Celebrate 25 Years Of Techdirt With Some New Gear!

Techdirt

from the birthday-presents dept

Get your Old Logo and Retro Logo gear on Threadless »

As we continue our celebration of Techdirt’s 25th anniversary and gear up for our anniversary party this Friday, it’s time to launch some new gear in our Threadless store! First, it’s the return of something we offered for a limited time on our 20th anniversary five years ago: the Old Logo gear. Yes, once upon a time that was the official logo of Techdirt! The first logo in fact, used until it was retired in 1999. But let’s face it — it’s not the prettiest logo. And so we’re also launching our new Retro Logo gear, featuring the current logo re-imagined as pixel art, for another way to celebrate the 25 year legacy of Techdirt.

As usual, both designs are available on t-shirts, hoodies, stickers, phone cases, notebooks, bags and more. Plus, don’t forget to check out all the other great designs available in our store on Threadless.

Also, there’s still time to get your invite to our special online anniversary celebration this Friday, September 9th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Attendance is free for anyone with an active Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind The Curtain membership from our Insider Shop, or the equivalent levels via our Patreon. You can also show us some extra support by buying a one-time ticket for $100. Sign up or buy a ticket today, and you’ll receive an email before the event with details on joining!

Filed Under: 25 years, anniversary, gear, techdirt gear
Companies: techdirt

Join Us For Our 25th Anniversary Party This Friday!

Techdirt

from the quarter-century dept

As you know, Techdirt recently marked its 25th anniversary, and we’re celebrating with a special online party this Friday, September 9th at 11am PT / 2pm ET, where you can mix and mingle with Techdirt staff and other fans, and get the inside story on the history of the blog from Mike Masnick. Attendance is free for anyone with an active Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind The Curtain membership from our Insider Shop, or the equivalent levels via our Patreon. You can also show us some extra support by buying a one-time ticket for $100.

If you’re already a subscriber, you should have received an email today (at the address associated with your Insider Shop purchase or your Patreon account) with details on attending the event. Please check for the email and use the registration link it contains. If you didn’t receive an invite but believe you should have, please contact us and let us know.

If you aren’t yet on the list, there’s still time! Sign up for a membership or purchase a ticket and you’ll receive your invite email prior to the event.

This site wouldn’t be here today without the support of our community, and we’re excited to see you on Friday and express our appreciation in person while marking this milestone in Techdirt’s history!

Sign up now or purchase a ticket to ensure your access to the event »

Filed Under: 25 years, anniversary
Companies: techdirt

Join Us In Celebrating 25 Years Of Techdirt!

Techdirt

from the marking-the-occasion dept

Get access to our special online anniversary event »

Techdirt began in 1997 as a simple newsletter about the latest technology news. Now, over 75,000 posts and nearly 2-million comments later, we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary!

To mark the occasion, we’re holding a special online event on September 9th, 2022 at 11am PT / 2pm ET, where you can meet and mingle with Techdirt staff and other readers, and get the inside story on the blog’s history from founder Mike Masnick.

Attendance is free if you have an active Techdirt membership (Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind The Curtain), or you can give us some extra support and purchase a one-time ticket for $100.

If you are an active member or have purchased a ticket, you will receive an email the week of the event with access details for our special conference platform, Remo. A microphone and webcam are encouraged, so you can chat with other attendees!

Sign up now or purchase a ticket to ensure your access to the event »

Filed Under: 25 years, anniversary
Companies: techdirt

Techdirt At 25: The Crypto Wars Never End

Techdirt

from the the-long-and-winding-crypto-wars? dept

Next Friday, September 9th, we’ll be hosting our 25th anniversary event. We’ll post the actual details later this week, but the best way to make sure you can attend is to be a regular paying subscriber to Techdirt. You can back us via the qualifying Techdirt Insider packages (Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind the Curtain — or the equivalent levels via our Patreon). And keep watching for more 25th anniversary goodness.

A week ago, we noted that it was the 25th anniversary of Techdirt, which initially began with a (mostly) weekly newsletter, which first went out on August 23, 1997. The second such newsletter went out on August 30, 1997 — or 25 years ago today. You can read it here. Once again, you may notice some themes that have not changed in the past two and a half decades around here…

It kicks off with then Netscape chair Jim Clark declaring “Microsoft, I think, is fundamentally an evil company.” I mean, that sounds like what some smaller companies now say about Google and Facebook.

But one of the things that shines through is that an earlier generation of the crypto wars was in full swing back then. Just as we have government officials here in the US and abroad trying to kill encryption — while insisting that unspeakable evil happens because of it — back then the big fight was Bernstein v. United States, one of EFF’s first huge cases about whether or not you could “export” encryption (in the form of a student publishing a paper that explained his encryption algorithm). And this week 25 years ago, I wrote about a district court ruling in the case. It was one of many such rulings, and the case eventually went up to higher courts as well. Still, I find it notable that all the way back then we were talking about the legality of encryption — and an EFF case!

This week’s newsletter also talked about another encryption scheme, from a company called Cryptologic that was offering a $1 million bounty if anyone could crack their “uncrackable” encryption. I’m not sure what happened with that bounty — but Cryptologic apparently went on to basically focus on the gambling market and appears to have been purchased by a big gambling company somewhere along the way.

Some other echoes of the future: the newsletter talked about criminals swiping credit card numbers from AOL, and Intel facing antitrust concerns over a consolidation purchase. Also, the Clinton administration was calling on websites to not snoop on visitors — and in response a study found that nearly half of all the government’s own websites were… snooping on visitors. I also mocked the brand new Juniper Networks raising a ton of money based on vaporware. Turns out they actually did have a product or two on the way…

There’s more, but it’s pretty amazing to me how many of the themes remain the same — it’s just that many (though not all) of the company names have changed.

Filed Under: 25 years, encryption, history
Companies: techdirt

25 Years Ago Today… Techdirt Got Started!

Techdirt

from the happy-birthday,-us dept

On August 23rd, 1997, I sent out this emailed newsletter — which was then called Up-To-Date — to various business school colleagues. That was exactly 25 years ago, and that began dragging me down the path of what became Techdirt early the following year (when I realized it might be nice to have a website to post the copies of the newsletter on, rather than just sending them out over email).

A lot has changed since then, but… a lot really hasn’t.

Even just looking back at that first newsletter there are some fun snippets. I was joking about an effort by some universities to try to reinvent the internet (I referred to it as “Internet 3” — somewhat mocking another effort, called Internet2, which somehow apparently still exists). We also wrote about Experian (freshly renamed from TRW, but still with a huge legacy of doing terrible stuff) had enabled people to check their credit info online, only to discover security problems.

Some things just never change.

I also talked about how Snap!, the now-long-forgotten “portal” by CNET (which kinda still exists, though is really just a part of CBS’s web properties), was destined for failure. Of course, today Snap means Snapchat, the social media site.

Anyway, over the next few weeks, I’m going to try to look back at a few more of those original newsletters. We’ll also have a few other anniversary related things going on — culminating in a fun, interactive live (virtual) event on September 9th (details to come soon). That event will be open to anyone subscribed to one of the current ongoing (monthly or yearly) Techdirt Insider packages (Crystal Ball, Watercooler, or Behind the Curtain — or the equivalent levels via our Patreon). If you’d like to attend and are not a subscriber, now would be a good time to join.

It’s kind of wild to think that, in some way or another, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. When I wrote that first newsletter, I wasn’t even sure there would ever be a second, let alone 25 years worth of content which now includes almost 80,000 total posts (~51,000 of which are mine). And, I don’t plan on slowing down much either. There are still lots of things to talk about, and the things I’m talking about these days seem a lot more important and relevant to a lot more people than joking about random internet things two and a half decades ago…

As always, though, none of this happens without the community here and — especially since we’ve removed ads from the site — the people who directly support Techdirt and help keep it running. So, a huge thank you goes out to everyone just reading this, and doubly so to those who have supported us one way or another over the years. We literally could not have done it without you.

Filed Under: 25 years, anniversary
Companies: techdirt

And Now The Copia Institute Tells The US Supreme Court There’s A Big Problem With Texas’s Social Media Law

Free Speech

from the first-amendment-fire-drill dept

Last week a bizarre one-line order from the Fifth Circuit lifted the injunction on Texas’s social media law, allowing it to go into effect, despite all the massive problems with it – including the extent to which it violates the First Amendment and Section 230.

So NetChoice and CCIA filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court to try to have it at least reinstate the injunction while the case worked its way through the appellate courts. And yesterday Copia Institute filed an amicus brief supporting their application.

The brief is, in many ways, an encore performance of the brief we’d submitted to the Fifth Circuit, using ourselves and Techdirt as an example of how the terms of HB20 violates our constitutional and statutory rights, but this time around there are a few additional arguments that may be worth their own posts (in fact, one is a throwback to an old post). Also, one key argument that we added applies less to the problems with HB20 itself and more to the problems involved with the Fifth Circuit lifting the injunction, and especially in the way that it did. We pointed out that lifting the injunction, and without any explanation for why, looked an awful lot like the sort of prior restraint that had long been considered verboten under the First Amendment. State actors (including courts) are not supposed to chill the exercise of expression unless and until there’s been the adjudication needed to find that the First Amendment permits that sanction. Here the Fifth Circuit technically heard the case, but it issued a sanction stymying the exercise of speech (lifting the injunction) without ever actually having ruled that HB20’s chilling terms were actually ok under the First Amendment. Perhaps the court truly think’s HB20 is perfectly sound under the First Amendment, we don’t really know. And we can’t know, because they didn’t say anything. Which also means there’s nothing to appeal, because if the Fifth Circuit made an error in thinking HB20 is ok (which seems likely, because that law conflicts with so much established First Amendment precedent, as well as common sense) no one can say where that error was, or what of its judgment should be reversed.

Nevertheless, the law is out there, in effect now, doing harm to platforms’ expression. HB20 still needs to be thrown out on the merits, but for the moment we just all need the Supreme Court to get the bleeding to stop.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 5th circuit, content moderation, free speech, hb20, prior restraint, supreme court, texas
Companies: copia institute, techdirt

Introducing The Techdirt Insider Discord

Techdirt

from the join-us dept

Join the Insider Discord with a Watercooler or Behind The Curtain membership!

Techdirt has been around for nearly 25 years at this point, and we have an unfortunate habit of being just slightly too far ahead of the technology curve. The site was launched before the word blog even existed, and certainly before there were readily available and easy to use tools for creating a blog (more on that soon!), so we cobbled together our own solution. We’ve done that with unfortunate frequency. In the early 2000s, we even built our own internal RSS reader in order to find stories (I always thought it was better than Google Reader). And, a while back, we launched the Techdirt “Insider Chat” long before Discord or Slack or other such tools were popular.

The Techdirt Insider Chat was a widget on our site that, if you supported us at certain levels in our own Insider Shop (or on Patreon), you got access to a chat that only those supporters could use — but which was still displayed on the sidebar for anyone to see. Because there weren’t widespread tools to make this possible, we built our own. But it was a bit clunky and limited, and honestly wasn’t receiving that much use beyond a handful of dedicated users.

Over the last few months, we’ve moved the Insider Chat over to Discord, which has become the standard these days for community chats. However, we did want to still include the feature of displaying the chat publicly — but only allowing actual supporters to participate. So while we are now using Discord as the basis of the chat (which is much easier for many people to use, has many more features, and allows for things like accessing the chat on mobile devices), we built our own embeddable widget that reflects the chat in the sidebar (which you can see if you look over to the right).

If you’re interested in (1) supporting Techdirt and (2) joining in on the conversations now happening in the chat and (3) connecting with others in the Techdirt community, please consider supporting us at a level that includes the Insider Chat.

As you’ll recall, earlier this year we removed all the ads (and Google tracking code) from Techdirt. We are relying more and more on our community supporting us going forward, and we’re working hard to provide those supporters with more useful and fun features, including this new Discord community.

Filed Under: chat, insider chat, techdirt
Companies: discord, techdirt

This Thursday, Watch The Techdirt Podcast Live – And Become A Patreon Backer To Call In With Questions!

Techdirt

from the 300-episodes dept

As you may know, we?re fast approaching our 300th episode of the podcast, and to celebrate we?re bringing back the original co-hosts, Dennis Yang and Hersh Reddy, to join Mike Masnick for a special live-streamed episode this Thursday, September 30th at 1pm PT / 4pm ET.

Stay tuned on Thursday morning when we?ll be sharing a link to the YouTube live stream here on the blog and on Twitter. But, for our backers on Patreon, we?re also testing out a new feature that will allow you to call in live and talk to the hosts! If you’re already a backer, you can find the link to join via our recording and call-in platform on Patreon in your message inbox and in a backers-only post on our page. If not, now’s the time to become a patron and get access to this and other special bonuses! This is the first time we?ve experimented with this feature, so we?re anticipating the possibility of technical issues that prevent it from working — but if all goes well, we?re excited to field your questions and celebrate 300 episodes of The Techdirt Podcast!

Filed Under: live call-ins, live streaming, techdirt podcast
Companies: techdirt

Support Public Code, While Helping Support Techdirt

Techdirt

from the synergy dept

Recently, following our announcement that we have removed all Google ads and tracking code from Techdirt, a reader reached out to us with a novel (and greatly appreciated!) proposal for supporting the change and our ongoing reporting while also helping out a good cause: buying an ad — not for their own benefit, but for that of a public interest campaign that aligns perfectly with our own values. That’s why you see a new banner in the sidebar on the site, encouraging our readers to sign an open letter put together by FSFE calling on the EU to pass a law requiring all publicly financed software to be made available under a free and open source license.

This reader purchased the ad with their own money, as a way of helping out both Techdirt and the FSFE campaign — and we think this is such an amazing and generous idea that we wanted to call extra attention to it with a post. We’ve written about this same issue of open sourcing publicly funded software in the past, when the White House began embracing the idea and then unveiled an official open source software policy — but the fact is it should be the norm for all governments that use taxpayer money to develop software. If the public funds something, it should be available to the public by default.

And, of course, we also want to call attention to this campaign as a way that you can support Techdirt. As we said in our post about removing Google trackers from the site, these kinds of reader-friendly changes also take away some of our revenue streams, and increase our reliance on you, our readers, to support us directly when and if you can. We’re extremely grateful to all the readers who stepped up and gave us a tip through our Friend of Techdirt option in the Insider Shop, or engaged with one of the many other ways to support us — and now this one generous reader has showed yet another option, and one that allows you to support Techdirt and the public interest at the same time.

So we encourage everyone to sign the open letter to help demonstrate that this kind of campaign works. Moreover, if there’s a campaign or an organization out there that you think aligns well with Techdirt’s values and readership and that you’d like to support while helping us out in this way, please get in touch and let us know. We don’t currently have fixed rates for direct ad purchases like this, and instead prefer to come up with custom solutions that fit your budget and needs — so don’t hesitate to reach out and let us know what you have in mind.

Thanks again to all our readers, and today especially to this one reader who came to us with this excellent idea!

Filed Under: ads, open code, open licensing, open source, publicly financed software
Companies: techdirt

Techdirt Is Now Entirely Without Any Google Ads Or Tracking Code

Techdirt

from the cleaning-out-the-cobwebs dept

First things first: if you are interested in advertising on Techdirt in a non-intrusive, non-obnoxious way, please contact us. We’d love to work with you on cool, innovative advertising and sponsorship that engages, instead of annoys, our community. As some of you may recall, last summer, we had to pull all ads off of Techdirt, after we kept running into problems with Google, and its overly aggressive, overly sensitive (if somewhat arbitrary) advertising morality police (such as telling us all our stories about Google were “dangerous or derogatory”).

After announcing that, we had a few different companies approach us with possible alternatives, and earlier this year, we tried to put ads back on the site briefly, with a promise from a provider that they could both serve better quality ads as well as “deal with” Google if it started complaining again. Here’s the unfortunate secret underpinning nearly all of the internet advertising space: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies which will purport to put ads on your website. And all of them will promise “quality” ads and better rates. But the unfortunate reality is that they’re all just backstopped by Google, and the ads are all the same crappy ads in the end. Only the largest websites (or highly, highly specialized ones) can really pull their own weight on advertising. And, tragically, wonky tech/legal/policy blogs don’t cut it (unless we wanted to just start running reviews of every silly tech product out there, and that’s not our thing).

So, we worked with a new partner, with promises of higher quality… and it all turned out to just be the same awful Google ads again, and with it, the same automated emails every damn day from Google threatening to cut us off for our “dangerous and derogatory” content. This time around, we just ignored those threats, because at this point, we’re so damn sick of it that if Google cuts us off, so be it.

But, there was a larger issue. In our wrapup of the 2020 stats for Techdirt, I mentioned in passing that this would be the last year we used Google Analytics for tracking how people use the site. We’ve used a few different analytics systems in the life of Techdirt, and I think we used MeasureMap before Google bought it and wrapped it into Google Analytics. And, to be clear, Google Analytics worked decently well, had a nice interface (much nicer than most competitors) and, of course, was free for our use case. But that freedom came with a different kind of price — which is that Google was tracking users on our site. And that was becoming both more and more problematic, and more of a nuisance.

After becoming increasingly uncomfortable with that, we switched over to a different analytics package, and are now using both Plausible and Matomo (self-hosted), to make sure that we’re much more protective of the privacy of Techdirt’s readers. We actually pulled Google Analytics off the site in late January. But then we noticed something odd. In February, Google Analytics was still showing up even though we had pulled the tags. It turned out that, via the new ad partner we had, as soon as ads via Google show up on our site Google Analytics code showed up along with it. And that really sucks.

After going through a variety of options, we eventually realized that none of this was worth it. We ended our contract with our ad provider, and then had to scrub through all our code to make sure Google Analytics was truly gone (it’s amazing how it pops up in unexpected places). We didn’t post about this immediately, in part because we were busy with other stuff, but also because I wanted to make sure Google Analytics was really gone. And it is.

Of course, that also means we’re once again without any advertising on Techdirt, which is a hit to our revenue and our ability to keep going — at a time when that’s under threat from other things as well. We are hoping to try some more creative (less intrusive, less annoying) sponsorship and advertising methods in the near future, but at the very least we’re increasingly going to rely on you, our community, to help Techdirt stick around. If you are able to, and interested, the easiest way to directly support Techdirt is via the Friend of Techdirt option (basically a way to tip us however much you’d like), but we have a wide variety of ways to support us, and any one you choose is greatly appreciated.

Techdirt is one of the very, very, very few truly independent media brands around. Almost none of the independent media brands that existed when we started remain. Some have been sucked up into larger companies or shut down entirely. Others have decided to go behind expensive paywalls. We’ve had to adapt and change over the years in many ways just to stick around, but in the end the reason we do this is because of the community we’ve built up here. For us to stick around, I need to ask the community to help support us as well. We have some cool experiments and projects in the works, so stay tuned for that, but in the meantime, if you can help us out, it would be hugely appreciated.

Filed Under: ads, advertising, analytics, privacy, tracking
Companies: google, techdirt