We Stand On The Precipice Of World War III, But, Sure, Let's All Talk About The DMCA And 'Standard Technical Measures'

A whole bunch of people wasted Tuesday talking about technical measures. What technical measures, you might ask? The ones vaguely alluded to in the DMCA. Subsection 512(i) conditions the safe harbors on platforms (more formally called "Online...

Phoenix City Council Says PD Can Have Surveillance Drones Without Any Policy In Place Because Some Officers Recently Got Shot

The Phoenix Police Department wants drones and it wants them now. And, according to this report by the Phoenix New Times, it's going to get them. After several hours of debate and spirited public response during the Phoenix City Council...

Turns Out It Was Actually The Missouri Governor's Office Who Was Responsible For The Security Vulnerability Exposing Teacher Data

The story of Missouri's Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) leaking the Social Security Numbers of hundreds of thousands of current and former teachers and administrators could have been a relatively small story of yet another...

New Right To Repair Bill Targets Obnoxious Auto Industry Behavior

It's just no fun being a giant company aspiring to monopolize repair to boost revenues. On both the state and federal level, a flood of new bills are targeting companies' efforts to monopolize repair by implementing obnoxious DRM, making...

Why It Makes No Sense To Call Websites 'Common Carriers'

There's been an unfortunate movement in the US over the last few years to try to argue that social media should be considered "common carriers." Mostly this is coming (somewhat ironically) from the Trumpian wing of grifting victims, who...

Censr: Alt-Right Twitter Alternative Gettr Bans Posts, Accounts Calling One Of Its Backers A Chinese Spy

As so-called "conservatives" (a decently large number of them appearing to actually be white supremacists and bigots engaged in harassment) complained Big Tech was slanted against them, a host of new services arrived to meet the sudden...

'Peaky Blinders' Production Company Working With Bushmills On A Themed Whiskey

Nearly a year ago, we talked about a trademark battle between Caryn Mandabach Productions, the company that produces Netflix's Peaky Blinders hit show, and Sadler's Brewhouse, a combined distillery that applied for a "Peaky...

San Francisco Cops Are Running Rape Victims' DNA Through Criminal Databases Because What Even The Fuck

There are things people expect the government to do. And then there are the things the government actually does. The government assumes many people are comfortable with things it does that are technically legal, but certainly not how the average...

As Expected, Trump's Social Network Is Rapidly Banning Users It Doesn't Like, Without Telling Them Why

Earlier this week we took a look at Donald Trump and Devin Nunes' Truth Social's terms of service, noting that they -- despite claiming that Section 230 should be "repealed" -- had

Comcast Continues To Bleed Olympics Viewers After Years Of Bumbling

NBC (now Comcast NBC Universal) has enjoyed the rights to broadcast the US Olympics since 1998. In 2011, the company paid $4.4 billion for exclusive US broadcast rights to air the Olympics through 2020. In 2014, Comcast NBC Universal shelled out...

Former Employees Say Mossad Members Dropped By NSO Officers To Run Off-The-Books Phone Hacks

Oh, NSO Group, is there anything you won't do? (And then clumsily deny later?). If I were the type to sigh about such things, I surely would. But that would indicate something between exasperation and surprise, which are emotions I don't...

No, Creating An NFT Of The Video Of A Horrific Shooting Will Not Get It Removed From The Internet

Andy Parker has experienced something that no one should ever have to go through: having a child murdered. Even worse, his daughter, Alison, was murdered on live TV, while she was doing a live news broadcast, as an ex-colleague shot her and the...

ACLU & EFF Step Up To Tell Court You Don't Get To Expose An Anonymous Tweeter With A Sketchy Copyright Claim

In November, we wrote about a very bizarre case in which someone was using a highly questionable copyright claim to try to identify an anonymous Twitter user with the username @CallMeMoneyBags. The account had made fun of various rich people...

Hertz Ordered To Tell Court How Many Thousands Of Renters It Falsely Accuses Of Theft Every Year

It all started with Hertz being less than helpful when a man was falsely accused of murder. Michigan resident Herbert Alford was arrested and convicted for a murder he didn't commit. He maintained his innocence, claiming he was at the airport in...

The GOP Knows That The Dem's Antitrust Efforts Have A Content Moderation Trojan Horse; Why Don't The Dems?

Last summer, I believe we were among the first to highlight that the various antitrust bills proposed by mainly Democratic elected officials in DC included an incredibly dangerous trojan horse that would aid Republicans in their "playing the...

Peloton Outage Prevents Customers From Using $2,500 Exercise Bikes

Peloton hasn't been having a great run lately. While business boomed during the pandemic, things have taken a sour turn of late on a bizarre host of fronts. In just the last month or two the company has seen an historic drop in company valuation...

Clearview Pitch Deck Says It's Aiming For A 100 Billion Image Database, Restarting Sales To The Private Sector

Clearview AI -- the facial recognition tech company so sketchy other facial recognition tech companies don't want to be associated with it -- is about to get a whole lot sketchier. Its database, which supposedly contains 10 billion images scraped...

Apple Finally Defeats Dumb Diverse Emoji Lawsuit One Year Later

Roughly a year ago, we discussed a wildly silly lawsuit brought against Apple by a company called Cub Club and an individual, Katrina Parrott. At issue were "diverse emojis", which by now are so ubiquitous as to be commonplace. Parrott had...