Blockchain is a mechanism whereby a community can verify the integrity of data.
It is unlikely to be useful for someone who want to defend a monopoly against a community. It is more likely to be of use for the exact opposite.
In other words it can be used as part of an anti-anti-piracy measure to verify the integrity of torrents against anti-piracy measures that try to spoof them.
The reality is that blockchain based offerings are not something that you can "own" as a way of making monopoly profits. The moment you try to do that the unique advantages of blockchain evaporate.
No, blockchain based offerings are released into the world. If they are successful then a large number of people can make money by using them and an even larger number of people will benefit more indirectly. However there is no automatic reward for their creators.
That is why "investing in blockchain" is an indication of backwards, old fashioned thinking.
Sorry - you are wrong - I have a cheap capped subscription with BT as part of the phone deal but with free access to BT sport (which is actually useless at the moment because the bandwidth on BT is not good enough). I have another provider (wireless with much better bandwidth) so BT is only a backup for me.
Probably the best way to achieve that would be by a genuine free market, with multiple players, at the ISP level.
As I understand it this does not exist for most of the US.
The UK is better on that score - although we don't have true net neutrality (BT zero rates its own content on deals which are otherwise very limited in bandwidth for example).
I still think that it wouldn't really satisfy their desires - but I'll concede that it it would satisfy what they currently believe their desires to be.
In other words it's what they currently think that they want - but if they got it they would quickly realise that it isn't what they actually want.
Stop trying to make the 'job' of criminals easier just because it would make fulfilling your desires easier too.
Except that it wouldn't do even that. The existence of secure encryption depends on the laws of mathematics not the policies of Apple. Even if Apple only offered backdoored encryption serious criminals would still be able to deploy their own encryption. Only the low hanging fruit would be affected - and they usually leave plenty of other evidence to work with.
As for San Bernardino - well the two main perpetrators were already dead, and it has been shown time and again that these Islamic plots don't depend on sophisticated support networks. So why bother? There was nothing that the FBI could have "cracked" and this was baltantly obvious from the very start.
These attacks are triggered by information which is propagated in plain sight via the various Islamic scriptures. The way to combat them it to take on the ideology in the public square.
Gadget addiction has been around for a very long time. All that changes is the gadgets in question.
The guy who was responsible for the mechanical (punch card) calculating machines on the Manhattan project got addicted to finding clever ways of using them, which distracted him from his real task.
(Reported in Richard Feymann's autobiography).
I got addicted to a mainframe computer in 1971.
For most people these addictions don't last very long.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
Not really, it's an opinion. If you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist then I apologise if you found that insulting, but my opinion is that such people are weird.
I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I was conducting a thought experiment - see above- .
The implication that I am a conspiracy theorist is itself an insult.
There is a distinction here - between the legislature, whose rules are enforced by the courts, and the executive.
I am not scared of the former because everything that they do has to be done in the light of day and passed through bodies where at least some people of goodwill are in a position to scrutinise and if necessary reject it.
In the US the constitution is a particularly good example of this because anyone who wants to modify it has to get over some pretty big hurdles.
The executive is a different thing completely.
SO in summary what I am proposing is for the legistlature (backed by the courts and due process) to impose rules on private businesses to prevent them from being manipulated by the executive in order to prevent the latter from doing indirectly what it is not legally allowed to do directly.
The obvious concrete example would be to force Merkel to use a hate speech law to achieve her ends (which will probably fail as reported here, and hence is less scary) rather than to get the same result via a quick conversation with Mark Zuckerberg.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
You don't seem to understand the difference between a conspiracy theory and a thought experiment.
A thought experiment (what I have been doing) explores the potential consequences of a hypothesis. In other words it is an exploration of what could happen.
A conspiracy theory claims that the events are actually happening - quite a different animal. I never did the latter, although I did point out a couple of documented cases involving other governments (not the US).
Conducting a thought experiment does not mean that you are paranoid.
You are being needlessly personal about this.
the government preventing a company from running their own service ... Any action would surely need to be taken by the government you're so afraid of.
Yet exactly that kind of action is regularly taken by government in respect of racial discrimaination, sexual discrimination etc etc - and I suspect that you approve of it- I certainly do.
In fact when such laws were first introduced many of the intended beneficiaries would have been suspicious of the true intentions of the government (understandably, based on the track record of the government up to that point). At that time I'm sure that there would have been plenty of landlords who would have objected to the government "preventing them from running their own service".
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
"What's the problem with that opinion while also having the opinion that Twitter and YouTube should also not be forced to do things against their normal wishes by government pressure?"
The issue is that when a company does something that would be illegal if it were a government agency then it creates the possibility for the government to use the company as a proxy to do things that it should not do. Of course this only works if the company is very big. Since it is documented that the government did exactly that in relation to paypal/wikileaks, and the German government did the same in relation to facebook/critics of Merkel's migration policies (before they got around to introducing a hate speech law with the same purpose) this is not just a conspiracy theory.
Stop inventing the opinions of other people, address the ones being stated in reality, please. You seem to do this regularly, stop it.
Pot meet kettle.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
The gratuitous insult at the end was unnecessary wasn't it?
It isn't a conspiracy theory it's a real problem - which techdirt identified in relation to the wikileaks/paypal/amazon affair.
It isn't governments stripping power from corporations it is governments giving corporations the absolute right not to be forced to do something by the government.
The only way to do that effectively is to place them under exactly the same rules as the most powerful entity within the state- the government. That way the government can never be tempted to utilise a cor[poration to do something that it couldn't do itself. This also has the benefit of preventing any corporation from becoming more powerful than the government.
For a while in the UK the Murdoch press became more powerful than the government. As a result we only got a labour government when the party agreed not to do anything that Murdoch disapproved of. As a result we only got a half hearted labour government and are still stuck with many of the legacies of the Thatcher years.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
What's the problem with that opinion while also having the opinion that Twitter and YouTube should also not be forced to do things against their normal wishes by government pressure?
Except that it doesn't mention that it is entirely possible that some of these decisions are (or could be in the future) the result of government pressure. I pointed out that Facebook has caved to government pressure in Germany (it has also done so in Pakistan). Do you think it wouldn't do so in the US?
I do detect some hypocrisy here too - because it seems that when the "victim" is an organisation that techdirt (at least partially) approves of the smoking gun of government pressure is identified whereas when they don't like the political views of said organisation the possibility of government pressure is ignored.
So, who determines who is a "near monopoly" and thus gets their freedom to administer their platform removed? The same government you're so scared of that you demand their rights be stripped?
I don't have a simple answer to that one, except to point out that it was the government that invented the first amendment and all the other laws that you approve of so why are you scared of the government intervening to guarantee free speech and at the same time limit its OWN power to control the debate in the public square??
Other than that I'm merely pointing out that there is a problem that everyone seems to be hell bent on ignoring because it just so happens that the people who are encountering it happen to be people whose views and or behaviour you don't like.
Now I'll admit that the subject of the present article does appear to be unpleasant enough to make an uncharitable critic say that he "deserves all he gets" but I am aware of others who have hit this type of problem who most certainly don't deserve it.
A few advantages of comments sections vs social media.
1) Social media have a tendency to become monopolies - so it is easy for governments to censor them by pressuring a few executives. Websites with comments sections are ineviatbly more diverse and so those problems don't arise.
2) Social mediaare more blatant about exploiting their users to earn revenue.
3) YOu can be anonymous - it you want - or need to.
Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
Yes - this is all very well and all in accordance with the US constitution:
BUT
A few years ago when the issue was Amazon and Paypal denying service to Wikileaks this site took a rather different line.
At that time techdirt was of the opinion that Amazon and Paypal had caved to government pressure.
This means that the right of a company like Twitter to ban someone without first amendment consequences gives the government a mechanism to route around the first amendment. Given the near monopoly position of a relatively small number of social media outlets the government is in a position to effectively censor speech by means of a small number of private meetings with a few top executives.
There is evidence that governments are quite keen to do this kind of thing just google "Merkel Zuckerberg" to find it.
Of course this is not the US government - but it would be naive to think that the US government doesn't/wouldn't do the same. Remember - just because at present the victims are mostly people that you regard as hatemongers etc doesn't mean that those whom you agree with will always be immune.
On the post: Kodak's Supposed Cryptocurrency Entrance Appears To Be Little More Than A Rebranded Paparazzi Copyright Trolling Scheme... With The Blockchain
Re:
It is unlikely to be useful for someone who want to defend a monopoly against a community. It is more likely to be of use for the exact opposite.
In other words it can be used as part of an anti-anti-piracy measure to verify the integrity of torrents against anti-piracy measures that try to spoof them.
On the post: Kodak's Supposed Cryptocurrency Entrance Appears To Be Little More Than A Rebranded Paparazzi Copyright Trolling Scheme... With The Blockchain
Re:
On the post: Kodak's Supposed Cryptocurrency Entrance Appears To Be Little More Than A Rebranded Paparazzi Copyright Trolling Scheme... With The Blockchain
Re:
On the post: Kodak's Supposed Cryptocurrency Entrance Appears To Be Little More Than A Rebranded Paparazzi Copyright Trolling Scheme... With The Blockchain
Re: Re:
No, blockchain based offerings are released into the world. If they are successful then a large number of people can make money by using them and an even larger number of people will benefit more indirectly. However there is no automatic reward for their creators.
That is why "investing in blockchain" is an indication of backwards, old fashioned thinking.
On the post: Washington State AG Sues Motel 6 For Handing Over Guest Registry Info To ICE
Re:
So how is ICE et al any different than the Stassi?
The Stasi wasn't racist. It was an equal opportunities oppressor.
On the post: After Being AWOL From The Fight For Years, Google & Facebook To Fund Lawsuits Over Net Neutrality
Re: Re: Net neutrality
On the post: For The Second Time In A Week, German Hate Speech Laws Results In Deletion Of Innocent Speech
Re: Re: Best learning tool ever
Except that we already knew that it couldn't work - Berlusconi was elected three times over 14 years.
On the post: After Being AWOL From The Fight For Years, Google & Facebook To Fund Lawsuits Over Net Neutrality
Net neutrality
As I understand it this does not exist for most of the US.
The UK is better on that score - although we don't have true net neutrality (BT zero rates its own content on deals which are otherwise very limited in bandwidth for example).
On the post: FBI Says Device Encryption Is 'Evil' And A Threat To Public Safety
Re: Re: Re: With 'friends' like these...
I still think that it wouldn't really satisfy their desires - but I'll concede that it it would satisfy what they currently believe their desires to be.
In other words it's what they currently think that they want - but if they got it they would quickly realise that it isn't what they actually want.
On the post: FBI Says Device Encryption Is 'Evil' And A Threat To Public Safety
Re: With 'friends' like these...
Stop trying to make the 'job' of criminals easier just because it would make fulfilling your desires easier too.
Except that it wouldn't do even that. The existence of secure encryption depends on the laws of mathematics not the policies of Apple. Even if Apple only offered backdoored encryption serious criminals would still be able to deploy their own encryption. Only the low hanging fruit would be affected - and they usually leave plenty of other evidence to work with.
As for San Bernardino - well the two main perpetrators were already dead, and it has been shown time and again that these Islamic plots don't depend on sophisticated support networks. So why bother? There was nothing that the FBI could have "cracked" and this was baltantly obvious from the very start.
These attacks are triggered by information which is propagated in plain sight via the various Islamic scriptures. The way to combat them it to take on the ideology in the public square.
On the post: Shareholder Groups Say Apple Should Do More To Address Gadget 'Addiction' Among Young People: Should It?
Gadget Addiction - not new
The guy who was responsible for the mechanical (punch card) calculating machines on the Manhattan project got addicted to finding clever ways of using them, which distracted him from his real task.
(Reported in Richard Feymann's autobiography).
I got addicted to a mainframe computer in 1971.
For most people these addictions don't last very long.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
Not really, it's an opinion. If you consider yourself a conspiracy theorist then I apologise if you found that insulting, but my opinion is that such people are weird.
I don't consider myself a conspiracy theorist. I was conducting a thought experiment - see above- . The implication that I am a conspiracy theorist is itself an insult.
There is a distinction here - between the legislature, whose rules are enforced by the courts, and the executive.
I am not scared of the former because everything that they do has to be done in the light of day and passed through bodies where at least some people of goodwill are in a position to scrutinise and if necessary reject it.
In the US the constitution is a particularly good example of this because anyone who wants to modify it has to get over some pretty big hurdles.
The executive is a different thing completely.
SO in summary what I am proposing is for the legistlature (backed by the courts and due process) to impose rules on private businesses to prevent them from being manipulated by the executive in order to prevent the latter from doing indirectly what it is not legally allowed to do directly.
The obvious concrete example would be to force Merkel to use a hate speech law to achieve her ends (which will probably fail as reported here, and hence is less scary) rather than to get the same result via a quick conversation with Mark Zuckerberg.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
You don't seem to understand the difference between a conspiracy theory and a thought experiment.
A thought experiment (what I have been doing) explores the potential consequences of a hypothesis. In other words it is an exploration of what could happen.
A conspiracy theory claims that the events are actually happening - quite a different animal. I never did the latter, although I did point out a couple of documented cases involving other governments (not the US).
Conducting a thought experiment does not mean that you are paranoid.
You are being needlessly personal about this.
the government preventing a company from running their own service ... Any action would surely need to be taken by the government you're so afraid of.
Yet exactly that kind of action is regularly taken by government in respect of racial discrimaination, sexual discrimination etc etc - and I suspect that you approve of it- I certainly do.
In fact when such laws were first introduced many of the intended beneficiaries would have been suspicious of the true intentions of the government (understandably, based on the track record of the government up to that point). At that time I'm sure that there would have been plenty of landlords who would have objected to the government "preventing them from running their own service".
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
"What's the problem with that opinion while also having the opinion that Twitter and YouTube should also not be forced to do things against their normal wishes by government pressure?" The issue is that when a company does something that would be illegal if it were a government agency then it creates the possibility for the government to use the company as a proxy to do things that it should not do. Of course this only works if the company is very big. Since it is documented that the government did exactly that in relation to paypal/wikileaks, and the German government did the same in relation to facebook/critics of Merkel's migration policies (before they got around to introducing a hate speech law with the same purpose) this is not just a conspiracy theory.
Stop inventing the opinions of other people, address the ones being stated in reality, please. You seem to do this regularly, stop it. Pot meet kettle.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
It isn't a conspiracy theory it's a real problem - which techdirt identified in relation to the wikileaks/paypal/amazon affair.
It isn't governments stripping power from corporations it is governments giving corporations the absolute right not to be forced to do something by the government.
The only way to do that effectively is to place them under exactly the same rules as the most powerful entity within the state- the government. That way the government can never be tempted to utilise a cor[poration to do something that it couldn't do itself. This also has the benefit of preventing any corporation from becoming more powerful than the government.
For a while in the UK the Murdoch press became more powerful than the government. As a result we only got a labour government when the party agreed not to do anything that Murdoch disapproved of. As a result we only got a half hearted labour government and are still stuck with many of the legacies of the Thatcher years.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
What's the problem with that opinion while also having the opinion that Twitter and YouTube should also not be forced to do things against their normal wishes by government pressure?
Except that it doesn't mention that it is entirely possible that some of these decisions are (or could be in the future) the result of government pressure. I pointed out that Facebook has caved to government pressure in Germany (it has also done so in Pakistan). Do you think it wouldn't do so in the US?
I do detect some hypocrisy here too - because it seems that when the "victim" is an organisation that techdirt (at least partially) approves of the smoking gun of government pressure is identified whereas when they don't like the political views of said organisation the possibility of government pressure is ignored.
So, who determines who is a "near monopoly" and thus gets their freedom to administer their platform removed? The same government you're so scared of that you demand their rights be stripped?
I don't have a simple answer to that one, except to point out that it was the government that invented the first amendment and all the other laws that you approve of so why are you scared of the government intervening to guarantee free speech and at the same time limit its OWN power to control the debate in the public square??
Other than that I'm merely pointing out that there is a problem that everyone seems to be hell bent on ignoring because it just so happens that the people who are encountering it happen to be people whose views and or behaviour you don't like.
Now I'll admit that the subject of the present article does appear to be unpleasant enough to make an uncharitable critic say that he "deserves all he gets" but I am aware of others who have hit this type of problem who most certainly don't deserve it.
On the post: In Keeping And Improving News Comments, The Intercept Shows Websites What Giving A Damn Looks Like
Comment sections vs social media
1) Social media have a tendency to become monopolies - so it is easy for governments to censor them by pressuring a few executives. Websites with comments sections are ineviatbly more diverse and so those problems don't arise.
2) Social mediaare more blatant about exploiting their users to earn revenue.
3) YOu can be anonymous - it you want - or need to.
On the post: In Keeping And Improving News Comments, The Intercept Shows Websites What Giving A Damn Looks Like
Re: Yeah, you can have those luxuries with wide appeal to get REGISTERED USERS.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
As you are probably aware, the first amendment limits what the government can do ... not corporations.
So all the government needs to do is to put a bit of pressure on the corporations .. and voila ! the first amendment is dead in the water.
On the post: Chuck Johnson Sues Twitter, Copying Dennis Prager's Lawsuit Against YouTube
Re: Re: Re: Section 230 of the CDA is not the whole of the law.
BUT
A few years ago when the issue was Amazon and Paypal denying service to Wikileaks this site took a rather different line.
At that time techdirt was of the opinion that Amazon and Paypal had caved to government pressure.
This means that the right of a company like Twitter to ban someone without first amendment consequences gives the government a mechanism to route around the first amendment. Given the near monopoly position of a relatively small number of social media outlets the government is in a position to effectively censor speech by means of a small number of private meetings with a few top executives.
There is evidence that governments are quite keen to do this kind of thing just google "Merkel Zuckerberg" to find it.
Of course this is not the US government - but it would be naive to think that the US government doesn't/wouldn't do the same. Remember - just because at present the victims are mostly people that you regard as hatemongers etc doesn't mean that those whom you agree with will always be immune.
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