Just because a company acts like a jackass when trying to bully somebody into shutting up doesn't give them the right to then sue them for making themselves look bad...
That is quite literally what happened.
Southwest: "Take down your site... you keep posting about how we were dicks to you."
SWMonkey: "No, I have this thing called the First Amendment. Ever hear of it?"
Southwest: "I have these things called 'lawyers' who don't give two shits about the First Amendment... prepare your asses for bankruptcy because you are making us look bad at how we handled this situation! #merica"
So yeah... definitely no reason to have a federal SLAPP law to shut this lawsuit down. Pretty sure the system works as intended; make corporations the arbiters of speech because they have money, power, and little else to do.
So, I totally understand the idea of not violating rights. It's wrong m'kay.
And if you do violate rights. settle early.
BUT
You have to remember a lot of universities are political animals that have to cowtow to the morons holding the purse strings. In Iowa... it is DEFINITELY the republican lawmakers.
A perverse incentive exists when you have a gaggle of fools tell you they want you to do something and they hold the purse strings... Say no... well, that extra funding you were expecting magically dried up.
So while I disagree with the university's decision; one has to wonder if they made the right choice. I mean... the state is paying for their screw-up, not the university. And they didn't make any enemies with the lawmakers so their funding stream is intact...
In some ways I'm happy that this law passed. It will be used as a case study for all future administrations and freedom-of-speech advocates on what NOT to do. Too many times these laws never make it this far (for good reason) and all pundits have are hypothetical harms, which are easy to ignore. Harder to ignore something like this... silver linings and all...
Too much to hope that this will help stop SESTA here in the States?
There is nothing 'left' about this. The majority of Americans are for Net Neutrality and for better internet for all.
This is quite literally the definition of market failure and regulatory capture. If you don't see that, you are purposefully burying your head in the sand.
Market Failure -- 10.6 million homes have NO access to fixed-line broadband internet. 2/3 of Americans only have ONE option for broadband internet. That is by definition market failure.
Regulatory Capture -- Stopping municipalities from creating their own alternative when there isn't one; Throwing up nuisance lawsuits to stop other companies from competing, such as Google. Suing city-by-city to stop One-Touch-Make-Ready pole attachments to speed adoptions. Stopping states from passing their own Net Neutrality laws written almost exclusively by the big telcos... That is by definition regulatory capture.
If users actually had competition, TD would quit covering this since there wouldn't be a problem, no matter what the FCC did. If a company acted like an ass-hat, they'd be held accountable by users leaving them in droves. Currently that isn't possible since you literally can't leave for another provider.
I see that you printed out a random series of words on a paper we believe to be a coded message. Tell us what it says or you will be held in contempt... It is a foregone conclusion that you know what this code means.
How on earth is this example any different than providing a PIN?!
I'm just hoping that the ISPs piss off too many people too quickly that the next FCC re-establishes Title II and mandates local loop unbundling... I'd love to have real competition in America...
Every day in the United states 6,775 people die. That... is a lot of people. Some of those are sick and disabled; and with these nefarious Net Neutrality rules that are in place... more people will die tomorrow. Until you stop Net Neutralitting, people will continue to die. Shame on you for killing people for protecting a few consumers.
Grand Wizard Ajit Pai has promised us that people will quit dying when these rules are replaced. Do you really want the blood of 6,775 people on your hands? Just give him what he wants! Stop the carnage!
Get ready for cable company 'blackouts' on the Internet of Things. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
I really think once we get this net neutrality thing solved 'once and for all'... which is probably never with the oscillating political theater we call our government... I'm sure there will be a Platform Neutrality law in the wings that works similar to FRAND patents... You can't just block someone's device just because you don't want them to use it... it's either open or closed... not open for some, blocked for some...
Before his tenure in the FCC, he worked for the CTIA (Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association) from '92 - '04.
I heard him make an interesting pitch. Lots of people thought he was 'in the pocket' of Big Telecom, but when he was working there, he was actually working for the 'little guy'. The incumbent MCIs and AT&Ts of the time were landline. Cellular was just a nascent technology competing in a brave new world (Seriously... who had cell phones in 1992???). He worked to foster regulations that were friendly to this new 'mobile phone' thing and he brought that mantra to the FCC to do the same thing. He wasn't the 'baby-eating-dingo' people thought he was. He understood the struggles of small companies trying to compete.
I understand the intent and where they were going. But yeah... that is a little too little regulation for me... plus, this will also turn into a favorites game unless ANYONE can use a superseded law and not just a specific company.
Company X is doing research and gets a waiver to do Y. Company Z is also doing research. If Company X is granted a waiver, and Z cannot get the waiver, that puts X at a huge competitive disadvantage.
For things like drones, autonomous driving, flying cars; I could see benefits for relaxing certain types of laws. Things like dumping mercury into water because you are testing something for a new oil refining process...not so much.
last time i checked... printed newspapers didn't have a real-time comments section... your act of publishing your viewpoint on this matter proves why Section 230 has to exist... otherwise it would be too risky for TechDirt to let you, a potential liability, post on their site.
Same for me. I don't know Mike. He doesn't know me. I could post "For a good time, call 17 year old Betty at ###-###-####" and blam... they are now a co-conspirator in an underage sex ring... Kamala Harris will be busting down their doors and Mike will be brought up on pimping charges.
Prosecute the people breaking the law... not all of the 3rd parties that have done nothing. Don't prosecute Ford just because Betty was caught in the back seat. Don't prosecute Victoria Secret just because that is where she bought her bra. Don't prosecute AT&T just because they provided a cell phone that she used to answer the message. Don't prosecute TechDirt just because some random asshole posted Betty's number there.
I look at Section 230 the same as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act(PLCAA) for gun makers. It protects the manufacturer of guns from selling a product that people can misuse. Prior to its passing... they had to deal with a ton of nuisance suits when people did stupid things with guns. This wasn't just individuals; but also states with axes to grind...
Thankfully, Section 230 was set up pretty well from the get-go so we didn't have to deal with these nuisance suits. People trying to sue Facebook and Twitter because ISIS used their platforms. People trying to sue because someone said something mean anonymously.... Section 230 protected against all that.
Now we are opening the floodgates to let politically motivated Attorney Generals like Jim Hood going after Google because a Sex Trafficking ad popped up once; and Kamala Harris bludgeoning Facebook because she saw a post propositioning sex...
This will not end here... it will get much much worse... wait until they add 'Stop Enabling Terrorist Attacks' (SETA) and 'Stop Enabling Online Bullying Attacks' (SEOBA)...
Good luck letting anyone put anything online after that; except for maybe a couple of pictures of puppies... everyone loves puppies.....unless those pictures of puppies have steganographic messages about sex trafficking hidden in them! Fine... no puppy pictures either... Thanks for ruining the internet, congress...
At least in my state, the mail you get for a red light or speeding ticket camera are just idle threats. You have to be served in person for these before you are obligated to pay the fine (which they tack on a $30 fee for the serving process). There is also a 90-day window in which they can serve these tickets. After that, they are null and void.
Will the same rules apply to these? I don't see how you could reasonably expect 'standard mail' to be a good stand-in for proof-of-receipt.
Re: OH, NOW you want 3rd-party liability! Hold FCC liable for bots, eh?
Making up a DDOS attack and giving no evidence seems like they are hiding something.
Refusing to release information that would help catch these fraudsters seems like they are hiding something.
3rd Party Liability, as you claim, is not what this article is talking about. It is the obstruction of justice that the FCC is liable for.
And these 'Doom' predictions are based in a long stream of this things call 'history of bad behavior'. I know 'facts' are not very popular in this political climate anymore, but let me lay a few out for you before you shout 'fake news' at the top of your lungs and burst a blood vessel:
AT&T forcibly blocking FaceTime, a legal and legitimate app that was written by Apple. AT&T forced their users to upgrade their phone plan before enabling it.
Comcast blocking Bit Torrent for no other reason than it could
Verizon adding a 'zombie cookie' to track users around the web, without consent, and it ALSO was found to be susceptible to malicious use cases leaving customers less safe.
Comcast and other ISPs letting their colo connections clog and slow down Netflix and YouTube all because they wanted to tax these companies twice. While technically not apart of Net Neutrality; the verbiage that says unfair business practices will be looked at on a case-by-case basis is also being rolled back.
I don't see how any of the above is acceptable behavior. I also don't see how this is even controversial. My Thanksgiving was spent with non-techies bringing up and lamenting this absolutely ridiculous state of affairs. These are people that use computers for email and Netflix and they are talking about it!
The vast majority of the United States populace agrees that additional roadblocks, tolls, or degradation of legal content should be illegal. Net Neutrality is needed since the ISPs refuse to 'self regulate' themselves.
Journals provide 3 pieces of value: A 'trust' relationship that the articles are valid (most of the time), A repository of knowledge that has been curated, and a framework to peer review the articles to enhance the entire ecosystem...
It sounds like the Open Source community has already solved that issue with repositories like GitHub, Maven, NPM, and other repositories that house software. Everyone collaboratively works together to benefit one another. You trust code that others have trusted and 'cited'.
It would be nice to see Open Access journals take off and have a similar structure. Feel free to cite from these papers, but instead of spending $$$$ a year on a paid journal, just donate your time to peer review.
The telcos want NO regulation... so quit playing the shill of the broadband duopoly and trotting out the drivel of 'let the free market decide'.
Free markets work when there is a free.... market.... not when there is regulatory capture an immense barriers to entry. When a company the size of GOOGLE can't break into the broadband market, that should shoot up warning flares so high that everyone on Capitol Hill takes notice (I said should... it didn't).
So the next best thing is basic regulation... And I really do mean BASIC.
1) Don't sell off private information. 2) Don't pick winners and losers by Zero Rating your own companies and companies you are friendly with. 3) Don't block access to websites...
I didn't realize you wanted to have a conversation about that This kind of damning statement and pivot shows you that these scumbags know full well what they are doing when they attempt to abuse copyright like this. They know that there is nothing they can say to make them look good about the position that they are taking. This is a nuisance suit pure and simple. They know it has no merit, but want to discourage others from doing the same with their IP in the future. Judges need to be getting wise to this and start tossing these cases early, often, and make the loser pay legal fees.
But this is America, so no chance on that ever happening.
On the post: Dashcam Recording Instantly Undercuts Officers' Concocted Reason For A Traffic Stop
Oh wait, this is America; he'll be given a promotion...
On the post: Southwest's Bullshit Lawsuit Over A Site That Made $45 Helping People Book Cheaper Flights
Once again with feeling
That is quite literally what happened.
Southwest: "Take down your site... you keep posting about how we were dicks to you."
SWMonkey: "No, I have this thing called the First Amendment. Ever hear of it?"
Southwest: "I have these things called 'lawyers' who don't give two shits about the First Amendment... prepare your asses for bankruptcy because you are making us look bad at how we handled this situation! #merica"
So yeah... definitely no reason to have a federal SLAPP law to shut this lawsuit down. Pretty sure the system works as intended; make corporations the arbiters of speech because they have money, power, and little else to do.
On the post: Iowa State's Attempt To Violate Its Students First Amendment Rights To Cost State Nearly $400k In Damages
University's position: rock... meet hard place
And if you do violate rights. settle early.
BUT
You have to remember a lot of universities are political animals that have to cowtow to the morons holding the purse strings. In Iowa... it is DEFINITELY the republican lawmakers.
A perverse incentive exists when you have a gaggle of fools tell you they want you to do something and they hold the purse strings... Say no... well, that extra funding you were expecting magically dried up.
So while I disagree with the university's decision; one has to wonder if they made the right choice. I mean... the state is paying for their screw-up, not the university. And they didn't make any enemies with the lawmakers so their funding stream is intact...
On the post: For The Second Time In A Week, German Hate Speech Laws Results In Deletion Of Innocent Speech
Best learning tool ever
Too much to hope that this will help stop SESTA here in the States?
On the post: FCC Prepares To Weaken Broadband's Definition To Hide Competitive, Coverage Issues
Re: Re:
This is quite literally the definition of market failure and regulatory capture. If you don't see that, you are purposefully burying your head in the sand.
Market Failure -- 10.6 million homes have NO access to fixed-line broadband internet. 2/3 of Americans only have ONE option for broadband internet. That is by definition market failure.
Regulatory Capture -- Stopping municipalities from creating their own alternative when there isn't one; Throwing up nuisance lawsuits to stop other companies from competing, such as Google. Suing city-by-city to stop One-Touch-Make-Ready pole attachments to speed adoptions. Stopping states from passing their own Net Neutrality laws written almost exclusively by the big telcos... That is by definition regulatory capture.
If users actually had competition, TD would quit covering this since there wouldn't be a problem, no matter what the FCC did. If a company acted like an ass-hat, they'd be held accountable by users leaving them in droves. Currently that isn't possible since you literally can't leave for another provider.
On the post: Another Court Says Compelled Password Production Doesn't Violate The Fifth Amendment
Your guilt is a foregone conclusion...
How on earth is this example any different than providing a PIN?!
On the post: Leaked E-mail Shows Even The FCC's Own CTO Thinks Gutting Net Neutrality Harms The Public
Fail in grand style...
On the post: FCC Boss Lies Again, Insists Net Neutrality Harms The Sick And Disabled
Only YOU can prevent the deaths of millions...
Grand Wizard Ajit Pai has promised us that people will quit dying when these rules are replaced. Do you really want the blood of 6,775 people on your hands? Just give him what he wants! Stop the carnage!
/s
On the post: Google And Amazon Are Harming Consumers And Behaving Like Obnoxious Toddlers
Race to the bottom
I really think once we get this net neutrality thing solved 'once and for all'... which is probably never with the oscillating political theater we call our government... I'm sure there will be a Platform Neutrality law in the wings that works similar to FRAND patents... You can't just block someone's device just because you don't want them to use it... it's either open or closed... not open for some, blocked for some...
On the post: Days Before Doing Verizon's Bidding, Ajit Pai Gives A Talk At Verizon
Re: Nostalgia
I heard him make an interesting pitch. Lots of people thought he was 'in the pocket' of Big Telecom, but when he was working there, he was actually working for the 'little guy'. The incumbent MCIs and AT&Ts of the time were landline. Cellular was just a nascent technology competing in a brave new world (Seriously... who had cell phones in 1992???). He worked to foster regulations that were friendly to this new 'mobile phone' thing and he brought that mantra to the FCC to do the same thing. He wasn't the 'baby-eating-dingo' people thought he was. He understood the struggles of small companies trying to compete.
On the post: New York AG Provides Tool To Help You Check If Your Name Was Used To Support Killing Net Neutrality
Shows for me; Non-NY Resident
On the post: Australian State Wants To Let Tech Companies Ignore Laws And Regulations
Great idea... keep working on it.
Company X is doing research and gets a waiver to do Y. Company Z is also doing research. If Company X is granted a waiver, and Z cannot get the waiver, that puts X at a huge competitive disadvantage.
For things like drones, autonomous driving, flying cars; I could see benefits for relaxing certain types of laws. Things like dumping mercury into water because you are testing something for a new oil refining process...not so much.
On the post: House Internet Censorship Bill Is Just Like The Senate Bill, Except Worse
Re:
Same for me. I don't know Mike. He doesn't know me. I could post "For a good time, call 17 year old Betty at ###-###-####" and blam... they are now a co-conspirator in an underage sex ring... Kamala Harris will be busting down their doors and Mike will be brought up on pimping charges.
Prosecute the people breaking the law... not all of the 3rd parties that have done nothing. Don't prosecute Ford just because Betty was caught in the back seat. Don't prosecute Victoria Secret just because that is where she bought her bra. Don't prosecute AT&T just because they provided a cell phone that she used to answer the message. Don't prosecute TechDirt just because some random asshole posted Betty's number there.
IT MAKES NO DAMN SENSE....
On the post: House Internet Censorship Bill Is Just Like The Senate Bill, Except Worse
This will be bad
Thankfully, Section 230 was set up pretty well from the get-go so we didn't have to deal with these nuisance suits. People trying to sue Facebook and Twitter because ISIS used their platforms. People trying to sue because someone said something mean anonymously.... Section 230 protected against all that.
Now we are opening the floodgates to let politically motivated Attorney Generals like Jim Hood going after Google because a Sex Trafficking ad popped up once; and Kamala Harris bludgeoning Facebook because she saw a post propositioning sex...
This will not end here... it will get much much worse... wait until they add 'Stop Enabling Terrorist Attacks' (SETA) and 'Stop Enabling Online Bullying Attacks' (SEOBA)...
Good luck letting anyone put anything online after that; except for maybe a couple of pictures of puppies... everyone loves puppies.....unless those pictures of puppies have steganographic messages about sex trafficking hidden in them! Fine... no puppy pictures either... Thanks for ruining the internet, congress...
On the post: The FCC's Attack On Net Neutrality Is Based Entirely On Debunked Lobbyist Garbage Data
On the post: Oklahoma Looks To Clamp Down On Uninsured Driving With Traffic Cams And Perverse Incentives
Red Light Loopholes apply?
Will the same rules apply to these? I don't see how you could reasonably expect 'standard mail' to be a good stand-in for proof-of-receipt.
On the post: NY Attorney General Investigating Why Dead People Supported The FCC's Attack On Net Neutrality
Re: OH, NOW you want 3rd-party liability! Hold FCC liable for bots, eh?
Refusing to release information that would help catch these fraudsters seems like they are hiding something.
3rd Party Liability, as you claim, is not what this article is talking about. It is the obstruction of justice that the FCC is liable for.
And these 'Doom' predictions are based in a long stream of this things call 'history of bad behavior'. I know 'facts' are not very popular in this political climate anymore, but let me lay a few out for you before you shout 'fake news' at the top of your lungs and burst a blood vessel:
AT&T forcibly blocking FaceTime, a legal and legitimate app that was written by Apple. AT&T forced their users to upgrade their phone plan before enabling it.
Comcast blocking Bit Torrent for no other reason than it could
Verizon adding a 'zombie cookie' to track users around the web, without consent, and it ALSO was found to be susceptible to malicious use cases leaving customers less safe.
Comcast and other ISPs letting their colo connections clog and slow down Netflix and YouTube all because they wanted to tax these companies twice. While technically not apart of Net Neutrality; the verbiage that says unfair business practices will be looked at on a case-by-case basis is also being rolled back.
I don't see how any of the above is acceptable behavior. I also don't see how this is even controversial. My Thanksgiving was spent with non-techies bringing up and lamenting this absolutely ridiculous state of affairs. These are people that use computers for email and Netflix and they are talking about it!
The vast majority of the United States populace agrees that additional roadblocks, tolls, or degradation of legal content should be illegal. Net Neutrality is needed since the ISPs refuse to 'self regulate' themselves.
On the post: The Sad Legacy Of Copyright: Locking Up Scientific Knowledge And Impeding Progress
Look at Software Development as an Analog
It sounds like the Open Source community has already solved that issue with repositories like GitHub, Maven, NPM, and other repositories that house software. Everyone collaboratively works together to benefit one another. You trust code that others have trusted and 'cited'.
It would be nice to see Open Access journals take off and have a similar structure. Feel free to cite from these papers, but instead of spending $$$$ a year on a paid journal, just donate your time to peer review.
On the post: FCC Moves To Gut Rules Protecting Broadband Users Telcos No Longer Want
Re: it is such a shame....
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171031/09320238517/verizon-lobbies-fcc-to-block-states -protecting-broadband-privacy-net-neutrality.shtml
The telcos want NO regulation... so quit playing the shill of the broadband duopoly and trotting out the drivel of 'let the free market decide'.
Free markets work when there is a free.... market.... not when there is regulatory capture an immense barriers to entry. When a company the size of GOOGLE can't break into the broadband market, that should shoot up warning flares so high that everyone on Capitol Hill takes notice (I said should... it didn't).
So the next best thing is basic regulation... And I really do mean BASIC.
1) Don't sell off private information.
2) Don't pick winners and losers by Zero Rating your own companies and companies you are friendly with.
3) Don't block access to websites...
On the post: Lawsuit Brought By Cosby Show Production Company Against Documentary Is The Reason We Have Fair Use
Very Telling
I didn't realize you wanted to have a conversation about that This kind of damning statement and pivot shows you that these scumbags know full well what they are doing when they attempt to abuse copyright like this. They know that there is nothing they can say to make them look good about the position that they are taking. This is a nuisance suit pure and simple. They know it has no merit, but want to discourage others from doing the same with their IP in the future. Judges need to be getting wise to this and start tossing these cases early, often, and make the loser pay legal fees.
But this is America, so no chance on that ever happening.
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