Court Dismisses Pepperdine’s Nonsense Trademark Suit Against Netflix Over ‘Running Point’ A little over a year ago, we wrote about a fairly silly lawsuit filed against Netflix (and Warner Bros.) by Pepperdine University in California for trademark infringement. At issue is the Netflix s…

Court Dismisses Pepperdine’s Nonsense Trademark Suit Against Netflix Over ‘Running Point’.

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ Internet Ctrl-Alt-Speech is a weekly podcast about the latest news in online speech, from Mike Masnick and Everything in Moderation’s Ben Whitelaw. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, …

Ctrl-Alt-Speech: Honey, I Shrunk the Kids’ Internet.

A Baseless Copyright Claim Against A Web Host — And Why It Failed Copyright law is supposed to encourage creativity. Too often, it’s used to extract payouts from others. Higbee & Associates, a law firm known for sending copyright demand letters to w…

A Baseless Copyright Claim Against A Web Host — And Why It Failed.

Someone Filed a Bogus DMCA Notice to Kill a Story About A Sketchy SEO Firm. It Worked — Briefly. We’ve talked for years about how the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown system is ripe for abuse. The legal structure of the law practically begs for such abuse: send a notice, content disappea…

Someone Filed a Bogus DMCA Notice to Kill a Story About A Sketchy SEO Firm. It Worked — Briefly.

The World Is Yours Forgive me for this digression. I know it’s usually left to Mike Masnick to lift us up from our collective doldrums when things seem even more hopeless than they did last year. His New Year&#…

The World Is Yours.

Musk, Bezos, Both Cry To Trump’s FCC In Bid To Dominate Satellite Broadband Elon Musk is desperate to dominate the Low-Earth-Orbit (LEO) satellite broadband market. So is Jeff Bezos. And now the two billionaires are engaged in proxy fights at Trump’s FCC over who&#82…

Musk, Bezos, Both Cry To Trump’s FCC In Bid To Dominate Satellite Broadband.

RFK Jr. Amends ACIP’s Charter In Attempt To Exert More Control Over Panel Members After RFK Jr. found himself getting a rebuke from the court system over his ACIP reorganization from last year, in which the courts issued a preliminary injunction on the vaccine schedule changes A…

RFK Jr. Amends ACIP’s Charter In Attempt To Exert More Control Over Panel Members.

Tech Lobbyists Are Trying To Kill Colorado’s Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law There’s a meaningful push afoot to implement statewide “right to repair” laws that try to make it cheaper, easier, and environmentally friendlier for you to repair the technology you own.…

Tech Lobbyists Are Trying To Kill Colorado’s Popular ‘Right To Repair’ Law.

Prosecutors Still Trying To Convict 62-Year-Old Woman For Wearing Penis Costume To Anti-Trump Protest Never underestimate the stupidity of law enforcement. When things could just be left alone and everything would turn out OK, officers insist on inserting themselves into the equation, ensuring maxi…

Prosecutors Still Trying To Convict 62-Year-Old Woman For Wearing Penis Costume To Anti-Trump Protest.

Remember The “Ministry Of Truth” Freakout? Rubio Is Now Doing Something Far Worse Through Elon Musk’s X Remember when the Biden administration set up something called the “Disinformation Governance Board” and the entire MAGA universe lost its collective mind? It was the “Ministry of…

Remember The “Ministry Of Truth” Freakout? Rubio Is Now Doing Something Far Worse Through Elon Musk’s X.

Judge Tells Border Officers (Again!) That They Can’t Arrest Migrants Without Real Warrants The courts keep pounding the nails home. What this government is engaged in is illegal, on multiple levels. If you subtract the pro-MAGA Fifth Circuit and 6/9ths of the Supreme Court, you have a ju…

Judge Tells Border Officers (Again!) That They Can’t Arrest Migrants Without Real Warrants.

Trump Attacks On Public Media Blocked By Judge (But It’s Too Little, Too Late) A federal judge has ruled that President Trump’s executive order last year defunding PBS and NPR violated the First Amendment, and has issued a permanent injunction insisting that executive branch …

Trump Attacks On Public Media Blocked By Judge (But It’s Too Little, Too Late).

Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations To Focus On Deportations This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. In the first days after Pam Bondi was appointed attorney general last year, the Department of Justice…

Trump’s Justice Department Dropped 23,000 Criminal Investigations To Focus On Deportations.

With Cox V. Sony The Supreme Court Provides Yet Another Internet-Protecting Decision The Supreme Court has now issued its decision in Cox Communications v. Sony Music Entertainment. This was a case where Cox, a broadband provider, had been held liable for the alleged copyright infr…

With Cox V. Sony The Supreme Court Provides Yet Another Internet-Protecting Decision.

Techdirt Podcast Episode 449: The Dangers Of Product Design Liability For Social Media Support us on Patreon » We’ve written at length about the dangers of the recent court rulings in California and New Mexico that say social media companies can be held responsible f…

Techdirt Podcast Episode 449: The Dangers Of Product Design Liability For Social Media.

The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI Since the New York Times published its semi-viral big profile of Medvi last week — the “AI-powered” telehealth startup that it breathlessly described as a “$1.8 billion company&#8…

The New York Times Got Played By A Telehealth Scam And Called It The Future Of AI.

Trump’s Office Of Legal Counsel Says Trump Doesn’t Need To Follow The Presidential Records Rules Leave it to the president that makes us nostalgic for Nixon-era corruption to claim that a law Nixon made necessary is no longer a law. The Presidential Records Act was summoned into existence by N…

Trump’s Office Of Legal Counsel Says Trump Doesn’t Need To Follow The Presidential Records Rules.

America First? Paramount Finalizes $24 Billion In Middle East Backing For Warner Bros Deal MAGA Republicans spent year swaddling themselves in phony “America first!” rhetoric (including suffering an embolism over Chinese influence over TikTok), but have suddenly gone mys…

America First? Paramount Finalizes $24 Billion In Middle East Backing For Warner Bros Deal.

Congress Wants To Put The Law Behind A Paywall. Again. Every relevant court that has looked at this question — including the Supreme Court — has agreed: no one can own the law. When private standards get incorporated into binding legal requirements, th…

Congress Wants To Put The Law Behind A Paywall. Again.

Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi For Not Making His Vindictive Fantasies A Reality You’re never safe when you’re working for Trump. That much was obvious in Trump’s first term, when he fired Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Natio…

Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi For Not Making His Vindictive Fantasies A Reality.

UK Politicians Continue To Miss The Point In Latest Social Media Ban Proposal The UK is moving forward with its efforts to ban social media for young people. Ahead of this week’s House of Lords debate on the topic, we’re getting you situated with a primer on what’s been happ…

UK Politicians Continue To Miss The Point In Latest Social Media Ban Proposal.

Trump Celebrates Easter By Dropping An F-Bomb, Threatening More War Crimes Before we get into this, let’s set the scene a little: The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 20-26, 2026, finds that most White evangelicals (69%) approve of the way Trump is …

Trump Celebrates Easter By Dropping An F-Bomb, Threatening More War Crimes.

Jacob Siegel’s Error-Filled Book On ‘Censorship’ Got Fact-Checked. He’s Calling It Censorship. Fact-checking is not censorship. Asking a publication to correct factual errors is not censorship. Pointing out that someone’s book contains demonstrably false claims is not censorship. None …

Jacob Siegel’s Error-Filled Book On ‘Censorship’ Got Fact-Checked. He’s Calling It Censorship.

Supreme Court Shrugs Off Opportunity To Save The First Amendment From The Fifth Circuit’s Antipathy The Supreme Court’s latest recap of its relative inactivity (Trump administration “emergency” appeals aside) has delivered yet more evidence of this court’s indifference to …

Supreme Court Shrugs Off Opportunity To Save The First Amendment From The Fifth Circuit’s Antipathy.

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN It’s time for the second in our series of spotlight posts looking at the winners of our eighth annual public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1930! We’ve already covered the Best Adapt…

Game Jam Winner Spotlight: CARAMENTRAN.

Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration To Hold ICE Shooters Accountable This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license. They asked nicely at first.  After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed …

Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration To Hold ICE Shooters Accountable.

In Chiles V. Salazar The Supreme Court Issues A Bad Good First Amendment Decision The Supreme Court’s decision last year in U.S. v. Skirmetti, upholding a law depriving young trans people the healthcare they need, is insupportable, rendering people unequal in a way the Con…

In Chiles V. Salazar The Supreme Court Issues A Bad Good First Amendment Decision.

Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source? Most of the discussions about the impact of the latest generative AI systems on copyright have centered on text, images and video. That’s no surprise, since writers, artists and film-makers feel ve…

Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong Last week, I wrote about why the social media addiction verdicts against Meta and YouTube should worry anyone who cares about the open internet. The short version: plaintiffs’ lawyers found a…

The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong.

Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance This may not be an actual “Wyden siren,” but it still has his name attached to it. What’s being said here isn’t nearly as ominous as this single sentence he sent to CIA lead…

Senators Ask Tulsi Gabbard To Tell Americans That VPN Use Might Subject Them To Domestic Surveillance.