Forget GDPR, the EU's New Copyright Proposal Will Be a Complete Disaster

Today is GDPR day, and lots of people are waking up to a world in which EU regulations are having a widespread (and not always positive) impact on how the internet works. As we've detailed over the past couple of years, while there are many good... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

The 'Race to 5G' Is Largely Just Marketing Nonsense

By now you've probably been informed that the next-generation of wireless broadband technology is going to revolutionize everything. Much like they did with 3G and 4G, wireless carriers like AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have repeatedly... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Ad Software Dev Sends Threatening Letter to Researchers Who Exposed It

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), passed in 1998, governs the sort of data that can be collected from children under the age of 13. That's why kids have to age themselves prematurely to create accounts on some social... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Cops Realizing SESTA Made Their Jobs Harder While Making Traffickers' Job Easier

For many months in the discussion over FOSTA/SESTA, some of us tried to explain how problematic the bills were. Much of the focus of those discussions were about the negative impact it would have on free speech on the internet, as the way the bill was... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Companies Respond to the GDPR by Blocking All EU Users

We've talked a bunch about the GDPR recently. While the effort is well-meaning (some may disagree with this) and does have some good ideas concerning data control and transparency, we still feel that it was put in place by people who had little... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Cord Cutting Is the Obvious Result of a 70% Spike in Cable TV Prices Since 2000

We've discussed time and time again how, when faced with an evolving video market, the broadcast and cable industry repeatedly decided to double down on bad ideas. While consumers increasingly lamented having to pay $130 per month for a massive... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

AT&T Unveils a Fake 5G Network Hoping You'll Ignore T-Mobile Is Kicking Its Ass

To be clear: fifth generation (5G) wireless should be really impressive when it actually arrives, providing significantly faster mobile broadband speeds at lower latencies. The catch: the 5G standard hasn't even been created yet, and any real... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Amazon joins Google in making censorship easy

A couple weeks ago we wrote about the unfortunate decision by Google to stop enabling domain fronting on its AppEngine. As we explained at the time, this was an (accidental) way of hiding certain traffic by using the way certain large companies had... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago

Device Detects Drug Use Through Fingerprints

If this tech becomes a routine part of law enforcement loadouts, judicial Fourth and Fifth Amendment findings are going to be upended. Or, at least, they should be. I guess citizens will just have to see how this all shakes out. A raft of... | Continue reading


@techdirt.com | 6 years ago