I think you missed the part where this particular article is about a bill that would force tech companies to do more moderation.
And no, companies moderating content on their privately owned websites and servers is not against the 1st Amendment as they are not in any way a government or part of the government; rather, between the 1A right against compelled speech and the 1A right of association, not allowing companies to moderate speech on their websites is against the 1A. Again, there are court cases that point to this being the case.
And no, private companies removing unwanted content and/or users from their privately owned websites and/or servers is not censorship, either. There is a difference.
Look, I am no fan of Twitter or Facebook; I mostly left them a long time ago. However, I know how to read the whole article rather than just the introduction, I know what the law is on this issue, and I know what words mean. I don’t think you do.
If there was a white supremacist platform for user content owned and operated by a single private citizen who was also a bigot or by a corporation run by a bigot, and that platform removed speech that didn’t conform with those ideals, while I would find the platform to be, at the very, very least, distasteful, and more likely hateful and abhorrent, I would still defend their right to exist, say such horrible things, and remove content they dislike even if I think that content is perfectly fine. I wouldn’t support or use such a platform, and I would likely heavily criticize it both publicly and privately, but I wouldn’t want the government to ban it entirely or stop it from moderating content on the platform however it sees fit. That’s how the 1A and private-property rights work. I also wouldn’t say that they’re censoring anyone or violating anyone’s 1A rights. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is (though if such a platform got even close to as large as either Facebook or Twitter, I’d be admittedly shocked and dismayed at the state of humanity); I’d feel the same on the issues of 1A rights, private property rights, and government interference with such either way.
So, in a super litigious society, you don't appear to understand that making cops personally liable for every law suit that 2nd guesses split-second actions, might be chilling, […]
I don’t have a problem with that, and we do the same for just about everyone else. Lots of people are held liable for split-second actions.
That said, since we also have precedence outside qualified immunity that says that a lot of those split-second decisions aren’t violating anyone’s rights, anyways, and the ones that are or might be shouldn’t be dismissed early on, anyways, I don’t see that happening beyond what it ought to. If a person makes an allegation that something violated their rights, but the law says that, even if the allegations are true, their rights haven’t been violated, the case will and should be dismissed quickly anyways, QI or no QI. If the allegations are very clearly false or the plaintiff has absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their claim, then the plaintiff will lose in summary judgement without getting to a jury. Otherwise, it’s a case that absolutely should go to a jury.
If that’s chilling, it only appears to chill bad or excessive behavior and would only dissuade people who shouldn’t be officers from becoming officers, so I fail to see the problem. Really, even without QI, the system tends to favor cops over citizens anyways. And the law quite explicitly does not require the cops to personally pay for legal help, court cost and fees, or any fines stemming from such a lawsuit. That all comes from taxpayer money, and not even necessarily the police department’s funds, specifically.
Also, even with QI, governments spend a lot of money defending against or settling such lawsuits. If a case is truly frivolous, the state may even be able to recover court costs either way.
[…] and thus the equivalent of defunding the police?
I’m afraid I don’t see the connection between “chilling police” and “defunding the police”. Especially when “defunding the police” refers to diverting funds that would go to law enforcement for anything, including legal costs, to other things (like mental health professionals or social workers), or, in the oft-used misunderstanding of it, removing all funding for the current police department entirely, neither of which would be likely direct consequences of eliminating QI.
And actually, on that note, while I perfectly understand why people confuse the issue (intentionally or not), I should probably explain how defunding the police (which, again, this isn’t) is supposed to work, at least in theory. Currently, police have to handle a lot of things that aren’t exactly related to enforcing the law. Things like stopping people from committing suicide or getting homeless people off of the streets. The idea is to remove funds from police departments and divert it towards other programs and agencies that will handle those tasks for the police (at least most of the time), so while police will have less funding, they will also have fewer duties. Other programs and agencies that might receive funding might be intended to solve problems that increase lawlessness, like mental healthcare programs, programs intended to help unemployed people get jobs, and drug-rehabilitation programs. This would make even the law enforcement part of the job of police officers easier because there would be fewer instances of law breaking. So yes, police departments would get less money and possibly have fewer employees, but they would also need less money and fewer employees because they would have fewer tasks that they would have to handle.
There is an extreme version that involves defunding the current police department entirely and moving those funds to (possibly among other programs) a completely new police department built from the ground up to replace the old one. This is intended to, essentially, clean house and remove systemic issues with the current police department and to ensure the removal of any bad apples. So, even under this scenario, there will still be police officers who still get paid sufficiently to do the jobs they’re supposed to do.
Now, both of these methods have been tested (in varying degrees) in several locations across the country, and the results we’ve seen so far have been promising. Fewer deaths and injuries caused by police, less harrassment by police, happier civilians, fewer lawsuits, fewer cases settled or lost, fewer people in prison, and no more crimes committed than before (often less), with little to no additional costs to the government.
Of course, as I already stated, removing QI doesn’t do either of those things. If removing QI costs departments more money, that’s the fault of the officers, not the law. Police should be held to a higher standard than civilians.
So if people started writing opinion pieces as to why they believed that Joe Biden (Or Mike Masnick) were attracted to young children, that would be OK.
It depends. If by “OK” you mean “is and ought to be absolutely protected by the First Amendment and should not be sued over as defamatory or false light or anything like that”, and the opinion piece itself did not allege or imply any false facts that they knew or really should have known to be false in explaining how and why they formed that opinion, then yes, that would be perfectly okay. It would also be okay if it was obviously or at least probably satirical. If you mean something else by “OK”, then unless they have really good reasons for doing so, I’d say probably not, but I wouldn’t necessarily support a lawsuit over it. And either way, if the opinion piece does not fit the conditions I mentioned earlier, then for the most part, no matter what definition of “OK” you mean, that would not be OK.
However, even if it’s not “OK”, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d support taking the writer and/or publisher to court over it. At the very least, I’d say trying to contact the writer or publisher to at least try to work something out outside of court before possibly resorting to legal threats or legal action. Legal action should be a last resort when dealing with speech, especially online speech, particularly due to the Streisand effect. Even if the opinion piece is defamatory, depending on a variety of factors, it’s entirely possible that the opinion piece was largely unnoticed by most people, and by trying to censor it, you may wind up making it seen by a lot more people, so even if you are morally, ethically, legally, and factually right to sue over the piece, it may just backfire on you.
Again, just because someone’s speech is objectionable or hurts your feelings or damages your reputation, that’s not enough reason to ignore the 1A and try to censor it, and I will still defend people’s right to say objectionable things, even if they aren’t true, so long as it is reasonable for them to think it is true and actually believe it’s true, and to voice objectionable opinions. I don’t have to like or agree with what is being said to defend their right to say it. Sometimes, there may be unfortunate consequences. However, the law is not and should not be a shield against any negative consequences even if they weren’t your fault.
There is absolutely no evidence that Voice of America is or ever has been a left propaganda machine or that it is or ever was laughed at by everyone who listens to it. Indeed, it has been seen as a positive force by non-totalitarians to counter totalitarian propaganda, and no conservative prior to Trump has ever leveled that accusation against it that I’m aware of.
Also, the changes being made were actually making people around the world respect it less and were seen as attempting to make it a source of pro-Trump propaganda and fake news. More people found the VoA as Pack pushed it as far more laughable than the one that was already there.
It’s also worth noting that the political opinions of the members of VoA were fairly diverse. Even the so-called anti-Trump people weren’t all leftist; many were right-wing or right-leaning, and some were centrist. Anti-Trump =/= anti-conservative or pro-liberal, which can be seen by the many ballots from 2020 where people voted essentially all Republican except for in the presidential race, and most of these particular ballots actually voted for Biden solely because they were anti-Trump. And the anti-Trump ones were not, by and large, ideologues or spreaders of “toxic wokeness”, whatever that is.
I will concede that VoA may have been seen, at least by some, as a pro-America or pro-democracy propaganda machine, but not a leftist one.
But please, do provide evidence that supports your claim.
First, regarding the subject line, for the most part, the only Trump-related derangement I’ve seen is for Trumpists to ignore reality when it comes to Trump or Democrats. And it does, indeed, seem to be largely permanent, though I have seen some cases of former Trumpists in recovery, so there’s still some hope.
Here you've successfully stolen the election, Congress and President […]
Nope. There have been numerous court cases alleging such about the Presidential race, and none of them had any merit and were dismissed either for failing to state a claim, being wrong about the law, lacking sufficient reasonable evidence to support their claims, lacking standing (the least common reason), or some combination of the above, and they have all been ended. Numerous hand and machine recounts were done in the contested states, and none of them differed significantly from the original count. The only known instances of attempted or successful voter fraud or election fraud were by Republicans.
And as for Congress, a lot of votes for Biden voted all Republican downticket, and the run-offs showed no evidence of voter or election fraud by Democrats either.
Additionally, the various Republican election officials and Secretaries of State for each of the contested states have all said that there was no widespread voter or election fraud in their states during the 2020 election.
As for the laws and election-policy-changes being complained about, all of them were also in place for states that went to Trump and to downballot Republicans in that same election, and with one possible exception, all of them were found to be lawful and constitutional, and many of them were in place well before the 2020 election.
So, there is no credible evidence to support a claim of widespread voter and/or election fraud by Democrats that would be enough to have changed the results in any of the federal races in the 2020 election or the Georgia run-off for Senate. In fact, there’s a plethora of evidence to the contrary. As such, no US election was stolen here.
and all that you can write of is TRUMP.
First, they’ve written plenty of articles about the new Congress and administration as well as topics that have little to nothing to do with any Congress or administration, be it this one, the last one, and the one before. So no, this claim is false.
Second, when Trump became President, Techdirt would still write some articles about the Obama administration, so this isn’t something they only do for Trump.
Third, this has some information we didn’t previously know about, so Techdirt couldn’t have written about it before while Trump was still President, and it is still fairly relevant to today, in part because it’s also about what Biden is doing now:
Tell ya again, kid: you need some POSITIVE, not more opinion / ad hom on Trump.
Again, there have been some positive (or neutral) articles recently, and there were some throughout the Trump administration. So, you’re still working from a false premise. If you mean positive pieces about Trump, let me know what good Trump has done first, and then we’ll talk. That said, the only times most journalists may write positive pieces about the last president are when summarizing that President’s legacy right around when they leave office, when the current President does something that makes the last President look good, at least by comparison, or when the current President says something false about the last President. None of those are the case right now with Trump or Biden.
Second, this is still largely an opinion blog, so of course they will write opinions about current and/or recent events as well as compare them to older events. They did the same thing for both Trump and Obama when they were President.
Third, this isn’t an ad hominem argument, really. An ad hominem would be trying to refute what someone said because they are a bad or undesirable person or something. Criticizing someone’s actions and the motivations for those actions is not an ad hominem in itself. For example, saying that evolution is wrong or immoral because Charles Darwin was a racist would be an ad hominem. Saying that Michael Pack is corrupt and abused his power because he spent a lot of taxpayer money trying to weed out anti-Trump people in his cabinet and therefore should not keep or have ever had that position or been able to do those things is not an ad hominem. Not every insult is necessarily an ad hominem.
Finally, technically, this article isn’t really about Trump. It’s about Michael Pack, the former Trump-appointed head of the US Agency for Global Media. You could argue that it is about Trump’s administration, but that’s not quite the same thing as being about Trump himself.
“It truly is insane how obsessed Trumpists are over Hillary's emails.”
State your evidence that [it] shouldn't be. Those US Secretary of State emails containing official secrets were apparently intentionally on a server open to the world, YET [the] US gov't still doesn't know the contents nor who got them.
Actually, that server was no less secure than the one she was supposed to be using. It was not “open to the world”.
Several Republican-led congressional investigations into it found no illegal activity.
A Republican-led FBI investigated the issue and found no evidence of anything illegal.
During the past four years, the Trump administration did nothing to indict or really even investigate Hillary Clinton at all over anything, let alone over those emails, despite saying that they would and having plenty of motive to do so and the power to do so if there was any wrongdoing on her part.
Just about every previous Secretary of State who used email did essentially the same thing, including Colin Powell, and they received no repercussions whatsoever. Ivanka Trump also did something similar during the Trump presidency.
It was not intentional. The investigations showed that essentially all of the allegedly classified emails were not properly marked to indicate that they were classified or what the classification was, all of them were sent there by others, not sent or solicited by Hillary, and many were improperly claimed to be classified despite not actually containing any classified material. Both the FBI and the congressional hearings on the matter said as much.
As implied by point 6 and contrary to your assertions, the US government does (or at least did) know the contents of those emails. Yes, some emails were deleted, but supposedly they were purely personal emails and were not at all work-related. They were also deleted without knowledge of the investigation. Besides, they made up a minority of the emails on that server.
The US government also knows (more or less) who got these emails. It doesn’t take forensic science to read the To, From, and Cc lines or to see who, if anyone, Hillary forwarded them to. The only things missing would be what recipients other than Hillary did with them or the Bcc recipients of the original email, and she had no control over those, nor was she responsible for that. And before you say, “But they were on an unsecured server and open to the world, so someone could’ve hacked in and seen them,” again, no they were not unsecured or open to the world (see point 1), but even if they were, the government also checked the private server and found no evidence of intrusion, infection, compromise, or anything else suspicious, so even if it was hypothetically plausible that a hacker obtained access they wouldn’t have had if the emails were on a government server (which it isn’t, really), it doesn’t appear that anyone actually did, so at least with regards to this specific claim, that point is moot.
It has been more than five years since the topic of Hillary’s emails popped up, and by all credible accounts (and a number of less credible ones biased against Hillary), there doesn’t seem to have been any damage done to anyone or anything except possibly Hillary’s reputation. The secrets don’t appear to have anything that needed to be classified to protect national security or anything. No one who was not authorized to receive classified information actually accessed these emails. No one was hurt or killed. No money was lost (except in the investigations). Hillary also admitted that it was a mistake and that she learned her lesson, and she no longer holds any public office; she doesn’t even come into the public eye much any more. There has also been no new information or developments or other changes to the story since December 2016. Aside from Ivanka, who wasn’t punished or even investigated, there have been no new comparable situations that have come up to make it relevant to anything today. So, why keep bringing it up? What good does it do, especially now?
Your "writing" is dead easy since don't bother with facts. IF had to come up substantive proposals, you'd be stumped.
The only ones not bothering with facts here are you and Michael Pack. That said, this is meant to be an opinion piece, not just a blind recitation of the facts, so yeah, you’re going to get more than just facts here; you’ll also see opinions and maybe some speculation. Welcome to Techdirt. Clearly you’re new here.
As for coming up with substantive proposals, Techdirt is not a lobbying body, a politician, a holder of any political office, involved in government contracts, a government agency/agent, a judge, or a clerk for any of the above. They don’t have any obligation to come up with substantive proposals because that’s not their job. Most journalists and writers of opinion pieces don’t come up with substantive proposals. Why would you expect Techdirt to be any different?
That said, Techdirt has come up with substantive proposals for several things in the past, such as police accountability (especially qualified immunity), net neutrality, section 230 (and yes, “leave it alone” is a substantive proposal), copyright (especially the DMCA, which they recently sent several ideas about reforming to a representative), patents, and anti-SLAPP laws. So clearly, when it comes to coming up with substantive proposals, they clearly aren’t stumped as you claim.
Finally, what “substantive proposals” would be made here on this issue? This is all about one guy’s attempt to make the USAGM and several things that come out of it like VoA into pro-Trump propaganda outlets, and that has been dealt with by Biden, who has removed the man responsible (among others) and is seeking replacements, including people who quit or were fired because of that guy. Maybe have some sort of oversight committee regarding how finances get used by that department? A bad actor would probably just gut the think to being useless.
Re: Yet again, lecturing to an Appeals Level court!
You're an amazingly arrogant little corporate-supported, pirate-defending pretense at one studied in law.
I don’t know how a person can be a pretense at anything; they can have a pretense, but I don’t think they can be one.
Pedantics aside, what evidence do you have that Cathy Gellis is corporate-supported, and on what basis do you claim that she defends pirates?
Also, I’m not sure how, even if she is corporate-supported, that would make her opinion in this case less valid. The makers of “Oh the Places You’ll Boldly Go!” (the defendants in this case) are not a corporation, but Dr. Seuss’s estate (at least arguably) is. Additionally, corporations (namely publishers and movie studios) tend to support copyright maximalism, not piracy. So, if she is influenced by corporate interests, surely she would be against pirates and also support this decision. And before you say, “But Google/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter…!”, those corporations aren’t terribly opposed to an expansion of what is infringing; the only thing that matters to them is whether they will be held liable for infringement done by users.
Also, this case isn’t about piracy. Piracy, as it relates to copyright, is about infringing distribution, acquisition, possession, and/or usage of (essentially identical and largely unaltered) copies of the original work that are specifically meant to serve the same purpose of the original and replace it. Not all copyright infringement is piracy. If they were selling unauthorized copies of the original book essentially unaltered, that would be piracy. If they were distributing photocopies of the pages and/or cover of the original book, that would be piracy. Instead, what we have here is the creation and distribution of, according to the 9th Circuit opinion, derivative works based on the original book but also distinct in some critical respects. So, even if you agree with the 9th Circuit, this isn’t piracy, even though it would be copyright infringement. So, yeah, Cathy’s opinion in this article isn’t defending pirates or piracy with regards to copyrighted works, even if she may defend pirates or piracy elsewhere.
Basically, this is just an ad hominem attack that doesn’t even work in this case.
Just to start, you wave aside the black letter Constitution provisions!
Well, the only time the Constitution talks about copyright is in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, which also deals with patents:
[The Congress shall have power t]o promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.
So, basically, it just says that Congress can pass laws that grant and enforce copyright and patents, says they have to last only for a limited time before expiring, and says that the purpose of copyright and patent laws must be “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. It also only says to secure those exclusive rights to authors (and inventors), not publishers, inventors, or estates.
There are also some limitations, though not explicitly spelled out as such, that come from the First Amendment:
Congress shall make no law […] abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; […].
Other than that, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the extent of what copyright protects (note that it says nothing about derivative works, when it kicks in, how to get a copyright over a work, or what works or elements are actually protected), its duration (as long as the duration is limited), the idea of passing or selling copyrights to others, or the idea of licensing. (It also doesn’t say anything about fair use, but that stems from trying to balance copyright with 1A rights, and it is also explicitly established in current copyright legislation and treaties.) All of those details are hashed out in federal laws and statutes and in the interpretations of those laws and statutes as well as the Constitution by federal courts. Heck, the Constitution doesn’t even say that Congress must write laws to establish copyrights or patents or anything; it only gives it the power to do so if it wants to.
Now, explain to me how Cathy Gellis here is “wav[ing] away” a plain reading of the text of the Constitution like you claim she is (as opposed to current copyright legislation and court opinions, as those would not be considered part of “the black letter Constitution provisions” even if they are also legally binding, so they would not provide support for your claim).
Dude, please calm down. I understand your frustration, believe me. However, this isn’t Twitter, and none of us are responsible for what’s going on with you. And yes, I’m sure that there are plenty of people who’ve done more reprehensible things than you who have gotten better treatment on Twitter than you.
And, not to defend Twitter or anything, but I can understand why they want the phone number. It’s just basic cybersecurity. Why you were locked out to begin with, I don’t know, but I’m sure that, the way it’s set up, if you’re locked out of your account for any reason, whether it’s your fault or theirs, this is literally the only way they can allow you access to your account again.
Re: Section 230 will surely be found Unconstitutional too!
Just takes the right case with bit of skepticism and the evidence of the actuality that it's being used by corporations to stifle every "natural" person's 1A Rights, to implement a de facto end-run on 1A, and grant corporations the status of Royalty.
The 1A right to free speech doesn’t include the right to be heard by anyone in particular or a particular number of people, nor does it include the right to say whatever you want on someone else’s privately owned property—even if it’s open to the public—without consequences from the owner of that property, including but not limited to being kicked off of it. In fact, the 1A doesn’t anyone at all from doing anything unless they’re the government, part of the government, or acting on behalf of the government (outside of certain contracts, but that’s another story). It does include a right not to speak or be forced to host someone else’s speech on your privately owned property. The 1A also includes a right for persons—natural or otherwise—to be or not be associated with other persons if they don’t want to.
In other words, it is literally impossible for a corporation to stifle anyone’s 1A right to free speech (outside of NDA-type clauses in contracts), and trying to force them to host speech infringes on their 1A rights. But even if corporations didn’t have 1A rights, that still doesn’t mean that the 1A is being run around. Seriously, this is exactly how the 1A is supposed to work.
And as for “the evidence of the actuality”, the courts have not ruled as it has on such things out of ignorance of what corporations have been doing. They were assuming for the sake of argument that corporations were doing exactly what they’ve been accused of. These were rulings about what the law says, not what it ought to be. Your assumption is that, if they only knew what you did, they would overturn all that legal precedent and agree with you. That’s not how it works at all. Even if the corporations were doing exactly what you say, that wouldn’t change the court rulings one iota.
Also, even if you were right, how would that give corporations royalty status? And I don’t think you understand what skepticism means.
Besides, as you note, everyone but a few rabid corporatists HATES it.
Uh, no, that’s not what they said. It’s mostly politicians, ignorant people, and whiny bigots who hate it.
It’s also important to note that the haters are extremely divided on why they hate it, and the reasons are irreconcilable. Anti-230 liberals hate that corporations are protected from liability for others’ speech on their platform and that they can’t be forced to remove certain undeserable content (generally); they want to force corporations to do more moderation. Anti-230 conservatives hate that corporations are allowed to moderate whatever and whoever they want however, whenever, and whyever they want to (generally); they want corporations to moderate less. These two positions are irreconcilable, and they’re fairly evenly divided. In turn, each side is unable to consistently agree among themselves what content, exactly, is okay to/must be moderated, what content is okay to/must be moderated, what tools a corporation can use to moderate, or whether §230 should be repealed, replaced, or reformed.
On top of that, they all operate from a misunderstanding of the 1A and how the internet actually works.
Legislative attorneys advised that HB228 may violate the First Amendment by compelling speech through requiring these companies to provide information about their moderation practices, although that may not be an impermissible burden given their vast resources.
This sounds like another one of those times lawmakers and attorneys forget that startups and small businesses exist. Can Facebook, Twitter, or Google comply with these requirements? Possibly. But what about the little guys and the newbies?
“As much as the intentions of this bill are good, logistically it just won’t work,” Anderegg, R-Lehi, said.
Wait, that’s your problem? That it’s practically unworkable?
…Actually, I can agree with that. Mandating porn filters for all devices is, indeed, unworkable. In fact, it’s technically impossible to do that. There isn’t really a way to block, a lot of pornographic apps and programs through an automated filter, and a manual filter would be just impossible. And it’d be pretty stupid to mandate that such a thing implement its own internal filter given that it’s sole purpose is to provide pornographic content. No amount of “fixes” will make it logistically work.
However, it’s also fundamentally unconstitutional to mandate porn filters at all. Again, no amount of changes can fix that. You can have all the special sessions to fix it you want; the fact is that you simply cannot mandate porn filters. Period. And even if you could, history has shown that porn filters simply don’t work at all. Kids have no trouble disabling them, they have tons of false positives, and they have tons of false negatives.
I can appreciate wanting parents to have tools to help protect young children from adult content. I personally think it’s not worth worrying about, but fine. Still, a legal mandate is not the way to go.
Hypothetically? Possibly. I’m pretty sure absolute immunity would apply to members officially acting as lawmakers, prosecutors, or judges in those capacities.
No, individual Native Americans are, in fact, individuals, so they can still sue for libel or other things. This includes individuals who are part of tribal leadership, at least in their individual capacities, as well as any tribal corporations or NGOs (I think). Additionally, they could try to initiate a class-action lawsuit where the class members are members of some particular tribe or something. On top of that, for legal actions that don’t conflict with the Constitution’s restrictions on government agencies (like enforcing a contract), the tribe acting as a single unit can initiate legal action in a local, state, or federal court against someone who wronged them. They can even sue a government agency in international court (hypothetically at least).
What this decision says is that the tribe, as a governing body or agency, can’t sue for libel or similar causes of action in an American court (local, state, or federal), nor can they sue an individual, corporation, or non-governmental organization in international court. This is because they are the governing body for a dependent nation, which cannot sue just anyone for any cause of action in international court.
Also, I don’t think that anyone can sue anyone for libel at all in international court. You also can’t sue in international court over disputes about what a particular nation’s laws do or don’t allow within their borders; it’s meant for disputes between nations or against a nation that breaks a treaty or contract. So even if the tribe as a government agency could sue in international court, I don’t see a cause of action they could sue over that that court would have jurisdiction over. Also, even if they could sue and even prevail in international court over this, that wouldn’t matter because of the SPEECH Act.
Finally, tribes are nations with regards to sovereign immunity, which protects them from most lawsuits or criminal charges, as well as with regards to governing its members and property and entering agreements with other tribes (I think). They are dependent nations with regards to international law. Individual Native Americans, of course, are not nations; they are individuals, and they can sue or be sued in that capacity just like anyone else.
Re: Re: Re: You want hundreds of millions subject to corporate c
Oh, and by the way: you (and I mean YOU, "the community" doing it is an other lie) CENSOR my on-topic civil comments
Nope. First, prove that Masnick is lying about the community doing the moderation. Second, only commercial spam gets removed; your comments have just been hidden. Even by the loosest reasonable definition of “censorship”, that isn’t censorship. Third, your comments that have been hidden were flagged for good reason.
Re: Re: Re: You want hundreds of millions subject to corporate c
Heh, heh. STINGS when I'm right, doesn't it?
It doesn’t matter if it does because you’re wrong. The quote you pulled shows that you’re wrong.
Again, ten years and more ago I told you better clean up the site or it'd inevitably diminish. You didn't, and it did.
[citation needed]
No one reasonable wants to read this cesspit of un-civil discussion.
As Stephen pointed out, that’s because of people like you.
When AdSense pulled ads here, I was not even commenting on the site.
Given the fact that 1) you admitted that you have been commenting here for over ten years and 2) the AdSense thing happened less than ten years ago, this is clearly false.
Indeed, few dissent, because it's futile, just get endless ad hom attacks.
Actually, there have been a number of dissenters, including you. And they don’t “just get endless ad hom attacks”.
No, Maz, you're lying as usual. It's your fanboys who were / are the problem, and who have visibly changed.
I haven’t been on this site as long as you have, but I haven’t seen a significant difference in the discussions on this site between old and new articles, except that possibly there’s more of it and the writers at Techdirt write fewer comments. There has been no real change among any of the commenters, “fanboys” or otherwise.
Re: Re: Re: Re: "passive" is what Section 230
YOU have to make a positive case, not just repeat Techdirt's lies.
That’s not how logic or arguments work. If the first person makes a positive claim, they have the burden of proof and, thus, have to make a positive case in order for their claim to be taken seriously. If the first person makes a negative claim, then the other side has the burden of proof by providing a counterexample or showing that the negative claim is inconsistent, and so they’d have to make a positive case that disproves the negative claim.
In this case, you made the following positive claims:
Facebook, Google, and Twitter “decided all by themselves to [become ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ under Indian law by] using their own notions of ‘standards’.”
Techdirt is “leftist”.
Techdirt “label[s] pro-American[s] / populist[s] / Constitutionalist[s] as ‘dangerous’.” (And, by implication: those labeled by Techdirt as dangerous are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and are labeled as such because they are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and/or espousing ideas that are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist.)
Leftists “label pro-American[s] / populist[s] / Constitutionalist[s] as ‘dangerous’.” (And, by implication: those labeled by leftists as dangerous are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and are labeled as such because they are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and/or espousing ideas that are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist.)
Techdirt “actively support Facebook / Google / Twitter doing [#1] directed against half of the US population […]”.
Techdirt does #5 “simply because” of #3 and/or #4.
That the 2020 election was stolen.
That Biden is “a geezer clearly losing his mind.”
That there are “a bunch of kooks in the new Admin[istration].”
That one of those “kooks” is a “fat geezer pretending he's a woman.”
That Techdirt writers consider themselves to be part of the Democratic Party. (Note that this is not the same thing as being leftist. Many leftists, even if only considering American citizens who live in America, are not Democrats, and not all Democrats are leftist.)
That the Democratic Party “will probably do away with Section 230.”
Some of these claims are more likely to be true than others, some are more relevant than others, but you have not given evidence or citations for any of them. For this reason, the comment you’re responding to asked for citations for one or more of those claims. They do not have to present a positive case in order to do so. You made the positive claim here, not them.
If you’re talking about the claim made in the article that “[t]he new law pretty much abolishes those [Safe Harbors] because complying with the law turns intermediaries from "passive" to "active," the commenter is not Techdirt and did not make that claim themselves, nor did they say they necessarily agree with that claim. Thus, they have not taken on the burden of proving that claim; only Techdirt does, and they have presented evidence and arguments supporting their claim in the article. The commenter, though, has no need to provide any evidence in order to ask for your evidence. (Also, contrary to your assertion, the commenter repeated nothing Techdirt said.)
Only one or maybe two of your claims even appear to address that claim, and even then, they do not contradict the claim itself, as both your claims and Techdirt’s claim can be true or both can be false. (Note that Techdirt’s claim doesn’t solely apply to Google, Facebook, and Twitter but to any intermediary like 4chan or 8kun, which have far less moderation than those companies.) But even if they were mutually exclusive, they are both positive claims, so even if Techdirt has to make a positive case for their claim (which they already did), so do you (which you have not). So, again, asking for you to present evidence supporting your claims does not require presenting a positive case for their claim.
And "YOU" are Timothy Geigner using your "AC Unknown" sock-puppet, which is also obvious. "You" didn't comment a total of 58 months, yet NOW you're hot on monitoring the site late on a Friday night? -- That's clear EVIDENCE that "you" are a sock puppet.
No, it is not. For one thing, AC Unknown has commented several times recently. I know because I distinctly remember you making these exact same accusations towards them before, minus the ones about monitoring the site late on a Friday night (which itself presumes that they are in the same time zone as you are).
More importantly, even assuming for the sake of argument that your allegations regarding their being inactive for 58 months prior to this one comment, it doesn’t prove anything other than the fact that they did not write comments for 58 months. It certainly does not prove your claim that they are a sock-puppet account for Tim Geigner. This has been pointed out to you numerous times, just about every time that you make this argument. There are plenty of alternative explanations, like being busy with other stuff or having nothing they want to say until now, and there is not a single known instance of an account being dormant for a long period of time suddenly being used as a sock-puppet account anywhere outside of your accusation against Techdirt and so-called “zombie accounts”. Sock-puppet accounts aren’t generally taken from an existing user but are created for the purpose of being used as a sock-puppet account, and they are not known for having long periods of inactivity. There is zero connection between your premise and your conclusion; if anything, your premise would be more likely to disprove your conclusion. There is nothing suspicious about a 58-month-long gap in commenting activity (but not necessarily viewing, flagging, first-or last-word-ing, or voting a comment insightful and/or funny) from an account used for the comment section of a news/opinion site.
There is also nothing suspicious about “monitoring [a] site late on a Friday night.” If anything, I’d expect more activity from an account late on a Friday night given that it’s the start of the weekend, a time schools and many jobs have off every week, and it’s the last day of each week that Techdirt posts new articles with news and/or opinions rather than contest results, a look into Techdirt history, or winners of the Funniest and/or Most Insightful Comments. And, as I mentioned earlier, for all that you know, it wasn’t necessarily late on a Friday night for AC Unknown when they made the post because you don’t know what time zone they live in and the times given for when the comment was posted are after being converted to your local time zone (or whatever time zone your device or browser is configured for). Just because the timestamp that you see says it was posted late on a Friday night doesn’t mean that that was the time for the commenter when they submitted it. But, again, that claim is completely pointless anyways as, even if it’s true, it doesn’t prove anything that you claim at all. There is zero connection between your premise and your conclusion once again. It is completely and utterly irrelevant.
And even if AC Unknown’s account is being used as a sock-puppet account (and, as mentioned, we have absolutely no reason to believe that it is, at least given only the content of the comment itself and what you’ve provided as supposed evidence), you’ve provided nothing to prove that it was Tim Geigner doing so or that Tim Geigner uses sock-puppet accounts at all. So, once again, you’re failing to provide proof of your claim. Now, unlike the other claims, there is some connection, in that AC Unknown’s account being used as a sock-puppet account is a necessary condition for it to be used as such by Tim Geigner, but it is not a sufficient condition, and the alleged gap in activity and the timing and content of the comment do nothing to add to that, so you haven’t really made an adequate case even if we throw you quite a few bones.
This is why no one takes you seriously. You make lots of positive claims, many of which are outrageous, generally without providing any evidence to support them; claim that anyone who asks you to provide evidence of those claims must provide a positive case/has the burden of proof and then fail to present the evidence you were asked for; and constantly repeat the same conspiracy theories that are based upon arguments that are clearly invalid and not at all convincing, simply asserting that the premises you give are “clear evidence” that your conclusions are not only true but “obvious” (sometimes even your premises fail to be supported, making whether the argument is invalid unnecessary to showing that it may not be sound).
We still stand by those claims. The right to do something is not the right to do something without being criticized for it; it’s the right to do so without adverse legal repercussions or government-backed repercussions. Just because they can do something legally and we believe they absolutely should be able to legally doesn’t necessarily mean that we believe that they should in every case or that we believe that they should be free from criticism and/or mockery when they do. It also doesn’t mean that we believe that they won’t make mistakes.
We may not always agree with how they choose to exercise their rights in every or even any instance, but we will still fight for those rights no matter our personal feelings. Isn’t that how defense of free speech works? “I may not support or agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it,” right? It’s the same thing. We don’t have to agree with all or any of Twitter’s moderation decisions to support their right to make those decisions without government interference.
If we would change our minds just because we’re suddenly disadvantaged by the outcomes, that would mean that our principles weren’t well-thought-out to begin with or came from ignorance. It’s all well and good to change your mind when presented with new evidence you hadn’t considered or given proper weight to, but the thing is that we took this stance on moderation fully expecting that things like this would happen. We considered the trade-offs and benefits of each possible position carefully and decided based on available evidence, logical deductions, plausible predictions, and fundamental principles, and we chose our current stance accordingly. These cases were well within what we expected to happen, and so we have no reason to change our minds.
That you can’t understand these distinctions or agree with these principles is, frankly, not my problem.
It's better to be censored by a sovereign state that is at least theoretically accountable to people than faceless corporate monopolies accountable to no one.
That is the exact opposite of what is true. A corporation’s reach extends no further than their own property, and the punishments are minor. A sovereign state is capable of extending to everyone’s property within their jurisdiction and can lead to imprisonment or even death.
On the post: It's Not Just Republican State Legislators Pushing Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bills
Re:
I think you missed the part where this particular article is about a bill that would force tech companies to do more moderation.
And no, companies moderating content on their privately owned websites and servers is not against the 1st Amendment as they are not in any way a government or part of the government; rather, between the 1A right against compelled speech and the 1A right of association, not allowing companies to moderate speech on their websites is against the 1A. Again, there are court cases that point to this being the case.
And no, private companies removing unwanted content and/or users from their privately owned websites and/or servers is not censorship, either. There is a difference.
Look, I am no fan of Twitter or Facebook; I mostly left them a long time ago. However, I know how to read the whole article rather than just the introduction, I know what the law is on this issue, and I know what words mean. I don’t think you do.
If there was a white supremacist platform for user content owned and operated by a single private citizen who was also a bigot or by a corporation run by a bigot, and that platform removed speech that didn’t conform with those ideals, while I would find the platform to be, at the very, very least, distasteful, and more likely hateful and abhorrent, I would still defend their right to exist, say such horrible things, and remove content they dislike even if I think that content is perfectly fine. I wouldn’t support or use such a platform, and I would likely heavily criticize it both publicly and privately, but I wouldn’t want the government to ban it entirely or stop it from moderating content on the platform however it sees fit. That’s how the 1A and private-property rights work. I also wouldn’t say that they’re censoring anyone or violating anyone’s 1A rights. It doesn’t matter how big or small it is (though if such a platform got even close to as large as either Facebook or Twitter, I’d be admittedly shocked and dismayed at the state of humanity); I’d feel the same on the issues of 1A rights, private property rights, and government interference with such either way.
On the post: It's Not Just Republican State Legislators Pushing Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bills
Re: Re: Oh boy
Actually, based on past history, the current SC is unlikely to overturn the precedential decisions that make these bills unconstitutional.
On the post: Police, Police Supporters: Ending Qualified Immunity Makes Being A Cop Too Hard, Somehow 'Defunds' The Police
Re: Our Society
I don’t have a problem with that, and we do the same for just about everyone else. Lots of people are held liable for split-second actions.
That said, since we also have precedence outside qualified immunity that says that a lot of those split-second decisions aren’t violating anyone’s rights, anyways, and the ones that are or might be shouldn’t be dismissed early on, anyways, I don’t see that happening beyond what it ought to. If a person makes an allegation that something violated their rights, but the law says that, even if the allegations are true, their rights haven’t been violated, the case will and should be dismissed quickly anyways, QI or no QI. If the allegations are very clearly false or the plaintiff has absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support their claim, then the plaintiff will lose in summary judgement without getting to a jury. Otherwise, it’s a case that absolutely should go to a jury.
If that’s chilling, it only appears to chill bad or excessive behavior and would only dissuade people who shouldn’t be officers from becoming officers, so I fail to see the problem. Really, even without QI, the system tends to favor cops over citizens anyways. And the law quite explicitly does not require the cops to personally pay for legal help, court cost and fees, or any fines stemming from such a lawsuit. That all comes from taxpayer money, and not even necessarily the police department’s funds, specifically.
Also, even with QI, governments spend a lot of money defending against or settling such lawsuits. If a case is truly frivolous, the state may even be able to recover court costs either way.
I’m afraid I don’t see the connection between “chilling police” and “defunding the police”. Especially when “defunding the police” refers to diverting funds that would go to law enforcement for anything, including legal costs, to other things (like mental health professionals or social workers), or, in the oft-used misunderstanding of it, removing all funding for the current police department entirely, neither of which would be likely direct consequences of eliminating QI.
And actually, on that note, while I perfectly understand why people confuse the issue (intentionally or not), I should probably explain how defunding the police (which, again, this isn’t) is supposed to work, at least in theory. Currently, police have to handle a lot of things that aren’t exactly related to enforcing the law. Things like stopping people from committing suicide or getting homeless people off of the streets. The idea is to remove funds from police departments and divert it towards other programs and agencies that will handle those tasks for the police (at least most of the time), so while police will have less funding, they will also have fewer duties. Other programs and agencies that might receive funding might be intended to solve problems that increase lawlessness, like mental healthcare programs, programs intended to help unemployed people get jobs, and drug-rehabilitation programs. This would make even the law enforcement part of the job of police officers easier because there would be fewer instances of law breaking. So yes, police departments would get less money and possibly have fewer employees, but they would also need less money and fewer employees because they would have fewer tasks that they would have to handle.
There is an extreme version that involves defunding the current police department entirely and moving those funds to (possibly among other programs) a completely new police department built from the ground up to replace the old one. This is intended to, essentially, clean house and remove systemic issues with the current police department and to ensure the removal of any bad apples. So, even under this scenario, there will still be police officers who still get paid sufficiently to do the jobs they’re supposed to do.
Now, both of these methods have been tested (in varying degrees) in several locations across the country, and the results we’ve seen so far have been promising. Fewer deaths and injuries caused by police, less harrassment by police, happier civilians, fewer lawsuits, fewer cases settled or lost, fewer people in prison, and no more crimes committed than before (often less), with little to no additional costs to the government.
Of course, as I already stated, removing QI doesn’t do either of those things. If removing QI costs departments more money, that’s the fault of the officers, not the law. Police should be held to a higher standard than civilians.
On the post: Judge Tosses Laughably Stupid SLAPP Lawsuit The Trump Campaign Filed Against The NY Times
Re:
It depends. If by “OK” you mean “is and ought to be absolutely protected by the First Amendment and should not be sued over as defamatory or false light or anything like that”, and the opinion piece itself did not allege or imply any false facts that they knew or really should have known to be false in explaining how and why they formed that opinion, then yes, that would be perfectly okay. It would also be okay if it was obviously or at least probably satirical. If you mean something else by “OK”, then unless they have really good reasons for doing so, I’d say probably not, but I wouldn’t necessarily support a lawsuit over it. And either way, if the opinion piece does not fit the conditions I mentioned earlier, then for the most part, no matter what definition of “OK” you mean, that would not be OK.
However, even if it’s not “OK”, that doesn’t necessarily mean I’d support taking the writer and/or publisher to court over it. At the very least, I’d say trying to contact the writer or publisher to at least try to work something out outside of court before possibly resorting to legal threats or legal action. Legal action should be a last resort when dealing with speech, especially online speech, particularly due to the Streisand effect. Even if the opinion piece is defamatory, depending on a variety of factors, it’s entirely possible that the opinion piece was largely unnoticed by most people, and by trying to censor it, you may wind up making it seen by a lot more people, so even if you are morally, ethically, legally, and factually right to sue over the piece, it may just backfire on you.
Again, just because someone’s speech is objectionable or hurts your feelings or damages your reputation, that’s not enough reason to ignore the 1A and try to censor it, and I will still defend people’s right to say objectionable things, even if they aren’t true, so long as it is reasonable for them to think it is true and actually believe it’s true, and to voice objectionable opinions. I don’t have to like or agree with what is being said to defend their right to say it. Sometimes, there may be unfortunate consequences. However, the law is not and should not be a shield against any negative consequences even if they weren’t your fault.
On the post: Trump Appointee Who Wanted To Turn Voice Of America Into Breitbart Spent Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars Investigating His Own Staff
Re: Staffing
There is absolutely no evidence that Voice of America is or ever has been a left propaganda machine or that it is or ever was laughed at by everyone who listens to it. Indeed, it has been seen as a positive force by non-totalitarians to counter totalitarian propaganda, and no conservative prior to Trump has ever leveled that accusation against it that I’m aware of.
Also, the changes being made were actually making people around the world respect it less and were seen as attempting to make it a source of pro-Trump propaganda and fake news. More people found the VoA as Pack pushed it as far more laughable than the one that was already there.
It’s also worth noting that the political opinions of the members of VoA were fairly diverse. Even the so-called anti-Trump people weren’t all leftist; many were right-wing or right-leaning, and some were centrist. Anti-Trump =/= anti-conservative or pro-liberal, which can be seen by the many ballots from 2020 where people voted essentially all Republican except for in the presidential race, and most of these particular ballots actually voted for Biden solely because they were anti-Trump. And the anti-Trump ones were not, by and large, ideologues or spreaders of “toxic wokeness”, whatever that is.
I will concede that VoA may have been seen, at least by some, as a pro-America or pro-democracy propaganda machine, but not a leftist one.
But please, do provide evidence that supports your claim.
On the post: Trump Appointee Who Wanted To Turn Voice Of America Into Breitbart Spent Millions Of Taxpayer Dollars Investigating His Own Staff
Re: Trump Derangement Syndrome is PERMANENT.
First, regarding the subject line, for the most part, the only Trump-related derangement I’ve seen is for Trumpists to ignore reality when it comes to Trump or Democrats. And it does, indeed, seem to be largely permanent, though I have seen some cases of former Trumpists in recovery, so there’s still some hope.
Nope. There have been numerous court cases alleging such about the Presidential race, and none of them had any merit and were dismissed either for failing to state a claim, being wrong about the law, lacking sufficient reasonable evidence to support their claims, lacking standing (the least common reason), or some combination of the above, and they have all been ended. Numerous hand and machine recounts were done in the contested states, and none of them differed significantly from the original count. The only known instances of attempted or successful voter fraud or election fraud were by Republicans.
And as for Congress, a lot of votes for Biden voted all Republican downticket, and the run-offs showed no evidence of voter or election fraud by Democrats either.
Additionally, the various Republican election officials and Secretaries of State for each of the contested states have all said that there was no widespread voter or election fraud in their states during the 2020 election.
As for the laws and election-policy-changes being complained about, all of them were also in place for states that went to Trump and to downballot Republicans in that same election, and with one possible exception, all of them were found to be lawful and constitutional, and many of them were in place well before the 2020 election.
So, there is no credible evidence to support a claim of widespread voter and/or election fraud by Democrats that would be enough to have changed the results in any of the federal races in the 2020 election or the Georgia run-off for Senate. In fact, there’s a plethora of evidence to the contrary. As such, no US election was stolen here.
First, they’ve written plenty of articles about the new Congress and administration as well as topics that have little to nothing to do with any Congress or administration, be it this one, the last one, and the one before. So no, this claim is false.
Second, when Trump became President, Techdirt would still write some articles about the Obama administration, so this isn’t something they only do for Trump.
Third, this has some information we didn’t previously know about, so Techdirt couldn’t have written about it before while Trump was still President, and it is still fairly relevant to today, in part because it’s also about what Biden is doing now:
Again, there have been some positive (or neutral) articles recently, and there were some throughout the Trump administration. So, you’re still working from a false premise. If you mean positive pieces about Trump, let me know what good Trump has done first, and then we’ll talk. That said, the only times most journalists may write positive pieces about the last president are when summarizing that President’s legacy right around when they leave office, when the current President does something that makes the last President look good, at least by comparison, or when the current President says something false about the last President. None of those are the case right now with Trump or Biden.
Second, this is still largely an opinion blog, so of course they will write opinions about current and/or recent events as well as compare them to older events. They did the same thing for both Trump and Obama when they were President.
Third, this isn’t an ad hominem argument, really. An ad hominem would be trying to refute what someone said because they are a bad or undesirable person or something. Criticizing someone’s actions and the motivations for those actions is not an ad hominem in itself. For example, saying that evolution is wrong or immoral because Charles Darwin was a racist would be an ad hominem. Saying that Michael Pack is corrupt and abused his power because he spent a lot of taxpayer money trying to weed out anti-Trump people in his cabinet and therefore should not keep or have ever had that position or been able to do those things is not an ad hominem. Not every insult is necessarily an ad hominem.
Finally, technically, this article isn’t really about Trump. It’s about Michael Pack, the former Trump-appointed head of the US Agency for Global Media. You could argue that it is about Trump’s administration, but that’s not quite the same thing as being about Trump himself.
Actually, that server was no less secure than the one she was supposed to be using. It was not “open to the world”.
Several Republican-led congressional investigations into it found no illegal activity.
A Republican-led FBI investigated the issue and found no evidence of anything illegal.
During the past four years, the Trump administration did nothing to indict or really even investigate Hillary Clinton at all over anything, let alone over those emails, despite saying that they would and having plenty of motive to do so and the power to do so if there was any wrongdoing on her part.
Just about every previous Secretary of State who used email did essentially the same thing, including Colin Powell, and they received no repercussions whatsoever. Ivanka Trump also did something similar during the Trump presidency.
It was not intentional. The investigations showed that essentially all of the allegedly classified emails were not properly marked to indicate that they were classified or what the classification was, all of them were sent there by others, not sent or solicited by Hillary, and many were improperly claimed to be classified despite not actually containing any classified material. Both the FBI and the congressional hearings on the matter said as much.
As implied by point 6 and contrary to your assertions, the US government does (or at least did) know the contents of those emails. Yes, some emails were deleted, but supposedly they were purely personal emails and were not at all work-related. They were also deleted without knowledge of the investigation. Besides, they made up a minority of the emails on that server.
The US government also knows (more or less) who got these emails. It doesn’t take forensic science to read the To, From, and Cc lines or to see who, if anyone, Hillary forwarded them to. The only things missing would be what recipients other than Hillary did with them or the Bcc recipients of the original email, and she had no control over those, nor was she responsible for that. And before you say, “But they were on an unsecured server and open to the world, so someone could’ve hacked in and seen them,” again, no they were not unsecured or open to the world (see point 1), but even if they were, the government also checked the private server and found no evidence of intrusion, infection, compromise, or anything else suspicious, so even if it was hypothetically plausible that a hacker obtained access they wouldn’t have had if the emails were on a government server (which it isn’t, really), it doesn’t appear that anyone actually did, so at least with regards to this specific claim, that point is moot.
The only ones not bothering with facts here are you and Michael Pack. That said, this is meant to be an opinion piece, not just a blind recitation of the facts, so yeah, you’re going to get more than just facts here; you’ll also see opinions and maybe some speculation. Welcome to Techdirt. Clearly you’re new here.
As for coming up with substantive proposals, Techdirt is not a lobbying body, a politician, a holder of any political office, involved in government contracts, a government agency/agent, a judge, or a clerk for any of the above. They don’t have any obligation to come up with substantive proposals because that’s not their job. Most journalists and writers of opinion pieces don’t come up with substantive proposals. Why would you expect Techdirt to be any different?
That said, Techdirt has come up with substantive proposals for several things in the past, such as police accountability (especially qualified immunity), net neutrality, section 230 (and yes, “leave it alone” is a substantive proposal), copyright (especially the DMCA, which they recently sent several ideas about reforming to a representative), patents, and anti-SLAPP laws. So clearly, when it comes to coming up with substantive proposals, they clearly aren’t stumped as you claim.
Finally, what “substantive proposals” would be made here on this issue? This is all about one guy’s attempt to make the USAGM and several things that come out of it like VoA into pro-Trump propaganda outlets, and that has been dealt with by Biden, who has removed the man responsible (among others) and is seeking replacements, including people who quit or were fired because of that guy. Maybe have some sort of oversight committee regarding how finances get used by that department? A bad actor would probably just gut the think to being useless.
On the post: Oh The Culture You'll Cancel, Thanks To The Ninth Circuit And Copyright
Re: Yet again, lecturing to an Appeals Level court!
I don’t know how a person can be a pretense at anything; they can have a pretense, but I don’t think they can be one.
Pedantics aside, what evidence do you have that Cathy Gellis is corporate-supported, and on what basis do you claim that she defends pirates?
Also, I’m not sure how, even if she is corporate-supported, that would make her opinion in this case less valid. The makers of “Oh the Places You’ll Boldly Go!” (the defendants in this case) are not a corporation, but Dr. Seuss’s estate (at least arguably) is. Additionally, corporations (namely publishers and movie studios) tend to support copyright maximalism, not piracy. So, if she is influenced by corporate interests, surely she would be against pirates and also support this decision. And before you say, “But Google/YouTube/Facebook/Twitter…!”, those corporations aren’t terribly opposed to an expansion of what is infringing; the only thing that matters to them is whether they will be held liable for infringement done by users.
Also, this case isn’t about piracy. Piracy, as it relates to copyright, is about infringing distribution, acquisition, possession, and/or usage of (essentially identical and largely unaltered) copies of the original work that are specifically meant to serve the same purpose of the original and replace it. Not all copyright infringement is piracy. If they were selling unauthorized copies of the original book essentially unaltered, that would be piracy. If they were distributing photocopies of the pages and/or cover of the original book, that would be piracy. Instead, what we have here is the creation and distribution of, according to the 9th Circuit opinion, derivative works based on the original book but also distinct in some critical respects. So, even if you agree with the 9th Circuit, this isn’t piracy, even though it would be copyright infringement. So, yeah, Cathy’s opinion in this article isn’t defending pirates or piracy with regards to copyrighted works, even if she may defend pirates or piracy elsewhere.
Basically, this is just an ad hominem attack that doesn’t even work in this case.
Well, the only time the Constitution talks about copyright is in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, which also deals with patents:
So, basically, it just says that Congress can pass laws that grant and enforce copyright and patents, says they have to last only for a limited time before expiring, and says that the purpose of copyright and patent laws must be “to promote the progress of science and useful arts”. It also only says to secure those exclusive rights to authors (and inventors), not publishers, inventors, or estates.
There are also some limitations, though not explicitly spelled out as such, that come from the First Amendment:
Other than that, the Constitution doesn’t say anything about the extent of what copyright protects (note that it says nothing about derivative works, when it kicks in, how to get a copyright over a work, or what works or elements are actually protected), its duration (as long as the duration is limited), the idea of passing or selling copyrights to others, or the idea of licensing. (It also doesn’t say anything about fair use, but that stems from trying to balance copyright with 1A rights, and it is also explicitly established in current copyright legislation and treaties.) All of those details are hashed out in federal laws and statutes and in the interpretations of those laws and statutes as well as the Constitution by federal courts. Heck, the Constitution doesn’t even say that Congress must write laws to establish copyrights or patents or anything; it only gives it the power to do so if it wants to.
Now, explain to me how Cathy Gellis here is “wav[ing] away” a plain reading of the text of the Constitution like you claim she is (as opposed to current copyright legislation and court opinions, as those would not be considered part of “the black letter Constitution provisions” even if they are also legally binding, so they would not provide support for your claim).
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: Recent Examples Of Misunderstanding Context
Re:
Dude, please calm down. I understand your frustration, believe me. However, this isn’t Twitter, and none of us are responsible for what’s going on with you. And yes, I’m sure that there are plenty of people who’ve done more reprehensible things than you who have gotten better treatment on Twitter than you.
And, not to defend Twitter or anything, but I can understand why they want the phone number. It’s just basic cybersecurity. Why you were locked out to begin with, I don’t know, but I’m sure that, the way it’s set up, if you’re locked out of your account for any reason, whether it’s your fault or theirs, this is literally the only way they can allow you access to your account again.
On the post: Utah Legislature Wraps Up Session By Passing Two Unconstitutional Internet Bills
Re: Section 230 will surely be found Unconstitutional too!
The 1A right to free speech doesn’t include the right to be heard by anyone in particular or a particular number of people, nor does it include the right to say whatever you want on someone else’s privately owned property—even if it’s open to the public—without consequences from the owner of that property, including but not limited to being kicked off of it. In fact, the 1A doesn’t anyone at all from doing anything unless they’re the government, part of the government, or acting on behalf of the government (outside of certain contracts, but that’s another story). It does include a right not to speak or be forced to host someone else’s speech on your privately owned property. The 1A also includes a right for persons—natural or otherwise—to be or not be associated with other persons if they don’t want to.
In other words, it is literally impossible for a corporation to stifle anyone’s 1A right to free speech (outside of NDA-type clauses in contracts), and trying to force them to host speech infringes on their 1A rights. But even if corporations didn’t have 1A rights, that still doesn’t mean that the 1A is being run around. Seriously, this is exactly how the 1A is supposed to work.
And as for “the evidence of the actuality”, the courts have not ruled as it has on such things out of ignorance of what corporations have been doing. They were assuming for the sake of argument that corporations were doing exactly what they’ve been accused of. These were rulings about what the law says, not what it ought to be. Your assumption is that, if they only knew what you did, they would overturn all that legal precedent and agree with you. That’s not how it works at all. Even if the corporations were doing exactly what you say, that wouldn’t change the court rulings one iota.
Also, even if you were right, how would that give corporations royalty status? And I don’t think you understand what skepticism means.
Uh, no, that’s not what they said. It’s mostly politicians, ignorant people, and whiny bigots who hate it.
It’s also important to note that the haters are extremely divided on why they hate it, and the reasons are irreconcilable. Anti-230 liberals hate that corporations are protected from liability for others’ speech on their platform and that they can’t be forced to remove certain undeserable content (generally); they want to force corporations to do more moderation. Anti-230 conservatives hate that corporations are allowed to moderate whatever and whoever they want however, whenever, and whyever they want to (generally); they want corporations to moderate less. These two positions are irreconcilable, and they’re fairly evenly divided. In turn, each side is unable to consistently agree among themselves what content, exactly, is okay to/must be moderated, what content is okay to/must be moderated, what tools a corporation can use to moderate, or whether §230 should be repealed, replaced, or reformed.
On top of that, they all operate from a misunderstanding of the 1A and how the internet actually works.
On the post: Utah Legislature Wraps Up Session By Passing Two Unconstitutional Internet Bills
Re:
That’s a pretty massive oversight. It may also save the state from wasting money defending the bill since it wouldn’t actually do anything.
On the post: Utah Legislature Wraps Up Session By Passing Two Unconstitutional Internet Bills
This sounds like another one of those times lawmakers and attorneys forget that startups and small businesses exist. Can Facebook, Twitter, or Google comply with these requirements? Possibly. But what about the little guys and the newbies?
On the post: Utah Legislature Wraps Up Session By Passing Two Unconstitutional Internet Bills
Wait, that’s your problem? That it’s practically unworkable?
…Actually, I can agree with that. Mandating porn filters for all devices is, indeed, unworkable. In fact, it’s technically impossible to do that. There isn’t really a way to block, a lot of pornographic apps and programs through an automated filter, and a manual filter would be just impossible. And it’d be pretty stupid to mandate that such a thing implement its own internal filter given that it’s sole purpose is to provide pornographic content. No amount of “fixes” will make it logistically work.
However, it’s also fundamentally unconstitutional to mandate porn filters at all. Again, no amount of changes can fix that. You can have all the special sessions to fix it you want; the fact is that you simply cannot mandate porn filters. Period. And even if you could, history has shown that porn filters simply don’t work at all. Kids have no trouble disabling them, they have tons of false positives, and they have tons of false negatives.
I can appreciate wanting parents to have tools to help protect young children from adult content. I personally think it’s not worth worrying about, but fine. Still, a legal mandate is not the way to go.
On the post: New York Court Reminds Native American Tribe That Suing For Libel Isn't An Option For Government Agencies
Re: QI
Hypothetically? Possibly. I’m pretty sure absolute immunity would apply to members officially acting as lawmakers, prosecutors, or judges in those capacities.
On the post: New York Court Reminds Native American Tribe That Suing For Libel Isn't An Option For Government Agencies
Re: Re: Re: Due Process
No, individual Native Americans are, in fact, individuals, so they can still sue for libel or other things. This includes individuals who are part of tribal leadership, at least in their individual capacities, as well as any tribal corporations or NGOs (I think). Additionally, they could try to initiate a class-action lawsuit where the class members are members of some particular tribe or something. On top of that, for legal actions that don’t conflict with the Constitution’s restrictions on government agencies (like enforcing a contract), the tribe acting as a single unit can initiate legal action in a local, state, or federal court against someone who wronged them. They can even sue a government agency in international court (hypothetically at least).
What this decision says is that the tribe, as a governing body or agency, can’t sue for libel or similar causes of action in an American court (local, state, or federal), nor can they sue an individual, corporation, or non-governmental organization in international court. This is because they are the governing body for a dependent nation, which cannot sue just anyone for any cause of action in international court.
Also, I don’t think that anyone can sue anyone for libel at all in international court. You also can’t sue in international court over disputes about what a particular nation’s laws do or don’t allow within their borders; it’s meant for disputes between nations or against a nation that breaks a treaty or contract. So even if the tribe as a government agency could sue in international court, I don’t see a cause of action they could sue over that that court would have jurisdiction over. Also, even if they could sue and even prevail in international court over this, that wouldn’t matter because of the SPEECH Act.
Finally, tribes are nations with regards to sovereign immunity, which protects them from most lawsuits or criminal charges, as well as with regards to governing its members and property and entering agreements with other tribes (I think). They are dependent nations with regards to international law. Individual Native Americans, of course, are not nations; they are individuals, and they can sue or be sued in that capacity just like anyone else.
On the post: Utah Prematurely Tries To Dance On Section 230's Grave And Shows What Unconstitutional Garbage Will Follow If We Kill It
Re: Re: Re: You want hundreds of millions subject to corporate c
Have you ever considered, you know, waiting for your comments to get through rather than trying over and over.
On the post: Utah Prematurely Tries To Dance On Section 230's Grave And Shows What Unconstitutional Garbage Will Follow If We Kill It
Re: Re: Re: You want hundreds of millions subject to corporate c
Nope. First, prove that Masnick is lying about the community doing the moderation. Second, only commercial spam gets removed; your comments have just been hidden. Even by the loosest reasonable definition of “censorship”, that isn’t censorship. Third, your comments that have been hidden were flagged for good reason.
On the post: Utah Prematurely Tries To Dance On Section 230's Grave And Shows What Unconstitutional Garbage Will Follow If We Kill It
Re: Re: Re: You want hundreds of millions subject to corporate c
It doesn’t matter if it does because you’re wrong. The quote you pulled shows that you’re wrong.
[citation needed]
As Stephen pointed out, that’s because of people like you.
Given the fact that 1) you admitted that you have been commenting here for over ten years and 2) the AdSense thing happened less than ten years ago, this is clearly false.
Actually, there have been a number of dissenters, including you. And they don’t “just get endless ad hom attacks”.
I haven’t been on this site as long as you have, but I haven’t seen a significant difference in the discussions on this site between old and new articles, except that possibly there’s more of it and the writers at Techdirt write fewer comments. There has been no real change among any of the commenters, “fanboys” or otherwise.
On the post: India's New Cyber Law Goes Live: Subtracts Safe Harbor Protections, Adds Compelled Assistance Demands For Intermediaries
Re: Re: Re: Re: "passive" is what Section 230
That’s not how logic or arguments work. If the first person makes a positive claim, they have the burden of proof and, thus, have to make a positive case in order for their claim to be taken seriously. If the first person makes a negative claim, then the other side has the burden of proof by providing a counterexample or showing that the negative claim is inconsistent, and so they’d have to make a positive case that disproves the negative claim.
In this case, you made the following positive claims:
Facebook, Google, and Twitter “decided all by themselves to [become ‘active’ rather than ‘passive’ under Indian law by] using their own notions of ‘standards’.”
Techdirt is “leftist”.
Techdirt “label[s] pro-American[s] / populist[s] / Constitutionalist[s] as ‘dangerous’.” (And, by implication: those labeled by Techdirt as dangerous are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and are labeled as such because they are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and/or espousing ideas that are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist.)
Leftists “label pro-American[s] / populist[s] / Constitutionalist[s] as ‘dangerous’.” (And, by implication: those labeled by leftists as dangerous are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and are labeled as such because they are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist and/or espousing ideas that are pro-American, populist, and/or constitutionalist.)
Techdirt “actively support Facebook / Google / Twitter doing [#1] directed against half of the US population […]”.
Techdirt does #5 “simply because” of #3 and/or #4.
That the 2020 election was stolen.
That Biden is “a geezer clearly losing his mind.”
That there are “a bunch of kooks in the new Admin[istration].”
That one of those “kooks” is a “fat geezer pretending he's a woman.”
That Techdirt writers consider themselves to be part of the Democratic Party. (Note that this is not the same thing as being leftist. Many leftists, even if only considering American citizens who live in America, are not Democrats, and not all Democrats are leftist.)
Some of these claims are more likely to be true than others, some are more relevant than others, but you have not given evidence or citations for any of them. For this reason, the comment you’re responding to asked for citations for one or more of those claims. They do not have to present a positive case in order to do so. You made the positive claim here, not them.
If you’re talking about the claim made in the article that “[t]he new law pretty much abolishes those [Safe Harbors] because complying with the law turns intermediaries from "passive" to "active," the commenter is not Techdirt and did not make that claim themselves, nor did they say they necessarily agree with that claim. Thus, they have not taken on the burden of proving that claim; only Techdirt does, and they have presented evidence and arguments supporting their claim in the article. The commenter, though, has no need to provide any evidence in order to ask for your evidence. (Also, contrary to your assertion, the commenter repeated nothing Techdirt said.)
Only one or maybe two of your claims even appear to address that claim, and even then, they do not contradict the claim itself, as both your claims and Techdirt’s claim can be true or both can be false. (Note that Techdirt’s claim doesn’t solely apply to Google, Facebook, and Twitter but to any intermediary like 4chan or 8kun, which have far less moderation than those companies.) But even if they were mutually exclusive, they are both positive claims, so even if Techdirt has to make a positive case for their claim (which they already did), so do you (which you have not). So, again, asking for you to present evidence supporting your claims does not require presenting a positive case for their claim.
No, it is not. For one thing, AC Unknown has commented several times recently. I know because I distinctly remember you making these exact same accusations towards them before, minus the ones about monitoring the site late on a Friday night (which itself presumes that they are in the same time zone as you are).
More importantly, even assuming for the sake of argument that your allegations regarding their being inactive for 58 months prior to this one comment, it doesn’t prove anything other than the fact that they did not write comments for 58 months. It certainly does not prove your claim that they are a sock-puppet account for Tim Geigner. This has been pointed out to you numerous times, just about every time that you make this argument. There are plenty of alternative explanations, like being busy with other stuff or having nothing they want to say until now, and there is not a single known instance of an account being dormant for a long period of time suddenly being used as a sock-puppet account anywhere outside of your accusation against Techdirt and so-called “zombie accounts”. Sock-puppet accounts aren’t generally taken from an existing user but are created for the purpose of being used as a sock-puppet account, and they are not known for having long periods of inactivity. There is zero connection between your premise and your conclusion; if anything, your premise would be more likely to disprove your conclusion. There is nothing suspicious about a 58-month-long gap in commenting activity (but not necessarily viewing, flagging, first-or last-word-ing, or voting a comment insightful and/or funny) from an account used for the comment section of a news/opinion site.
There is also nothing suspicious about “monitoring [a] site late on a Friday night.” If anything, I’d expect more activity from an account late on a Friday night given that it’s the start of the weekend, a time schools and many jobs have off every week, and it’s the last day of each week that Techdirt posts new articles with news and/or opinions rather than contest results, a look into Techdirt history, or winners of the Funniest and/or Most Insightful Comments. And, as I mentioned earlier, for all that you know, it wasn’t necessarily late on a Friday night for AC Unknown when they made the post because you don’t know what time zone they live in and the times given for when the comment was posted are after being converted to your local time zone (or whatever time zone your device or browser is configured for). Just because the timestamp that you see says it was posted late on a Friday night doesn’t mean that that was the time for the commenter when they submitted it. But, again, that claim is completely pointless anyways as, even if it’s true, it doesn’t prove anything that you claim at all. There is zero connection between your premise and your conclusion once again. It is completely and utterly irrelevant.
And even if AC Unknown’s account is being used as a sock-puppet account (and, as mentioned, we have absolutely no reason to believe that it is, at least given only the content of the comment itself and what you’ve provided as supposed evidence), you’ve provided nothing to prove that it was Tim Geigner doing so or that Tim Geigner uses sock-puppet accounts at all. So, once again, you’re failing to provide proof of your claim. Now, unlike the other claims, there is some connection, in that AC Unknown’s account being used as a sock-puppet account is a necessary condition for it to be used as such by Tim Geigner, but it is not a sufficient condition, and the alleged gap in activity and the timing and content of the comment do nothing to add to that, so you haven’t really made an adequate case even if we throw you quite a few bones.
This is why no one takes you seriously. You make lots of positive claims, many of which are outrageous, generally without providing any evidence to support them; claim that anyone who asks you to provide evidence of those claims must provide a positive case/has the burden of proof and then fail to present the evidence you were asked for; and constantly repeat the same conspiracy theories that are based upon arguments that are clearly invalid and not at all convincing, simply asserting that the premises you give are “clear evidence” that your conclusions are not only true but “obvious” (sometimes even your premises fail to be supported, making whether the argument is invalid unnecessary to showing that it may not be sound).
On the post: Content Moderation At Scale Is Impossible: Recent Examples Of Misunderstanding Context
Re:
We still stand by those claims. The right to do something is not the right to do something without being criticized for it; it’s the right to do so without adverse legal repercussions or government-backed repercussions. Just because they can do something legally and we believe they absolutely should be able to legally doesn’t necessarily mean that we believe that they should in every case or that we believe that they should be free from criticism and/or mockery when they do. It also doesn’t mean that we believe that they won’t make mistakes.
We may not always agree with how they choose to exercise their rights in every or even any instance, but we will still fight for those rights no matter our personal feelings. Isn’t that how defense of free speech works? “I may not support or agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it,” right? It’s the same thing. We don’t have to agree with all or any of Twitter’s moderation decisions to support their right to make those decisions without government interference.
If we would change our minds just because we’re suddenly disadvantaged by the outcomes, that would mean that our principles weren’t well-thought-out to begin with or came from ignorance. It’s all well and good to change your mind when presented with new evidence you hadn’t considered or given proper weight to, but the thing is that we took this stance on moderation fully expecting that things like this would happen. We considered the trade-offs and benefits of each possible position carefully and decided based on available evidence, logical deductions, plausible predictions, and fundamental principles, and we chose our current stance accordingly. These cases were well within what we expected to happen, and so we have no reason to change our minds.
That you can’t understand these distinctions or agree with these principles is, frankly, not my problem.
On the post: India's New Cyber Law Goes Live: Subtracts Safe Harbor Protections, Adds Compelled Assistance Demands For Intermediaries
Re: India is a sovereign nation
That is the exact opposite of what is true. A corporation’s reach extends no further than their own property, and the punishments are minor. A sovereign state is capable of extending to everyone’s property within their jurisdiction and can lead to imprisonment or even death.
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