How will they go about terminating officers with the union contract in place? Does a lack of funding cause layoff's, and does that contract actually allow that?
Minnesota statutes allow a city or county to either employ for itself a policing force, or it may contract with another jurisdiction for that service, per MNS 436.05. Also, MNS 471.59 specifically permits the rescission of a policing contract.
I have no experience negotiating such things, but I suspect that the first stop for the union won't be a court, but the NLRB. If not, I'm pretty sure the court will "advise" the plaintiffs of their rights, and their duties in following, and exhausting, the proper course of administrative action first. ;)
I have read that Officer Derek Chauvin will collect his $50,000 per year pension even if he is convicted and serving a prison sentence, something the union arranged for their members.
You can bet your bottom shekel that a civil "wrongful death" lawsuit brought by Floyd's estate will latch on that that money, mosh-kosh. Chauvin can thank O.J. Simpson for that precedent. Ditto for any monies tendered for books, movies, magazine articles and the like.
And, I'm pretty sure that no contract ever written, even by a police union, can have a clause to the effect of overriding or frustrating a court's decision. But IANAL, so go lightly on the grains of salt.
What is wrong with everyone just thinking for themselves?
That would require the development of critical thinking, something that's been frowned upon by politicians for generations. For reassurance of that little factoid, consider H.L. Mecken's quote from 1920:
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
That prediction came to pass just 96 years later. Also, Mencken had much more to say on politics, I suggest that you search him out.
I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear (at all) that I personally don't like, nor do I easily advocate, bankruptcy for all the reasons you indicate. But I had hoped that my reasoning would've been obvious, that one can indeed hew to higher principles and expose the dirty laundry, even if doing so might might endanger one's equilibrium in life.
Where I come from contract law is based on the very definition of tort - that of a harm, or an alleged harm, to the offended party. Contract law, and the ensuing contracts springing therefrom, is a an attempt to apply uniformity to the enforcement of contracts, with varying results. Said variances being negotiated and adjudicated by the courts.
FWIW, an injunction against further offending conduct is not considered a punishment or a form of recompense, it is merely a stemming of behavior that might continue to cause damage, that's all. Yes, courts can impress upon you a more harsh remedy for failure to abide by any such injunction, however, such a remedy will inure not to the offended party, but to the court itself. You can be sure that no contract will stand that implies that a court will automatically grant the offended party's wish for non-monetary recompense.
I think you'll find that nearly every state has laws on their books that closely follow the definitions found in Horn's Second Restatement of Torts. Much of contract law is based on this very tome, though certainly not all of it. You can easily discern this for yourself by perusing your state's version of the U.C.C.
And finally, my experience is certainly not vast. All I did was ask if others had differing experiences in their law careers. Times do change, and it's been a long time since I occupied a chair in a law office.
It is my thought that even the financial backers of a given candidate might want to know more than just the usual BS the candidate has been feeding him/her all along. So it would follow that the solution is obvious: unless violating the terms of the NDA involves a quiet (and permanent) disappearance in the middle of the night, then go ahead and blab. When they try to enforce the agreement, just declare bankruptcy. After all, they can't demand in return for your agreement that you owe them anything else besides money. (In all of the jurisprudence I've ever seen, monetary compensation is the only acceptable recompense for a tort. If my experience is too limited, please feel free to enlighten me.)
The proper argument to present in court is that NDA's were constructed to protect business secrets, usually those learned by an employee that then went to work for a competitor for whatever reason. But nearly all courts have struck down NDA's with no time limit, the usual accepted limit being 3 to 5 years. I can't imagine that after a campaign has run its course, anything would be damaging to the desired results of said campaign (the successful election of the candidate), so a time limit beyond that scope would be highly suspect of attempting to squelch one's right to speak freely.
Speaking of "giving up free speech", this isn't a governmental dictum (nor a court order), so one is still free to speak, but for the pain of potential monetary loss.
tl;dr:
The courts take a dim view of one party trying to suppress another party's speech long after the reason for that suppression has lost its value.
The answer would be yes, there was a "right' added by § 230, the right to be free of culpability for allegations, accusations and assignations of blame for the actions/words of another, without having to prove your innocence first, such actions/words being the basis of an actionable tort. The doctrine arises from the long-standing common law that no person can be held responsible for the actions of another without some kind of attachment such as parent/child, or a contractual relationship of some kind.
While 1A defines and supports the meaning of "free speech", it deliberately excludes private parties from such efforts to control said speech, thus giving rise to the efforts of butthurt asshelmets to seek compensation for their lack of a proper upbringing (i.e. getting whacked upside the head every time they whined "that's not fair!").
It's pretty difficult to use [any smartphone] without all this hoopla....
Seems to me that the proper answer is to use the phone only for what A.G. Bell designed it to do - make voice phone calls. Portability doesn't change that little factoid. Or didn't you ever stop to wonder why they still make "dumb phones"?
While I've always liked the nuclear option, I think in the long run that's not gonna keep other nations from pulling the same stunt, vis-a-vis the EU requiring each country to implement the Mathias Döpfner Guaranteed Personal Enrichment Directive. (aka Article 15 of the Copyright Directive.)
What would work better would be to continue the current balance by telling the "Will Whine For Money" news outlets they will be charged exactly the same amount as their snippet tax for the privilege of having their headlines appear on a Google results page. Yes, this flies in the face of Google, et al, claiming that their search results cannot be bought, but hey, the news organizations have only Mathias Döpfner to thank for this bogus attempt at redistributing unearned wealth.
Some EU nations, and France in particular, believe that the Internet respects borders. The planet will be rocked right out of its orbit when those ossified bureaucrats are replaced by the next generation, the ones that grew up with the internet as just another aspect of daily life. They are the ones who "get it", in that advertisers put their money where they eyeballs are, not where the aforementioned Whiners want them to put it.
You've praised the Lowered, so I'm going to pass you some more ammunition.
(I don't know who wrote this originally, it's certainly not mine. If you know the author, please leave a reply to that effect.)
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: "Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?"
Short answer:
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering."
The serious answer: Here's what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't...
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."
That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."
That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, "That's cool!"
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"
That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"
That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"
That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."
That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"
That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids. has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they're just "animals" - and you say, "well, ok then."
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.
What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2020, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.
You're almost correct, AC, in that buying government regulators has been a sport for over a century. (The first such regulatory act was in 1912, the Radio Act (simple titles were all the rage, back then). And no, the Wireless Ship Communications Act of 1910 doesn't count. That was to require all ships registered with US ports to carry functional radios, it had nothing to do with regulating them.)
However, it wasn't until 1934 that FCC was setup, and invested with powers to regulate not only radio, but telecommunications of all kinds. At the time, this was meant to include not only radio, but wired telecommunications, as in telegraph carriers. But it would seem that the courts have always interpreted that word to include all manner of non-face-to-face communications, excepting the Postal Service. Thus, the telcos banded together, and started waging war, pitting the states against the FCC where it benefited them, and vice-versa where needful (in their eyes).
To my understanding, unless there's a part of the Act that I can't find, then the FCC really does not have the authority to dissolve itself, nor to cast aside any of it's duties or responsibilities. Insofar as I can discern, the courts still haven't decided whether the FCC acted within the bounds placed upon it by Congress.
However, I do know this: Any time a government sets up a body for controlling something in order to protect the population from abuse, the people that stand to benefit the most from such regulation are exactly the ones who are not placed anywhere near that position of power. IOW, there's not even a semblance of balance to be seen betwixt and between the regulators, the regulatees, and the public at large. Raise your hands if you can spell "MONEY".....
I'm not too sure I'd be so quick to label this story as 'weak'. The questions you raise are good, and have been answered both here on TD and elsewhere. But the bottom line for most folks, whether they be FB users or FB haters, is that the Cambridge Analytica debacle proved that FB has no moral scruples whatsoever. And I mean, proved beyond any possible doubt.
The inescapable problem for FB is that they have a history of taking advantage of people's personal data. Stating things like "we will never mistreat your data" has less than no meaning to them. All that this Libra venture meant to them was yet another avenue to access private, personal data, and deeply financial data at that. Even if they simply worked to arbitrage the money flow (shady at best, but done every day by the big boys...), they'd still be untrustworthy to the maximum degree possible.
Submitting to any degree of government oversight would expose this kind of behavior, and would tend to reduce profits from triple or quadruple digits down to double digits.... and Mark can't have that, now can he?
These garbage fans.... [a]re not smart people or wise people. They're spiteful people who are unable to exercise restraint. They're the kind of people that make other people say stupid stuff about regulating speech. Let's not encourage assholes.
I'm confused here. Are you referring to sports fans with the maturity of a two-year-old, or to Trump-ettes? Insofar as I can tell, there's not much difference between the two groups.
Looks like someone needs to read the summary.... the teen said explicitly that she might be logged into as many as 17 accounts, or as few as 4, it all depends on what the group has scheduled (presumably outside of the usual social media accounts, but who knows). I took that to mean that she can do several accounts concurrently, not consecutively over a week's time. And about the only thing that the advertisers are able to do is, more or less, serve ads that would likely appeal to teens, not to say, pre-teens or adults. Not much individual targeting to glean from that, I imagine.
Seems to me that Disney didn't "ask", they demanded, with lawyers yet.
What gripes me the most is that the sheep simply folded without so much as a "huh?", and paid the bastards. (If they did seek a lawyer's advice, I wasn't aware of that. But any good lawyer would've at least said "let me look into this for you", and come back with "Nah, don't bother, they're full of shit.")
In some states, but probably not all of them, Legislatures have granted power to people to institute an HOA, or a Condo, or a Time Share, and other names for what is increasingly becoming known as Common Interest Ownership communities.
Where I live, in Washington state, what we used to see was that the body of law granted pretty loosely defined powers to these organizations. When contests arose, the courts pretty much held that such organizations were indeed a "4th level of government". (After State, County and City, if so jurisdictioned.) This lead to HOA's winning just about 90% of the time.
In 2018, State law was not just amended, it was completely re-written to say that all such organizations were now subject to many additional restrictions. But for the purposes of this article and discussion, the salient point is that "No Common Interest Ownership community shall write any Article of Incorporation, or By-law, or Covenant, Condition & Restriction (CCRs) that conflicts with either Federal, State or local law or regulation". To my knowledge, this has yet to be tested in court, time will tell if this can withstand judicial scrutiny.
Whereupon Pink Floyd then gives it all up to Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford.
Yes, that Berry Gordy who started Motown Records, nee Tamla Records. Barrett Strong singing "Money" was his 8th release, and the propellant to MoTown becoming a force in the music biz.
Fun fact: Barrett Strong was also the author of "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and other Motown hits.
Fun fact #2: The song was originally released in 1959, right in the midst of the Payola Scandal. Good times, good times. ;)
What I predict now is that there will be more than one lawsuit to stop this law from taking effect:
a) The law cites no valid reason to interfere with commerce, other than "oh noes, the giants are making money and not sharing it with their employees". It would be interesting to learn just how many freelancers contacted Lorena and asked for this bill.
b) The law pretty much circumvents IRS rules regarding the long-standing "Smell Test". How does the law (and by extension, Lorena) contemplate forcing a person to claim employee status to the State, and independent contractor status to the IRS? That's gonna go over real swell, I'm sure of that. </s>
I also foresee an out-of-state cottage industry that acts as an intermediary for freelancers. One submits an article to the agent, who tells the freelancer it's for XYZ magazine, but instead it ends up in the hands of the freelancer's usual buyer, Newspaper DEF. Change names, lather, rinse and repeat as often as necessary. Win for the newspaper, win for the freelancer, and a bit off the top for the agent. Enough of these out-of-state operations spring up, and the law becomes superfluous.
The folks I'd be worried about would be musicians. I can just imagine a bar owner telling a customer-favorite band that they can play no more than 3 nights a week for 3 months, the law says that the customers will have to find a new favorite band... and the bar owner gets to figure out how to survive the ups and downs in beer sales. I'd sure like to see Lorena reason out how this will force Uber/Lyft to pay drivers as employees.
On the post: Minneapolis City Council Votes Unanimously To Disband Its Police Department
Re:
Minnesota statutes allow a city or county to either employ for itself a policing force, or it may contract with another jurisdiction for that service, per MNS 436.05. Also, MNS 471.59 specifically permits the rescission of a policing contract.
I have no experience negotiating such things, but I suspect that the first stop for the union won't be a court, but the NLRB. If not, I'm pretty sure the court will "advise" the plaintiffs of their rights, and their duties in following, and exhausting, the proper course of administrative action first. ;)
You can bet your bottom shekel that a civil "wrongful death" lawsuit brought by Floyd's estate will latch on that that money, mosh-kosh. Chauvin can thank O.J. Simpson for that precedent. Ditto for any monies tendered for books, movies, magazine articles and the like.
And, I'm pretty sure that no contract ever written, even by a police union, can have a clause to the effect of overriding or frustrating a court's decision. But IANAL, so go lightly on the grains of salt.
On the post: Devin Nunes' Lawyer Tells Judge To Ignore Section 230, Because Twitter Is Anti-Devin Nunes
Re: The problem is much broader than Twitter
Reminds me of the old joke about how stupid people are similar to a slinky. Both are good for a laugh when you push them down the stairs.
On the post: Trump Campaign Is So Pathetic It Claims CNN Poll Is Defamatory; Demands Retraction
Re: Re: New cow, same pile..
That would require the development of critical thinking, something that's been frowned upon by politicians for generations. For reassurance of that little factoid, consider H.L. Mecken's quote from 1920:
"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
That prediction came to pass just 96 years later. Also, Mencken had much more to say on politics, I suggest that you search him out.
On the post: Trump Campaign Non-Disclosure Agreements Again Being Challenged In Court
Re: Re:
I'm sorry, I didn't make it clear (at all) that I personally don't like, nor do I easily advocate, bankruptcy for all the reasons you indicate. But I had hoped that my reasoning would've been obvious, that one can indeed hew to higher principles and expose the dirty laundry, even if doing so might might endanger one's equilibrium in life.
Where I come from contract law is based on the very definition of tort - that of a harm, or an alleged harm, to the offended party. Contract law, and the ensuing contracts springing therefrom, is a an attempt to apply uniformity to the enforcement of contracts, with varying results. Said variances being negotiated and adjudicated by the courts.
FWIW, an injunction against further offending conduct is not considered a punishment or a form of recompense, it is merely a stemming of behavior that might continue to cause damage, that's all. Yes, courts can impress upon you a more harsh remedy for failure to abide by any such injunction, however, such a remedy will inure not to the offended party, but to the court itself. You can be sure that no contract will stand that implies that a court will automatically grant the offended party's wish for non-monetary recompense.
I think you'll find that nearly every state has laws on their books that closely follow the definitions found in Horn's Second Restatement of Torts. Much of contract law is based on this very tome, though certainly not all of it. You can easily discern this for yourself by perusing your state's version of the U.C.C.
And finally, my experience is certainly not vast. All I did was ask if others had differing experiences in their law careers. Times do change, and it's been a long time since I occupied a chair in a law office.
sumgai
On the post: Trump Campaign Non-Disclosure Agreements Again Being Challenged In Court
It is my thought that even the financial backers of a given candidate might want to know more than just the usual BS the candidate has been feeding him/her all along. So it would follow that the solution is obvious: unless violating the terms of the NDA involves a quiet (and permanent) disappearance in the middle of the night, then go ahead and blab. When they try to enforce the agreement, just declare bankruptcy. After all, they can't demand in return for your agreement that you owe them anything else besides money. (In all of the jurisprudence I've ever seen, monetary compensation is the only acceptable recompense for a tort. If my experience is too limited, please feel free to enlighten me.)
The proper argument to present in court is that NDA's were constructed to protect business secrets, usually those learned by an employee that then went to work for a competitor for whatever reason. But nearly all courts have struck down NDA's with no time limit, the usual accepted limit being 3 to 5 years. I can't imagine that after a campaign has run its course, anything would be damaging to the desired results of said campaign (the successful election of the candidate), so a time limit beyond that scope would be highly suspect of attempting to squelch one's right to speak freely.
Speaking of "giving up free speech", this isn't a governmental dictum (nor a court order), so one is still free to speak, but for the pain of potential monetary loss.
tl;dr:
The courts take a dim view of one party trying to suppress another party's speech long after the reason for that suppression has lost its value.
On the post: Think Of The Kitten: A Crash Course On Section 230
The answer would be yes, there was a "right' added by § 230, the right to be free of culpability for allegations, accusations and assignations of blame for the actions/words of another, without having to prove your innocence first, such actions/words being the basis of an actionable tort. The doctrine arises from the long-standing common law that no person can be held responsible for the actions of another without some kind of attachment such as parent/child, or a contractual relationship of some kind.
While 1A defines and supports the meaning of "free speech", it deliberately excludes private parties from such efforts to control said speech, thus giving rise to the efforts of butthurt asshelmets to seek compensation for their lack of a proper upbringing (i.e. getting whacked upside the head every time they whined "that's not fair!").
sumgai
On the post: Many Think Internet Privacy Is Lost, But That's Because You Can't Sue Anyone Who Violates It
Seems to me that the proper answer is to use the phone only for what A.G. Bell designed it to do - make voice phone calls. Portability doesn't change that little factoid. Or didn't you ever stop to wonder why they still make "dumb phones"?
On the post: Let. The Motherfucker. Burn.
Re: Re:
Would that be "95% of all cops are giving the rest of them a bad name."?
On the post: Yes, This Site Uses Cookies, Because Nearly All Sites Use Cookies, And We're Notifying You Because We're Told We Have To
'Sfunny, I don't see any such notice. Perhaps AdGuard is earning its keep after all.
The rest of what I have to say is just so much blathering of an old curmudgeon, so I'll get off of your lawn now.....
On the post: Australia Gives Up Any Pretense: Pushes Straight Up Tax On Facebook & Google To Pay News Orgs
Re:
While I've always liked the nuclear option, I think in the long run that's not gonna keep other nations from pulling the same stunt, vis-a-vis the EU requiring each country to implement the Mathias Döpfner Guaranteed Personal Enrichment Directive. (aka Article 15 of the Copyright Directive.)
What would work better would be to continue the current balance by telling the "Will Whine For Money" news outlets they will be charged exactly the same amount as their snippet tax for the privilege of having their headlines appear on a Google results page. Yes, this flies in the face of Google, et al, claiming that their search results cannot be bought, but hey, the news organizations have only Mathias Döpfner to thank for this bogus attempt at redistributing unearned wealth.
Some EU nations, and France in particular, believe that the Internet respects borders. The planet will be rocked right out of its orbit when those ossified bureaucrats are replaced by the next generation, the ones that grew up with the internet as just another aspect of daily life. They are the ones who "get it", in that advertisers put their money where they eyeballs are, not where the aforementioned Whiners want them to put it.
On the post: Happy Birthday, Statute of Anne
Re:
Stephen,
You've praised the Lowered, so I'm going to pass you some more ammunition.
(I don't know who wrote this originally, it's certainly not mine. If you know the author, please leave a reply to that effect.)
An anguished question from a Trump supporter: "Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?"
Short answer:
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering."
The serious answer: Here's what we really think about Trump supporters - the rich, the poor, the malignant and the innocently well-meaning, the ones who think and the ones who don't...
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine."
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay."
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem."
That when he made up stories about seeing muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue."
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you chirped, "He sure knows me."
That when you heard him illustrate his own character by telling that cute story about the elderly guest bleeding on the floor at his country club, the story about how he turned his back and how it was all an imposition on him, you said, "That's cool!"
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?"
That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense."
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!"
That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!"
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!"
That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be."
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!"
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!"
That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense."
That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!"
That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids. has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they're just "animals" - and you say, "well, ok then."
That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise.
What you don't get, Trump supporters in 2020, is that succumbing to frustration and thinking of you as stupid may be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.
Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.
On the post: Bad Idea Is Bad: Senator Sasse Wants To Give Whoever Patents COVID-19 Treatments 10 Extra Years Of Patent Protection
Re: Why don’t we have nice things
Shouldn't that be "All your money are belong to us"?
On the post: Ex-FCC Staffer Says FCC Authority Given Up In Net Neutrality Repeal Sure Would Prove Handy In A Crisis
Re:
You're almost correct, AC, in that buying government regulators has been a sport for over a century. (The first such regulatory act was in 1912, the Radio Act (simple titles were all the rage, back then). And no, the Wireless Ship Communications Act of 1910 doesn't count. That was to require all ships registered with US ports to carry functional radios, it had nothing to do with regulating them.)
However, it wasn't until 1934 that FCC was setup, and invested with powers to regulate not only radio, but telecommunications of all kinds. At the time, this was meant to include not only radio, but wired telecommunications, as in telegraph carriers. But it would seem that the courts have always interpreted that word to include all manner of non-face-to-face communications, excepting the Postal Service. Thus, the telcos banded together, and started waging war, pitting the states against the FCC where it benefited them, and vice-versa where needful (in their eyes).
To my understanding, unless there's a part of the Act that I can't find, then the FCC really does not have the authority to dissolve itself, nor to cast aside any of it's duties or responsibilities. Insofar as I can discern, the courts still haven't decided whether the FCC acted within the bounds placed upon it by Congress.
However, I do know this: Any time a government sets up a body for controlling something in order to protect the population from abuse, the people that stand to benefit the most from such regulation are exactly the ones who are not placed anywhere near that position of power. IOW, there's not even a semblance of balance to be seen betwixt and between the regulators, the regulatees, and the public at large. Raise your hands if you can spell "MONEY".....
sumgai
On the post: Facebook Still Can't Admit That Launching Libra During An International Privacy Scandal Is Idiotic
Re: Weak story. . .
I'm not too sure I'd be so quick to label this story as 'weak'. The questions you raise are good, and have been answered both here on TD and elsewhere. But the bottom line for most folks, whether they be FB users or FB haters, is that the Cambridge Analytica debacle proved that FB has no moral scruples whatsoever. And I mean, proved beyond any possible doubt.
The inescapable problem for FB is that they have a history of taking advantage of people's personal data. Stating things like "we will never mistreat your data" has less than no meaning to them. All that this Libra venture meant to them was yet another avenue to access private, personal data, and deeply financial data at that. Even if they simply worked to arbitrage the money flow (shady at best, but done every day by the big boys...), they'd still be untrustworthy to the maximum degree possible.
Submitting to any degree of government oversight would expose this kind of behavior, and would tend to reduce profits from triple or quadruple digits down to double digits.... and Mark can't have that, now can he?
On the post: Sixth Circuit: Criticizing Refs Is Protected Speech, Even If Lots Of Sports Fans Are Assholes
I'm confused here. Are you referring to sports fans with the maturity of a two-year-old, or to Trump-ettes? Insofar as I can tell, there's not much difference between the two groups.
On the post: As The World Frets Over Social Media Tracking For Advertising, Young People Are Turning Fooling Sites Into Sport
Re:
Looks like someone needs to read the summary.... the teen said explicitly that she might be logged into as many as 17 accounts, or as few as 4, it all depends on what the group has scheduled (presumably outside of the usual social media accounts, but who knows). I took that to mean that she can do several accounts concurrently, not consecutively over a week's time. And about the only thing that the advertisers are able to do is, more or less, serve ads that would likely appeal to teens, not to say, pre-teens or adults. Not much individual targeting to glean from that, I imagine.
On the post: Disney's Licensing Dogs Charge Underserved School District A Third Of Fundraiser Money For Playing 'Lion King' DVD
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Seems to me that Disney didn't "ask", they demanded, with lawyers yet.
What gripes me the most is that the sheep simply folded without so much as a "huh?", and paid the bastards. (If they did seek a lawyer's advice, I wasn't aware of that. But any good lawyer would've at least said "let me look into this for you", and come back with "Nah, don't bother, they're full of shit.")
On the post: Home Owners Association Threatens Residents With Lawsuit For Online Criticism
Let's see the middle ground
In some states, but probably not all of them, Legislatures have granted power to people to institute an HOA, or a Condo, or a Time Share, and other names for what is increasingly becoming known as Common Interest Ownership communities.
Where I live, in Washington state, what we used to see was that the body of law granted pretty loosely defined powers to these organizations. When contests arose, the courts pretty much held that such organizations were indeed a "4th level of government". (After State, County and City, if so jurisdictioned.) This lead to HOA's winning just about 90% of the time.
In 2018, State law was not just amended, it was completely re-written to say that all such organizations were now subject to many additional restrictions. But for the purposes of this article and discussion, the salient point is that "No Common Interest Ownership community shall write any Article of Incorporation, or By-law, or Covenant, Condition & Restriction (CCRs) that conflicts with either Federal, State or local law or regulation". To my knowledge, this has yet to be tested in court, time will tell if this can withstand judicial scrutiny.
sumgai
On the post: Germany Wants To Limit Memes And Mashups Derived From Press Publishers' Material To 128-by-128 Pixels In Resolution, And Three Seconds In Length
Re: Re: Giving it back where it belongs
Whereupon Pink Floyd then gives it all up to Berry Gordy and Janie Bradford.
Yes, that Berry Gordy who started Motown Records, nee Tamla Records. Barrett Strong singing "Money" was his 8th release, and the propellant to MoTown becoming a force in the music biz.
Fun fact: Barrett Strong was also the author of "Heard It Through The Grapevine" and other Motown hits.
Fun fact #2: The song was originally released in 1959, right in the midst of the Payola Scandal. Good times, good times. ;)
sumgai
On the post: Bad Laws And The Best Of Intentions: Law Designed To 'Protect' Gig Workers May Destroy Journalism Freelancers
Probable conflict on the horizon
What I predict now is that there will be more than one lawsuit to stop this law from taking effect:
a) The law cites no valid reason to interfere with commerce, other than "oh noes, the giants are making money and not sharing it with their employees". It would be interesting to learn just how many freelancers contacted Lorena and asked for this bill.
b) The law pretty much circumvents IRS rules regarding the long-standing "Smell Test". How does the law (and by extension, Lorena) contemplate forcing a person to claim employee status to the State, and independent contractor status to the IRS? That's gonna go over real swell, I'm sure of that. </s>
I also foresee an out-of-state cottage industry that acts as an intermediary for freelancers. One submits an article to the agent, who tells the freelancer it's for XYZ magazine, but instead it ends up in the hands of the freelancer's usual buyer, Newspaper DEF. Change names, lather, rinse and repeat as often as necessary. Win for the newspaper, win for the freelancer, and a bit off the top for the agent. Enough of these out-of-state operations spring up, and the law becomes superfluous.
The folks I'd be worried about would be musicians. I can just imagine a bar owner telling a customer-favorite band that they can play no more than 3 nights a week for 3 months, the law says that the customers will have to find a new favorite band... and the bar owner gets to figure out how to survive the ups and downs in beer sales. I'd sure like to see Lorena reason out how this will force Uber/Lyft to pay drivers as employees.
sumgai
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