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Way back in 2009, we discussed a very impressive fan film called The Hunt for Gollum. While the film was made by dedicated fans of the Lord of the Rings films and was non-commercial in nature, we openly speculated both what the copyright implications of the film and whether there would be any risk of a takedown or lawsuit over it. We noted at the time that that seemed unlikely, given that the...
The Pirate Party has long played an important role in fighting the worst excesses of copyright in the EU. For example, when a major copyright update was being discussed, the Pirate Party MEP Felix Reda wrote an insightful and practical report on what needed changing. Most of his recommendations were ignored in the final EU Copyright Directive, but at least someone was fighting on behalf of...
If you’re a fan of chaos, well, the TikTok ban situation is providing plenty of chaos to follow.
Ever since the US government made it clear it was seriously going to move forward with the obviously unconstitutional and counterproductive plan to force ByteDance to divest from TikTok or have the app effectively banned from the U.S., various rich people have been stepping up with promises to buy the...
Bit of a weird one here.
So, there’s the assumption made by all cops and most courts that any area visible to passersby does not have an expectation of privacy. That means front yards, open garages, etc. Courts and cops have mostly agreed this expectation of privacy does not suddenly appear no matter how long the government stares at publicly visible areas with unblinking eyes… like surveillance...
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What do you get when you cross a Kennedy, a brain worm, and a social media giant? Apparently, another ridiculous lawsuit destined to be laughed out of court.
In 2020, RFK Jr. sued Meta (then Facebook) claiming that when the company fact-checked and moderated his anti-vax nonsense, it was a state actor. This was, he argued, because the company relied on Section 230 to not be liable for its...
Before T-Mobile acquired Sprint, activists, consumer groups, and deal critics (including me) warned repeatedly that the telecom sector megadeal would result in layoffs, less competition, higher prices, and a lower quality product overall. The Trump FCC and DOJ very clearly didn’t care; they rubber stamped the deal without even reading deal impact reports.
T-Mobile CEO John Legere, famous for...
For years and years we have documented here the trend of cord-cutting from traditional cable television services. And we all know where those previous subscribers have gone: to streaming services, particularly as those services have matured and performed better than they did in the early days.
But if cord-cutting was a thing the cable industry should have, but didn’t, recognize early enough, so...
Tired of being underserved and overbilled by shitty regional broadband monopolies, back in 2002 a coalition of local Utah governments formed UTOPIA — (the Utah Telecommunication Open Infrastructure Agency). The inter-local agency collaborative venture then set about building an “open access” fiber network that allows any ISP to then come and compete on the shared network.
As we’ve noted over the...
Is there any law that Elon Musk actually understands?
The latest is that he’s lost yet another lawsuit, this time (in part) for not understanding copyright law.
There have been a variety of lawsuits regarding data scraping over the past decade, and we’ve long argued that such scraping should be allowed under the law (though sites are free to take technical measures to try to block them). Some of...