 | |
| Country of origin | United States |
|---|---|
| Owner | Floor64, Inc. |
| Created by | Mike Masnick |
| Editor | Mike Masnick |
| URL | techdirt |
| Commercial | Yes |
| Registration | Optional |
| Launched | 1997 |
| Current status | Active |
Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyright reform in particular. [1]
The website was founded in 1997 by Mike Masnick. It was originally based on the weblog software Slash. Techdirt's content is based on reader submissions as well as the editorial staff's picks. The website makes use of MySQL, Apache, and PHP, and is hosted at ActionWeb. [2] Techdirt is managed by Floor 64, a company located in Redwood City, California, US. [3]
There is a guest editor section in Techdirt, called "Favorite Techdirt Posts of the Week", where several high-profile personalities of politics and culture contributed articles over the years; for instance Marietje Schaake, Member of the European Parliament for the Netherlands, [4] Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon [5] or author Glyn Moody. [6]
The popular term the "Streisand effect" was coined on Techdirt by founder Mike Masnick in January 2005. [7] [8]
In 2003, Forbes Magazine selected Techdirt as one of the "Best Tech Blogs". [9] In 2006 Bloomberg Businessweek praised Techdirt for its "sharp, pithy analysis of current tech issues". [10] In 2007, techdirt was nominated for the Webby Award in the section "Web Blog - Business". [11] Techdirt has been named among the favorite blogs of PC Magazine in 2008. [12] In 2015, Techdirt was positively mentioned for the bold step to allow readers to remove web ads. [13]
In 2009, English singer Lily Allen created a blog critical of music piracy in which she plagiarized an entire post from Techdirt. [14] Following an exchange with Techdirt, debating hypocrisy in the musician's handling of copyright infringement, Allen shut down her blog. [15]
Marvin Ammori, a lawyer who advocates on network neutrality and Internet freedom, praised Techdirt in the 2011 Stop Online Piracy Act controversy, saying: "I'm not sure anyone did more to educate the public about SOPA than Techdirt." [16]
In 2017, American entrepreneur Shiva Ayyadurai filed suit against Techdirt for defamation in response to a series of articles critical of Ayyadurai's claims to have invented email as a teenager in 1978, an assertion which has been dismissed by several experts. [17] [18] Techdirt announced its intention to fight the suit, describing it as a "First Amendment fight for its life". [19] A federal judge dismissed the defamation claims on September 6, 2017. [20] In June 2018, attorneys for Ayyadurai appealed the ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. [21] The two parties settled out-of-court in May 2019 with no money changing hands, and Techdirt's articles remaining online with an added link to a rebuttal on Ayyadurai's website. [18] [22]
Masnick and Techdirt run a think tank called Copia. [23] Through this effort, Masnick has worked on multiple policy-focused video games, including Moderator Mayhem , a game focused on content moderation. [24] [25]
The EFF Pioneer Award is an annual prize by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for people who have made significant contributions to the empowerment of individuals in using computers. Until 1998 it was presented at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., United States. Thereafter it was presented at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference. In 2007 it was presented at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference.
Electronics is a discontinued American trade journal that covers the radio industry and subsequent industries from 1930 to 1995. Its first issue is dated April 1930. The periodical was published with the title Electronics until 1984, when it was changed temporarily to ElectronicsWeek, but was then reverted to the original title Electronics in 1985. The ISSN for the corresponding periods are: ISSN 0013-5070 for the 1930–1984 issues, ISSN 0748-3252 for the 1984–1985 issues with title ElectronicsWeek, and ISSN 0883-4989 for the 1985–1995 issues. It was published by McGraw-Hill until 1988, when it was sold to the Dutch company VNU. VNU sold its American electronics magazines to Penton Publishing the next year.
Gems is a compilation album released by Aerosmith in 1988 under the label Columbia. It was the first compilation of studio material since 1980's Greatest Hits. Concentrating mainly on heavier material than the radio-friendly singles output on Greatest Hits, the album is noted for the inclusion of the 1978 studio version of "Chip Away The Stone" – previously released as a single from 1978's Live! Bootleg, only a live rendition of the song was released at the time. Originally scheduled for release on November 8, 1988, the album was delayed one week and issued on November 15, 1988.
Executive Order 12333, signed on December 4, 1981 by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was an executive order intended to extend powers and responsibilities of U.S. intelligence agencies and direct the leaders of U.S. federal agencies to co-operate fully with CIA requests for information. This executive order was titled United States Intelligence Activities.
Lifehacker is a weblog about life hacks and software that launched on January 31, 2005. The site was originally launched by Gawker Media and is currently owned by Ziff Davis. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics including: Microsoft Windows, Mac, Linux programs, iOS and Android, as well as general life tips and tricks. The website is known for its fast-paced release schedule from its inception, with content being published every half hour all day long.
Bugtraq was an electronic mailing list dedicated to issues about computer security. On-topic issues are new discussions about vulnerabilities, vendor security-related announcements, methods of exploitation, and how to fix them. It was a high-volume mailing list, with as many as 776 posts in a month, and almost all new security vulnerabilities were discussed on the list in its early days. The forum provided a vehicle for anyone to disclose and discuss computer vulnerabilities, including security researchers and product vendors. While the service has not been officially terminated, and its archives are still publicly accessible, no new posts have been made since January 2021.
Knol was a Google project that aimed to include user-written articles on a range of topics. The lower-case term knol, which Google defined as a "unit of knowledge", referred to an article in the project. Knol was often viewed as a rival to Wikipedia.
Charles Hernan Carreon is an American trial attorney best known for his involvement in a legal dispute between The Oatmeal webcomic and content aggregator FunnyJunk. As of 2012, he represented individuals and companies in matters pertaining to Internet law.
The Streisand effect is an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project's photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.
Maria Renske "Marietje" Schaake is a Dutch politician who served as Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from the Netherlands between 2009 and 2019. She is a member of Democrats 66, part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party.
V. A. Shiva Ayyadurai is an Indian-American engineer, politician, entrepreneur, and anti-vaccine activist. He has become known for promoting conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and unfounded medical claims. Ayyadurai holds four degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), including a PhD in biological engineering, and is a Fulbright grant recipient.
FeeFighters is a payment processing platform and comparison shopping website for credit card processors. The site was launched in 2009 and was acquired by Groupon in 2012. FeeFighters has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur (magazine), Inc. (magazine) and TechCrunch, with BusinessWeek profiling it as "One of America's Most Promising Startups."
Choruss was a three-year experimental effort launched in 2008 by Warner Music Group and record-industry/Internet technology expert Jim Griffin to develop a licensed system for peer-to-peer music file sharing among college students. The idea was to establish a voluntary, blanket licensing system for users of college networks, experimenting with different licensing models and technology at different universities. Although the project was supported by many universities, the National Music Publishers Association, and three of the four major record labels at the time—Warner, Sony BMG, and EMI, with Universal being the only holdout—the service never launched, and the project was discontinued when its charter ended in late 2010.
Thomas Goolnik is a person formerly associated with the company TLD Networks. He has achieved notoriety in a battle over the European "Right To Be Forgotten" (RTBF), in particular whether current articles written about the RTBF are also subject to that regulation.
The use of stingrays by United States law enforcement is an investigative technique used by both federal and local law enforcement in the United States to obtain information from cell phones by mimicking a cell phone tower. The devices which accomplish this are generically known as IMSI-catchers, but are commonly called stingrays, a brand sold by the Harris Corporation.
The Internet of Garbage is a 2015 non-fiction book by journalist and lawyer Sarah Jeong. It discusses online harassment as a threat to the useful functions of the internet and argues for new approaches to managing the issue. The book was reissued in 2018 with a new preface by Jeong.
Filecoin (⨎) is an open-source, public cryptocurrency and digital payment system intended to be a blockchain-based cooperative digital storage and data retrieval method. It is made by Protocol Labs and shares some ideas from InterPlanetary File System allowing users to rent unused hard drive space. A blockchain mechanism is used to register the deals. Filecoin is an open protocol and backed by a blockchain that records commitments made by the network’s participants, with transactions made using FIL, the blockchain's native currency. The blockchain is based on both proof-of-replication and proof-of-spacetime.
Richard Liebowitz is an American entrepreneur, Broadway producer, former lawyer and photographer specializing in copyright law. While a lawyer, he was known for filing a high number of lawsuits against media organizations on behalf of photographers who assert that their images have been used without permission.
The Massachusetts Pirate Party (MassPirates) is the Massachusetts affiliate of the United States Pirate Party and a political designation in Massachusetts officially recognized by the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Massachusetts Pirate Party was formed in May 2010 by James O’Keefe, Christine Reynolds and Erik Zoltan. They are active in promoting privacy, transparent government, and innovation by reining in copyright laws and eliminating patent laws. MassPirates ran candidates for State Representative in 2014 and 2016 and elected their first office holder in 2015.
Moderator Mayhem is a casual web-based video game designed by Engine, Randy Lubin, and Mike Masnick of Techdirt targeted towards policymakers. The game is about the challenges of content moderation of user-generated content on social media.
TechDirt highlights research showing that extending copyrights increases prices and limits dissemination of knowledge, while also pointing out that people who believe patents cause innovation are simply confusing correlation with causation. If anything, patents inhibit innovation.
The episode is the latest example of a phenomenon known as the "Streisand Effect." Robert Siegel talks with Mike Masnick, CEO of Techdirt Inc., who coined the term.