If you are a horrible sociopath of a person, who doesn't mind a massively high false-positive rate and the attendant collateral damage, I suppose it might be...
I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when Ms. Hill said Apple was the good guys, or I might have literally done a spit take! If she wants to talk about antitrust regulators being asleep at the wheel, there's your prime target right there; any reasonable antitrust enforcer ought to take one look at how Apple's App Store works and immediately reach for the nearest Hammer of Smacking-Down.
Checking Google to see if you have Internet connectivity is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and is not weird at all. I've used the same trick myself various times. To check connectivity, you have to try to connect to something, and of the various sites that you can be reasonably secure in the assumption that they will never be down, Google is one of the fastest and most lightweight options.
While I wouldn't go so far as to call the notion of the Web starting out decentralized "a hopelessly naive myth," the guy above is right that it was never particularly wide-open. It's become more consolidated as time goes by, but that's to be expected if you have any understanding of human nature. There are advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization, but history has shown over and over again that centralization and consolidation wins out, pretty much every single time. (Which is why we need antitrust enforcers who are not asleep at the wheel. That consolidation is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes it very much is not!)
Ms. Hill hit the nail right on the head when she talked about large tech companies essentially being the de facto government of the Internet, and Mike didn't seem to be disagreeing with this point the way he did with some of the other points she raised. This seems odd, as he's disagreed quite vocally when I raised similar points in the past and pointed out where the logical conclusion lies.
It's also not how you want defamation to work if you truly believe in free speech.
It's exactly how I want defamation to work, and it doesn't conflict with a belief in free speech in any way. Free speech has never been an unlimited thing, and it's never covered destroying someone's reputation by spreading lies about them (aka defamation).
You and I may not like SPLC and their way of designating groups. I agree that they're awful at it and have an itchy trigger finger that diminishes their reputation greatly. I also feel that others take the SPLC designations too seriously.
That's the understatement of the year! When law enforcement organizations take their designations as gospel (which is a real thing that happens) and people get put on government watch lists because they were on the SPLC "hate list" (which is a real thing that happens) and people get shot because they were on the SPLC "hate list" (which is, again, a real thing that has happened,) how much further does it need to go before you acknowledge they're crossing lines?
Re: Re: Re: Milkovich v Lorain Joural [was Re: To my surprise...
Rather, the lawsuit makes the argument that the statement of opinion that is the SPLC's designation should be treated as a statement of fact.
Which isn't unreasonable in this particular case, even if it is in the general case (which I agree, it generally should be!) given that so many groups, including law enforcement agencies, are known to treat it as such.
Re: Milkovich v Lorain Joural [was Re: To my surprise...]
As Judge Friendly aptly stated: “[It] would be destructive of the law of libel if a writer could escape liability for accusations of [defamatory conduct] simply by using, explicitly or implicitly, the words “I think.’ ”
Yes, this exactly. If there exists some magic weasel words that act as a get-out-of-defamation-free card, then it basically renders the entire notion of defamation meaningless.
No, as I said, I'm not familiar with them. I'm not sure of anything; I'm simply observing that the evidence does seem to weigh against that conclusion. (Especially with the other guy downthread chiming in about their consistent activities openly opposing white supremacist groups.)
Whataboutism is when you try to distract someone by pointing to something unrelated that was not the topic of discussion. (Such as the killing of abortion doctors.) When the thing being pointed to is the current topic of discussion--the real harm done by the SPLC's spurious and politically-motivated "hate group" designations--that is not a whataboutism. So you fail here twice over!
Having said that, I'm not sure a defamation suit is the way to go about accomplishing that.
Depends on how you define "accomplishing." Will it put an end to their politically-motivated serial libel if successful? Probably not. Will it be a meaningful, useful step towards that ultimate goal if successful? That's more likely.
"Tied" by who? Folks like the SPLC? Yay for circular logic!
When your fundamental rules explicitly say that anybody who believes in the supremacy of one race over another, (specifically including white supremacists,) cannot become or remain a member of this organization, it's a bit hard to credibly say that this organization is a bunch of white supremacists.
That's a bit like saying "everyone in the No Lawyers Allowed Club is a practicing attorney at law!" It might be theoretically possible if the entire thing is a big lie, but it sounds kind of absurd on the face of it, especially when there are well-organized, well-funded groups (such as the SPLC) going around making spurious, malicious accusations for political purposes.
Yes, of course context matters. Let's assume, in the interest of brevity, clarity, and not being obnoxious, pedantic people that no one likes, that the context in question was exactly what it sounds like: insinuating that Fred had murdered somebody.
And here you lose all credibility. Try reading point 33 of the embedded complaint, which quotes from the Proud Boys bylaws, pointing out how they are explicitly anti-white-supremacy.
The thing is, Coleman has already stated that their hate group classification is a matter of opinion -- and the SPLC isn't referencing the FBI definition from what I can see.
Yes, that's the point. Words have meanings. "Hate group" means something to most people: it means the Klan. It means neo-Nazis. It means a very specific mental image, and the SPLC is well-aware of that. Playing Humpty Dumpty and declaring that they're using their own personal definition instead of the real one that everyone else uses is incredibly dishonest, and deliberately doing so to cause harm to others is defamation.
If I said "Fred is a killer," and then Fred sued me for defamation, and I tried to weasel out of it by saying "oh, by 'killer' I don't actually mean 'person who kills someone else;' I was using my own special definition that means something else entirely!", would you expect any reasonable court to buy that?
What I said is that I know nothing about the plaintiff. But I do know about the defendant. Also, from the article:
To that end, SPLC acknowledges that its goal is to destroy organizations and persons it targets as “hate groups” or as members of “hate groups” as a matter of “political struggle,” even if those targets do not qualify based on the broadly-understood definitions above.
That right there, independent of the details of this case, is lying. They may not like the term, but that's what it is. It's lying with the deliberate, malicious intent to do harm to others, which is defamation.
I'll translate: For someone who has never heard of either Mr. McInnes or Proud Boys, you sure are very confident that the SPLC is lying about them and their actions.
This is because, as I pointed out, I have heard of the SPLC and I'm familiar with their history, both early and recent.
Especially as a frequent commenter on this site. The Proud boys (and their "lawyer" JL Van Dyke) have appeared multiple times. You even commented on a Van Dyke article.
Lawyers frequently take on multiple clients. Who was JL Van Dyke representing in the article I commented on? (Which article was it anyway?)
Your insinuations notwithstanding, the fact remains that I've never heard of these guys before today. Please go away if you have nothing constructive to say.
CERN invented the HTTP protocol, and specified the HTML language as a derivative subset of SGML, which was invented by IBM. But the Web itself? There's a strong case to be made that that was created by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and by Nestcape, two American organizations that, together, invented the concept of the Web browser as we know it. Without their work to make it accessible to ordinary people, HTTP would never have moved much beyond the highly-specialized research purposes that CERN developed it for.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you are a horrible sociopath of a person, who doesn't mind a massively high false-positive rate and the attendant collateral damage, I suppose it might be...
On the post: Initial Fallout From McDonald's Losing Its EU 'Big Mac' Trademark Is Mockery From Burger King
And now the video is down, with no explanation given...
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If not objective, then it's a smear.
Most responsible, yes. Only one responsible, no.
On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 198: Life Without The Tech Giants
My takeaways:
I'm glad I wasn't drinking anything when Ms. Hill said Apple was the good guys, or I might have literally done a spit take! If she wants to talk about antitrust regulators being asleep at the wheel, there's your prime target right there; any reasonable antitrust enforcer ought to take one look at how Apple's App Store works and immediately reach for the nearest Hammer of Smacking-Down.
Checking Google to see if you have Internet connectivity is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and is not weird at all. I've used the same trick myself various times. To check connectivity, you have to try to connect to something, and of the various sites that you can be reasonably secure in the assumption that they will never be down, Google is one of the fastest and most lightweight options.
While I wouldn't go so far as to call the notion of the Web starting out decentralized "a hopelessly naive myth," the guy above is right that it was never particularly wide-open. It's become more consolidated as time goes by, but that's to be expected if you have any understanding of human nature. There are advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization, but history has shown over and over again that centralization and consolidation wins out, pretty much every single time. (Which is why we need antitrust enforcers who are not asleep at the wheel. That consolidation is sometimes a good thing, but sometimes it very much is not!)
Ms. Hill hit the nail right on the head when she talked about large tech companies essentially being the de facto government of the Internet, and Mike didn't seem to be disagreeing with this point the way he did with some of the other points she raised. This seems odd, as he's disagreed quite vocally when I raised similar points in the past and pointed out where the logical conclusion lies.
On the post: EU Copyright Directive Has Been Made Even More Stupid, And Some Are Still Trying To Make It Even Worse
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I would beg to differ! Just not in the way you're thinking...
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
It's exactly how I want defamation to work, and it doesn't conflict with a belief in free speech in any way. Free speech has never been an unlimited thing, and it's never covered destroying someone's reputation by spreading lies about them (aka defamation).
That's the understatement of the year! When law enforcement organizations take their designations as gospel (which is a real thing that happens) and people get put on government watch lists because they were on the SPLC "hate list" (which is a real thing that happens) and people get shot because they were on the SPLC "hate list" (which is, again, a real thing that has happened,) how much further does it need to go before you acknowledge they're crossing lines?
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Milkovich v Lorain Joural [was Re: To my surprise...
Which isn't unreasonable in this particular case, even if it is in the general case (which I agree, it generally should be!) given that so many groups, including law enforcement agencies, are known to treat it as such.
With great power comes great responsibility.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Milkovich v Lorain Joural [was Re: To my surprise...]
Yes, this exactly. If there exists some magic weasel words that act as a get-out-of-defamation-free card, then it basically renders the entire notion of defamation meaningless.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, as I said, I'm not familiar with them. I'm not sure of anything; I'm simply observing that the evidence does seem to weigh against that conclusion. (Especially with the other guy downthread chiming in about their consistent activities openly opposing white supremacist groups.)
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
Whataboutism is when you try to distract someone by pointing to something unrelated that was not the topic of discussion. (Such as the killing of abortion doctors.) When the thing being pointed to is the current topic of discussion--the real harm done by the SPLC's spurious and politically-motivated "hate group" designations--that is not a whataboutism. So you fail here twice over!
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
Depends on how you define "accomplishing." Will it put an end to their politically-motivated serial libel if successful? Probably not. Will it be a meaningful, useful step towards that ultimate goal if successful? That's more likely.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re:
Is he the guy who got shot because some extremist got ahold of their "hate map" and used it to pick out targets?
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Tied" by who? Folks like the SPLC? Yay for circular logic!
When your fundamental rules explicitly say that anybody who believes in the supremacy of one race over another, (specifically including white supremacists,) cannot become or remain a member of this organization, it's a bit hard to credibly say that this organization is a bunch of white supremacists.
That's a bit like saying "everyone in the No Lawyers Allowed Club is a practicing attorney at law!" It might be theoretically possible if the entire thing is a big lie, but it sounds kind of absurd on the face of it, especially when there are well-organized, well-funded groups (such as the SPLC) going around making spurious, malicious accusations for political purposes.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re: To my surprise...
Yes, of course context matters. Let's assume, in the interest of brevity, clarity, and not being obnoxious, pedantic people that no one likes, that the context in question was exactly what it sounds like: insinuating that Fred had murdered somebody.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
And here you lose all credibility. Try reading point 33 of the embedded complaint, which quotes from the Proud Boys bylaws, pointing out how they are explicitly anti-white-supremacy.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: To my surprise...
Yes, that's the point. Words have meanings. "Hate group" means something to most people: it means the Klan. It means neo-Nazis. It means a very specific mental image, and the SPLC is well-aware of that. Playing Humpty Dumpty and declaring that they're using their own personal definition instead of the real one that everyone else uses is incredibly dishonest, and deliberately doing so to cause harm to others is defamation.
If I said "Fred is a killer," and then Fred sued me for defamation, and I tried to weasel out of it by saying "oh, by 'killer' I don't actually mean 'person who kills someone else;' I was using my own special definition that means something else entirely!", would you expect any reasonable court to buy that?
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
What I said is that I know nothing about the plaintiff. But I do know about the defendant. Also, from the article:
That right there, independent of the details of this case, is lying. They may not like the term, but that's what it is. It's lying with the deliberate, malicious intent to do harm to others, which is defamation.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re: Re: Re:
This is because, as I pointed out, I have heard of the SPLC and I'm familiar with their history, both early and recent.
Lawyers frequently take on multiple clients. Who was JL Van Dyke representing in the article I commented on? (Which article was it anyway?)
Your insinuations notwithstanding, the fact remains that I've never heard of these guys before today. Please go away if you have nothing constructive to say.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re: Re:
...huh?
On the post: EU Copyright Directive Has Been Made Even More Stupid, And Some Are Still Trying To Make It Even Worse
Re: Re:
CERN invented the HTTP protocol, and specified the HTML language as a derivative subset of SGML, which was invented by IBM. But the Web itself? There's a strong case to be made that that was created by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and by Nestcape, two American organizations that, together, invented the concept of the Web browser as we know it. Without their work to make it accessible to ordinary people, HTTP would never have moved much beyond the highly-specialized research purposes that CERN developed it for.
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