AI And Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead
You shouldn’t need a permission slip to read a webpage—whether you do it with your own eyes, or use software to help. AI is a category of general-purpose tools with myriad beneficial uses. Requiring developers to license the materials needed to create this technology threatens the development of more innovative and inclusive AI models, as well […]
Daily Deal: The Complete 2025 CompTIA Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA
Prepare to sit a various CompTIA certification courses with the Complete 2025 CompTIA Certification Training Super Bundle by IDUNOVA. Over 17 courses, you’ll learn about penetration testing, network security, IT fundamentals, and more. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from […]
People Who Can’t Get Books Banned From Libraries Are Now Hiding Them Or Throwing Them In The Trash
The “rule of law” folks (who also have a sizable overlap with the “party of free speech“) are at it again. Around the nation, legislators emboldened by the Republican party’s embrace of bigotry have been passing bills banning books (or, worse, subjecting librarians to criminal charges). Almost as often as a law gets passed, it […]
Musk Leverages His Unelected Non-Existent Authority And Expertise To Steal $2 Billion FAA Contract From Verizon
The first Trump FCC tried to give Musk nearly a billion dollars to deliver expensive Starlink access to some traffic medians and airport parking lots. The Biden FCC clawed back most of those subsidies, (correctly) arguing that the service couldn’t deliver consistent speeds, and if we’re going to spend taxpayer money on broadband, more future-proof and less […]
Massachusetts Judge Dismisses Auto Industry Lawsuit Over State’s Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Reforms
In late 2020, Massachusetts lawmakers (with overwhelming public support) passed an expansion of the state’s “right to repair” law. The original law was the first in the nation to be passed in 2013. The update dramatically improved it, requiring that all new vehicles be accessible via a standardized, transparent platform that allows owners and third-party repair shops […]
Trump White House Announces That It Will Decide Who Gets To Cover The Administration
It’s a familiar playbook. When Donald Trump receives backlash from the public or the press for some action he’s taken, say barring AP News from White House press briefings and events because it won’t bow to his desire to rename parts of a large body of water, he doesn’t shrink. He doubles down. Every single […]
Hey Elon: You Don’t Just ‘Ooopsie’ The Destruction Of Ebola Prevention
Look, sometimes you make mistakes. Maybe you send an email to the wrong person. Maybe you accidentally buy the wrong kind of pasta sauce at the grocery store. Maybe you accidentally dismantle critical global health infrastructure. These things happen! At least, that’s what Elon Musk wants us to believe. At yesterday’s first official Musk/Trump administration […]
South Dakota Lawmakers Send Unconstitutional Age-Verification Bill To The Governor’s Desk
Lots of states have been passing performative, rights-violating bills that mandate sites hosting porn start performing age verification or suffer the consequences. The consequences can be severe, with fines being multiplied per access by unverified users on top of legal actions brought by state prosecutors. Most of these follow the same problematic blueprint. Even if […]
Daily Deal: Microsoft Project 2021 Professional
Be the boss of any project with Microsoft Project Professional 2021. This powerful yet easy-to-use app lets you stay on track, from small tasks to larger projects. Manage your projects more efficiently with the right timelines, budgets, and resources. You’ll get automated scheduling tools as well as built-in reports to help you reduce inefficiencies and […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/27/daily-deal-microsoft-project-2021-professional/
Jeff Bezos Frees WaPo Opinion Pages Of The Personal Liberty Of Expressing Their Opinion
Look, when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post a decade ago, people worried that a billionaire owner might interfere with the paper’s editorial independence. For years, those fears seemed overblown — Bezos appeared content to let journalists do journalism while he focused on more pressing matters (like building rockets and not paying taxes). But it […]
The Trump Admin Thinks Affordable Fiber Broadband Is ‘Woke’
It’s understandably not going to get the same attention as the dismantling of numerous government agencies at the hands of rich unelected manbabies, but the Trump administration is also taking aim at all the promising parts of the 2021 infrastructure bill. Especially as it relates to broadband. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) contained a whopping $42.5 […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/27/the-trump-admin-thinks-affordable-fiber-broadband-is-woke/
Well-Meaning Germans Attempt To Stifle Neo-Nazis By Trademarking Their Coded Slogans
We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but it never really works. One of the symptoms of the permission culture we’ve built for ourselves, largely in the Western world, is that people or organizations think they can game otherwise legitimate systems in order to silence others. Intellectual property is one of those systems, where we’ve […]
Musk’s USAID Cuts May Hand China The AI Race
How do you win the global AI race? If you asked Elon Musk or his supporters in the Trump administration, they’d probably talk about deregulation, or getting government out of the way, or maybe something about GPU clusters and massive power consumption. What they probably wouldn’t mention is USAID, the US government’s primary foreign aid […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/26/musks-usaid-cuts-may-hand-china-the-ai-race/
Heritage Foundation Presentation Details Plans To Doxx And Target Wikipeda Editors It Claims Are ‘Abusing Their Position’
Every day Donald Trump seems to implement yet another of the key schemes of Project 2025, despite claiming last summer that “I know nothing about Project 2025.” According to the Project 2025 Web site, it is organized by the Heritage Foundation, which is also working on what it calls its “Oversight Project”: The Oversight Project […]
Dear Governor Newsom & AG Bonta: If You Want To Stop Having To Pay Elon Musk’s Legal Bills, Stop Passing Unconstitutional Laws
California taxpayers are now on the hook for $345,576 in legal fees to… Elon Musk. Why? Because Governor Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta ignored warnings about the obvious Constitutional problems with AB 587, their social media “transparency” law. The law, which Google and Meta actually supported (knowing full well that they could comply […]
Daily Deal: The Complete 2025 Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking Training Bundle
The Complete 2025 Penetration Testing & Ethical Hacking Training Bundle has 9 courses to help you learn to fight back against cyber threats. Courses include hands-on lessons on penetration testing for AWS, IoT, and web apps, along with hacking basics and a few certificate exam prep courses. It’s on sale for $50. Note: The Techdirt […]
South Dakota Republicans: Let’s Start Jailing Librarians
This stupid state. These stupid legislators. This goddamn constituency. This is my current home state. And it is painful to be here. Kristi Noem is now the head of the DHS, presumably because she never asked what this country could do for her, but instead asked “what can I do for Donald Trump?” She kept […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/26/south-dakota-republicans-lets-start-jailing-librarians/
FCC Boss Brendan Carr Wants You To Know He’s Having A Great Time Trampling Free Speech, Attacking Civil Rights, And Destroying All Broadband Consumer Protection
We’ve noted repeatedly how new Trump FCC boss Brendan Carr is a Trump bootlicker of the highest order. He’s also busy illegally leveraging FCC power to trample the First Amendment and bully media companies that aren’t kissing Trump’s ass. At least when he isn’t busy attacking FCC civil rights reforms or dismantling whatever’s left of […]
Nikola Finally Files For Chapter 11 To Try To Wind Down Smoothly
While I have no interest in celebrating the demise of a company, one in which very real people had and have jobs that are going to go away, this was also a long time coming. The five year story about how EV trucking company Nikola ended in bankruptcy started in spectacular fashion in 2020, when […]
The Hollow Men Of Silicon Valley
I am, unabashedly, a Humean emotivist. Like David Hume, I hold that emotions—not abstract reason—form the foundation of our ethics. Cold logic alone doesn’t guide our moral compass; it is shaped by the deep wellspring of human feeling. This isn’t a rejection of reason, but a recognition of its limits and its partnership with emotion in […]
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/02/25/the-hollow-men-of-silicon-valley/