I had a civics class in high school. In fact, I remember watching the twin towers fall live in civics class in high school. That was an interesting coincidence. That event caused some of my classmates to join the military upon graduation and it convinced others (myself included) not to do so.
As far as section 230 is concerned, the phrases "first-party" and "third-party" don't actually exist. They're simply used to make it easier to understand who is responsible for what speech. Here's the text of (c)(1) again:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." - 47 USC ยง 230 (c)(1)
This simply means that no one is responsible for the speech of anyone else on the internet and since no service can be considered a publisher of content that they allowed to be posted on their site, there aren't any penalties for removing said content.
So, to speak on your conclusion, yes any (non-governmental) platform can discriminate against whatever speech they like. If some white supremacist site blocks speech calling for racial equality, they can do that. If a left-leaning blog wants to ban conservatives, they can do that too. This is a feature not a bug. The goal was to allow different spaces for different points of view to flourish on the internet.
Re: Do you think a MONTHLY 'Unlimited' plan isn't LIMITED?
Unlimited bandwidth usage means that a person should be able to completely saturate their bandwidth for an entire billing period without issue. For example, if you have a 30-day billing period and a 100 Mbps connection, you should be able to download 259.2 terabits or 32.4 Terabytes of data in that time period. Of course, you can't download more data than there is time for.
Concerning the metro pass example you used, it's quite possible to use public transportation more than three times a day on average for a month. I can even imagine an example.
Let's take a February that starts on a Monday for our example. A person rides the metro into and out of the city for work every workday for a total of 40 uses. Let's say that they also ride from their workplace a couple of stops to (and from) their favorite restaurant every workday for lunch. That's another 40 uses. If at this point, they also stop for drinks every Friday after work and before riding home, that's another 8. So, we've reached 88 already for the shortest month of the year. If this example occurred in a leap year, there would be an extra workday pushing us over the limit to 92 uses already and most months have 30 or 31 days.
In short, unlimited means, "as much as you can use it in this period of time". Once you've added a limit, it's no longer unlimited.
Your system just needs one more carrot/stick. Require that any department which receives federal funding has all of its badge and gun-carrying officers have a valid federal certification. Using federal funding as a lever has always been the commerce clause workaround.
He resigned two days after the incident. Which is one day after the video was supplied to the state prosecutor's office and the police department. Fortunately, this victim was able to bond himself out of custody after only one day and canvas the street where the incident took place looking for people with surveillance cameras. If he'd taken any longer some systems would have started overwriting.
Firstly, I must ask, which "ordinary flu season" this century has killed over half-a-million Americans? Secondly, only two of the vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 use single-stranded mRNA as their active ingredient. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a modified Adenovirus to get double-stranded DNA into a cell in order to get the cell to create spike proteins for the immune system to recognize.
The funny thing about many conspiracy theorists is that you constantly tell people to "do your own research" but, you don't seem to have the media literacy skills to do so yourselves. For example, it took me less than five minutes to find the full ingredients lists for each of the three vaccines. (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen) The mRNA ones you mentioned each include their active ingredients (two slightly different types of mRNA that each express SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins) along with lipids, salts, sugar, and preservatives to keep them fresh from creation to injection. The Janssen one is a bit different since its buffers need to keep a weakened virus alive until it enters a cell to kick off spike protein creation.
Another issue I've heard involves people being frightened about these vaccines "modifying DNA." This is decidedly false. The mRNA delivered by the two mRNA vaccines simply uses the machinery of our cells to create spike proteins. A good analogy is this: assume you own a 3D printer. An mRNA vaccine is analogous to a(n odd) friend who comes by with a model of a wanted criminal and prints that model on your printer so that you know what the criminal looks like. The Adenovirus version works similarly by using the fact that viruses work by hijacking our cell machinery and modifying this virus to make the hijacked machinery pump out spike proteins instead of copies of said virus. Once you get beyond the "proteins belonging to the virus are now in the bloodstream" part these vaccines work just like all the rest in that the adaptive immune system takes notice of the foreign proteins and ramps itself up to be able to take down anything like it in the future.
I've also heard the opinion that it's "strange" that a vaccine has become available so quickly. That's more understandable but, even then, there was a bit of a head start with SARS-CoV-2 vaccines since there were already abandoned SARS-CoV-1 and MERS vaccines just waiting for money to continue their studies. Also, mRNA methods for vaccination have been studied for decades mainly as a potential single-shot flu vaccine or later as a vaccination method for Zika. Once people realized that COVID-19 was a problem, and started dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into every promising arena of development, it shouldn't be surprising that novel vaccination methods were uncovered.
Normally we (as a society) just don't spend enough on vaccine breakthroughs since they aren't very profitable. However, when the health of the world is on the line, the capital flows to the places where it's needed.
Re: Re: Re: what? -- WHO is covered? "We The People"!
The Constitution doesn't grant rights to people, it forbids the Government from performing certain actions. That being said, the American legal system is based on all things being allowed that aren't specifically made illegal. So, if corporations aren't specifically forbidden from doing something that a natural person is also not forbidden from doing then they can do that thing. If the law doesn't specifically remove a right from corporations that natural people have, then they still have that right.
All of this is because the law created corporate personhood and hasn't limited it in the ways that you think it has. If you believe that corporate personhood should be limited, that's fine. You should speak with your elected officials about some changes. Until then though, corporations have most of the same rights that you or I have and many of them have the money to more easily afford to exercise those same rights. (For example, most of us can't afford to run political advertising ourselves but, we certainly have the right to do so.)
In the case of ebooks, the NFT would be your "proof of purchase" that a reseller would require (assuming that the reseller cared at all about copyright) if they wanted to buy your copy to sell on to yet another person.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Did you catch the part I emphasized there? "Congress shall make no law..." Google is not Congress. Twitter is not Congress. Facebook is not Congress. Since none of those companies is either owned by or a department of the government (either federal, state, or municipal), the First Amendment doesn't apply to them. This point has been made repeatedly by many people but I'll assume the best and assume that you haven't learned this little piece of Constitutional law yet.
I've already seen comments that claim this is what's happening. As though people with service below this level (like my own 100/12 service) will lose their internet connections.
In order to get either of your standards, we'd seriously need local governments to own and operate the last mile with ISP's simply providing service over municipally-owned fiber. Even then, there are gravel and dirt roads where burying conduits wouldn't be easy and I'm not sure about hanging long-distance fiber from poles. Imagine the infrastructure that would have to be added for houses that don't even have municipal water and sewer service (wells and septic systems are pretty common in my area) in order to pull this off.
For example, I live in an apartment serviced by Charter Spectrum (and, of course, we have municipal water and sewer service.) However, if I look over the top of my computer screen at the single-family homes a few hundred feet from me none of them have access to broadband internet, municipal water, or municipal sewage systems. (I know this because several of them have been up for sale in the decade that I've lived here and their listings mention these things.) I'm not even that far outside of a city with two cities each about 3 miles to the east and west of my location.
Many states have laws that make the public/private partnerships you're describing (where a private company builds the network and then sells or leases it to the city) illegal or incredibly difficult with tons of red tape.
Wherever it can be done though, I completely agree with you.
Re: We have to take what little improve we can get, at least for
Don't forget, the Supreme Court isn't a monolith. None of the justices who established Qualified Immunity are still on the court. Even the Qualified Immunity decision was an 8-1 split with Justice Berger dissenting.
Google was already working on a "News Showcase" program where they pay for access to complete articles from selected publishers. They aren't simply paying for links that show up in search or the current version of Google News. My guess is that they'll simply point countries who want to start charging link taxes to this program and if those countries still want to charge for links in search, they'll cut them off from everything.
Does this cities SCADA software run on Linux? If not, then you're just replacing one expensive problem with another expensive problem. While there are F/OSS SCADA solutions (I just did a simple Google search and found three plus a site that claimed to have eight listed without even scrolling), they would still require funding to implement and train their employees.
There have never been any rules requiring content neutrality on television besides the "fairness doctrine" which was rescinded in 1987 and only applied to broadcast (OTA) television anyway. Net neutrality, on the other hand, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.
All ISPs, including the cable companies you've mentioned, were covered by the net neutrality rules that were formerly put in place by the FCC.
On the post: Parler Forced To Explain The First Amendment To Its Users After They Complain About Parler Turning Over Info To The FBI
Re: Re: Re:
I had a civics class in high school. In fact, I remember watching the twin towers fall live in civics class in high school. That was an interesting coincidence. That event caused some of my classmates to join the military upon graduation and it convinced others (myself included) not to do so.
On the post: Appeals Court Actually Explores 'Good Faith' Issue In A Section 230 Case (Spoiler Alert: It Still Protects Moderation Choices)
Re: Re: Re:
As far as section 230 is concerned, the phrases "first-party" and "third-party" don't actually exist. They're simply used to make it easier to understand who is responsible for what speech. Here's the text of (c)(1) again:
This simply means that no one is responsible for the speech of anyone else on the internet and since no service can be considered a publisher of content that they allowed to be posted on their site, there aren't any penalties for removing said content.
So, to speak on your conclusion, yes any (non-governmental) platform can discriminate against whatever speech they like. If some white supremacist site blocks speech calling for racial equality, they can do that. If a left-leaning blog wants to ban conservatives, they can do that too. This is a feature not a bug. The goal was to allow different spaces for different points of view to flourish on the internet.
On the post: Despite A Decade Of Complaints, US Wireless Carriers Continue To Abuse The Word 'Unlimited'
Re: Do you think a MONTHLY 'Unlimited' plan isn't LIMITED?
Unlimited bandwidth usage means that a person should be able to completely saturate their bandwidth for an entire billing period without issue. For example, if you have a 30-day billing period and a 100 Mbps connection, you should be able to download 259.2 terabits or 32.4 Terabytes of data in that time period. Of course, you can't download more data than there is time for.
Concerning the metro pass example you used, it's quite possible to use public transportation more than three times a day on average for a month. I can even imagine an example.
Let's take a February that starts on a Monday for our example. A person rides the metro into and out of the city for work every workday for a total of 40 uses. Let's say that they also ride from their workplace a couple of stops to (and from) their favorite restaurant every workday for lunch. That's another 40 uses. If at this point, they also stop for drinks every Friday after work and before riding home, that's another 8. So, we've reached 88 already for the shortest month of the year. If this example occurred in a leap year, there would be an extra workday pushing us over the limit to 92 uses already and most months have 30 or 31 days.
In short, unlimited means, "as much as you can use it in this period of time". Once you've added a limit, it's no longer unlimited.
On the post: Cop's Lies About A Traffic Stop Are Exposed By A Home Security Camera Located Across The Street
Re: Re:
How is your phone going to upload a video to offsite storage via a wire?
On the post: Cop's Lies About A Traffic Stop Are Exposed By A Home Security Camera Located Across The Street
Re: Re:
Your system just needs one more carrot/stick. Require that any department which receives federal funding has all of its badge and gun-carrying officers have a valid federal certification. Using federal funding as a lever has always been the commerce clause workaround.
On the post: Cop's Lies About A Traffic Stop Are Exposed By A Home Security Camera Located Across The Street
Re: Now, that followup...?
He resigned two days after the incident. Which is one day after the video was supplied to the state prosecutor's office and the police department. Fortunately, this victim was able to bond himself out of custody after only one day and canvas the street where the incident took place looking for people with surveillance cameras. If he'd taken any longer some systems would have started overwriting.
On the post: Life Imitates Art: Warren Spector Says He Wouldn't Make 'Deus Ex' In Today's Toxic Climate
Re: Re: Truth isn't about being "lovable", Thad.
Firstly, I must ask, which "ordinary flu season" this century has killed over half-a-million Americans? Secondly, only two of the vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 use single-stranded mRNA as their active ingredient. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a modified Adenovirus to get double-stranded DNA into a cell in order to get the cell to create spike proteins for the immune system to recognize.
The funny thing about many conspiracy theorists is that you constantly tell people to "do your own research" but, you don't seem to have the media literacy skills to do so yourselves. For example, it took me less than five minutes to find the full ingredients lists for each of the three vaccines. (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Janssen) The mRNA ones you mentioned each include their active ingredients (two slightly different types of mRNA that each express SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins) along with lipids, salts, sugar, and preservatives to keep them fresh from creation to injection. The Janssen one is a bit different since its buffers need to keep a weakened virus alive until it enters a cell to kick off spike protein creation.
Another issue I've heard involves people being frightened about these vaccines "modifying DNA." This is decidedly false. The mRNA delivered by the two mRNA vaccines simply uses the machinery of our cells to create spike proteins. A good analogy is this: assume you own a 3D printer. An mRNA vaccine is analogous to a(n odd) friend who comes by with a model of a wanted criminal and prints that model on your printer so that you know what the criminal looks like. The Adenovirus version works similarly by using the fact that viruses work by hijacking our cell machinery and modifying this virus to make the hijacked machinery pump out spike proteins instead of copies of said virus. Once you get beyond the "proteins belonging to the virus are now in the bloodstream" part these vaccines work just like all the rest in that the adaptive immune system takes notice of the foreign proteins and ramps itself up to be able to take down anything like it in the future.
I've also heard the opinion that it's "strange" that a vaccine has become available so quickly. That's more understandable but, even then, there was a bit of a head start with SARS-CoV-2 vaccines since there were already abandoned SARS-CoV-1 and MERS vaccines just waiting for money to continue their studies. Also, mRNA methods for vaccination have been studied for decades mainly as a potential single-shot flu vaccine or later as a vaccination method for Zika. Once people realized that COVID-19 was a problem, and started dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into every promising arena of development, it shouldn't be surprising that novel vaccination methods were uncovered.
Normally we (as a society) just don't spend enough on vaccine breakthroughs since they aren't very profitable. However, when the health of the world is on the line, the capital flows to the places where it's needed.
On the post: Florida Sheriff's Office Sued For Using 'Predictive Policing' Program To Harass Residents
Re: "GOP Sheriff"
I don't know if you're American but, in many states, county Sheriffs are elected on a partisan ballot.
On the post: It's Not Just Republican State Legislators Pushing Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bills
Re: Re: Re: what? -- WHO is covered? "We The People"!
The Constitution doesn't grant rights to people, it forbids the Government from performing certain actions. That being said, the American legal system is based on all things being allowed that aren't specifically made illegal. So, if corporations aren't specifically forbidden from doing something that a natural person is also not forbidden from doing then they can do that thing. If the law doesn't specifically remove a right from corporations that natural people have, then they still have that right.
All of this is because the law created corporate personhood and hasn't limited it in the ways that you think it has. If you believe that corporate personhood should be limited, that's fine. You should speak with your elected officials about some changes. Until then though, corporations have most of the same rights that you or I have and many of them have the money to more easily afford to exercise those same rights. (For example, most of us can't afford to run political advertising ourselves but, we certainly have the right to do so.)
On the post: Amazon's Refusal To Let Libraries Lend Ebooks Shows Why Controlled Digital Lending Is So Important
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
In the case of ebooks, the NFT would be your "proof of purchase" that a reseller would require (assuming that the reseller cared at all about copyright) if they wanted to buy your copy to sell on to yet another person.
On the post: It's Not Just Republican State Legislators Pushing Unconstitutional Content Moderation Bills
Re:
Did you catch the part I emphasized there? "Congress shall make no law..." Google is not Congress. Twitter is not Congress. Facebook is not Congress. Since none of those companies is either owned by or a department of the government (either federal, state, or municipal), the First Amendment doesn't apply to them. This point has been made repeatedly by many people but I'll assume the best and assume that you haven't learned this little piece of Constitutional law yet.
On the post: Senators Push FCC To Finally Update Our Pathetic Definition Of Broadband
Re:
I've already seen comments that claim this is what's happening. As though people with service below this level (like my own 100/12 service) will lose their internet connections.
On the post: Senators Push FCC To Finally Update Our Pathetic Definition Of Broadband
Re:
In order to get either of your standards, we'd seriously need local governments to own and operate the last mile with ISP's simply providing service over municipally-owned fiber. Even then, there are gravel and dirt roads where burying conduits wouldn't be easy and I'm not sure about hanging long-distance fiber from poles. Imagine the infrastructure that would have to be added for houses that don't even have municipal water and sewer service (wells and septic systems are pretty common in my area) in order to pull this off.
For example, I live in an apartment serviced by Charter Spectrum (and, of course, we have municipal water and sewer service.) However, if I look over the top of my computer screen at the single-family homes a few hundred feet from me none of them have access to broadband internet, municipal water, or municipal sewage systems. (I know this because several of them have been up for sale in the decade that I've lived here and their listings mention these things.) I'm not even that far outside of a city with two cities each about 3 miles to the east and west of my location.
On the post: Senators Push FCC To Finally Update Our Pathetic Definition Of Broadband
Re: Re: Re:
Many states have laws that make the public/private partnerships you're describing (where a private company builds the network and then sells or leases it to the city) illegal or incredibly difficult with tons of red tape.
Wherever it can be done though, I completely agree with you.
On the post: Illinois Lawmaker Proposes Unconstitutional Ban Of 'GTA' In Response To Carjackings
Re: Re:
Are dolphins, whales, and fish immortal? If not, then they too die sometime after contact with dihydrogen monoxide.
On the post: Supreme Court Rolls Back Another Horrible Qualified Immunity Decision By The Fifth Circuit
Re: We have to take what little improve we can get, at least for
Don't forget, the Supreme Court isn't a monolith. None of the justices who established Qualified Immunity are still on the court. Even the Qualified Immunity decision was an 8-1 split with Justice Berger dissenting.
On the post: The Bizarre Reaction To Facebook's Decision To Get Out Of The News Business In Australia
Re: I wish Google had cut off Australian news
Google was already working on a "News Showcase" program where they pay for access to complete articles from selected publishers. They aren't simply paying for links that show up in search or the current version of Google News. My guess is that they'll simply point countries who want to start charging link taxes to this program and if those countries still want to charge for links in search, they'll cut them off from everything.
On the post: Hacked Florida Water Plant Found To Have Been Using Unsupported Windows 7 Machines And Shared Passwords
Re: Re:
Does this cities SCADA software run on Linux? If not, then you're just replacing one expensive problem with another expensive problem. While there are F/OSS SCADA solutions (I just did a simple Google search and found three plus a site that claimed to have eight listed without even scrolling), they would still require funding to implement and train their employees.
On the post: Dumb New GOP Talking Point: If You Restore Net Neutrality, You HAVE To Kill Section 230. Just Because!
Re:
There are "Mom and Pop" ISPs, in fact, Tech Dirt talked about this one (that I can't find the Tech Dirt article for) last month.
On the post: Dumb New GOP Talking Point: If You Restore Net Neutrality, You HAVE To Kill Section 230. Just Because!
Re: Re: Re:
There have never been any rules requiring content neutrality on television besides the "fairness doctrine" which was rescinded in 1987 and only applied to broadcast (OTA) television anyway. Net neutrality, on the other hand, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, and not discriminate or charge differently based on user, content, website, platform, application, type of equipment, source address, destination address, or method of communication.
All ISPs, including the cable companies you've mentioned, were covered by the net neutrality rules that were formerly put in place by the FCC.
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