Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 6:18pm
There seems to be something of a black hole created by this action. They have now told the police department that (from the police perspective) that some really bad things are going to happen to many, if not most of them. In the meantime, they don't actually have anything to go to, except some fairly insubstantial suggestions, and potentially a year (or more) to conceive and accomplish them.
What happens in the mean time? Will those police act worse than before out of fear, retribution, uncertainty, and will there be any control over them? Will they be able to cancel the union contract, or will they be stuck with that in the future meaning not much will change?
I have read that Officer Derek Chauvin will collect his $50,000 per year pension even if he is convicted and serving a prison sentence, something the union arranged for their members. How will they go about terminating officers with the union contract in place? Does a lack of funding cause layoff's, and does that contract actually allow that?
I know the City Counsel is acting with the best intentions, now that the citizenry has place them in the untenable political position of if they don't their political careers are threatened. But they did not think this through. At the very least, they should have had, and explained an interim plan while they work out the long term program. And they should have been definitive about the future of that union contract.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 1:46pm
Re: Re: The devil is in the details, so...
Granted, but if Bop Street Records made the recordings, as often happens, they could be the copyright holders due to contractual arrangements. If that was the case, then those assets could (in theory) be transferred in the sale of the company. I presume that it was the company that was sold, not just the recordings.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 12:47pm
The devil is in the details, so...
Is it possible that Bop Street Records was in fact the copyright holder on those records, at least those that weren't already in the public domain and that the sale transferred those copyrights to the Internet Archive? Short of that rule where the artists can reclaim their copyright after a certain amount of time, wouldn't the Internet Archive then be able to do what they wished with those copyrights?
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 12:18pm
Re: This could be bad news if not handeled right
It's not possible to prove a negative, though I am sure Facebook will try, and even if actually innocent of any other similar action they will not be successful. The tricky part will be coming up with some 'evidence' to initiate the charges. Of course these could be made up by anyone as the way 'evidence works these days the mere charge will be enough.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 7:06am
Situation Normal All Fouled Up
"They included eBay’s senior manager of global intelligence, a manager of eBay's global intelligence center (GIC), a contractor who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC, and a senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team --and a former cop."
Think about what these people did in their day job? What kind of 'intelligence' did they conjure up. Were they as 'creative' in the 'intelligence' reports they submitted? Were they as ham fisted in their daily activities as corporate intelligence gatherers? Did no one else at eBay ever consider that their might be something about this group that needed looking in to? Or, like with the government, did the office of eBay global intelligence operate with a strict need to know policy, and nobody outside of the office had a need to know? Not even their boss.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 16 Jun 2020 @ 6:49am
Re: Yellin' at Other People's Kids Not to Play Ball in the Stree
Power of the purse. Congress controls the money the Executive spends. Not that these 35 can exert that type of control on their own, but with a lot of hard work they might influence some others. Getting past the Senate will be a big problem, at least in its current formulation. That might, however, be different in 6 months or so. Here's hoping.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jun 2020 @ 4:36pm
Re:
They might be better off hiring more counselors and training teachers to handle kids who have not been taught to take responsibility for their actions at home. And as Thad said here:
"...it's a job for people who are trained to deal with children who are mentally ill, developmentally disabled, or just subject to puberty-induced mood swings."
More training, holding teachers (and administrators) accountable for competences other than just teaching or administrating. Giving some parents a good kick in the ass wouldn't hurt either, but that is not going to come from the government any time soon.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jun 2020 @ 3:42pm
Re: Re: About Discipline
An additional societal factor may be the 'it takes a village' concept where kids, unaccompanied by an adult loose in any neighborhood must be up to something bad. Parents and/or police called by busy bodies who encapsulate their own children to protect them from everything. Even falling leaves. Kids never learn to function on their own anymore.
When I was a kid, and not in school, we 'escaped' (sometimes with encouragement) the house as early as we could and only returned home for meals. Lunch was a no brainer, but mom had a cowbell to 'remind' us when dinner was. No one ever complained about us, as the rest of the neighborhood kids did much the same.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jun 2020 @ 3:05pm
Third Party Data
In the interest of privacy, it should be made very clear that data collected by third parties belongs to the individual, not the third party, and that access to that data requires a warrant with sufficient specificity to name exactly the who, what, when, where, why, and how for what they are looking for. Their purpose should be to confirm already known information, rather than find leads. No fishing expeditions by law enforcement.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 15 Jun 2020 @ 2:13pm
Disbursement
I would add a caveat for those class actions, whomever is prosecuting them, and that is that the attorneys receive a minimal compensation and that the class member receive the vast majority of any rewards. This should not be yet another vector for the lawyers to win much more than the harmed.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 14 Jun 2020 @ 12:02pm
Re: Re: Re: Can't legislate away human nature
Your point about the FCC is a good one, I am not sure how one could go about ensuring ideological diversity in such a situation, perhaps by election from Congress, after the defanging of the party's there, or a lottery. The idea of a draft from people that have expressed an aversion to power, but that might well have similar issues.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 14 Jun 2020 @ 6:59am
Re: Can't legislate away human nature
I don't disagree with you, groups will form and may even become active toward their particular bent. My point is to remove the power we have given the party's that currently exist. They get to pick who will be nominated. They hold conventions with arcane rules that decide who will actually run. They get to establish a majority and minority in our federal legislative bodies, who then controls much of what happens in that body. Don't get me wrong, I want there to be a conflict of ideas in deliberative bodies. What I don't want is someone who by dint of having been a member of the majority who then got selected to lead to decide which bill will or won't make it to the floor, for partisan reasons.
Get rid of any rules that allow a party to make a decision for the rest of us. Comb through all the rules in the House and Senate and excise any rule that mentions, refers to, or has an opportunity to give power to one faction in their membership over another (and by faction I don't mean the committees which should form and then elect a leader from within that group). By allowing self nomination and holding a primary where every voter gets to decide which candidates move forward. Not R's picking R's or D's picking D's, but every voter has an opportunity to express their opinion on every candidate at the primary level as well as the actual election. It also eliminates the potential for 'party line' voting, which won't stop people from selecting candidates who think like them and making those selections, it prevents voters from selecting those candidates the party controls who were therefore allowed to run.
By removing money (candidate personal money or financial support) from the equation, every otherwise qualified citizen can run for office. This won't stop people from speaking out, maybe even corporations (though I think a Congressional fix for Citizens United is something we seriously need, as well as paid lobbying reform) but under the current system, the party's control a lot of money and select where it goes. Someone in this thread suggested 'don't give them money, give them advertising space/time and posters'. While that is not a terrible idea, there still needs to be a way for candidates to 'get out and press the flesh'. That same person wanted to control candidates behavior in such a way that they 'could not' create a new incident that gave one candidate more press face time than others. That, I am afraid is out of our control.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 13 Jun 2020 @ 4:21pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As an addendum to the no party concept, it has to be in the legislatures as well. No more majority leader or minority leader, no more chair of the committee goes to the party in power. These things will have to be worked out in other ways.
The Speaker of the House get elected, but from the entirety of the representatives. The Senate still gets stuck with the Vice-President. If there are other ways that party membership influences the conduct of Congress, they need to be eradicated as well.
With that under way, we can start working on state legislatures to install the same principles.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 13 Jun 2020 @ 5:30am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, I have some ideas about how to go about this, some of which are fairly elaborate. But in the interest of simplicity let's try this (for example).
Have a nomination day, one year and one month n advance of the election. At this point anybody can toss their hat in the ring (self nominate), along with their platform (part of the elaborate plan had the electorate 'elect' a platform upon which all candidates ran). The platforms and a questionnaire filled out by nominees is posted on a website, and published in newspapers, no other advertising allowed.
Then, one year prior to the election, a primary is held. Using whatever system is deemed best, but hopefully not the one we currently have, the field is winnowed to, well lets say a dozen or so.
These final 12 become eligible for the advertising (or better still let's call it campaign) money which is evenly split. No other money is allowed so that even a homeless person with no trust fund could do this. They get to choose what to do with the money, but every nickle is accountable, and some guidelines could be created. That homeless person might need to buy a suit or two, but in general the money should be spent of campaigning, and nothing else.
I am fairly sure that some additional details would need to be worked out. but there's an outline of something that might work. If you see a problem with this, please, use your imagination and tell us how to fix that.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 6:15pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Again, as I said above:
"Some say Third Party votes are a waste, but they are wrong. They help one candidate or the other by not making, OK lets call it the lesser of two evils, more liable to win."
I wish there was an election reform third party with enough sensible ideas to get behind, and included banning political party's. I could get behind that. Unfortunately most third party organizations are just a subset of one of the recent iterations of Republican or Democrat with some very small differentiation, and most people are too focused on issues closely related to themselves to look at the big picture. As I said the other day:
"Thinking about the political spectrum I imagined a line between each and every distinction. Unfortunately, that created a solid bar as even closely held base ideologies often disagree on some point or another creating yet another subset."
Democrats and Republicans have reversed their basic ideologies a number of times, each, which in the end, for me, they stand for nothing except themselves. I want a government that stands for the people, not a party or some other ideology.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 5:59pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don't think reform will be easy. Citizens United can be fixed by Congress, and one easy way to do that is government pays for all election related activities. They could easily take 1% away from the intelligence agencies and the military (the military could stand to cut many of their development programs, give the soldiers a raise and not miss that 1%) and pay for all of those election related activities, including advertising. It won't happen until we, the voters, make clear to our elected representatives that their jobs depend upon election reform in sufficient numbers to make them realize we are serious, which in and of itself won't be easy.
And I agree, it is not that I like or dislike either candidate as a person (though Trump is making that really difficult) neither one is qualified to be the elected leader of a very small debating club, let alone the nation.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 5:16pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Any one of those 7.8 billion other choices (it is actually less than 350 million as the rest are not eligible to be president, and neither are all of those 350 million, but I digress) would be a Third Party vote.
The point is that if you, for example, hate Trump more than Biden not voting or voting third party gives one less vote for Biden and makes Trump (to a very small degree, but compound that by like thinkers) more likely to win. Reverse that if you feel the other way. Some say Third Party votes are a waste, but they are wrong. They help one candidate or the other by not making, OK lets call it the lesser of two evils, more liable to win.
I don't like either of these two, but they are who have been presented to us by the duopolistic party system that we have, which is why I advocate for getting rid of political party's. The founding fathers debated having party's, some for and some against, and as someone else pointed out the other day Washington did not belong to a party when elected and remonstrated against them in his farewell address. Until that is fixed our choice is to abdicate our vote to the party system that is stacked against us, or participate in a way that insures the least bad, while at the same time working to make the system better, which means getting rid of political parties and taking money out of politics...for a start.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 4:25pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your choices will be Trump, Biden or Third Party. Since you're considering Biden (even if negatively) you must not like Trump either. So the next question to answer is who will the Third Party vote help/hurt more (at this point I don't see a Third Party win, though that is not entirely impossible)?
I don't know the answer yet, and may never. It may be how close the polls are, or how close the Electoral College counts are, which means a state by state analysis that is actually accurate and that those who are appointed to the Electoral College actually follow the mandate of their state (which apparently they are not required to). Oh my, what a system!
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 4:07pm
The ain't seen nothin' yet
Just how will Zoom handle the request to shut down a meeting when some IP maximalist discovers that one of the meeting participants has a radio playing in the background with some music (already paid for BTW) they claim to own the copyright on? That the cows might hear it has been used already, but I am sure the maximalists will come up with some better excuse to make the claim that it is a 'secondary' performance that requires additional fees.
Not being a user, can one record a Zoom meeting, then post it to YouTube? There, the problem would be the YouTube user for posting it (with YouTube in the middle of course) but I could see a dedicated maximalist trying to draw Zoom into things for having aided and abetted the recording.
Anonymous Anonymous Coward (profile), 12 Jun 2020 @ 10:19am
Re:
Well put. But without §230 other platforms could be sued out of existence if they don't comport to the will of the unduly passionate. Without §230 the truth might be quashed. Yes some platform might decide to moderate actual truth for their version, but others will allow it, or for that matter disallow the reverse.
Without §230 there would be unending lawsuits where each side declaims the other for real or imagined defamation. Not that we don't have that now, to some extent, but §230 allows platforms to escape with minimal (though very expensive) harm.
§230 removes the platforms liability so that their users can speak and the platform can set standards for the speech as they wish. The detractors for §230 wish to control speech they don't like, including the truth, whether they control the platform or not. Therefore the truth is saved, with the aid of §230.
On the post: Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Disband Its Police Department
There seems to be something of a black hole created by this action. They have now told the police department that (from the police perspective) that some really bad things are going to happen to many, if not most of them. In the meantime, they don't actually have anything to go to, except some fairly insubstantial suggestions, and potentially a year (or more) to conceive and accomplish them.
What happens in the mean time? Will those police act worse than before out of fear, retribution, uncertainty, and will there be any control over them? Will they be able to cancel the union contract, or will they be stuck with that in the future meaning not much will change?
I have read that Officer Derek Chauvin will collect his $50,000 per year pension even if he is convicted and serving a prison sentence, something the union arranged for their members. How will they go about terminating officers with the union contract in place? Does a lack of funding cause layoff's, and does that contract actually allow that?
I know the City Counsel is acting with the best intentions, now that the citizenry has place them in the untenable political position of if they don't their political careers are threatened. But they did not think this through. At the very least, they should have had, and explained an interim plan while they work out the long term program. And they should have been definitive about the future of that union contract.
On the post: Senator Thom Tillis Seems Really Pissed Off That The Internet Archive Bought A Record Store To Make Rare Recordings Accessible
Re: Re: The devil is in the details, so...
Granted, but if Bop Street Records made the recordings, as often happens, they could be the copyright holders due to contractual arrangements. If that was the case, then those assets could (in theory) be transferred in the sale of the company. I presume that it was the company that was sold, not just the recordings.
On the post: Senator Thom Tillis Seems Really Pissed Off That The Internet Archive Bought A Record Store To Make Rare Recordings Accessible
The devil is in the details, so...
Is it possible that Bop Street Records was in fact the copyright holder on those records, at least those that weren't already in the public domain and that the sale transferred those copyrights to the Internet Archive? Short of that rule where the artists can reclaim their copyright after a certain amount of time, wouldn't the Internet Archive then be able to do what they wished with those copyrights?
On the post: Tradeoffs: Facebook Helping The FBI Hack Tails To Track Down A Truly Awful Child Predator Raises Many Questions
Re: This could be bad news if not handeled right
It's not possible to prove a negative, though I am sure Facebook will try, and even if actually innocent of any other similar action they will not be successful. The tricky part will be coming up with some 'evidence' to initiate the charges. Of course these could be made up by anyone as the way 'evidence works these days the mere charge will be enough.
On the post: eBay Execs Thought Sending Dead Pigs, Live Spiders To Small News Website Was A Good Idea
Situation Normal All Fouled Up
Think about what these people did in their day job? What kind of 'intelligence' did they conjure up. Were they as 'creative' in the 'intelligence' reports they submitted? Were they as ham fisted in their daily activities as corporate intelligence gatherers? Did no one else at eBay ever consider that their might be something about this group that needed looking in to? Or, like with the government, did the office of eBay global intelligence operate with a strict need to know policy, and nobody outside of the office had a need to know? Not even their boss.
On the post: Congressional Reps Demand Federal Law Enforcement Agencies Stop Surveilling Protesters
Re: Yellin' at Other People's Kids Not to Play Ball in the Stree
Power of the purse. Congress controls the money the Executive spends. Not that these 35 can exert that type of control on their own, but with a lot of hard work they might influence some others. Getting past the Senate will be a big problem, at least in its current formulation. That might, however, be different in 6 months or so. Here's hoping.
On the post: More Schools Are Ending Contracts With Cops Following Protests Over The Killing Of George Floyd
Re:
They might be better off hiring more counselors and training teachers to handle kids who have not been taught to take responsibility for their actions at home. And as Thad said here:
More training, holding teachers (and administrators) accountable for competences other than just teaching or administrating. Giving some parents a good kick in the ass wouldn't hurt either, but that is not going to come from the government any time soon.
On the post: More Schools Are Ending Contracts With Cops Following Protests Over The Killing Of George Floyd
Re: Re: About Discipline
An additional societal factor may be the 'it takes a village' concept where kids, unaccompanied by an adult loose in any neighborhood must be up to something bad. Parents and/or police called by busy bodies who encapsulate their own children to protect them from everything. Even falling leaves. Kids never learn to function on their own anymore.
When I was a kid, and not in school, we 'escaped' (sometimes with encouragement) the house as early as we could and only returned home for meals. Lunch was a no brainer, but mom had a cowbell to 'remind' us when dinner was. No one ever complained about us, as the rest of the neighborhood kids did much the same.
On the post: Can You Build A Privacy Law That Doesn't Create Privacy Trolls?
Third Party Data
In the interest of privacy, it should be made very clear that data collected by third parties belongs to the individual, not the third party, and that access to that data requires a warrant with sufficient specificity to name exactly the who, what, when, where, why, and how for what they are looking for. Their purpose should be to confirm already known information, rather than find leads. No fishing expeditions by law enforcement.
On the post: Can You Build A Privacy Law That Doesn't Create Privacy Trolls?
Disbursement
I would add a caveat for those class actions, whomever is prosecuting them, and that is that the attorneys receive a minimal compensation and that the class member receive the vast majority of any rewards. This should not be yet another vector for the lawyers to win much more than the harmed.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Can't legislate away human nature
Your point about the FCC is a good one, I am not sure how one could go about ensuring ideological diversity in such a situation, perhaps by election from Congress, after the defanging of the party's there, or a lottery. The idea of a draft from people that have expressed an aversion to power, but that might well have similar issues.
Something to be examined, for certain.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Can't legislate away human nature
I don't disagree with you, groups will form and may even become active toward their particular bent. My point is to remove the power we have given the party's that currently exist. They get to pick who will be nominated. They hold conventions with arcane rules that decide who will actually run. They get to establish a majority and minority in our federal legislative bodies, who then controls much of what happens in that body. Don't get me wrong, I want there to be a conflict of ideas in deliberative bodies. What I don't want is someone who by dint of having been a member of the majority who then got selected to lead to decide which bill will or won't make it to the floor, for partisan reasons.
Get rid of any rules that allow a party to make a decision for the rest of us. Comb through all the rules in the House and Senate and excise any rule that mentions, refers to, or has an opportunity to give power to one faction in their membership over another (and by faction I don't mean the committees which should form and then elect a leader from within that group). By allowing self nomination and holding a primary where every voter gets to decide which candidates move forward. Not R's picking R's or D's picking D's, but every voter has an opportunity to express their opinion on every candidate at the primary level as well as the actual election. It also eliminates the potential for 'party line' voting, which won't stop people from selecting candidates who think like them and making those selections, it prevents voters from selecting those candidates the party controls who were therefore allowed to run.
By removing money (candidate personal money or financial support) from the equation, every otherwise qualified citizen can run for office. This won't stop people from speaking out, maybe even corporations (though I think a Congressional fix for Citizens United is something we seriously need, as well as paid lobbying reform) but under the current system, the party's control a lot of money and select where it goes. Someone in this thread suggested 'don't give them money, give them advertising space/time and posters'. While that is not a terrible idea, there still needs to be a way for candidates to 'get out and press the flesh'. That same person wanted to control candidates behavior in such a way that they 'could not' create a new incident that gave one candidate more press face time than others. That, I am afraid is out of our control.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As an addendum to the no party concept, it has to be in the legislatures as well. No more majority leader or minority leader, no more chair of the committee goes to the party in power. These things will have to be worked out in other ways.
The Speaker of the House get elected, but from the entirety of the representatives. The Senate still gets stuck with the Vice-President. If there are other ways that party membership influences the conduct of Congress, they need to be eradicated as well.
With that under way, we can start working on state legislatures to install the same principles.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, I have some ideas about how to go about this, some of which are fairly elaborate. But in the interest of simplicity let's try this (for example).
Have a nomination day, one year and one month n advance of the election. At this point anybody can toss their hat in the ring (self nominate), along with their platform (part of the elaborate plan had the electorate 'elect' a platform upon which all candidates ran). The platforms and a questionnaire filled out by nominees is posted on a website, and published in newspapers, no other advertising allowed.
Then, one year prior to the election, a primary is held. Using whatever system is deemed best, but hopefully not the one we currently have, the field is winnowed to, well lets say a dozen or so.
These final 12 become eligible for the advertising (or better still let's call it campaign) money which is evenly split. No other money is allowed so that even a homeless person with no trust fund could do this. They get to choose what to do with the money, but every nickle is accountable, and some guidelines could be created. That homeless person might need to buy a suit or two, but in general the money should be spent of campaigning, and nothing else.
I am fairly sure that some additional details would need to be worked out. but there's an outline of something that might work. If you see a problem with this, please, use your imagination and tell us how to fix that.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Again, as I said above:
I wish there was an election reform third party with enough sensible ideas to get behind, and included banning political party's. I could get behind that. Unfortunately most third party organizations are just a subset of one of the recent iterations of Republican or Democrat with some very small differentiation, and most people are too focused on issues closely related to themselves to look at the big picture. As I said the other day:
Democrats and Republicans have reversed their basic ideologies a number of times, each, which in the end, for me, they stand for nothing except themselves. I want a government that stands for the people, not a party or some other ideology.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don't think reform will be easy. Citizens United can be fixed by Congress, and one easy way to do that is government pays for all election related activities. They could easily take 1% away from the intelligence agencies and the military (the military could stand to cut many of their development programs, give the soldiers a raise and not miss that 1%) and pay for all of those election related activities, including advertising. It won't happen until we, the voters, make clear to our elected representatives that their jobs depend upon election reform in sufficient numbers to make them realize we are serious, which in and of itself won't be easy.
And I agree, it is not that I like or dislike either candidate as a person (though Trump is making that really difficult) neither one is qualified to be the elected leader of a very small debating club, let alone the nation.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Any one of those 7.8 billion other choices (it is actually less than 350 million as the rest are not eligible to be president, and neither are all of those 350 million, but I digress) would be a Third Party vote.
The point is that if you, for example, hate Trump more than Biden not voting or voting third party gives one less vote for Biden and makes Trump (to a very small degree, but compound that by like thinkers) more likely to win. Reverse that if you feel the other way. Some say Third Party votes are a waste, but they are wrong. They help one candidate or the other by not making, OK lets call it the lesser of two evils, more liable to win.
I don't like either of these two, but they are who have been presented to us by the duopolistic party system that we have, which is why I advocate for getting rid of political party's. The founding fathers debated having party's, some for and some against, and as someone else pointed out the other day Washington did not belong to a party when elected and remonstrated against them in his farewell address. Until that is fixed our choice is to abdicate our vote to the party system that is stacked against us, or participate in a way that insures the least bad, while at the same time working to make the system better, which means getting rid of political parties and taking money out of politics...for a start.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Your choices will be Trump, Biden or Third Party. Since you're considering Biden (even if negatively) you must not like Trump either. So the next question to answer is who will the Third Party vote help/hurt more (at this point I don't see a Third Party win, though that is not entirely impossible)?
I don't know the answer yet, and may never. It may be how close the polls are, or how close the Electoral College counts are, which means a state by state analysis that is actually accurate and that those who are appointed to the Electoral College actually follow the mandate of their state (which apparently they are not required to). Oh my, what a system!
On the post: Zoom & China: Never Forget That Content Moderation Requests From Government Involve Moral Questions
The ain't seen nothin' yet
Just how will Zoom handle the request to shut down a meeting when some IP maximalist discovers that one of the meeting participants has a radio playing in the background with some music (already paid for BTW) they claim to own the copyright on? That the cows might hear it has been used already, but I am sure the maximalists will come up with some better excuse to make the claim that it is a 'secondary' performance that requires additional fees.
Not being a user, can one record a Zoom meeting, then post it to YouTube? There, the problem would be the YouTube user for posting it (with YouTube in the middle of course) but I could see a dedicated maximalist trying to draw Zoom into things for having aided and abetted the recording.
/serious or /sarcastic...could go either way
On the post: Ron Wyden Explains Why President Trump (And Many Others) Are Totally Wrong About Section 230
Re:
Well put. But without §230 other platforms could be sued out of existence if they don't comport to the will of the unduly passionate. Without §230 the truth might be quashed. Yes some platform might decide to moderate actual truth for their version, but others will allow it, or for that matter disallow the reverse.
Without §230 there would be unending lawsuits where each side declaims the other for real or imagined defamation. Not that we don't have that now, to some extent, but §230 allows platforms to escape with minimal (though very expensive) harm.
§230 removes the platforms liability so that their users can speak and the platform can set standards for the speech as they wish. The detractors for §230 wish to control speech they don't like, including the truth, whether they control the platform or not. Therefore the truth is saved, with the aid of §230.
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