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Disney spent 18 months negotiating to create a digital version of Dwayne Johnson for the live-action Moana film. Johnson agreed. The technology was ready. Then Disney’s lawyers killed the whole thing—not because of privacy concerns or actor rights, but because they worried parts of the film might end up in the public domain.
This is exactly what we predicted would happen. While everyone obsessed...
It’s funny just how often the actions of so-called “strong men” actually show just how scared and fragile they are. And if you want a more specific example of what I’m talking about, you can typically tell when a national government is feeling scared or weak, because that usually comes along with restrictions on a free and open internet. Worried that your horror-show of a government from a human...
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
Two weeks into President Donald Trump’s second presidency, and just days after he pardoned hundreds of Capitol rioters, officials Trump had placed in charge of the Justice Department made a sweeping demand. They wanted the names of the thousands of FBI employees who had played a role in investigating...
Arrest/ticketing quotas have almost always been found illegal by courts. They used to be commonplace, but courts (at all levels) have generally ruled that quotas pervert incentives so much they encourage open, deliberate abuse of constitutional rights.
Enter the Trump administration, which only considers the Second Amendment to be sacrosanct. Trump deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has spent...
Equipped with a 1.2mm fine tip, the Digi Pen for iPad and Tablets provides durability, sensitivity, and pixel precision. No lagging, no skips, no scratches. Perfect for drawing, sketching, painting, and writing. With palm rejection technology, you can use it directly without wearing gloves and write on the screen as if you’re writing on paper. You can also tilt the stylus at different angles to...
We’ve talked plenty about how Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) was always more about performative cruelty than actual efficiency. But a new Senate report reveals just how spectacularly DOGE failed at its supposed core mission while causing immeasurable human suffering in the process. The entire concept blew up more spectacularly than one of Musk’s Starships.
The numbers...
We’ve well documented how the AOL–>AT...
For no less than 25 years now, Techdirt has been writing about how the tax preparation industry, especially Intuit, has spent gobs of money bribing lobbying government to keep relatively low-earners from simple methods for filing their tax returns. The series of posts you can find in that link, particularly those in the last 5-10 years, will give you an idea of just how shady and shitty these...
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, Pocket Casts, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice — or go straight to the RSS feed.
We’re taking a little break from our regular weekly news roundups this month, but we’ve got a couple special episodes...
This story was originally published by ProPublica. Republished under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
One afternoon in mid-September, a group of middle school girls in rural East Tennessee decided to film a TikTok video while waiting to begin cheerleading practice.
In the 45-second video posted later that day, one girl enters the classroom holding a cellphone. “Put your hands up,” she says, while a...