You just straight up imagined that the Unruh Act covers "political affiliation". Like most anti-discrimination rules, it does not.
California Civil Code s.51, aka the Unruh Civil Rights Act, prevents discrimination based on:
"sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation"
Not political affiliation. It's very interesting to me that you simply assumed (or intentionally pretended?) that political affiliation was on that list.
There are some different contours to how Canada's Charter rights apply in civil lawsuits, however the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the Charter right to free speech is a critical guiding principle in civil defamation/libel law specifically.
That is a much more complicated project than changing the default of a single checkbox. It's something that's on our radar as a possible future feature, but outside the scope of this update that was focused on making the mobile experience smoother.
the mark down check box is now on the right side of the text (in opostion to almost all sane page layouts).
I'm not quite sure how we ended up with that happening but I don't think it was intentional and either way you are correct! Moving it to the left side now.
We had thought about including that with this build and then it sorta dropped off our radar, but you're right and we're all in agreement! Updating it any moment now - you should start seeing Markdown checked by default very shortly.
Of course, given that many of them will already buy "children in a school shooting are all paid crisis actors and the whole thing never happened" without further thought, one wonders just how potent or necessary an addition "deep fakes" really is to the toolkit.
Re: "someone else's stuff" is not your "own stamp on things"
I had thought about responding to many of your points one by one, but I think there's just a single key point that is the crux of it all. You say:
The legal limits have already been worked out.
The legal limits are in a constant state of flux. There have been several pieces of major copyright legislation, and international copyright treaties, making major changes to the "legal limits" just in my lifetime - and many more than that in the copyright's very short (in the grand scheme of things) history. Legislative changes continued to be proposed and pushed all over the world, including Europe's current massive overhaul.
Beyond that, one of the key elements of the "legal limits" - fair use - is not and has never been and does not even pretend to be clear or firm. It is in an even greater state of flux, potentially drastically altered by every even-slightly-significant court ruling related to it. Several other aspects of copyright are similarly still open to significant legal debate, and could be changed by a ruling - things like contributory infringement or inducement to infringement. There are also aspects of the "legal limits" that are regularly re-evaluated bureaucratically, by the Copyright Office.
And, moreover, copyright law - which came to prominence at the behest of publishers in the age of movable type - has always been heavily shaped by technology. Every new major form of media distribution - records, movies, VHS tapes, DVRs - has resulted in years and years of legal and legislative grappling over how copyright applies and how it must be adapted. The same was true with the DMCA in response to the internet, and we are now very much in the midst of an extension of that battle for an internet that functions in ways barely envisioned in 1998.
So no, the legal limits have not been "worked out" - they are in a constant state of being worked on. And you know perfectly well that the constitution only grants congress the power to secure exclusive rights for creators, it does not "direct" them to do so.
at least some of the cases, it's attention-seeking behavior that would not happen if there was not a way to get an audience through a giant social network*
This is also true of some cases of suicide by jumping off a roof, which wouldn't happen if we didn't allow such tall buildings in such visible public places.
Are you sure you've switched to the beta? You should definitely be seeing the page respond to your screen size, and there shouldn't be extra white space. Or are you just referring to the desktop version? This update is focused on mobile, no major changes to the desktop site.
I'll think about anything that might mitigate the back-button issues with post expanders (could possibly add expanded posts to a URL-string so they remain expanded when you return to the page that way) but overall the expanders are a very popular feature.
FYI, my deleted comment came from this article and it appears that both the spam comments have been removed now.
I will have to double check how exactly our filters respond to username URLs right now - we've tweaked that in the past when there were specific bursts of spam getting in at various times, but not sure the current status.
FYI, my deleted comment came from this article and it appears that both the spam comments have been removed now.
Yes, we remove spam comments. If we miss some, we miss some, and I'm sorry about that I guess. And if you submitted a comment that was intentionally masquerading a spam comment, and we deleted it as spam, well... what did you expect? As I said, we only delete spam comments - not sure why you're accusing me of hypocrisy over that.
the opportunity to update your spam filter seems to be missed
What opportunity was missed? I don't really know what that means...
We operate several concurrent spam filters that catch hundreds of spam comments every day - and we're not aware of any superior alternative that we should be installing instead. There's no such thing as a perfect filter.
Yeah there definitely seem to be a few strange things happening for some people with regards to getting into/out of the beta - we'll try to resolve it ASAP, but for the moment it seems like most of it happens when interacting with this post, so hopefully it doesn't cause too many problems for folks who just want to stick with the normal site for now.
I'm not sure what comment you're referring to but I'll look into it. If it wasn't actually spam, it shouldn't have been deleted. In what way are we inconsistent about removing spam? Unless you just mean that sometimes stuff slips through the cracks and we don't notice it for a while.
We've considered collapsing entire reply threads before, it's something we may revisit.
I do think the "irony" you're seeing is rather imagined though. Our comments are actually among the most open of any blog on the web. How many sites do you know that even allow fully anonymous comments without requiring you to so much as enter an email address? Or that has a reporting system that never results in any comments actually being deleted (apart from spam)?
As for our unwavering stance, that has always been in favour of the first amendment and against censorship by the government. Meanwhile, though we believe leaning towards openness is the right choice in many situations, we've always maintained that it is perfectly acceptable, often preferable, and essentially inevitable that almost all online forums will employ some level of content moderation.
Hmm, yeah, looks like something strange is happening with this post specifically. We'll figure it out soon - and let me know if it ends up happening to you anywhere else.
Were you using the lite version on mobile before, or just zooming in on the regular desktop version? Is it possible you have some sort of zoom or text-size-adjustment still applied? The font *is* larger on mobile now, but only because it was previously unreadable mouseprint until you zoomed in on it...
On the post: VP Of 'Students For Free Speech' Sues Critic For (Among Other Things) Calling Him A 'Free Speech Asshole'
Re: Re:
Woah there!
You just straight up imagined that the Unruh Act covers "political affiliation". Like most anti-discrimination rules, it does not.
California Civil Code s.51, aka the Unruh Civil Rights Act, prevents discrimination based on:
Not political affiliation. It's very interesting to me that you simply assumed (or intentionally pretended?) that political affiliation was on that list.
On the post: VP Of 'Students For Free Speech' Sues Critic For (Among Other Things) Calling Him A 'Free Speech Asshole'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
d, maybe (I think probably not)
And even then, if you read the actual tweet (also reproduced in the complaint)... he never even calls Di Franco that:
https://twitter.com/mbueckert/status/1093148134119825409
On the post: VP Of 'Students For Free Speech' Sues Critic For (Among Other Things) Calling Him A 'Free Speech Asshole'
Re:
There are some different contours to how Canada's Charter rights apply in civil lawsuits, however the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that the Charter right to free speech is a critical guiding principle in civil defamation/libel law specifically.
On the post: Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates
Re: Re: Re:
That is a much more complicated project than changing the default of a single checkbox. It's something that's on our radar as a possible future feature, but outside the scope of this update that was focused on making the mobile experience smoother.
On the post: Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates
Re:
the mark down check box is now on the right side of the text (in opostion to almost all sane page layouts).
I'm not quite sure how we ended up with that happening but I don't think it was intentional and either way you are correct! Moving it to the left side now.
On the post: Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates
Re: Defaults
On the post: Deep Fakes: Let's Not Go Off The Deep End
Re: Re:
Of course, given that many of them will already buy "children in a school shooting are all paid crisis actors and the whole thing never happened" without further thought, one wonders just how potent or necessary an addition "deep fakes" really is to the toolkit.
On the post: Copyright, Culture, Sharing, Remix... And A Congresswoman Dancing As A College Student
Re: "someone else's stuff" is not your "own stamp on things"
I had thought about responding to many of your points one by one, but I think there's just a single key point that is the crux of it all. You say:
The legal limits have already been worked out.
The legal limits are in a constant state of flux. There have been several pieces of major copyright legislation, and international copyright treaties, making major changes to the "legal limits" just in my lifetime - and many more than that in the copyright's very short (in the grand scheme of things) history. Legislative changes continued to be proposed and pushed all over the world, including Europe's current massive overhaul.
Beyond that, one of the key elements of the "legal limits" - fair use - is not and has never been and does not even pretend to be clear or firm. It is in an even greater state of flux, potentially drastically altered by every even-slightly-significant court ruling related to it. Several other aspects of copyright are similarly still open to significant legal debate, and could be changed by a ruling - things like contributory infringement or inducement to infringement. There are also aspects of the "legal limits" that are regularly re-evaluated bureaucratically, by the Copyright Office.
And, moreover, copyright law - which came to prominence at the behest of publishers in the age of movable type - has always been heavily shaped by technology. Every new major form of media distribution - records, movies, VHS tapes, DVRs - has resulted in years and years of legal and legislative grappling over how copyright applies and how it must be adapted. The same was true with the DMCA in response to the internet, and we are now very much in the midst of an extension of that battle for an internet that functions in ways barely envisioned in 1998.
So no, the legal limits have not been "worked out" - they are in a constant state of being worked on. And you know perfectly well that the constitution only grants congress the power to secure exclusive rights for creators, it does not "direct" them to do so.
On the post: The Internet Giant's Dilemma: Preventing Suicide Is Good; Invading People's Private Lives... Not So Much
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
This is also true of some cases of suicide by jumping off a roof, which wouldn't happen if we didn't allow such tall buildings in such visible public places.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Great! Cosmetic changes are ALWAYS death knell!
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Beta layout: Desktop Chrome(has flash), iMac osx 10.6.8
I'll think about anything that might mitigate the back-button issues with post expanders (could possibly add expanded posts to a URL-string so they remain expanded when you return to the page that way) but overall the expanders are a very popular feature.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
FYI, my deleted comment came from this article and it appears that both the spam comments have been removed now.
I will have to double check how exactly our filters respond to username URLs right now - we've tweaked that in the past when there were specific bursts of spam getting in at various times, but not sure the current status.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
FYI, my deleted comment came from this article and it appears that both the spam comments have been removed now.
Yes, we remove spam comments. If we miss some, we miss some, and I'm sorry about that I guess. And if you submitted a comment that was intentionally masquerading a spam comment, and we deleted it as spam, well... what did you expect? As I said, we only delete spam comments - not sure why you're accusing me of hypocrisy over that.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
the opportunity to update your spam filter seems to be missed
What opportunity was missed? I don't really know what that means...
We operate several concurrent spam filters that catch hundreds of spam comments every day - and we're not aware of any superior alternative that we should be installing instead. There's no such thing as a perfect filter.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re:
We've considered collapsing entire reply threads before, it's something we may revisit.
I do think the "irony" you're seeing is rather imagined though. Our comments are actually among the most open of any blog on the web. How many sites do you know that even allow fully anonymous comments without requiring you to so much as enter an email address? Or that has a reporting system that never results in any comments actually being deleted (apart from spam)?
As for our unwavering stance, that has always been in favour of the first amendment and against censorship by the government. Meanwhile, though we believe leaning towards openness is the right choice in many situations, we've always maintained that it is perfectly acceptable, often preferable, and essentially inevitable that almost all online forums will employ some level of content moderation.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Doesn't happen on other posts.
Hmm, yeah, looks like something strange is happening with this post specifically. We'll figure it out soon - and let me know if it ends up happening to you anywhere else.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: We Finally Start Testing Responsive Design!
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
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