Seems to me there's a market opportunity here, for someone to produce "dumb" TVs, sell them for less than the competition is selling spyware TVs, and market them as being spyware-free, unlike the competition, as a positive feature.
I'm not confused at all. So-called "safe harbors" exist as an extension of bad policy, making it worse.
Safe harbors provide a clear route to limit intermediary liability. Without them, liability claims start with the hosting provider.
Which is why it's not a "safe harbor" at all. Calling it that is an Orwellian abuse of the language. An actual safe harbor is CDA 230, which says that the host is not liable unless they actively participated in creating the content, not just hosting it.
What extrajudicial takedown regimes are is a tool of extortion. They provide leverage for unsavory types to say "that's a nice site you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to drag it into court and hold it liable for user-generated content." That entire notion needs to go.
A system that would actually make sense looks like this:
Record label says "hey, this video on YouTube infringes on our rights."
The label goes to a court and says "we believe that this video on YouTube infringes on our rights."
The court says "Presumption of Innocence says I can't just take that statement at face value, especially with your track record. Can you demonstrate to my satisfaction that 1) you own the rights to some material, 2) this video makes unauthorized use of it, and 3) it does so in a way that is not Fair Use?"
Record label demonstrates these three points to the court's satisfaction. (Or fails to, in which case it's thrown out.)
Court decides there's a reasonable likelihood that this video is infringing. It sends a court order to YouTube saying "this video by user Bob Smith appears to be infringing rights held by Record Label, Inc. Please notify Bob Smith."
YouTube notifies Bob Smith of the claim and the pending litigation.
If Bob Smith (or his lawyer) responds within a reasonable amount of time, he faces Record Label in court, where Record Label has to prove that he did something wrong by uploading the video. If he loses, the court sends a court order to YouTube that this video should be taken down as infringing.
If Bob Smith chooses to take the video down instead of facing the label in court, the court case is dismissed and that's the end of things. (If he later puts it back up, this can be used as evidence against him in future proceedings.)
If Bob Smith never replies, the label must then demonstrate to the court beyond a reasonable doubt that the video is infringing, which (if successful) then results in a takedown court order being sent to YouTube.
If Bob Smith comes to court and the video is found to not be infringing, Record Label is required to pay Smith's attorney fees.
If this sounds like a lot of work to get something taken down... well, yeah. That's the point. When we make it easy, we get massive abuse, so we fix it by making it difficult.
Various people have claimed that "information wants to be free" and that "information wants to be valuable" with varying degrees of justification on either side.
Might I suggest the less controversial notion that information wants to be? And if someone wants it gone, in violation of its fundamental nature, at the very least they should have to get a court of law to agree?
Extrajudicial takedowns have never been a good idea. We need to push back, and get them rolled back. We shouldn't need to talk about "safe harbors" that aren't safe harbors at all, but in actuality nothing more than tools of extortion. The (universal) safe harbor should instead be the judicial system, and the principles of the Presumption of Innocence and of Due Process.
What if they already have this information from a prior scan of the suspect's face?
That, at least, won't work. The technology has been better than that for around a decade now at least, because that's when I had a unlock-by-face laptop. A friend tried to troll it by taking a picture of my face and holding his phone up to the camera, and it wouldn't let him in.
If I understand correctly, it checks IR as well as visible light to defeat exactly this sort of attack.
Breaking up the companies into smaller companies, each wit their own local monopoly does not create completion
Yeah, the Ma Bell breakup was done bizarrely wrong in that sense. Instead of multiple regional monopolies, they should have broken it the opposite way, into multiple national entities that had to compete one with another.
Just a note: 1700 miles is 1.7K miles. ("17K miles away" doesn't actually exist on Earth the way we think of distances, as it's more than halfway around the planet and so we'd instead measure the smaller distance to the point in question by going the opposite direction.)
> The middle east is a mess, much of it our doing.
Don't rush to take too much credit. The Middle East has been a mess for thousands of years. Ethnicities and dominant religions have changed greatly over time, but that region of the planet being one big continuous cesspool of violence has remained pretty constant throughout history.
The Web was not another AOL or CompuServe, it was a new thing, and it's not valid to directly equate the two like that. The Web was a new system that started out highly decentralized, then (inevitably) consolidated over the next couple decades.
> Per the article, Berners-Lee seems mostly to be focusing on the developer's perspective: this will happen because it's what software developers want.
Which would be great if they were the decision makers. As a professional software developer myself, though, I know exactly how far removed that notion is from reality. The vast majority of the time, we follow The Boss's decisions and desires, even if we think they're dumb, because he's the one paying our salary and putting food on our tables.
"It’s quantum leap over 4G,” Vestberg added, in a statement he repeated no less than four times.
It's amusing to see this term abused by people ignorant of actual physics. A real "quantum leap" describes the smallest change it's possible for an electron to make.
Re: Re: Re: Re: This is why we shouldn't use the passive voice
Wow, you are projecting harder than my office equipment! "Vindictiveness" has nothing whatsoever to do with my reasoning on this matter. It actually hews much closer to the principle that you horrendously mangled in an attempt to drum up support for your own side: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. This means that one person does not have the right to force all of society to "forget" things that they find inconvenient.
We all need a society that can forgive transgressions.
Yes, I definitely agree. Having said that, the term "forgive and forget" was coined by an idiot, and only another idiot would conflate the two. Any rational adult is perfectly capable of forgiving a past transgression by someone, while still remaining wary that their underlying character is such that they're capable of doing something similar again. And considering how many examples we've already seen of RTBF being abused by unrepentant predatory people, this is not something that should even be "downplayed," to use your own word. This. Is. Why. It. Should. Not. Exist. Because the potential for harm far outweighs the potential for good.
Re: Re: This is why we shouldn't use the passive voice
So let's reverse the question then.
Why should society remember every little thing you've done for eternity?
Because remembering things for as long as they're relevant is the default state, as is using technology to improve our performance in essentially everything we do, good, bad, or neutral.
Just because you believe that something from the past is no longer relevant doesn't mean it's not relevant to me. In fact, I'd submit that an interested party is the least qualified to make such a judgment.
That's what is being argued here. It's not public criminal records, or news publications. It's the photos taken by idiot parents that were uploaded to Facebook, it's the stupid sexting crap that teenagers do. It's the basic things that practically no-one born more than 15 years ago has ever had to deal with beyond the immediate consequences. An expectation that they take for granted and are now denying later generations claiming it as a luxury that cannot be afforded to them for non-nonsensical and unjustifiable reasons.
You're kidding... right? Because, as Luke Skywalker famously put it, every word you just said is wrong.
It absolutely is public criminal records and news publications. Just have a look at past stories on the subject.
I was born well over 15 years ago, and my wife has embarrassing baby pictures of me. She got them from my sister, who got them from my mom's old photo albums. Older generations didn't need the Internet for that!
Likewise, being more than 15 years old, sexting was never a thing for me or my classmates. It is now, unfortunately, and it is stupid crap teens do today. It's something they need to learn is a bad idea because it can ruin their life. A lot of people like to claim that teens aren't mature enough to reason about long-term consequences, but this is patently absurd in the light of the vast majority of teens who do in fact manage to make it to adulthood alive and without doing something stupid that screws up their life. (Despite abundant opportunities to do so!) This is just one other thing today's generation needs to be aware of, and forcing other people to take responsibility for their mistakes by cleaning up after them is the exact opposite of the right thing to do in this case!
But neither of those goals require knowing ... who someone dated in high school.
I still remember everyone I dated in high school. They make for some great stories to look back on with my wife and laugh about. Why should anyone have the power to erase that?!?
Put into the proper active voice, this is the "right to compel others to forget about you." Which sounds ridiculously dystopian, like something out of a Philip K. Dick story.
Wasn't the Web originally pitched to us all as a decentralized system? But as things got bigger, they consolidated.
There are both advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization, but history has shown that at large scale, economies of scale (one of the advantages of centralization) will always win out. What makes Tim Berners-Lee (or anyone else) think it will be different this time around?
You suggest that we pan a good idea because we just assume
that the person presenting it is insincere, based on past actions. As I said, if this is actually sincere, it would be a good idea and should be recognized as such. On the other hand, keep in mind the track record of who we're dealing with.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
when he actually suggests something that would put more power in the hands of users and remove that power from Facebook, we should probably be encouraging that kind of thing rather than mocking it.
Yes we should, if we believed that 1) he'd actually do it and 2) he wouldn't find some way to pervert it into something that gives Facebook even more power in some way.
Given Facebook's track record, this is a pretty big if!
On the post: Vizio Admits Modern TV Sets Are Cheaper Because They're Spying On You
On the post: Hollywood Asks EU To Drop Article 13 Entirely, Because It Might Possibly Have A Tiny Compromise For The Internet
Re: Re:
I'm not confused at all. So-called "safe harbors" exist as an extension of bad policy, making it worse.
Which is why it's not a "safe harbor" at all. Calling it that is an Orwellian abuse of the language. An actual safe harbor is CDA 230, which says that the host is not liable unless they actively participated in creating the content, not just hosting it.
What extrajudicial takedown regimes are is a tool of extortion. They provide leverage for unsavory types to say "that's a nice site you have there. It would be a shame if someone were to drag it into court and hold it liable for user-generated content." That entire notion needs to go.
A system that would actually make sense looks like this:
If this sounds like a lot of work to get something taken down... well, yeah. That's the point. When we make it easy, we get massive abuse, so we fix it by making it difficult.
On the post: Hollywood Asks EU To Drop Article 13 Entirely, Because It Might Possibly Have A Tiny Compromise For The Internet
Various people have claimed that "information wants to be free" and that "information wants to be valuable" with varying degrees of justification on either side.
Might I suggest the less controversial notion that information wants to be? And if someone wants it gone, in violation of its fundamental nature, at the very least they should have to get a court of law to agree?
Extrajudicial takedowns have never been a good idea. We need to push back, and get them rolled back. We shouldn't need to talk about "safe harbors" that aren't safe harbors at all, but in actuality nothing more than tools of extortion. The (universal) safe harbor should instead be the judicial system, and the principles of the Presumption of Innocence and of Due Process.
On the post: Federal Judge Says Compelling People To Unlock Phones With Their Fingerprints/Faces Violates The 5th Amendment
Re: I don't understand how this works...
That, at least, won't work. The technology has been better than that for around a decade now at least, because that's when I had a unlock-by-face laptop. A friend tried to troll it by taking a picture of my face and holding his phone up to the camera, and it wouldn't let him in.
If I understand correctly, it checks IR as well as visible light to defeat exactly this sort of attack.
On the post: Pakistan Demands Google Take Down Petition For Academic Freedom... Saying It Represents Hate Speech
Re: Re: Re: Re: you cant Justify religious idiogogy.
On the post: Frontier Hammered By Minnesota AG For Its Refusal To Repair Its Broadband Network
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: But seriously....
Yeah, the Ma Bell breakup was done bizarrely wrong in that sense. Instead of multiple regional monopolies, they should have broken it the opposite way, into multiple national entities that had to compete one with another.
On the post: Pakistan Demands Google Take Down Petition For Academic Freedom... Saying It Represents Hate Speech
On the post: Scooter Company Bird Sends Absolutely Bullshit Copyright Threat Letter To Cory Doctorow For Reporting On Modifying Scooters
Re: Bird is wrong, but Doctorow IMO wanted people to steal scoot
On the post: Naperville, IL Development Project Forced To Drop Name To Avoid Public Confusing It With City 1.7K Miles Away
On the post: Chinese Police Now Performing Door-To-Door Twitter Censorship
Re: Re:
Don't rush to take too much credit. The Middle East has been a mess for thousands of years. Ethnicities and dominant religions have changed greatly over time, but that region of the planet being one big continuous cesspool of violence has remained pretty constant throughout history.
On the post: There's One Encouraging Thought Buried In Zuckerberg's 2019 Challenge
Re: Re: Re:
> Per the article, Berners-Lee seems mostly to be focusing on the developer's perspective: this will happen because it's what software developers want.
Which would be great if they were the decision makers. As a professional software developer myself, though, I know exactly how far removed that notion is from reality. The vast majority of the time, we follow The Boss's decisions and desires, even if we think they're dumb, because he's the one paying our salary and putting food on our tables.
On the post: Verizon Promises Not To Over-Hype 5G, Immediately Proceeds To Over-Hype 5G
It's amusing to see this term abused by people ignorant of actual physics. A real "quantum leap" describes the smallest change it's possible for an electron to make.
On the post: EU Court Adviser Says Google Shouldn't Have To Enforce A French RTBF Request Anywhere But In Europe
Re: Re: Re: Re: This is why we shouldn't use the passive voice
Wow, you are projecting harder than my office equipment! "Vindictiveness" has nothing whatsoever to do with my reasoning on this matter. It actually hews much closer to the principle that you horrendously mangled in an attempt to drum up support for your own side: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. This means that one person does not have the right to force all of society to "forget" things that they find inconvenient.
Yes, I definitely agree. Having said that, the term "forgive and forget" was coined by an idiot, and only another idiot would conflate the two. Any rational adult is perfectly capable of forgiving a past transgression by someone, while still remaining wary that their underlying character is such that they're capable of doing something similar again. And considering how many examples we've already seen of RTBF being abused by unrepentant predatory people, this is not something that should even be "downplayed," to use your own word. This. Is. Why. It. Should. Not. Exist. Because the potential for harm far outweighs the potential for good.
On the post: EU Court Adviser Says Google Shouldn't Have To Enforce A French RTBF Request Anywhere But In Europe
Re: Re: This is why we shouldn't use the passive voice
Because remembering things for as long as they're relevant is the default state, as is using technology to improve our performance in essentially everything we do, good, bad, or neutral.
Just because you believe that something from the past is no longer relevant doesn't mean it's not relevant to me. In fact, I'd submit that an interested party is the least qualified to make such a judgment.
You're kidding... right? Because, as Luke Skywalker famously put it, every word you just said is wrong.
It absolutely is public criminal records and news publications. Just have a look at past stories on the subject.
I was born well over 15 years ago, and my wife has embarrassing baby pictures of me. She got them from my sister, who got them from my mom's old photo albums. Older generations didn't need the Internet for that!
Likewise, being more than 15 years old, sexting was never a thing for me or my classmates. It is now, unfortunately, and it is stupid crap teens do today. It's something they need to learn is a bad idea because it can ruin their life. A lot of people like to claim that teens aren't mature enough to reason about long-term consequences, but this is patently absurd in the light of the vast majority of teens who do in fact manage to make it to adulthood alive and without doing something stupid that screws up their life. (Despite abundant opportunities to do so!) This is just one other thing today's generation needs to be aware of, and forcing other people to take responsibility for their mistakes by cleaning up after them is the exact opposite of the right thing to do in this case!
I still remember everyone I dated in high school. They make for some great stories to look back on with my wife and laugh about. Why should anyone have the power to erase that?!?
On the post: Chinese Police Now Performing Door-To-Door Twitter Censorship
Re:
On the post: EU Court Adviser Says Google Shouldn't Have To Enforce A French RTBF Request Anywhere But In Europe
This is why we shouldn't use the passive voice
Forgotten by whom? By people other than yourself.
Put into the proper active voice, this is the "right to compel others to forget about you." Which sounds ridiculously dystopian, like something out of a Philip K. Dick story.
On the post: There's One Encouraging Thought Buried In Zuckerberg's 2019 Challenge
Re:
Wasn't the Web originally pitched to us all as a decentralized system? But as things got bigger, they consolidated.
There are both advantages and disadvantages to both centralization and decentralization, but history has shown that at large scale, economies of scale (one of the advantages of centralization) will always win out. What makes Tim Berners-Lee (or anyone else) think it will be different this time around?
On the post: There's One Encouraging Thought Buried In Zuckerberg's 2019 Challenge
Re: Re:
that the person presenting it is insincere, based on past actions. As I said, if this is actually sincere, it would be a good idea and should be recognized as such. On the other hand, keep in mind the track record of who we're dealing with.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."
On the post: Another Day, Another Massive Cellular Location Data Privacy Scandal We'll Probably Do Nothing About
Re: Pessimism is anti-American
On the post: There's One Encouraging Thought Buried In Zuckerberg's 2019 Challenge
Yes we should, if we believed that 1) he'd actually do it and 2) he wouldn't find some way to pervert it into something that gives Facebook even more power in some way.
Given Facebook's track record, this is a pretty big if!
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