Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: regarding publication freedom and varied media
For example, how would you feel if your loved ones died in a car crash? Horrible. So does that mean we need to make sure there are never any car crashes? The only way to do that (currently) is to ban cars.
...or, when we're not employing ridiculous hyperbole, we could try doing something that actually works, like figuring out why people die in car crashes and using the data obtained to work to make cars safer.
How do I know that actually works? Because someone actually did that, and it ended up making cars measurably safer, to the point where he's been called "the person whose work saved more lives than any American but Jonas Salk." And getting laws passed to establish minimum safety standards was a big part of it.
Re: Re: Re: regarding publication freedom and varied media
"How would you feel if it happened to someone you love" is seldom if ever a good basis for public policy.
Why do you say that?
Reduce that down to the core value expressed, and you have "empathy is seldom if ever a good basis for public policy," which makes no sense unless the person saying it is a sociopath--a person with a psychological condition that causes them to be incapable of empathy--or an Objectivist--a person with a badly skewed belief system that causes them to see sociopaths as a high ideal worthy of emulation.
Or, alternatively, if you subscribe to the psychological theory that friends and loved ones are those who we see on a subconscious level as extensions of our own Self, then this "policy basis" derives naturally from the Golden Rule, which has been one of the most solid bases for public policy at least as far back as Hammurabi's Code.
There's something... weird about American publications, which regularly rely on the First Amendment, to argue against those very freedoms.
Not that weird, really. The First Amendment guarantees six distinct things, and the Supreme Court has ruled that a seventh, Freedom of Association, is covered as well because it derives from the others.
Of those seven, the first has never truly been a serious issue in the USA. The second and seventh are under continuous assault from all sides these days, with the mainstream media leading the charge. Techdirt has covered the erosion of #5 pretty extensively, and how the entirety of our legal system these days frequently seems to be stacked against #6. But how often do you see the media speaking up for any of these points?
Freedom of the press is #4, which of course they'll protect; that's their special right. But if their stance on the other 5 ranges from ignoring them to actively helping to tear them down... why should it be any different for #3?
Re: Re: Re: Well, you're certainly demonstrating that it isn't clearly NOT hyperbole...
I don't know what happened to you in school by one of these 'privilege[d] ... top athletes',
What makes you think it was only one?
And what happened to me was what happened to everyone: they went strutting around like kings of the school and all the rest of us were beneath them. Thing is, I come from a long line of Americans. I've got generations of "all men are created equal" running through my blood and I don't believe in kings, so it was kind of inevitable that confrontations would occur when I didn't let them push me around, and I got singled out for extra helpings of abuse.
It's kinda funny how these things turn out, though. There were plenty of these guys, but the one I really remember, the worst of them... he was a thug, pure and simple. Big tough football player who bragged openly about putting things in his body that he shouldn't have, and doing things with girls that he really shouldn't have, and the rules never seemed to apply to him.
Eventually I graduated and got out of there. Spent a few years at college and out seeing the world, and when I finally came home and started getting caught up, I heard that he had really turned his life around. In the span of a few short years, something had caused him to clean himself up, find God, and really start to become a force for good in the community... and then he started learning to fly private planes and died in a crash. To this day I really don't know what to think about him.
He may be an athlete, but not all athletes are assholes and bullies,
Technically true. In my entire K-12 experience, I knew a grand total of one football and/or basketball player who was not.
Those aren't good odds, though, especially since my family moved around a lot during those years so I got to know a whole lot of different athletes from a lot of different schools.
So you think that normal people, say those who are not under the iron rule of a academic administration, are held to liability for affirming in a forum someone's claim that they fraternized with a coworker or colleague?
That's hardly a fair question, since for people outside of school, such "fraternization" does not constitute a felony.
My first job out of high school, as is so commonly the case for kids not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, was working in fast food. Two of my coworkers were dating. They made no secret of it, and the boss was just fine with it as long as they didn't let it become disruptive, which they didn't. At least, until one of them started training to become a shift manager. That would have changed their relationship to "fraternizing with the chain of command," as it were, and apparently that was a big no-no. But even then it wasn't that big a deal; they just transferred her to work at another branch a few miles away and everyone was fine.
Speaking of ruined lives, in the rest of the blogosphere, untold amounts of online abuse goes unpunished and disregarded by authorities even when the abuse forces relocations or identity changes.
Oh, I know. Some lawmakers are trying to fix that by enacting much-needed cyberbullying legislation, and it's a bit distressing to see Techdirt come out against it over and over.
...or they're just not interested in all the effort and stress it would require, as appears to be the case with Elizabeth Warren. (One of the few people in today's political scene who I'd consider a truly good candidate for President.)
Re: Well, you're certainly demonstrating that it isn't clearly NOT hyperbole...
If by "ruin his life" you mean "strip away the shield of privilege that protects top athletes and make him just as responsible for his actions as any ordinary person," then yes, I absolutely do want to see him brought down to the same level of "ruin" that everyone else experiences as "normal."
Or is your use of the term "ruin" hyperbole here? :P
None of them actually create content, and they certainly have little intention of paying for it,
True. But they're not claiming to be content creators, so why is this being said like some sort of accusation?
but they do redistribute the content created by others - they would argue that such redistribution is a natural extension of their role as social networks.
Also true.
I would argue that much of the redistribution is an unnatural act.
...and here's where the streak of getting things right breaks. There are few things more natural, from early childhood to the end of one's life, than the enthusiastic urge to share one's interests with others. What's unnatural (in the neutral, non-pejorative sense of the word: it's an artificial creation that goes against the way of nature) is the attempt to put in place systems that restrict such impulses.
Bush Sr. was a disappointing president, going back on his "Read my lips: no new taxes" promise and alienating the voters, so they threw him out and brought in the opposite, a President from the opposite party who was (relatively) young, suave, and hip.
We all know what happened then: he turned out to be a thoroughly corrupt leader and a sexual predator to boot, and was worse than Bush Sr. After years of constant scandal, the people got sick of Clinton and threw him out and brought in the opposite, a President form the opposite party who ran on a platform of "restoring dignity to the White House."
That didn't turn out so well either. Bush Jr. would most likely have made a decent, if unexceptional, peacetime president, but he got in way over his head after 9/11 and ended up being a worse president than Clinton had. So then what happened? This should be easy enough to explain by now: the voters threw him out and brought in a new president from the opposite party who ironically enough campaigned on the same basic premise as Bush Jr. There's not much difference between "Hope and Change" and "restore dignity to the White House" when the thing you're changing is the supremely undignified inhabitant of the White House.
And so far, it hasn't worked out. We haven't seen much change except in a negative direction, and Obama's doubled down on a lot of the worst Bush-era policies that he promised to reform. Again, he's been an even worse president than Bush, and people are getting sick of it.
So what's going to happen in the next election? That should be obvious: we're almost certainly going to end up with whichever Republican candidate most successfully manages to portray himself as the anti-Obama... and he's probably going to somehow be even worse. I really hope that's not what happens, but we've got a very clear pattern established over the past few decades, and no signs of anything fundamental changing that would break us out of it.
I'm quite capable of recognizing it, and this isn't it. This looks a lot more like a classic after-the-fact Just Joking Justification than genuine hyperbole.
The right to free speech is not reserved for those who agree with you and are polite and respectful to authority.
Oh, definitely. But as has been noted elsewhere, the right to free speech does not cover defamation. Libel is not protected by the First Amendment. You can't do it and get away with it by invoking the Bill of Rights. Does not work. Period.
Hmm... OK, I have to admit I'm a bit hazy on the chronology of music that came out before I was born. Was this before or after the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal brought the reality of the problems that this can cause to the nation's attention?
The use of the word "actually" suggests otherwise. You do realize that using "it was just a joke" to weasel out of the consequences of your hurtful deeds is one of the oldest lame excuses in the book, and is so widely recognized as such that TVTropes has its own page dedicated to it? (The "Real Life section at the bottom is worth checking out.)
It was never intended to "give authors the right to REFUSE to let their works reach the public," though. That's a modern (and bizarre and counterproductive) innovation. The purpose of copyright was to keep abusive publishers from putting authors out of business by printing and distributing their works without compensating the authors.
The idea that someone would create something that adds to our culture and then actively try to prevent it from being added to our culture was as absurd in the Founding Fathers' day as it is today, and the fact that some people actually try to do that doesn't make it any less absurd; it just underscores that there are some really absurd people out there.
On the post: New Yorker Decides US Has Too Much Free Speech; Dismisses 'Free Speech Extremists'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: regarding publication freedom and varied media
On the post: New Yorker Decides US Has Too Much Free Speech; Dismisses 'Free Speech Extremists'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: regarding publication freedom and varied media
...or, when we're not employing ridiculous hyperbole, we could try doing something that actually works, like figuring out why people die in car crashes and using the data obtained to work to make cars safer.
How do I know that actually works? Because someone actually did that, and it ended up making cars measurably safer, to the point where he's been called "the person whose work saved more lives than any American but Jonas Salk." And getting laws passed to establish minimum safety standards was a big part of it.
On the post: Dianne Feinstein Worries That Net Neutrality Will Block ISPs From Censoring 'Terrorist' Content She Doesn't Like
Re: Letter to Dianne Feinstein
On the post: New Yorker Decides US Has Too Much Free Speech; Dismisses 'Free Speech Extremists'
Re: Re: Re: regarding publication freedom and varied media
Why do you say that?
Reduce that down to the core value expressed, and you have "empathy is seldom if ever a good basis for public policy," which makes no sense unless the person saying it is a sociopath--a person with a psychological condition that causes them to be incapable of empathy--or an Objectivist--a person with a badly skewed belief system that causes them to see sociopaths as a high ideal worthy of emulation.
Or, alternatively, if you subscribe to the psychological theory that friends and loved ones are those who we see on a subconscious level as extensions of our own Self, then this "policy basis" derives naturally from the Golden Rule, which has been one of the most solid bases for public policy at least as far back as Hammurabi's Code.
So what exactly is bad about it?
On the post: New Yorker Decides US Has Too Much Free Speech; Dismisses 'Free Speech Extremists'
Not that weird, really. The First Amendment guarantees six distinct things, and the Supreme Court has ruled that a seventh, Freedom of Association, is covered as well because it derives from the others.
Of those seven, the first has never truly been a serious issue in the USA. The second and seventh are under continuous assault from all sides these days, with the mainstream media leading the charge. Techdirt has covered the erosion of #5 pretty extensively, and how the entirety of our legal system these days frequently seems to be stacked against #6. But how often do you see the media speaking up for any of these points?
Freedom of the press is #4, which of course they'll protect; that's their special right. But if their stance on the other 5 ranges from ignoring them to actively helping to tear them down... why should it be any different for #3?
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Well, you're certainly demonstrating that it isn't clearly NOT hyperbole...
What makes you think it was only one?
And what happened to me was what happened to everyone: they went strutting around like kings of the school and all the rest of us were beneath them. Thing is, I come from a long line of Americans. I've got generations of "all men are created equal" running through my blood and I don't believe in kings, so it was kind of inevitable that confrontations would occur when I didn't let them push me around, and I got singled out for extra helpings of abuse.
It's kinda funny how these things turn out, though. There were plenty of these guys, but the one I really remember, the worst of them... he was a thug, pure and simple. Big tough football player who bragged openly about putting things in his body that he shouldn't have, and doing things with girls that he really shouldn't have, and the rules never seemed to apply to him.
Eventually I graduated and got out of there. Spent a few years at college and out seeing the world, and when I finally came home and started getting caught up, I heard that he had really turned his life around. In the span of a few short years, something had caused him to clean himself up, find God, and really start to become a force for good in the community... and then he started learning to fly private planes and died in a crash. To this day I really don't know what to think about him.
Technically true. In my entire K-12 experience, I knew a grand total of one football and/or basketball player who was not.
Those aren't good odds, though, especially since my family moved around a lot during those years so I got to know a whole lot of different athletes from a lot of different schools.
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Is this about his athleticism, then?
That's hardly a fair question, since for people outside of school, such "fraternization" does not constitute a felony.
My first job out of high school, as is so commonly the case for kids not born with a silver spoon in their mouths, was working in fast food. Two of my coworkers were dating. They made no secret of it, and the boss was just fine with it as long as they didn't let it become disruptive, which they didn't. At least, until one of them started training to become a shift manager. That would have changed their relationship to "fraternizing with the chain of command," as it were, and apparently that was a big no-no. But even then it wasn't that big a deal; they just transferred her to work at another branch a few miles away and everyone was fine.
Oh, I know. Some lawmakers are trying to fix that by enacting much-needed cyberbullying legislation, and it's a bit distressing to see Techdirt come out against it over and over.
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Tax Payers
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Well, you're certainly demonstrating that it isn't clearly NOT hyperbole...
Or is your use of the term "ruin" hyperbole here? :P
On the post: News Corp's CEO Bizarre Obsession With Made Up Lies About Google
True. But they're not claiming to be content creators, so why is this being said like some sort of accusation?
Also true.
...and here's where the streak of getting things right breaks. There are few things more natural, from early childhood to the end of one's life, than the enthusiastic urge to share one's interests with others. What's unnatural (in the neutral, non-pejorative sense of the word: it's an artificial creation that goes against the way of nature) is the attempt to put in place systems that restrict such impulses.
On the post: Split Works Debate Raises Thorny Issues For Music Companies (And For The Rest Of Us)
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Spoken like someone who has never OD'd on vitamins. (I haven't either, of course, but I do recognize that the possibility exists.) :P
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Tax Payers
Bush Sr. was a disappointing president, going back on his "Read my lips: no new taxes" promise and alienating the voters, so they threw him out and brought in the opposite, a President from the opposite party who was (relatively) young, suave, and hip.
We all know what happened then: he turned out to be a thoroughly corrupt leader and a sexual predator to boot, and was worse than Bush Sr. After years of constant scandal, the people got sick of Clinton and threw him out and brought in the opposite, a President form the opposite party who ran on a platform of "restoring dignity to the White House."
That didn't turn out so well either. Bush Jr. would most likely have made a decent, if unexceptional, peacetime president, but he got in way over his head after 9/11 and ended up being a worse president than Clinton had. So then what happened? This should be easy enough to explain by now: the voters threw him out and brought in a new president from the opposite party who ironically enough campaigned on the same basic premise as Bush Jr. There's not much difference between "Hope and Change" and "restore dignity to the White House" when the thing you're changing is the supremely undignified inhabitant of the White House.
And so far, it hasn't worked out. We haven't seen much change except in a negative direction, and Obama's doubled down on a lot of the worst Bush-era policies that he promised to reform. Again, he's been an even worse president than Bush, and people are getting sick of it.
So what's going to happen in the next election? That should be obvious: we're almost certainly going to end up with whichever Republican candidate most successfully manages to portray himself as the anti-Obama... and he's probably going to somehow be even worse. I really hope that's not what happens, but we've got a very clear pattern established over the past few decades, and no signs of anything fundamental changing that would break us out of it.
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Lawyer up
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: "Don't see what fuss is about"
Oh, definitely. But as has been noted elsewhere, the right to free speech does not cover defamation. Libel is not protected by the First Amendment. You can't do it and get away with it by invoking the Bill of Rights. Does not work. Period.
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
The use of the word "actually" suggests otherwise. You do realize that using "it was just a joke" to weasel out of the consequences of your hurtful deeds is one of the oldest lame excuses in the book, and is so widely recognized as such that TVTropes has its own page dedicated to it? (The "Real Life section at the bottom is worth checking out.)
On the post: School, Police Chief Must Face Lawsuit Brought By Student Suspended For 10 Days For Tweeting 'Actually, Yes'
Re: Re:
On the post: Split Works Debate Raises Thorny Issues For Music Companies (And For The Rest Of Us)
Re:
The idea that someone would create something that adds to our culture and then actively try to prevent it from being added to our culture was as absurd in the Founding Fathers' day as it is today, and the fact that some people actually try to do that doesn't make it any less absurd; it just underscores that there are some really absurd people out there.
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