Also, it appears that your Markdown parser is broken. It should be able to handle multiple > tokens at the start of a paragraph, to create nested blockquotes, but it fails at that in my post above.
The lawsuit struggles to focus on the impact of SPLC's opinions because that's basically all it has:
>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.
Right, but that's the very nature of speech. The intent of free speech is to allow people and groups to try to persuade others of something. And, if that persuasion includes convincing others not to do business with you, that's fair game.
I dunno. This is the part of the whole thing I find really persuasive. "Hate group" is a term with a pretty standard, commonly-understood meaning. If they are deliberately applying that term to people or organizations that don't fit that meaning, to cause people to believe that they are hate groups by the commonly-understood meaning, well... we have a word for that: lying.
They are telling lies about organizations with the deliberate intent to cause harm to them, to "destroy [those] organizations" as they themselves acknowledge. That's another concept we have a word for, and that word is defamation.
You cover a lot of bogus defamation suits on here, but this one looks like the real deal.
But this post is directed towards other folks as well: those who think SLPC has a bit of an itchy trigger finger in declaring someone part of a hate group (or declaring groups as hate organizations)
I wouldn't quite say that. Rather, while acknowledging the good work they've done in the past, I would point out that they are not immune to Nietzsche's famous warning about He Who Hunts Monsters, nor to the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." In recent years, as the actual hatred they fought against has steadily diminished, the SPLC have undergone a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation, becoming a full-on hate group (by the proper definition) themselves.
I don't know anything about Gavin McInnes or the Proud Boys; this article was the first I've ever heard of either of them. But given the SPLC's recent track record, it seems more likely that he's just another one of their victims rather than a legitimate bad guy, and it's good to see someone trying to hold them accountable for what sure looks like real defamation.
And, yes, it would also likely apply to our comments as well. We don't make €10 million per year, nor do we have 5 million monthly uniques... but we are way older than 3 years old.
Do you have employees or servers in Europe? If not... what are they going to do about it?
This is the point where Techdirt needs to start pushing for a SPEECH Act counterpart to shield US entities from nonsense like this.
Pointing to one of the most notoriously corrupt monopolistic sub-industries in the publishing world, who have been blatantly preying on starving students with every unethical tactic in the book for decades now, is seriously not helping your case here.
As originally conceived, yes. In its current, corrupted form, perverted almost a full 180 degrees from its original meaning, though? No way no how. Let's get our priorities straight. Fix copyright first, then figure out how to protect it.
Even if that were 100% true, the massive amounts of collateral damage that this is likely to cause, as currently written, absolutely is "breaking the internet."
But hosting such a site in the EU will now be effectively impossible
"In the EU" being the applicable words. They can claim extraterritorial jurisdiction until they're blue in the face, but if they don't have servers or employees in the EU, and the US or other country where they actually are located doesn't want to play along, what exactly are they going to do about it?
At this point the EU ought to just rename it "the footgun directive."
Would be nice but...in this case it's almost like being on the other side of the copyright debate. We can't control who gets to give money or to whom without putting much of the democratic process or concept of fiscal ownership in jeopardy.
Why not? Plenty of other successful democracies do it, and they have less corruption (and less obnoxious political advertisements bombarding everyone!) than we do. The USA is very much an outlier in this regard, with Citizens United and the like placing us waaaaaaaaaaay out on the extreme fringe.
The more fundamental problem with this is that trusting accusations by default flies in the face of sound jurisprudence. We've known for centuries that this is a bad idea because it encourages false accusations, and so we have the Presumption of Innocence (aka "innocent until proven guilty") enshrined as a cornerstone of our legal process. And sure enough, when we set up the DMCA takedown system in which accusations are presumed to be legitimate, we ended up with a system that is massively overrun by false accusations.
And if you were going to bring up the usual objection--that it would lead to confusing conversations if someone can change something they wrote after someone else replied to it--that can be ameliorated easily enough. StackOverflow has had a fix for that problem for 10 years now: changes leave a trail.
For the first five minutes, edits are "free." This is for fixing proofreading problems: typos, bad word choice, stuff like that. It's expected that few people are going to see and respond to your post during this time anyway. But after a post is 5 minutes old, if you edit it, it leaves an "edited" link on your post that takes anyone who cares to click on it to a change history, letting them see exactly what it used to say.
I don't know if that's exactly how it ought to be implemented here, as the workings of this comments section are fairly different from the way StackOverflow works, but the basic principles are pretty generally applicable and could be adapted as appropriate to come up with a solution that works for Techdirt.
It's not that they're "not enforced" *per se;* it's that corrupt publishing interests have managed to get bad precedents on the record that say that the penalty clauses say much less than a plain reading of the text would suggest that they say, to the point where almost nothing that a malicious publisher could possibly do can fall within what little remains of the revised definition. They've ensured that *there's nothing there to enforce against them.*
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
Re:
Also, it appears that your Markdown parser is broken. It should be able to handle multiple > tokens at the start of a paragraph, to create nested blockquotes, but it fails at that in my post above.
On the post: Gavin McInnes Files Laughably Silly Defamation Lawsuit Against Southern Poverty Law Center
I dunno. This is the part of the whole thing I find really persuasive. "Hate group" is a term with a pretty standard, commonly-understood meaning. If they are deliberately applying that term to people or organizations that don't fit that meaning, to cause people to believe that they are hate groups by the commonly-understood meaning, well... we have a word for that: lying.
They are telling lies about organizations with the deliberate intent to cause harm to them, to "destroy [those] organizations" as they themselves acknowledge. That's another concept we have a word for, and that word is defamation.
You cover a lot of bogus defamation suits on here, but this one looks like the real deal.
I wouldn't quite say that. Rather, while acknowledging the good work they've done in the past, I would point out that they are not immune to Nietzsche's famous warning about He Who Hunts Monsters, nor to the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution." In recent years, as the actual hatred they fought against has steadily diminished, the SPLC have undergone a Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation, becoming a full-on hate group (by the proper definition) themselves.
I don't know anything about Gavin McInnes or the Proud Boys; this article was the first I've ever heard of either of them. But given the SPLC's recent track record, it seems more likely that he's just another one of their victims rather than a legitimate bad guy, and it's good to see someone trying to hold them accountable for what sure looks like real defamation.
On the post: EU Copyright Directive Has Been Made Even More Stupid, And Some Are Still Trying To Make It Even Worse
Do you have employees or servers in Europe? If not... what are they going to do about it?
This is the point where Techdirt needs to start pushing for a SPEECH Act counterpart to shield US entities from nonsense like this.
On the post: Court Tells FCC Its Attack On Tribal Broadband Subsidies Wasn't Based On The Facts
In other news, water is wet and the Pope is Catholic.
On the post: Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet
Re: Re: Re:
Pointing to one of the most notoriously corrupt monopolistic sub-industries in the publishing world, who have been blatantly preying on starving students with every unethical tactic in the book for decades now, is seriously not helping your case here.
Just sayin'...
On the post: Russian Site-Blocking Leads To An Explosion In 'Pirate' Sites, Tiny Dip In Piracy
Re: Re:
The more you tighten your grip, the more communication systems will slip through your fingers.
On the post: Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet
Re:
As originally conceived, yes. In its current, corrupted form, perverted almost a full 180 degrees from its original meaning, though? No way no how. Let's get our priorities straight. Fix copyright first, then figure out how to protect it.
On the post: Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet
Re:
Even if that were 100% true, the massive amounts of collateral damage that this is likely to cause, as currently written, absolutely is "breaking the internet."
On the post: Minnesota Lawyers Board Asks State Supreme Court To Smack Paul Hansmeier Around A Bit
The thought just struck me, what was this guy like growing up, that he ended up turning into this as an adult?
Maybe someone should do a "young Paul Hansmeier" video, in the style of the famous (and hilarious!) "young Hillary Clinton."
On the post: Article 13 Is Back On: Germany Caves To France As EU Pushes Forward On Ruining The Internet
"In the EU" being the applicable words. They can claim extraterritorial jurisdiction until they're blue in the face, but if they don't have servers or employees in the EU, and the US or other country where they actually are located doesn't want to play along, what exactly are they going to do about it?
At this point the EU ought to just rename it "the footgun directive."
On the post: FCC Accused Of Colluding With Big Carriers On 5G Policy
Re: Serious question
That depends on whether you're talking about law on the books, or law that the system has the political will to enforce in the current climate.
On the post: FCC Accused Of Colluding With Big Carriers On 5G Policy
Re: Ajit has Pai'd himself again
He's giving the entire industry a Pai in the face. Let's hope we emerge from this mess with a bit more sanity once the dust clears.
On the post: Canada's Bell Tried To Have VPNs Banned During NAFTA Negotiations
Re: Re: Instead, ban infrastructure providers from owning ISPs,
Sure you do:
On the post: A Teenager Tried To Warn Apple About It's Facetime Security Flaw, But Appears To Have Been Ignored
By iDiots, for iDiots. So glad my wife and I use Android phones instead.
On the post: Disney Goes All Disney On The Kingdom Hearts 3 Title Screen Over Streaming
Re: May not be Disney, specifically.
Agreed. As a lifelong gamer, this really feels more like a "Japanese video game company thing" than a "Disney thing."
On the post: Revolving Doors And Regulatory Capture Are Ensuring E-Voting Remains An Insecure Mess
Re: Re:
Why not? Plenty of other successful democracies do it, and they have less corruption (and less obnoxious political advertisements bombarding everyone!) than we do. The USA is very much an outlier in this regard, with Citizens United and the like placing us waaaaaaaaaaay out on the extreme fringe.
On the post: Developer DMCAs Steam For Hosting Its Own Game To Wrest Control Back From Rogue Publisher
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The more fundamental problem with this is that trusting accusations by default flies in the face of sound jurisprudence. We've known for centuries that this is a bad idea because it encourages false accusations, and so we have the Presumption of Innocence (aka "innocent until proven guilty") enshrined as a cornerstone of our legal process. And sure enough, when we set up the DMCA takedown system in which accusations are presumed to be legitimate, we ended up with a system that is massively overrun by false accusations.
On the post: Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates
Re: Re:
But still no edit functionality. :(
On the post: Some Small But Important Techdirt Updates
Re: Re: Re: Defaults
Why?
And if you were going to bring up the usual objection--that it would lead to confusing conversations if someone can change something they wrote after someone else replied to it--that can be ameliorated easily enough. StackOverflow has had a fix for that problem for 10 years now: changes leave a trail.
For the first five minutes, edits are "free." This is for fixing proofreading problems: typos, bad word choice, stuff like that. It's expected that few people are going to see and respond to your post during this time anyway. But after a post is 5 minutes old, if you edit it, it leaves an "edited" link on your post that takes anyone who cares to click on it to a change history, letting them see exactly what it used to say.
I don't know if that's exactly how it ought to be implemented here, as the workings of this comments section are fairly different from the way StackOverflow works, but the basic principles are pretty generally applicable and could be adapted as appropriate to come up with a solution that works for Techdirt.
On the post: Developer DMCAs Steam For Hosting Its Own Game To Wrest Control Back From Rogue Publisher
Re:
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