First, this isn't a discussion about the EU being a bunch of nazis. Everyone already knew that. It's not about them being the ONLY bunch of nazis. The US has its own Donald Nazi Trump, Kirstjen Nazi Nielsen, Ted Nazi Cruz, Marco "Cuban Nazi" Rubio, etc.
It's about the RANDOM UNDEFINED IMMEDIATE CENSORSHIP DEMANDED by those who would claim anyone is the Powers That Be of ALL INTERNET CONTENT ANYWHERE NOW so TAKE IT DOWN because WE SAID SO based on a rule in a part of the world you may not be part of NOW NOW NOW MACH SCHNELL!!!
The commercial Internet was formed in 1993, at which point any person was able to connect, without needing an affiliation with either the government, the military (ARPAnet), or universities (NSFnet). At that time there were NO regulations about content.
Then along came the CDA, which wanted to make communications "decent" in 1996. This was a bad thing.
The ACLU sued and in 1997 the SCOTUS invalidated most of CDA but left Section 230 intact. This was a good thing.
Not content with not having "protected the children" in 1998 we have the COPA. It was enjoined from being enforced but was still in and of itself a bad thing.
In 2004 SCOTUS said the injunction stands. This was a good thing.
In 2000 Congress passed the CIPA, mandating filters in schools and libraries receiving federal funds. SCOTUS upheld this in 2003. This was a bad thing.
In 2018 we add FOSTA-SESTA which not only gut part of the Sec 230 protections in the CDA but restore some of the CIPA/COPA stuff that SCOTUS didn't agree with in the first place.
So if you want to say that the EU's 4 directives are harmful to the Internet, free speech, free expression, UJC etc. you are absolutely right. Unfortunately it was our narrow minded right-wing politicians who started it.
No. Nothing of the sort, and thanks for bringing another copyright maximalist attitude to the show.
Anytime someone says "before you make a copy of anything you should ALWAYS..." they have an ax to grind.
Go grind your ax. When you're done you're not going to be chopping up the Copyright laws or the free speech laws, or the right to fair use laws of this country.
I think what the gentleman is saying is whether or not you are taking actions which might be a violation of the law, it is not "committing a felony" until felony charges are brought up and you are found guilty by a jury of your peers or an arbiter of law.
When you drive "a little over the speed limit" you are in fact in violation of the law, and perhaps you do it 20x a day. If LEO could pull up evidence in retrospect and bust you for 600x/month that little bit of speeding could be reckless driving, and for the sheer amount, likely cause a loss of license.
They don't have that retrospective evidence... yet... and so you're free to speed, 1-4MPH above the posted speed limit, 5-9MPH above the posted speed limit, 155MPH as per your rev limiter. Whatever. Until you're not.
Three POTENTIAL felonies a day is probably an exaggeration. Three POTENTIAL violations of the law is probably right. Ever eat food in a supermarket before you paid for it? Opened a can of Coke™ and drank some before paying for it? That's shoplifting because we can't determine your positive intent [to pay for it] any more than we can determine your negative intent [to shoplift it].
Plenty of other examples. Point is... don't confusion a potential violation of the law with CRIME, FELONY, or being found guilty of either.
Bad cops... and the cops who let them continue to be bad cops.
I'm perfectly happy to hear they will be violating less people's 4th amendment rights because there's not any personal cash in it for them. I'm perfectly happy to hear they will be doing less no-knock raids on the wrong house or shooting the wrong people (of darker skin or tatoos or whatever the criteria for killing the wrong people is) because they won't get something out of it.
Perhaps they could just focus on, you know, POLICE WORK, and not being a drug czar or a trademark-infringement confiscation group or an arm of the MPAA/RIAA/BSA...
Yes, come to think of it, bad cops and the ones who let them be bad cops, go back to doing traffic patrol. Oh and leave the solving crimes part to detectives.
There was never an FM vs AM war, and nobody ever claimed one would replace the other. The two serve entirely differing purposes.
FM is near-reception only, and very narrow band, and was designed to transmit two channels (L+R, L-R) for "stereo" purposes. AM is long-range, bounces off the ionosphere at night, only some stations allowed to transmit at full power ("Superstations") and is subject to 'fade'.
FM was an addition to AM, not a replacement, and one that lives to this day. Nobody pays more for FM than AM and if you switch from one to the other on your car radio nobody but you and your annoyed passenger will care.
Cable TV wasn't brought on to replace FOTA TV but to augment it. In time the cable companies sought to limit what FOTA could do (mostly successfully, which is why some cable-only channels never went OTA). They also continued raising their fees while demanding exclusive franchises (which cities gave them, then suing when cities tried to create new franchises or alternative infrastructure).
The two are hardly analogous, but that's not important. What is important is how cable views streaming. Streaming is NOT OTA... but it is effectively bypassing cable's gatekeepers to deliver the same content, sometimes at a higher quality.
Bypassing the gatekeeper? Whut? That's what's driving cable companies insane, just like it drives Big Media insane that people 'pirate' (not a legal term, not in 17USC).
It doesn't matter to them that their customers want the content, are willing to pay for the content, and don't want to spend time setting up XMBC, Roku, Kodi, Xbox, whatever. No, what matters to them is to STOP ANYONE OFFERING CONTENT so they don't have to be competitive.
Until they stop worrying about how to guild their pockets and actually start offering competitive content without extortionist price/price hikes... the only thing they have to fear is the damage they cause themselves.
"The [Inter]Net views censorship as damage... and routes around it" -- John Gilmore.
Community Antenna (nee Access) Television (CATV) was the impetus for allowing cable companies monopolies ("exclusive franchises") to put infrastructure into providing people access to such local broadcasts that they couldn't receive with a normal over the air (OTA) antenna. In time they added content that wasn't delivered by OTA but was only receivable by having big ugly dishes (BUDs).
Now skip forward about 30 years and cable TV providers and telcos are focused hard on locking down any possible competition. They want to have all the content, and not allow anyone else to access the content.
That's led to loss of signal for many "channels" (an outdated paradigm) when negotiations ("extortion") had failed to provide the cable TV company the outcome they wanted. NO wall = NO government. Oops, wrong extorsion.
Here we are now talking about "illegal streaming". That's really simple, right? It's when I take content I don't have a right to stream (no such thing in 17USC) and I stream it (no such thing in 17USC). Some would call this "making available" and equate it to offering the content on e.g. bittorrent. Some would call it offering a "pirate" feed. Either way, still not in 17USC.
What's more concerning is we're undergoing a cultural shift between - it's ok to stream stuff. Hello, YouTube! - it's ok to stream some stuff but no dancing baby because music. - it's ok to have recorded stuff but don't stream stuff. and the slipper slope's next part: - it's ok only to stream stuff YOU'VE created, and don't try and fair-use anything because we'll sue your ... and if you think the slope ends there it's - Congress (ifnwhen they reopen) will pass a law saying it's unlawful to stream anything you haven't created yourself using nobody else's material.
There are two ways to approach a slippery slope: 1. Say "Pshaw, there's no slipper slope! Look, Central America never turned communist!" 2. Fight it at the outset and don't let them get step 1 in before you realize they're gunning for step 10.
Re: Re: Cable companies... are ... cable companies
Yeah, Charter is not "an ISP that also offers cable TV services." They're a cable TV company that also offers Internet services.
This article isn't about Internet, Internet Service, nor Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
It's 100% about a CABLE TV company refusing to carry a TV NETWORK on their CABLE TV network.
Nothing to do with any other products they may or may not offer.
If they also had a nice lobby with flowers you could buy you wouldn't call them a florist, would you?
Is there any point to asking me if there's any point? Precision in language is key to meaning transfer... which is the point of communication.
Have a swell day, and thanks for posting anonymously. Did you feel your words were so unwelcome you couldn't stand behind them... or do you work for Charter?
Having a phone shouldn't be something we avoid because of government overreach. We [our society and our elected officials] should be limiting that overreach and having strong protections.
Like, let me think, oh I don't know, the 4th Amendment? And... uh, the Exclusionary Rule? And... no Good Faith exemption?
I tire myself just thinking about how much our protections have been gutted by the gutless.
Even more technical, when a prosecutor wants to enter an exhibit at trial, he requests the permission of the Court to do so. That gives the defense an opportunity to object.
If said objection occurs and if it is upheld, the exhibit is not allowed to be entered, and it never becomes "evidence". Sometimes the prosecution will even return this private property undamaged to the defendant in an undamaged condition, but don't count on it. Law enforcement in the US is all about punishing everyone and hoping to catch some promotions in the process.
TechDirt (rightly) spends a lot of brain power and well crafted discussions discussing our rights to our devices, to have them free of malware, and protecting our rights to use, repair, and keep them free for OUR use, not others.
So here's a case where the bad guys wanted to get this woman's data. They were determined to hack into her phone to get her private data. We've discussed for ages this data reveals FAR MORE about her life than the alleged drive-by shooting.
Instead of allowing these bad guys (LEOs) to get her data, she (allegedly) wiped it. That's equivalent in result to her phone being locked and LEOs being unable to unlock it, and equivalent in action to what she's charged with... which is destruction of evidence.
Evidence isn't "all known data we didn't get to access." LEOs claiming so doesn't make it so.
There are two types of cops... bad ones, and the ones that let them continue to be bad cops. I don't trust any of them with an open copy of all the data on any of my devices. They can't even have my fitbit.
"Contrary to public opinion" because you said so doesn't make it so, SCOTUS and appeals courts say it isn't so.
This is the Godwin's Law applied to Second Amendment discussions. Invariably as a discussion of the Second Amendment and right to bear arms occurs, someone will cry out that it's all about militias and nobody has any rights granted by the law.
It's not. It wasn't. It's just a poorly constructed statement... like your entire epic tome attempting to defend your misinterpretation.
If only you "aunti-gunz peeps" would just say "militia" and halt discussions in the beginning, nobody would ever need to discuss it. Oh wait, but we still have the rights.
How would you know? Your dataset likely includes exactly zero dead people who have responded to your polls.
I, on the other hand, have surveyed many dead people, and asked them about the opinions they posted. Well, to be scientifically precise I said "If you posted an opinion and not a proven fact please let me know."
"Adams said the bills take the First Amendment right to free speech and the Second Amendment right to bear arms into the equation."
Our inalienable rights are not parts of an equation to be traded back and forth, bandied against each other, weighted like the blind scales of justice, or bartered.
Our first amendment rights to not have the government impinge our rights to free expression mean exactly that. If the government punishes me for something I said on social media that violates my rights. It doesn't matter if "gun" or if "driver's license" or if "right to ride a train in China." It's a violation of my first amendment rights.
The second amendment has some guarantees (yes, I see some posters up above have already done the usual trope of "guns moare guns" and sadly these are part of the problem) and those guarantees are not predicated on WHAT I SAY or WHERE I'M FROM or WHO I VOTE FOR. Making my "right to bear arms" dependent on what I said (or didn't say) on social media violates that right as well.
Remember. TODAY it might be about all the bad things you said on social media, and why you shouldn't buy a firearm (oh, sorry "gun").
TOMORROW it might be how you DIDN'T speak up in support of the [choose class of people here] and therefore you're a complete a-hole... and shouldn't be allowed to drive a car. Or post on facebook, or instagram, or techd... [disconnected] [no longer allowed to drive] [or own a "guhn"]
On the post: EU's Never Ending Quest To Rip The Internet And Free Expression To Shreds Continues With The Terrorist Content Regulation
Blind but do not see
First, this isn't a discussion about the EU being a bunch of nazis. Everyone already knew that. It's not about them being the ONLY bunch of nazis. The US has its own Donald Nazi Trump, Kirstjen Nazi Nielsen, Ted Nazi Cruz, Marco "Cuban Nazi" Rubio, etc.
It's about the RANDOM UNDEFINED IMMEDIATE CENSORSHIP DEMANDED by those who would claim anyone is the Powers That Be of ALL INTERNET CONTENT ANYWHERE NOW so TAKE IT DOWN because WE SAID SO based on a rule in a part of the world you may not be part of NOW NOW NOW MACH SCHNELL!!!
Focus.
E
On the post: EU's Never Ending Quest To Rip The Internet And Free Expression To Shreds Continues With The Terrorist Content Regulation
Regulating speech on the 'net - a brief history
The commercial Internet was formed in 1993, at which point any person was able to connect, without needing an affiliation with either the government, the military (ARPAnet), or universities (NSFnet). At that time there were NO regulations about content.
Then along came the CDA, which wanted to make communications "decent" in 1996. This was a bad thing.
The ACLU sued and in 1997 the SCOTUS invalidated most of CDA but left Section 230 intact. This was a good thing.
Not content with not having "protected the children" in 1998 we have the COPA. It was enjoined from being enforced but was still in and of itself a bad thing.
In 2004 SCOTUS said the injunction stands. This was a good thing.
In 2000 Congress passed the CIPA, mandating filters in schools and libraries receiving federal funds. SCOTUS upheld this in 2003. This was a bad thing.
In 2018 we add FOSTA-SESTA which not only gut part of the Sec 230 protections in the CDA but restore some of the CIPA/COPA stuff that SCOTUS didn't agree with in the first place.
So if you want to say that the EU's 4 directives are harmful to the Internet, free speech, free expression, UJC etc. you are absolutely right. Unfortunately it was our narrow minded right-wing politicians who started it.
Think of the children.
Ehud
On the post: Investigators, Reporters Close In On The Origins Of Those Fake Net Neutrality Comments
Hijacking your name
You need to look up hijacking. Nobody hijacked your name. Just like you don't "hijack" the term "ISP" to mean "telco" or "broadband provider."
Cheers, mate.
E
On the post: One Person's Unsettling Experience With A $20k Higbee Copyright Troll Demand Letter
Re: Due Diligence - troll
No. Nothing of the sort, and thanks for bringing another copyright maximalist attitude to the show.
Anytime someone says "before you make a copy of anything you should ALWAYS..." they have an ax to grind.
Go grind your ax. When you're done you're not going to be chopping up the Copyright laws or the free speech laws, or the right to fair use laws of this country.
Ehud
On the post: Sprint Sues AT&T Over Its Fake 5G, Says AT&T's Tricking Consumers
Re: ISPs
This has NOTHING to do with ISPs.
Karl conflates ISPs and telcos all the time.
Don't fall into the trap.
This. Has. Nothing. To. Do. With. INTERNET. SERVICE. PROVIDERS.
E
On the post: Sheriffs' Union Boss Says Officers Have No Reason To Do Their Job If They Can't Score Forfeiture Cash On The Side
Felonies, Misdemeanors, and Prosecutions
I think what the gentleman is saying is whether or not you are taking actions which might be a violation of the law, it is not "committing a felony" until felony charges are brought up and you are found guilty by a jury of your peers or an arbiter of law.
When you drive "a little over the speed limit" you are in fact in violation of the law, and perhaps you do it 20x a day. If LEO could pull up evidence in retrospect and bust you for 600x/month that little bit of speeding could be reckless driving, and for the sheer amount, likely cause a loss of license.
They don't have that retrospective evidence... yet... and so you're free to speed, 1-4MPH above the posted speed limit, 5-9MPH above the posted speed limit, 155MPH as per your rev limiter. Whatever. Until you're not.
Three POTENTIAL felonies a day is probably an exaggeration. Three POTENTIAL violations of the law is probably right. Ever eat food in a supermarket before you paid for it? Opened a can of Coke™ and drank some before paying for it? That's shoplifting because we can't determine your positive intent [to pay for it] any more than we can determine your negative intent [to shoplift it].
Plenty of other examples. Point is... don't confusion a potential violation of the law with CRIME, FELONY, or being found guilty of either.
E
On the post: Sheriffs' Union Boss Says Officers Have No Reason To Do Their Job If They Can't Score Forfeiture Cash On The Side
Two kinds of cops...
Bad cops... and the cops who let them continue to be bad cops.
I'm perfectly happy to hear they will be violating less people's 4th amendment rights because there's not any personal cash in it for them. I'm perfectly happy to hear they will be doing less no-knock raids on the wrong house or shooting the wrong people (of darker skin or tatoos or whatever the criteria for killing the wrong people is) because they won't get something out of it.
Perhaps they could just focus on, you know, POLICE WORK, and not being a drug czar or a trademark-infringement confiscation group or an arm of the MPAA/RIAA/BSA...
Yes, come to think of it, bad cops and the ones who let them be bad cops, go back to doing traffic patrol. Oh and leave the solving crimes part to detectives.
E
On the post: And Now Professional Sports Teams Are Cutting The Cable Cord, Too
Re: Re: Despite losses, cable is still BIG.
E
On the post: And Now Professional Sports Teams Are Cutting The Cable Cord, Too
FM/AM vs Cable Companie and FOTA TV
FM is near-reception only, and very narrow band, and was designed to transmit two channels (L+R, L-R) for "stereo" purposes. AM is long-range, bounces off the ionosphere at night, only some stations allowed to transmit at full power ("Superstations") and is subject to 'fade'.
FM was an addition to AM, not a replacement, and one that lives to this day. Nobody pays more for FM than AM and if you switch from one to the other on your car radio nobody but you and your annoyed passenger will care.
Cable TV wasn't brought on to replace FOTA TV but to augment it. In time the cable companies sought to limit what FOTA could do (mostly successfully, which is why some cable-only channels never went OTA). They also continued raising their fees while demanding exclusive franchises (which cities gave them, then suing when cities tried to create new franchises or alternative infrastructure).
The two are hardly analogous, but that's not important. What is important is how cable views streaming. Streaming is NOT OTA... but it is effectively bypassing cable's gatekeepers to deliver the same content, sometimes at a higher quality.
Bypassing the gatekeeper? Whut? That's what's driving cable companies insane, just like it drives Big Media insane that people 'pirate' (not a legal term, not in 17USC).
It doesn't matter to them that their customers want the content, are willing to pay for the content, and don't want to spend time setting up XMBC, Roku, Kodi, Xbox, whatever. No, what matters to them is to STOP ANYONE OFFERING CONTENT so they don't have to be competitive.
Until they stop worrying about how to guild their pockets and actually start offering competitive content without extortionist price/price hikes... the only thing they have to fear is the damage they cause themselves.
"The [Inter]Net views censorship as damage... and routes around it" -- John Gilmore.
On the post: And Now Professional Sports Teams Are Cutting The Cable Cord, Too
CATV history and streaming
Now skip forward about 30 years and cable TV providers and telcos are focused hard on locking down any possible competition. They want to have all the content, and not allow anyone else to access the content.
That's led to loss of signal for many "channels" (an outdated paradigm) when negotiations ("extortion") had failed to provide the cable TV company the outcome they wanted. NO wall = NO government. Oops, wrong extorsion.
Here we are now talking about "illegal streaming". That's really simple, right? It's when I take content I don't have a right to stream (no such thing in 17USC) and I stream it (no such thing in 17USC). Some would call this "making available" and equate it to offering the content on e.g. bittorrent. Some would call it offering a "pirate" feed. Either way, still not in 17USC.
What's more concerning is we're undergoing a cultural shift between
- it's ok to stream stuff. Hello, YouTube!
- it's ok to stream some stuff but no dancing baby because music.
- it's ok to have recorded stuff but don't stream stuff.
and the slipper slope's next part:
- it's ok only to stream stuff YOU'VE created, and don't try and fair-use anything because we'll sue your ...
and if you think the slope ends there it's
- Congress (ifnwhen they reopen) will pass a law saying it's unlawful to stream anything you haven't created yourself using nobody else's material.
There are two ways to approach a slippery slope:
1. Say "Pshaw, there's no slipper slope! Look, Central America never turned communist!"
2. Fight it at the outset and don't let them get step 1 in before you realize they're gunning for step 10.
Ehud
On the post: Court Again Rules That Cable Giants Can't Weaponize The First Amendment
Re: Re: Cable companies... are ... cable companies
Not the same bird.
E
On the post: Court Again Rules That Cable Giants Can't Weaponize The First Amendment
Re: Re: Cable companies... are ... cable companies
This article isn't about Internet, Internet Service, nor Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
It's 100% about a CABLE TV company refusing to carry a TV NETWORK on their CABLE TV network.
Nothing to do with any other products they may or may not offer.
If they also had a nice lobby with flowers you could buy you wouldn't call them a florist, would you?
Is there any point to asking me if there's any point? Precision in language is key to meaning transfer... which is the point of communication.
Have a swell day, and thanks for posting anonymously. Did you feel your words were so unwelcome you couldn't stand behind them... or do you work for Charter?
E
E
On the post: Court Again Rules That Cable Giants Can't Weaponize The First Amendment
Cable companies... are ... cable companies
except...
ISPs don't air cable TV and don't include or exclude ESN or any other network... because... um... they're ISPs, not cable TV companies.
(Hint: there's nothing in this article about their provision of Internet Services)
E
On the post: Prosecutors Charge Suspect With Evidence Tampering After A Seized iPhone Is Wiped Remotely
I can wear a short skirt if I want to.
Like, let me think, oh I don't know, the 4th Amendment? And... uh, the Exclusionary Rule?
And... no Good Faith exemption?
I tire myself just thinking about how much our protections have been gutted by the gutless.
E
On the post: Prosecutors Charge Suspect With Evidence Tampering After A Seized iPhone Is Wiped Remotely
"Evidence"
If said objection occurs and if it is upheld, the exhibit is not allowed to be entered, and it never becomes "evidence". Sometimes the prosecution will even return this private property undamaged to the defendant in an undamaged condition, but don't count on it. Law enforcement in the US is all about punishing everyone and hoping to catch some promotions in the process.
That whole "innocent until proven guilty" and "criminal JUSTICE system" and cops following the law is just an intro to a TV show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMalvNeJFLk
E
On the post: Prosecutors Charge Suspect With Evidence Tampering After A Seized iPhone Is Wiped Remotely
Who owns my data?
So here's a case where the bad guys wanted to get this woman's data. They were determined to hack into her phone to get her private data. We've discussed for ages this data reveals FAR MORE about her life than the alleged drive-by shooting.
Instead of allowing these bad guys (LEOs) to get her data, she (allegedly) wiped it. That's equivalent in result to her phone being locked and LEOs being unable to unlock it, and equivalent in action to what she's charged with... which is destruction of evidence.
Evidence isn't "all known data we didn't get to access." LEOs claiming so doesn't make it so.
There are two types of cops... bad ones, and the ones that let them continue to be bad cops. I don't trust any of them with an open copy of all the data on any of my devices. They can't even have my fitbit.
E
On the post: New York Lawmakers Want Social Media History To Be Included In Gun Background Checks
Contrary to public opinion
This is the Godwin's Law applied to Second Amendment discussions. Invariably as a discussion of the Second Amendment and right to bear arms occurs, someone will cry out that it's all about militias and nobody has any rights granted by the law.
It's not. It wasn't. It's just a poorly constructed statement... like your entire epic tome attempting to defend your misinterpretation.
If only you "aunti-gunz peeps" would just say "militia" and halt discussions in the beginning, nobody would ever need to discuss it. Oh wait, but we still have the rights.
E
On the post: New York Lawmakers Want Social Media History To Be Included In Gun Background Checks
Dead people post only facts
I, on the other hand, have surveyed many dead people, and asked them about the opinions they posted. Well, to be scientifically precise I said "If you posted an opinion and not a proven fact please let me know."
100% of dead people post facts.
E
On the post: New York Lawmakers Want Social Media History To Be Included In Gun Background Checks
Equations
Our inalienable rights are not parts of an equation to be traded back and forth, bandied against each other, weighted like the blind scales of justice, or bartered.
Our first amendment rights to not have the government impinge our rights to free expression mean exactly that. If the government punishes me for something I said on social media that violates my rights. It doesn't matter if "gun" or if "driver's license" or if "right to ride a train in China." It's a violation of my first amendment rights.
The second amendment has some guarantees (yes, I see some posters up above have already done the usual trope of "guns moare guns" and sadly these are part of the problem) and those guarantees are not predicated on WHAT I SAY or WHERE I'M FROM or WHO I VOTE FOR. Making my "right to bear arms" dependent on what I said (or didn't say) on social media violates that right as well.
Remember. TODAY it might be about all the bad things you said on social media, and why you shouldn't buy a firearm (oh, sorry "gun").
TOMORROW it might be how you DIDN'T speak up in support of the [choose class of people here] and therefore you're a complete a-hole... and shouldn't be allowed to drive a car. Or post on facebook, or instagram,
or techd...
[disconnected]
[no longer allowed to drive]
[or own a "guhn"]
On the post: Pharrell Is Not At All Happy About Trump Using 'Happy' At His Rally... And He Might Actually Have A Case
Full letter URL
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/5024418/Copy-of-Pharrell-Williams-cease-and-desist.pdf
(It really only adds a one-sentence demand to the twitter-pic of the first page... but hey, for completeness...)
Ehud
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