking at the previous years results on Techdirt, what people were interested in, what commenters were rated highly and whatnot. I always wait until after New Years (unlike some other sites!) to make sure I have the full year’s data. This year, […]

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Latest Twitter Problem: Its API Has Been Down And No Info Has Been Provided

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Last night, I saw a bunch of folks complaining that the various apps through which they accessed Twitter, were no longer working. People using Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, Tweeten, and others all noted that they were blocked from actually using those services to read Twitter. It quickly became clear that Twitter’s API was completely down. There was […]

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Luka Doncic's Trademark Dispute With His Mother Settles

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Over the summer, we discussed what looked to be a fascinating trademark dispute between NBA superstar Luka Doncic and his mother, Mirjam Poterbin. As a quick summary, Doncic consented to have trademarks referring to him registered to his mother, as he’d become a star overseas at age 13. That itself isn’t all that odd. But […]

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NYPD Says Kids Don't Need Lawyers While Fighting Reforms Targeting Interrogations Of Minors

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Leave it to the NYPD to suggest some people’s rights just don’t matter. The NYPD has resisted pretty much every reform effort shoved in its general direction and this one — which would affect questioning of juvenile detainees — is being resisted as well. (“Stop resisting!” only works in one direction, unfortunately.) Here’s C.J. Ciaramella […]

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WotC Makes Major Changes To D&D OGL License, Sends Community Into A Frenzy

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If you go back and review Techdirt stories about Dungeons & Dragons, the beloved tabletop fantasy roleplaying game, you will see that most of them focus on the stupidity of moral panics, in which D&D is often swept up. This post is decidedly different. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) recently announced there would be changes […]

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One More Year Until Steamboat Willie's Mickey Mouse Enters The Public Domain: Will Mickey Really Be Free?

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As you’re probably aware, now that it’s January, we’re running our annual public domain game jam, for games based on works from 1927. This is the 5th year we’ve done this, ever since the public domain (finally) returned to the US after decades with no works ever reaching the public domain, due to never-ending copyright […]

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FF16 Dev's Response To Exclusivity Complaints: 'Just Buy A PS5!

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We’ve been talking a lot about video game exclusivity over the past couple of years. The sudden uptick in concern over a longstanding practice that ebbs and flows with time is largely related to industry consolidation of studios coming out of the COVID pandemic. In times of financial stress in an industry, that is often […]

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Afroman Turns Security Footage Of Bullshit Raid Of His Home Into Viral Rap Video Hit

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Rap artist Afroman’s biggest hit is “Because I Got High,” a track that details how his best intentions were undone by his weed intake. So, one might reasonably suspect marijuana might be found at his residence. But there’s very little that’s reasonable about what happened to Afroman four months ago. Earlier this year, he became […]

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Random Musk Fan Tries To Get Trademarks On Tesla's Behalf, Which Is Not How This Works

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It’s amazing how some people think trademarks work. In the last week or so, several media outlets briefly went into a frenzy over a trademark application that was filed for Tesla’s yet to be released Cybertruck specifically for vehicle categories other than “on land” vehicles. Notably, Elon Musk made some questionable claims that the Cybertruck, […]

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Mushrooms and other fashion must-haves

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Labs, rather than fields, will be the new source of materials for sustainable fashion. Big name brands are collaborating with startups to use everything from bacteria and fungi to seaweed to produce the fabrics of the future for an industry that could be worth US$2.2 billion by 2026.

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Independent Reporting Shows Cops Are Still Killing People At An Alarming Rate

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Law enforcement agencies have no interest in tracking how often officers kill people. Despite all the talk about police reform, very few states require accurate reporting on deadly force deployments. Even the DOJ doesn’t care. The federal face of law enforcement has been required to compile this data for over two decades. It has yet […]

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AI Lawyer Will Represent Client In Traffic Court, Threatening Nonexistent Market For Traffic Court Lawyers

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It’s the rise of the lawbots, something not even foretold by Futurama, which allowed a “simple hyper-chicken from a backwoods asteroid” to perform much of the series’ criminal justice work. AI-in-everything is on the rise. And that includes lowball court cases, as Lauren Leffer reports for Gizmodo. An AI-based legal advisor is set to play […]

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Oregon Supreme Court Applies SCOTUS Ruling Retroactively, Overturns All Non-Unanimous Jury Convictions

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In April 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a ruling that made things clear to the two states (Oregon and Louisiana) still inexplicably allowing people to be convicted by non-unanimous juries: to continue to do so violated the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused. The only two states affected applied the ruling, […]

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Copyright Has Kept De La Soul's Classic 1st Album Off Streaming Until Now

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For years, we’ve written about the copyright nonsense around sampling in hip hop music, and how it was treated with very, very different rules than things like cover songs and paying homage to previous artists in other forms of music. As we’ve mentioned for over a decade, filmmaker Kembrew McCleod did a full (fascinating) exploration […]

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DidYouKnowGaming Gets Video Nintendo DMCA'd Restored

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Back in December we discussed how Nintendo got a video on the DidYouKnowGaming YouTube channel taken down via a DMCA notice. While Nintendo is notorious for being an intellectual property bully and enforcing what it thinks are its rights in as draconian a manner as possible, what stood out about this particular story is that […]

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Congressman Moonlighting As A Master's Degree Student In AI

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We’ve spent years criticizing many politicians, especially in Congress, for trying to regulate technology that they don’t seem to understand and often falling prey to wild moral panics about the technology. That’s why it’s quite refreshing to see this story that the Washington Post had in the waning days of 2022 about Rep. Don Beyer, […]

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Capcom Kneecaps Fan Remakes Of 'Resident Evil' Games The Company Isn't Planning To Remake

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You might think that perusing Techdirt posts on the topic of fan-made video games using the IP of others would yield you only one kind of story in which threats and lawsuits abound. Fortunately, that’s something of a misconception. While there are indeed plenty of stories of that nature, there are also examples of studios […]

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Grab A US Military Device Full Of Biometric Data For Only $68 At Ebay! [Sponsored]

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The War on Terror will never end. It’s a multi-billion dollar boondoggle that ensures we will always live in fear, even if we realistically have nothing to fear. The war we waged for the hearts and minds of Afghanistan residents lasted long enough that soldiers participating in another US losing effort weren’t even born when […]

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Successful Evidence Suppression Motion Shows Cops Think Pretty Much Everything Is 'Suspicious'

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Law enforcement officers really enjoy performing warrantless searches. To get to that point, however, they need to be in certain places (airports, roadsides) and have one certain thing: “reasonable suspicion.” But what seems “reasonable” to someone like you or me is nowhere near what seems “reasonable” to a law enforcement officer. For instance, behold the […]

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Gigi Sohn's FCC Future Looking Brighter As Biden Plans Renomination

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Several sources familiar with the nomination process tell me that the Biden Administration is not only planning to re-nominate Gigi Sohn to the FCC in 2023, but that Sohn still has the full support of the Administration and of Biden personally. At points in 2022 it wasn’t entirely clear that team Biden had the political […]

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Gaming Like It's 1927: The Game Jam Has Begun!

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Sign up for the Public Domain Game Jam on itch.io  A new year has begun, and with it, a new edition of our annual public domain game jam! This year, it’s Gaming Like It’s 1927! There’s a host of exciting new works that just entered the public domain in the US, and we’re calling on […]

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Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of 2022 At Techdirt

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Happy new year, everyone! 2022 has ended, and that means it’s time for a look at the funniest and most insightful comments of the year at Techdirt. As usual, we’ll be honoring the top three winners in both categories, as well as taking a rare look at the list of comments that performed best when […]

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This Week In Techdirt History: December 25th - 31st

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Five Years Ago This week in 2017, people were still discovering that their dead loved ones had been used for fake comments supporting the death of net neutrality, while New York State was considering its own net neutrality law, and we wondered if Verizon would give back the taxpayer subsidies it got under Title II. […]

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