Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An empty penalty is no different than no penalty
...where do sexism and/or racism come into it?
Allegations that a company is attempting to abuse trademark law are not allegations that (the people involved with) a company are promoting, permitting, engaging in, or believers in sexism, racism, or any other similar thing.
Even some hypothetical person who managed to be completely without racism or sexism - despite the immense sociocultural pressures which make developing into such a person a virtual impossibility, to say nothing of any biological pressures in that direction which may exist - could still get things wrong in the realm of IP law.
Even if Bell's Brewery is indeed completely free of any hint of racist or sexist attitudes, that says nothing whatsoever about their views on trademark law.
(Grrr. Does this site's markdown permit any means of doing nested quotes, such that each quote level is distinguished from the previous?)
What are you on? TD does use javascript but there are other ways to make a website where you can have input. And what price? You mean the 5 minutes it takes me to respond to a topic I'm interested in? And no, Google has nothing to do with this, TD has operated like this long before Google was a sponsor. Someone else also pointed out that they are only ONE sponsor.
The price is that of letting unknown and possibly untrustworthy JS run on your computer, and do whatever it wants. In addition to consuming system resources (generally trivial amounts thereof, but still), there's always the chance that the JS involved may do something malicious, or at least "call home" - and the very fact that your computer contacted the relevant server to download the JS tells the people who host that server something about you.
The list of scripts which want to run on this page includes three Google domains: google.com, google-analytics.com, and ajax.googleapis.com. I have scripts forbidden from the second, on the grounds that (as I understand matters) that's their main ads-and-tracking face and I don't want to be tracked in that way, but allowed from the other two. I don't recall whether I allowed scripts from those domains for the purposes of Techdirt, or for the purposes of some other site; the only reason I would have done the former is if some aspect of the site's commenting functionality does not work without scripts from those domains.
If (parts of) Techdirt's comment functionality relies on JS loaded from one of Google's servers, then indeed, using (those parts of) the Techdirt comment system requires allowing JavaScript from Google.
Uh, they don't? You can't affect anything if you take no action.
I think this may be based on the idea that the number of flag (or "funny" or "insightful") clicks required for "enough" may vary depending on the total size of the potential pool of people who could so click. I entertained that idea myself, for quite some time.
More recently, I've realized that the logistics of arranging that would be prohibitive; there's no real practical way to track the number of people who didn't click, much less those who don't even allow scripts from the site. It still might be possible to have the "enough" threshold vary depending on the total number of votes (in all three categories) for all comments on the article, or for all comments within the past X time period, or some such thing - but the benefits of doing such seem slim at most, and the complexity of implementing it would be relatively high, so it doesn't seem likely that anyone would bother.
On the contrary. I flagged it, and not only am I not a Jew, I've never noticed ever meeting one.
I mean, I probably have - but if so, that aspect of that person's makeup never rose to such a level that it entered the sphere of my awareness.
The position that "anyone who objects strongly to this viewpoint must be a [member of X class]" is nothing more than a way to reinforce existing prejudice against that class; I wouldn't be surprised if it were actually a named fallacy.
Yeah. The fact is, the default association with the name "Elvis" in the minds of many people (I'd suspect the overwhelming majority) is in fact Elvis Presley; it hasn't been a common first name for a long time, AFAIK.
In fact, my first reaction when I first learned that Elvis Costello existed - years and years ago now - was to assume that he was a minor artist who'd changed his name to Elvis in order to get the public to associate him with Elvis Presley (even if only for purposes of contrast).
Even in this case, with the different trade dress and the fact that these people are apparently changing their names to Elvis to support the usage, the question of why "Elvis" is the name they chose remains - and while it's certainly possible that the reason they chose it was unrelated to Elvis Presley, the idea that it was related certainly doesn't look like an unjustifiable assumption to me.
"Transportation for life," was the sentence it gave, "And *then* to be fined forty pound." The jury all cheered, though the judge said he feared That the phrase was not legally sound.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt HIDING THE LINK. HERE IT IS AGAIN.
I think the troll in this case is reasoning something like:
Comments which are on-topic is not spamming the site, no matter how numerous.
Comments which are off-topic are, or can be, spamming the site.
The topic is inherently defined by the topic of the article, and cannnot legitimately shift over the course of discussion.
The troll's original comments were addressing something related to the article's topic, and many of the troll's others are pointing out how other people's aren't doing that.
Therefore, the troll's comments are mostly if not all on topic.
The comments which talk about the troll and/or the troll's comments - as distinct from the subject of those comments - don't address the article's topic.
Therefore, those comments are by definition off-topic.
Posting lots of off-topic comments constitutes spamming.
Therefore, the people who post comments talking about the troll rather than about the article's topic are spamming the site.
Several of those points seem questionable, but I can see how it could hold together internally, with the right mindset.
The call to censor is a form of speech, and worthy of protection.
Actual censorship, at least by state actors, should not be protectable as speech - if for no other reason than because of the different enforcement-power situation involved. (That sits on top of a much deeper and more complex stack of arguments, but most of us can probably take them as read.)
Actual censorship by individuals can be a form of speech, and protectable. Consider for example the people who edit movies to remove things their religious sensibilities consider objectionable, so that other people who share those sensibilities can experience those movies without those things (or at least used to do so; IIRC they got shut down on copyright grounds); consider also a parent forbidding a child access to particular books.
Both of those examples are forms of censorship, but in both cases the scope of the censorship is limited; in the former case the non-censored version of the movie is still available and can be accessed at least as easily as the censored one, and in the latter case the child will eventually grow out of the life stages where the parent has the authority to enforce such bans.
State-actor censorship, on the other hand, is generally not scope-limited in either of those ways; an attempt to use other channels to access the censored work is generally just as prohibited as accessing it by official channels would be, and the prohibition generally does not expire (either by time, or by maturity, or by any other unrestrictedly-available mechanism).
Where it gets sticky is what you might call collective censorship, not by a government, but by a large group of individuals; that includes both censorship efforts by large communities, and censorship efforts by major corporations, among probably other things. The argument that the choice of what to and to not censor is a manifestation of speech still applies, but the power imbalance of large group vs. individual can be considerably closer to that of government vs. individual than that of individual vs. individual, and the censorship can considerably more easily lack the scope limits that can make individual censorship acceptable.
It does a bit, yes. That bears on the "inherently" bit; if whether something is (to be kept) private is up to the opinion of the individual, then it is not inherently (to be kept) private. To a certain extent, it becomes a matter of definitions.
Part of the problem is that this mindset seems to arise - at least in some cases, at least in part - from a complete inability to comprehend, on a relevant (probably subconscious) level, that/why/how someone could not think that sexual matters are and should be (to be kept) private.
Here, however, we're getting beyond the limits of my ability to speak on this subject - even to the inadequate extent I've been able to do that thus far.
If you believe that slanted reports paid for by corporations can be true, why wouldn't you believe that reports paid for by someone's political opponents can be true?
Not a crime at all. It's merely that it makes it more likely for people who don't share that bias to discount the speaker's point, and so is harmful to the speaker's presumed goals.
(Well, maybe a crime against grammar, but that has nothing to do with the bias.)
There's no such thing as "the Democrat Party" (at least not in the USA). It's "the Democratic Party".
"Democrat" is a noun; the adjective is "Democratic". The confusion arises because "Republican" is both a noun and an adjective. (Compare vs. the nouns "democracy" and "republic".)
By using "Democrat" as an adjective in this way, you give yourself away as having a right-wing bias.
Because the information which would be necessary in order to fill in those blanks is classified, meaning that the FBI is forbidden to release it.
Just as information which is contained in the Nunes memo was classified, until Trump decided to declassify that memo. (Which may not automatically declassify the underlying information for release in other forms; it probably should, but I no longer expect the logic surrounding classification to be sane.)
If you've missed this, you must not have been paying much attention to the (very public) debate preceding the release of the memo.
Actually, he voted to reauthorize Section 702 , part of Title VII - whereas, per the article, this surveillance was obtained under Title I.
Going by that, even if warrants under both involve the same process (which is not necessarily guaranteed), that would just mean that the legislation which Nunes recently voted to reauthorize does not actually contain the process which was used in this case.
Even there, that's not writing about events that they created; it's writing about events that didn't happen.
Newspapers writing about events that they created would be the written equivalent of (say) "Next, on CNN: CNN is attempting to buy out ABC. We'll bring you the latest details.". The news organization (or at least its parent company) created the event, and now it is covering that event.
Or perhaps a journalist or editor inciting a riot, and then reporting on that riot, might also qualify. It's a bit more of a remove, but I think still close enough to fit.
(Note that I'm making these hypothetical stories up entirely out of whole cloth! Any resemblance to real-world events is entirely coincidental; I just haven't done any checking.)
I think it's possible to have the idea that actions involving the body (in the sense at hand) are inherently private, and thus that actions involving exposing those actions to strangers are inherently negative, without having the idea that the underlying "actions involving the body" are inherently negative. I.e., it's about privacy, not sex; the mindset would be something like "even if this person doesn't think these actions are degrading/humiliating, these inherently-private actions are still being made public, and so this person is being degraded/humiliated regardless of what that person thinks about it".
I can certainly see your lack of seeing it! The counterarguments you gave to the ideas from my previous comments are pretty much the ones I mentioned seeing myself, and I suspect that this is on the edge of what I myself am (currently) capable of seeing. It's just that I can see a mindset which either does not see those arguments, or does not acknowledge them as valid; it's the reasons behind not so doing that I'm having trouble articulating.
I have the sense that I'm also focusing on only a fraction of the mindset involved, so far here, and that even if I manage to explain it that may give an overly narrow impression of it. Unfortunately, this isn't a mindset I've spent long enough considering to have a full toolbox of explanations ready to hand...
As for Apple / iOS - whose OS would you prefer they used? Are you saying that they should have released their phone with no OS installed at all, or are you saying they needed to work with other people to create the browser for them? Remember, this was before Android even existed, it's not like people buying an iPhone could install something off the shelf.
I'd guess he's saying one or more of:
Apple shouldn't lock down the hardware and prevent you from installing something other than iOS on it.
Apple shouldn't restrict iOS to iPhones/iPads (etc.?) only; they should let you install it on any hardware you want.
Apple shouldn't restric MacOS X to Mac hardware only; they should let you install it on any hardware you want.
The first runs up against the security-reasons objection, which might or might not hold water.
The second runs up against, even if nothing else, the basic problem of drivers. Which isn't necessarily enough to completely counter the idea in principle, but does mean it would probably not make much difference in practice.
The third also runs up against the drivers problem (as well as the fact that, according to all reports I hear, Apple really are a hardware company and make their money on the hardware sales), but that's mitigated in this case by the existences of the "Hackintosh" community, which revolves around defying Apple's restrictions and actually getting MacOS X to install and run on non-Apple hardware - thus proving that the drivers problem is not always insurmountable.
On the post: Two Years Later, Bell's Brewery Finally Fails To Bully A Tiny Brewery Out Of Its Legitimate Trademark
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: An empty penalty is no different than no penalty
Allegations that a company is attempting to abuse trademark law are not allegations that (the people involved with) a company are promoting, permitting, engaging in, or believers in sexism, racism, or any other similar thing.
Even some hypothetical person who managed to be completely without racism or sexism - despite the immense sociocultural pressures which make developing into such a person a virtual impossibility, to say nothing of any biological pressures in that direction which may exist - could still get things wrong in the realm of IP law.
Even if Bell's Brewery is indeed completely free of any hint of racist or sexist attitudes, that says nothing whatsoever about their views on trademark law.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: All my questions NOT answered.
(Grrr. Does this site's markdown permit any means of doing nested quotes, such that each quote level is distinguished from the previous?)
The price is that of letting unknown and possibly untrustworthy JS run on your computer, and do whatever it wants. In addition to consuming system resources (generally trivial amounts thereof, but still), there's always the chance that the JS involved may do something malicious, or at least "call home" - and the very fact that your computer contacted the relevant server to download the JS tells the people who host that server something about you.
The list of scripts which want to run on this page includes three Google domains: google.com, google-analytics.com, and ajax.googleapis.com. I have scripts forbidden from the second, on the grounds that (as I understand matters) that's their main ads-and-tracking face and I don't want to be tracked in that way, but allowed from the other two. I don't recall whether I allowed scripts from those domains for the purposes of Techdirt, or for the purposes of some other site; the only reason I would have done the former is if some aspect of the site's commenting functionality does not work without scripts from those domains.
If (parts of) Techdirt's comment functionality relies on JS loaded from one of Google's servers, then indeed, using (those parts of) the Techdirt comment system requires allowing JavaScript from Google.
I think this may be based on the idea that the number of flag (or "funny" or "insightful") clicks required for "enough" may vary depending on the total size of the potential pool of people who could so click. I entertained that idea myself, for quite some time.
More recently, I've realized that the logistics of arranging that would be prohibitive; there's no real practical way to track the number of people who didn't click, much less those who don't even allow scripts from the site. It still might be possible to have the "enough" threshold vary depending on the total number of votes (in all three categories) for all comments on the article, or for all comments within the past X time period, or some such thing - but the benefits of doing such seem slim at most, and the complexity of implementing it would be relatively high, so it doesn't seem likely that anyone would bother.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re: Re: Re: Talking About Content Moderation ...
On the contrary. I flagged it, and not only am I not a Jew, I've never noticed ever meeting one.
I mean, I probably have - but if so, that aspect of that person's makeup never rose to such a level that it entered the sphere of my awareness.
The position that "anyone who objects strongly to this viewpoint must be a [member of X class]" is nothing more than a way to reinforce existing prejudice against that class; I wouldn't be surprised if it were actually a named fallacy.
On the post: BrewDog Beats Back Trademark Action From The Elvis Presley Estate
Re: Re: Re:
On the post: BrewDog Beats Back Trademark Action From The Elvis Presley Estate
Re:
Yeah. The fact is, the default association with the name "Elvis" in the minds of many people (I'd suspect the overwhelming majority) is in fact Elvis Presley; it hasn't been a common first name for a long time, AFAIK.
In fact, my first reaction when I first learned that Elvis Costello existed - years and years ago now - was to assume that he was a minor artist who'd changed his name to Elvis in order to get the public to associate him with Elvis Presley (even if only for purposes of contrast).
Even in this case, with the different trade dress and the fact that these people are apparently changing their names to Elvis to support the usage, the question of why "Elvis" is the name they chose remains - and while it's certainly possible that the reason they chose it was unrelated to Elvis Presley, the idea that it was related certainly doesn't look like an unjustifiable assumption to me.
On the post: Hacker Lauri Love Wins Extradition Appeal; Won't Be Shipped Off To The US
Re: Maybe he'll get 14 years "transportation"
"And *then* to be fined forty pound."
The jury all cheered, though the judge said he feared
That the phrase was not legally sound.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt HIDING THE LINK. HERE IT IS AGAIN.
I think the troll in this case is reasoning something like:
Several of those points seem questionable, but I can see how it could hold together internally, with the right mindset.
On the post: Israeli Music Fans Sue Two New Zealanders For Convincing Lorde To Cancel Her Israeli Concert
Re: Censorship as speech?
The call to censor is a form of speech, and worthy of protection.
Actual censorship, at least by state actors, should not be protectable as speech - if for no other reason than because of the different enforcement-power situation involved. (That sits on top of a much deeper and more complex stack of arguments, but most of us can probably take them as read.)
Actual censorship by individuals can be a form of speech, and protectable. Consider for example the people who edit movies to remove things their religious sensibilities consider objectionable, so that other people who share those sensibilities can experience those movies without those things (or at least used to do so; IIRC they got shut down on copyright grounds); consider also a parent forbidding a child access to particular books.
Both of those examples are forms of censorship, but in both cases the scope of the censorship is limited; in the former case the non-censored version of the movie is still available and can be accessed at least as easily as the censored one, and in the latter case the child will eventually grow out of the life stages where the parent has the authority to enforce such bans.
State-actor censorship, on the other hand, is generally not scope-limited in either of those ways; an attempt to use other channels to access the censored work is generally just as prohibited as accessing it by official channels would be, and the prohibition generally does not expire (either by time, or by maturity, or by any other unrestrictedly-available mechanism).
Where it gets sticky is what you might call collective censorship, not by a government, but by a large group of individuals; that includes both censorship efforts by large communities, and censorship efforts by major corporations, among probably other things. The argument that the choice of what to and to not censor is a manifestation of speech still applies, but the power imbalance of large group vs. individual can be considerably closer to that of government vs. individual than that of individual vs. individual, and the censorship can considerably more easily lack the scope limits that can make individual censorship acceptable.
On the post: Virginia Politicians Looks To Tax Speech In The Form Of Porn In The Name Of Stemming Human Trafficking
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will it know?
It does a bit, yes. That bears on the "inherently" bit; if whether something is (to be kept) private is up to the opinion of the individual, then it is not inherently (to be kept) private. To a certain extent, it becomes a matter of definitions.
Part of the problem is that this mindset seems to arise - at least in some cases, at least in part - from a complete inability to comprehend, on a relevant (probably subconscious) level, that/why/how someone could not think that sexual matters are and should be (to be kept) private.
Here, however, we're getting beyond the limits of my ability to speak on this subject - even to the inadequate extent I've been able to do that thus far.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt HIDING THE LINK. HERE IT IS AGAIN.
But I presume that you do (or else why would you have stated it?), and the premise doesn't include any exceptions which would cover you, so...
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/champ - see the verb definition.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Irrelevant
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt tap dancing
(Well, maybe a crime against grammar, but that has nothing to do with the bias.)
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt HIDING THE LINK. HERE IT IS AGAIN.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re: Techdirt tap dancing
bzzt
There's no such thing as "the Democrat Party" (at least not in the USA). It's "the Democratic Party".
"Democrat" is a noun; the adjective is "Democratic". The confusion arises because "Republican" is both a noun and an adjective. (Compare vs. the nouns "democracy" and "republic".)
By using "Democrat" as an adjective in this way, you give yourself away as having a right-wing bias.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re:
Because the information which would be necessary in order to fill in those blanks is classified, meaning that the FBI is forbidden to release it.
Just as information which is contained in the Nunes memo was classified, until Trump decided to declassify that memo. (Which may not automatically declassify the underlying information for release in other forms; it probably should, but I no longer expect the logic surrounding classification to be sane.)
If you've missed this, you must not have been paying much attention to the (very public) debate preceding the release of the memo.
On the post: Devin Nunes Releases Memo That Doesn't Show The Surveillance Abuses He Hypocritically 'Cares' About
Re: Re:
Going by that, even if warrants under both involve the same process (which is not necessarily guaranteed), that would just mean that the legislation which Nunes recently voted to reauthorize does not actually contain the process which was used in this case.
On the post: Push Resumes For An EU Google Tax, With The Bulgarian Government Leading The Way
Re: Re:
Newspapers writing about events that they created would be the written equivalent of (say) "Next, on CNN: CNN is attempting to buy out ABC. We'll bring you the latest details.". The news organization (or at least its parent company) created the event, and now it is covering that event.
Or perhaps a journalist or editor inciting a riot, and then reporting on that riot, might also qualify. It's a bit more of a remove, but I think still close enough to fit.
(Note that I'm making these hypothetical stories up entirely out of whole cloth! Any resemblance to real-world events is entirely coincidental; I just haven't done any checking.)
On the post: Virginia Politicians Looks To Tax Speech In The Form Of Porn In The Name Of Stemming Human Trafficking
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: How will it know?
I think it's possible to have the idea that actions involving the body (in the sense at hand) are inherently private, and thus that actions involving exposing those actions to strangers are inherently negative, without having the idea that the underlying "actions involving the body" are inherently negative. I.e., it's about privacy, not sex; the mindset would be something like "even if this person doesn't think these actions are degrading/humiliating, these inherently-private actions are still being made public, and so this person is being degraded/humiliated regardless of what that person thinks about it".
I can certainly see your lack of seeing it! The counterarguments you gave to the ideas from my previous comments are pretty much the ones I mentioned seeing myself, and I suspect that this is on the edge of what I myself am (currently) capable of seeing. It's just that I can see a mindset which either does not see those arguments, or does not acknowledge them as valid; it's the reasons behind not so doing that I'm having trouble articulating.
I have the sense that I'm also focusing on only a fraction of the mindset involved, so far here, and that even if I manage to explain it that may give an overly narrow impression of it. Unfortunately, this isn't a mindset I've spent long enough considering to have a full toolbox of explanations ready to hand...
On the post: Apple, Verizon Continue to Lobby Against The Right To Repair Your Own Devices
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'd guess he's saying one or more of:
Apple shouldn't lock down the hardware and prevent you from installing something other than iOS on it.
Apple shouldn't restrict iOS to iPhones/iPads (etc.?) only; they should let you install it on any hardware you want.
The first runs up against the security-reasons objection, which might or might not hold water.
The second runs up against, even if nothing else, the basic problem of drivers. Which isn't necessarily enough to completely counter the idea in principle, but does mean it would probably not make much difference in practice.
The third also runs up against the drivers problem (as well as the fact that, according to all reports I hear, Apple really are a hardware company and make their money on the hardware sales), but that's mitigated in this case by the existences of the "Hackintosh" community, which revolves around defying Apple's restrictions and actually getting MacOS X to install and run on non-Apple hardware - thus proving that the drivers problem is not always insurmountable.
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