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| Nov 15, 2019 | Court Punishes Copyright ‘Troll’ Lawyer for Repeatedly Lying to The Court | Over the past several years, independent photographers have filed more than a thousand lawsuits against companies that allegedly use their work without permission.
As many targets are mainstream media outlets, these can be seen as David vs.... |
| Nov 14, 2019 | Troll Lawyer Shows Up In Court To Explain His 'Dead Grandfather' Excuse, Gets His 'Fitness To Practice' Questioned By The Judge | Just a few days ago, copyright troll lawyer Richard Liebowitz was being threatened with jail time for refusing to provide a judge with some evidence his grandfather had died. If that doesn't seem like something most judges would demand, you... |
| Nov 14, 2019 | Troll Lawyer Shows Up In Court To Explain His 'Dead Grandfather' Excuse, Gets His 'Fitness To Practice' Questioned By The Judge | Just a few days ago, copyright troll lawyer Richard Liebowitz was being threatened with jail time for refusing to provide a judge with some evidence his grandfather had died. If that doesn’t seem like something most judges would demand, you... |
| Jul 6, 2019 | A US woman is accused of leaving a R70,000 'revenge tip' on a R800 bill with her boyfriend's credit card | Clear Sky Cafe in Clearwater, Florida.
Gene H. / Yelp
A woman is accused of leaving a $5,000 (R70,000) "revenge tip" on a $60 (R800) check with her boyfriend's credit card at a Florida restaurant.
Serina Wolfe, of Buffalo, New Yor... |
| Mar 11, 2018 | 3 Reasons To Get Excited For Kristen Wiig's Cheetah In 'Wonder Woman 2' | Kristen Wiig arrives at the 9th annual Governors Awards at the Dolby Ballroom on Saturday, Nov. 11,... [+] 2017, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP) |
| Mar 2, 2018 | Kobe Bryant Predicted to Win an Oscar, Despite Past Rape Accusation | The animated short film “Dear Basketball” opens in the tense final moments of a game, with seconds left on the clock. Fans cheer, sneakers squeak across the court. Among the black-and-white, pencil-drawn players, one in a number 24 purple j... |
| Jan 24, 2018 | 10 Men Who Have Successful Careers Despite Being Accused of Rape | On Monday night, Bill Cosby stood in front of a small crowd in a Philadelphia jazz club and cracked jokes for an hour. Despite the fact that more than 60 women to date have come forward to accuse the aged entertainer of drugging and assault... |
| Apr 7, 2017 | Drunk Driver Wearing 'Drunk Lives Matter' Shirt Arrested | The grassroots momentum behind the Black Lives Matter movement has led to some very cringy and very avoidable missteps by those trying to use its name and momentum to sell stuff.
Need we remind you of the #caramelapplesmatter slogan used to... |
| Dec 12, 2016 | Did the Russians “hack” the election? A look at the established facts | Enlarge / Trump denies there's any truth intelligence community claims of Russian interference in the election, claiming it could have been anyone.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images reader comments 515 with 189 posters participating, includin... |
| Oct 20, 2016 | Agents of influence: How reporters have been “weaponized” by leaks | Enlarge
George Hodan reader comments 166 with 85 posters participating, including story author
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Since June, some entity has been releasing e-mails and electronic documents o... |
| Oct 20, 2016 | Russia-linked phishing campaign behind the DNC breach also hit Podesta, Powell | The spear-phishing e-mail received by Clinton campaign staffer William Rinehart matches messages received by both former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
The Smoking Gun reader comments 76 with 44 ... |
| Sep 1, 2016 | Facebook and Discovering Your Sensitive Contacts in Two Easy Steps | Recently, Zeynep Tufekci highlighted an article by Kashmir Hill regarding a particularly severe privacy problem. Facebook, like all social networks, uses a "people you may know" suggestion mechanism in order to grow connections am... |
| Aug 1, 2016 | Man Pulls a Three Foot Sword on His Pizza Roll-Stealing Roommate | Last Sunday, Trystan Mesenburg returned to his old apartment to pick up some of his belongings with his girlfriend. It was a pretty mundane scene, but it took a very aggressive turn when Mesenburg got a little greedy and decided to throw hi... |
| Jun 21, 2016 | Here's the Full Transcript of Our Interview With DNC Hacker 'Guccifer 2.0' | We spoke to the hacker who claimed to have broken into the servers of the Democratic National Committee, who goes by the name of "Guccifer 2.0," in reference to the notorious hacker who leaked the George W. Bush paintings and rece... |
| Feb 28, 2016 | FBI Busts Movie Industry Insider for DVD Screener Leaks | Late last December millions of pirates cheered behind their computers as the “screener season” finally got underway.
High quality copies of some of the hottest Hollywood productions appeared online, with some titles even beating their offic... |
| Dec 11, 2015 | Self-Proclaimed 'Vigilante' Instrumental In First Prostitution Bust By Drone | Private drones are the new CCTV. As Cyrus Farivar words it for Ars Technica, the age of sousveillance is upon us. |
| Sep 30, 2015 | Judge Tosses Defamation Case Of The Sleepy Yankees Fan | Last year, we discussed the silly defamation case brought by Andrew Rector, baseball fan(?), that ESPN’s cameras showed to be sleeping(!) at a Red Sox v. Yankees game. The commentators on ESPN had some fun at Andrew’s expense. Quite mild an... |
| Aug 11, 2015 | Former Clippers Owner Donald Sterling Sues TMZ For Publishing His Recorded Conversation | Donald Sterling, the disgraced former owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, became the former owner last year after a tape of him scolding his girlfriend about appearing in public with “black people” became public. The controve... |
| Jan 20, 2015 | 'That's Not All!' Kevin Trudeau, The World’s Greatest Salesman, Makes One Last Pitch | Mike Nudelman/Business Insider
Kevin Trudeau, the undisputed "infomercial king," is one of the most successful TV pitchmen of all time. He's also a New York Times best-selling author and a motivational speaker with legions of devo... |
| Dec 19, 2014 | Illinois Woman Files For Trademark On Phrase 'I Can't Breathe' Because This Is America Damn It | You know, when you write for Techdirt, you see so many silly trademark stories that you become sort of numb to them. Even when it comes down to people, multiple people, attempting to trademark simple words and phrases because we’ve reached ... |
| Aug 10, 2014 | Google Street View car cited for driving on the wrong side of a one-way street and crashing | Christian Bautista, Tech Times 10 August 2014, 07:08 am
A Google Street View driver was ticketed for "careless prohibited driving" after the vehicle slammed into another car in Little Rock, Ark.
The car, which was going the wrong ... |
| Jun 13, 2014 | Guy Accused Of Leaking President Bush's Paintings Indicted For Hacking In The US | An online hacker who went by the name “Guccifer” got a lot of attention a year and a half ago or so for regularly hacking into the email and social media accounts of various political officials and insiders along with some Hollywood folks, ... |
| May 2, 2014 | The Definitive Guide to MLB Walk-Up Music in 2014 | How do you know you’re at a baseball game? You can hear music. Yeah, there’s also some sports occurring down on the pitch or gridiron or whatever, but during dips in the action, the PA systems churn out tunes. Sweet, amazing tunes. There’s ... |
| Jan 17, 2014 | Gene Simmons: P2P Pioneers Should Have Been Forced into Work Like Nazis | Every few years KISS guitarist Gene Simmons decides that stirring up a hornets’ nest on the topic of music piracy is a good idea.
Back in 2008 he said that children should be harshly punished for obtaining songs for free, noting that “..eve... |
| Dec 20, 2013 | FBI Agent: Connection Logs Show Suspect's MAC Address, So Look For Apple Hardware | The Smoking Gun recently covered the arrest of a 19-year-old college student for allegedly sending threats to a 14-year-old ask.fm user. The arrestee apparently sent a string of horrific messages filled with sexually violent imagery back in... |
| Oct 22, 2013 | Feds Apparently Didn't Communicate With Each Other About Various Silk Road Investigations | There’s been plenty of talk about Silk Road since the site got shut down and Ross Ulbricht was arrested and accused of being Dread Pirate Roberts behind the site. Of course, it struck us as interesting that hours after the arrest and the cr... |
| May 20, 2013 | Criminal Nabbed By His Own Food Porn | We’ve covered the trespasses of stupid criminals here before. Bank robbers who brag about their actions on YouTube, for instance. Or thieves on the lam uploading pictures containing their whereabouts to social media sites. It seems at times... |
| Mar 21, 2013 | Hacker Guccifer Targets Silicon Valley, Starting With the AOL Account of Kleiner Perkins’ John Doerr | (Photo: KPCB)
Mystery hacker Guccifer has been terrorizing America’s political elite by hacking into their email accounts and proving that even former presidents aren’t really that great at their newfound painting hobby. Now, The Smoking Gu... |
| Feb 15, 2013 | Why log data is the real story behind the Tesla/NY Times dust up | Matt Quinn is CTO of TIBCO, the parent company of LogLogic, which provides log management software.
When you think of “Big data,” you rarely think of log data. It just doesn’t have much sex appeal: It’s what IT uses to monitor applications,... |
| Feb 15, 2013 | Why log data is the real story behind the Tesla/NY Times dust up | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
Matt Quinn is CTO of TIBCO, the parent company of... |
| Feb 8, 2013 | Secret Service probing hack on former president George W. Bush’s email | We are excited to bring Transform 2022 back in-person July 19 and virtually July 20 - 28. Join AI and data leaders for insightful talks and exciting networking opportunities. Register today!
Hackers reportedly breached email accounts for fo... |
| Feb 8, 2013 | Bush family privacy shattered after e-mails, photos exposed online | George W. Bush stands next to a Frenchified cardboard version of himself.
The Smoking Gun reader comments 152 with 91 posters participating
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A brazen intrusion into several ... |
| Sep 27, 2012 | Penguin Taking Underperforming Authors To Court To Recoup Paid Advances | This looks like it might be a new sign of the disrupted times. With major publishing houses competing with damn near everyone for readers, they can longer be expected to hand out hefty advances, especially in exchange for the literary equiv... |
| Oct 26, 2011 | The Revolution Will Not Be Infringed Upon: Long Island Couple Files To Trademark 'Occupy Wall St.' | Wall Street blog extraordinaire, Dealbreaker, alerts us to the perhaps unsurprising news that a Long Island couple has filed for a trademark on the phrase “Occupy Wall Street.” (More in-depth information, including the filing, over at The S... |
| Sep 20, 2011 | Cocaine Ring Used Universal Music's Interscope Label To Ship Drugs & Cash | It’s no secret that there was a close connection between major record labels and drugs in the past — but people keep insisting that’s all ancient history these days. So it’s interesting to find out, via a federal prosecution of a cocaine ri... |
| Sep 16, 2011 | RIAA Label Used In Massive Cocaine Trafficking Ring | Earlier this year record label boss Jimmy Rosemond was arrested on the suspicion of leading a massive cocaine trafficking ring.
The founder of Czar Entertainment used shipments of music equipment to transfer cocaine across the United States... |
| Aug 30, 2011 | Pro Tip: Do Not Buy An iPad From A Dude In A McDonald’s Parking Lot | Asteroid. The iPad is an awesome device, but it costs money. Even second-hand models often command more than a new Android tablet. They’re just that much in demand. But look, if a guy, moreover a guy with as the police report states has a v... |
| Jun 10, 2011 | Lies, Damned Lies And Facebook Evidence Get FBI Involved In Divorced Couple's Spat | In a story that sounds like a movie plot with a few extra twists in it, last week a man, David Voelkert, was arrested for putting a GPS device on his ex-wife’s car. The backstory behind this is that the ex-wife, Angela Voelkert, had created... |
| Feb 11, 2011 | Justin Bieber's Never Say Never 3D: Where the Really Big Profits Will Come | MTV Films is releasing the first Justin Bieber movie today, Never Say Never 3D. The 3D experience will probably do all right in the theaters, as most 3D movies do nowadays, but it will really make its mark in the home aftermarket. In fact, ... |
| Dec 31, 2010 | 4chan victim of DDoS as FBI investigates role in PayPal attack | Users of 4chan may have gotten a taste of their own medicine after the site was knocked offline by a DDoS attack from an unknown origin early Thursday morning. The attack came amid an FBI raid on a Texas collocation facility as part of a wi... |
| Dec 30, 2010 | FBI raids Texas colocation facility in 4chan DDoS probe | reader comments 105 with 72 posters participating
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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is targeting a Texas-based computer network that the government thinks was hijacked fo... |
| Dec 20, 2010 | Under Arrest: The Author Of That Pedophilia Book Amazon Banned | Remember that vile ebook “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct” that briefly topped Amazon’s top 100 bestsellers lists, only to be pulled following massive customer and media pressure on the Internet r... |
| Nov 15, 2010 | Palin, Sizemore hacks: is getting into Yahoo e-mail too easy? | reader comments 63 with 48 posters participating
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It has been a brutal week for celebrity Web account hackers. As we reported, on Friday a Federal judge sentenced a Universi... |
| Nov 10, 2010 | Congrats Amazon, Your Pedophile Book Hits The Top 100 List And Over 2,500 People Join Boycott | Joining Aesop’s Fables and the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People this evening on Amazon’s Top 100 Bestsellers list is a very unlikely contender, The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure.
Earlier today both Mike and MG used their TechCru... |
| Nov 10, 2010 | Amazon Banning One Vile Ebook: A Victory For…. What Exactly? | Well, that was exciting wasn’t it? Less than 24 hours after we, and twenty billion other media outlets, reported on the presence of a “guide to pedophilia” on Amazon, it looks like the retail giant may have decided to withdraw it from sale.... |
| Jan 16, 2010 | Beware of spammers seeking help for Haiti | Article content
As if the earthquake that struck Haiti, killing an estimated 50,000 people with thousands more still missing, isn’t tragic enough, the cyberworld has already produced scams from people trying to cash in on the outpouring of ... |
| Sep 23, 2009 | Man faces 5 years in prison after stealing 3,000 Netflix DVDs | Some Netflix news for you this morning. It looks like a 49-year-old post office worker is facing a maximum of five years in federal prison after having plead guilty to federal theft charges. What was he stealing? Oh, you know, some 3,000 Ne... |
| Aug 11, 2009 | But Who Will Do Investigative Reporting Without Newspapers? | Pat was the first of a few of you to send in this amazing investigative report done by the folks at The Smoking Gun, outing a bunch of “griefers” who go by the name Pranknet and who have caused a tremendous amount of trouble and damage thro... |
| Aug 7, 2009 | The Smoking Gun exposes PrankNet as Internet badboys cower | reader comments 40 with 36 posters participating, including story author
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The Smoking Gun this week released the results of its lengthy investigation into PrankNet, an onlin... |
| Jun 13, 2009 | Man's arrest for Barrel Monster stunt exposes ridiculously high barrel pricing | Have you ever driven down the highway when there’s construction work going on and wondered who makes all the money from selling the orange barrels used to block off lanes? That’s a lot of barrels. So many barrels, in fact, that a student at... |
| Mar 6, 2009 | Imitate Someone On Craigslist, Get Arrested For Identity Fraud | A bunch of folks have been sending in the news of a woman who, after a fight with her boyfriend, posted a note on Craigslist posing as him, asking men to call his office number and “talk dirty.” She’s now been charged with a felony for iden... |
| Feb 19, 2009 | High School Girl Arrested For Refusing To Stop Texting In Class | Thanks to everyone who sent in this story, about a 14-year-old girl in Wisconsin, who apparently refused to stop text messaging in class… and was arrested because of it. Yes, the teacher apparently called the cops, and they arrested her for... |
| Feb 18, 2009 | Court dismisses claim Google Street View invades folks' privacy | A privacy invasion case against Google that was given extra attention after the company asserted in court that getting your picture taken is just part of life in the 21st century, was dismissed yesterday by a judge who apparently agrees.
La... |
| Feb 11, 2009 | Judge Decides That Calling Someone A Douchebag Is Okay… So Long As It's Funny | Last year, a series of lawsuits were filed over the publishing of a book based on the hit website Hot Chicks with Douchebags. Some of the “hot chicks” and at least one of the “douchebags” claimed it was libelous. However, in a rather entert... |
| Dec 12, 2008 | More Evidence That Online Information Is Not Always Credible | Apparently, some people have to learn the hard way that not all online information is credible. The Smoking Gun has the rather amusing details of a trio of women in Ohio who tried to follow some downloaded instructions on “how to commit arm... |
| Nov 21, 2008 | Suing Over Being Called A Douchebag Might Just Get More People To Think You're A Douchebag | There’s a somewhat popular (and quite amusing) blog called Hot Chicks with Douchebags. It is… well, pretty much what you’d expect (and might not be a link you want to click-through while at work) — a bunch of photos of attractive women in t... |
| Aug 28, 2008 | Blogger arrested for leaking Guns N' Roses MP3s | A blogger going by the name of Skwerl on music site Antiquiet was arrested by the FBI at 7:00 am PDT on Wednesday for making nine demo tracks from Guns N' Roses' upcoming album "Chinese Democracy" available to the public for downl... |
| Jun 13, 2008 | Sirius + XM merger still under fire from broadcasters, legislators | A senior Republican US Senator has accused Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin of misleading Congress and the Justice Dept. about the XM + Sirius merger deal. But this round of opposition has a familiar flavor to it.
Sen. Sam Brownback ... |
| May 21, 2008 | Not smart: Kid breaks up with girlfriend, posts nude photos of her on MySpace. Oh, and she's underage. | Here’s a tip, kids. Next time you break up with your girlfriend, don’t post nude photos of her on MySpace. Especially if she’s underage. Yeah, it seems cool at first, but then those pesky lawmen will ruin your life.
A 17-year-old Wisconsin ... |
| Apr 23, 2008 | Patriots Still Want 19-0 Trademark; So They Can Pretend They Had A Perfect Season | Right before the Super Bowl this year, we noted that the New England Patriots had filed for a trademark on “19 – 0” to be used in merchandise commemorating what the team believed would be the culmination of an undefeated season. This, by it... |
| Apr 8, 2008 | Yet another Google Maps Street View privacy breach | If previous Google Maps Street View complaints have seemed somewhat frivolous and paranoid, this latest one might be enough to change your mind. The Smoking Gun is reporting that a home not far from the Pittsburgh home Nicholas told us abou... |
| Apr 4, 2008 | Pittsburgh Couple Sues Google Over Photos Of Their House | The term “the Streisand Effect” was coined back in 2005 in reference to Barbara Streisand’s decision in 2003 to sue an aerial photographer who, in the process of photographing the entire west coast from a helicopter, took a photo of her hou... |
| Apr 4, 2008 | Couple sues Google because their home is on Google Maps Street View | How pompous. A Pittsburgh couple has sued Google because photos of their house are now on Google Maps Street View. They allege that ever since the photos have appeared on Street View, the value of their property has plummeted. Property reco... |
| Apr 4, 2008 | Google Damages Property Values? | A Pittsburgh couple is suing Google for including their house in Google’s Street View service.
According to a lawsuit filed in Allegheny County’s Court of Common Pleas this week, Aaron and Christine Boring accuse Google of “intentional and/... |
| Apr 1, 2008 | Craigslist Ransacking Was To Cover Up Burglary | Remember that story last week about someone posting a fake ad on Craigslist, leading to people ransacking a house and taking all sorts of stuff? It turns out that the folks behind the fake ad were simply trying to cover up their own burglar... |
| Mar 27, 2008 | Wait, Weren't Big Newspapers Needed For Credibility? | Over the last few years, it’s been amusing to watch defenders of mainstream journalism trash online journalism by claiming that traditional journalists can do real investigative journalism, whereas online-only sources are too easily suckere... |
| May 6, 2007 | Internet More Dangerous than School Violence, Sexually Transmitted Diseases for Children: survey | A new survey from the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, The National Poll on Children’s Health, has found that US parents rate Internet Safety as being a more serious health threat to children than school violence, sexually transmitted disease... |
| Dec 6, 2006 | One Way To Stop Kids From Opening Presents Early: Have Them Arrested | It’s holiday season, and for many kids, part of the tradition is trying to figure out what gifts their parents bought them — though, sometimes that results in kids getting a little too overanxious and jumping the gun by opening their gifts ... |
| Sep 6, 2006 | The New HP Way: Using Identity Theft To Spy On Board Members Shows High Personal Integrity | Following the news that came out late yesterday concerning HP’s chairperson’s decision to spy on other members of the board, using the most-likely illegal method of “pretexting” to get their confidential phone records, some more details are... |
| Jun 7, 2005 | New Wireless App: Celebrity Mugshots | I’ve never gotten into it here on Techdirt, but I’m somewhat anti-celebrity. We humans tend to devote way too much time and energy on stars and their lives. I find awards ceremonies like the Oscars the biggest irony of all, because it takes... |
| Jul 29, 2004 | Cops Mace Couple For Answering Phone In Theater | Just last month we had a story about all that mobile phone induced anger, and it should be noted that police are not immune to such things. The Associated Press is reporting that a woman who answered a phone call from her mother during the ... |
