open...

Open source lies at the heart of Google – it runs a modified form of Linux on its vast server farms, and uses many other free software pr...

One of the recurrent themes on Techdirt is the sense of entitlement the owners of various kinds of monopolies display, and their common b...

Well, this one's bizarre. Back in March 2010 we wrote about the UK Usenet aggregator Newzbin being found liable for the copyright i...

We've written about the hugely-successful Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho many times before, because he is a great example of an artis...

After years of unforgivable inaction, the education world is finally addressing the continuing disgrace that is computer teaching in this ...

Well, this was bound to happen. Barnes & Noble is offering big discounts on its Nook e-readers to people taking out subscriptions to ...

For a long time, the copyright industries have taken the position that they won't launch new digital music services until piracy is ...

So the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of copyright maximalist legislation, SOPA and PIPA, have been halted in their passage through the US legi...

One of the useful side-effects of the groundswell of protest against SOPA and PIPA is that a surprising number of people in positions of ...

One new approach to teasing apart the complex relationships between genes and common diseases such as cancer, heart disease, asthma and d...

Given its general contempt for the repeated attempts to close it down, you wouldn't expect The Pirate Bay to be particularly worried b...

" The Artist " may have won several Golden Globes, but there's at least one person who apparently hates the film because of s...

There is a rather odd atmosphere within the parts of the online community that fought so hard against SOPA this week – relief that all th...

Since SOPA and PIPA are US bills, the focus has naturally been on the US response to them – notably in the list of major sites that parti...

Canonical pulled off something of a coup at the recent Consumer Electronics Show (CES) when it announced its Ubuntu TV – inevitably dubbed...

A couple of months ago, Techdirt wrote about an EU politician's plan to build Internet surveillance into every operating system. As ...

The role of technology in the wave of protests that swept the world last year is a matter of debate. While some claim that social network...

Among the many high-profile organizations that are joining the SOPA blackout today is Greenpeace. That's great, except that you can...

One of the more unfortunate consequences of Moore's Law is that technologies that erode privacy are becoming cheaper every year – and ...

So the long-awaited verdict on the extradition of Richard O’Dwyer has finally arrived, and, as feared, it's ridiculous. There are m...

A few weeks back, Techdirt reported on an Indian minister asking Internet companies to do the impossible:  On Techdirt .

Against a background where some European courts are telling ISPs that they must block access to certain sites (in Finland and the UK , for...

You don't have to be a marketing genius or industry pundit to foresee that tablets will be an extremely hot sector in 2012. The launc...

Back in September last year, there was a bit of a to-do about Microsoft's UEFI Secure Boot technology in Windows 8, when a Red Hat eng...

If we are to believe the early signs, 2012 may well be the year that British schools finally start to address the continuing shame that i...