I dont' disagree with the substance of this post, but the tone is a bit entitled sounding. Does the author somehow think sites have a *duty* to provide a comment section?
Phrases like "cheap and lazy", "grown tired", "admitting that they're not invested enough" suggest that not having comments is in and of itself some egregious transgression.
Allowing comments may be a positive thing in general, it may have benefits for the community, and a site may face general decline in readers if it doesn't have one, but if a site chooses not to allow comments, especially because moderating them has become too much of a burden, then that's not evil, is it?
Presenting that as "elevating" the conversation is disingenuous crap, but that's a separate issue. The outrage here seems directed at the notion of removing comments, not the notion of whitewashing the decision.
Suppose they pick 10% of the people at random. That means they are selecting 10% * 0.69% = 0.069% of the people. So there's a 99.931% chance of not being selected. If there is one terrorist out of 1.7M *every day*, it will take 1005 days (2.75 years) of random testing before it even becomes more likely than not that the terrorist is caught. It would take 4343 days before you have a 95% chance of catching the terrorist on just one of those days.
This isn't about security. It's about allowing your PR team to *say* you are taking a "proactive, protective measure" without *actually* lying while saying it.
"Civil forfeiture is an in rem proceeding against the property itself, not the owner of property."
We're just one step away from granting personhood to property! Call in the Supreme Court!
Owner: "You stole my property." Gov't: "No. Your property broke the law." Owner: "I'll take you to court." Gov't: "You don't have standing." Owner: Gov't:
Seriously, this is the point, and I'd be more blunt, though that might provoke more of an undesired response: "I'm invoking my rights because I believe you are doing something wrong, officer."
Shhhhh! CoLP have been infiltrated at the highest levels by an organization whose mission is to get CoLP disbanded. Their strategy is working perfectly. Just let it play out!
I don't have Comcast. I want to call to try to cancel and be "saved" into signing up for Comcast just so that I can then call to actually cancel and have the fun of thwarting the script.
Thanks to @RoninOne for pointing out that tools that block tracking cookies won't work for canvas fingerprinting. I just checked on Privacy Badger, since I recommended it, and it appears that it will work, but I'm just going off what is in their FAQ:
"If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila!"
Seems like that would work. However, there is a loophole that may or may not be open:
"In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page's functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies."
Disney is to be commended for its gay-friendly policies, but that is orthogonal to criticism of the norms it depicts and perpetuates in its products. Disney's products are part of our culture, independent of Disney as a company. Criticising our culture via criticism of products of that culture is entirely appropriate.
Disney's own internal policies only add irony to the criticism.
"In short, we should be reconsidering our current copyright laws rather than blaming this school."
Nope. We should do both. Practically speaking we should just do the latter. Your suggestion is hard to differentiate from a strawman a lobbyist (or shill) would use to seem responsive while ensuring the status quo.
Paraphrasing: "the right solution is not ."
The problem with that is that focusing people on the long-term and difficult thing is often just a way to put an issue on the back burner long enough that it's no longer in the headlines.
Theoretically our government should be the means to fixing this. The power imbalance you mention is inherent in our economic system, wherein consumers must transact with large corporations for most of their economic activity.
A corporation has the combined power and money of many people (employees and shareholders) which one or a few people, the executives, can deploy in a coordinated fashion for every transaction. An individual consumer has effectively no power to balance that if they don't like what the corporation is doing. The power to *not* do business with a large corporation is only effective when there is sufficient and strong enough competition, and only when the competition have not all adopted the same objectionable tactics. These conditions rarely hold.
So, how do consumers band together? Their government, at least in theory. The people can say, "we don't think binding mandatory arbitration is fair" and outlaw it. But this doesn't work anymore because business and money have too much influence on politicians and the people have too little.
That's what needs to be fixed. We need to eliminate business's ability to influence politics, or we need to form another political "collective bargaining" entity (like a "consumers' union" or something).
Re: Re: Re: And there you have people talk about how left wingers are naive
At one point the stats you ask about were posted, average 10th and 90th percentile. At the time I posted there were somewhere around 9000 supporters. Actually, perhaps that info was on the page you get after pledging money. Anyone pledged recently and seen this?
Yes, that's my point, in general and specifically in response to AC's and DCL's replies. Restating Michael: "Reasonable action" could just mean that she has the legal right to log into his accounts and have them deleted via the site's standard procedures. Or if she can't log in, to contact the site's administrators saying she represents her dead ex-husband and would like them removed. Anything he could have done easily by himself.
It seems possible to me that the judge might find the use of copyright takedown notices to be *unreasonable*.
Mike said, "First, the idea here is clearly to use copyright as a tool to delete Chris Mackney's online existence entirely."
I don't see where the judge suggests copyright is the tool to use. Is that spelled out anywhere. The judge gave Dina the legal power to do what she wants, and she and her lawyer may have chosen copyright as their tool, but the judge didn't really say or imply that, or did I miss that detail.
It seems Dina and her lawyer are the ones that got the coypright ball rolling, no?
It hurts my head every time I am forced to be conscious of the fact that Dubya was *president*! It's like a hammer hitting me on the head to remind me we don't live in a meritocracy. If Bush can succeed, one can only conclude that we live in a mediocracy.
On the post: Tennessee Town Passes Policy Banning Negative Comments About The Town's Government
Civilization has to be learned.
What this reminds me is that civilization is hard. It doesn't happen on its own. Idiocy can creep in anywhere.
On the post: St. Louis Post Dispatch Declares That Banning Editorial Comments Will 'Elevate The Ferguson Conversation'
Right to comment
Phrases like "cheap and lazy", "grown tired", "admitting that they're not invested enough" suggest that not having comments is in and of itself some egregious transgression.
Allowing comments may be a positive thing in general, it may have benefits for the community, and a site may face general decline in readers if it doesn't have one, but if a site chooses not to allow comments, especially because moderating them has become too much of a burden, then that's not evil, is it?
Presenting that as "elevating" the conversation is disingenuous crap, but that's a separate issue. The outrage here seems directed at the notion of removing comments, not the notion of whitewashing the decision.
On the post: Chicago Transit Cops Start Up Their Own Security Theater, Will Start Randomly Swabbing Bags For Explosive Residue
Do the math
There are 1.7M riders per day, and 145 Stations (from http://www.transitchicago.com/about/facts.aspx).
Suppose they pick 10% of the people at random. That means they are selecting 10% * 0.69% = 0.069% of the people. So there's a 99.931% chance of not being selected. If there is one terrorist out of 1.7M *every day*, it will take 1005 days (2.75 years) of random testing before it even becomes more likely than not that the terrorist is caught. It would take 4343 days before you have a 95% chance of catching the terrorist on just one of those days.
This isn't about security. It's about allowing your PR team to *say* you are taking a "proactive, protective measure" without *actually* lying while saying it.
On the post: IRS Also More Than Willing To Steal Money Under The Pretense Of Crime Fighting
Re: Personhood
Owner: [ permanent sadness ]
Gov't: [ increased budget ]
On the post: IRS Also More Than Willing To Steal Money Under The Pretense Of Crime Fighting
Personhood
We're just one step away from granting personhood to property! Call in the Supreme Court!
Owner: "You stole my property."
Gov't: "No. Your property broke the law."
Owner: "I'll take you to court."
Gov't: "You don't have standing."
Owner:
Gov't:
On the post: Cop To Cameraman: 'If You're Invoking Your Rights, You Must Be Doing Something Wrong'
This
On the post: Former Senator Scott Brown's Staff Sends Larry Lessig A Letter Demanding He Stop Referring To Brown As A 'Lobbyist'
Re: I hope that isn't the actual ad because...
On the post: City Of London Police Issue Vague, Idiotic Warning To Registrars That They're Engaged In Criminal Behavior Because It Says So
Inside Job
On the post: Behind The Veil Part 2: Let's All Look At Comcast's Customer Retention Playbook For Its Employees!
Opposite
On the post: Internet Industry Hate Taken To Insane Levels: Ridiculous Proposals To 'Nationalize' Successful Internet Companies
Scared
On the post: Tons Of Sites, Including WhiteHouse.gov, In Unwitting AddThis Experiment With Tracking Technology That Is Difficult To Block
Re: Re: Not too hard to block - yet
"If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila!"
Seems like that would work. However, there is a loophole that may or may not be open:
"In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page's functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies."
FYI.
On the post: Tons Of Sites, Including WhiteHouse.gov, In Unwitting AddThis Experiment With Tracking Technology That Is Difficult To Block
Re: Not too hard to block - yet
On the post: College Pulls Support For Students' Parodic Musical Because It *Imagines* Disney Might Sue It
Re: While I agree
Disney's own internal policies only add irony to the criticism.
On the post: College Pulls Support For Students' Parodic Musical Because It *Imagines* Disney Might Sue It
Re: Re: The School's Fear Was Reasonable
Paraphrasing: "the right solution is [something long-term and difficult] not [something easy and immediate]".
On the post: College Pulls Support For Students' Parodic Musical Because It *Imagines* Disney Might Sue It
Re: The School's Fear Was Reasonable
Nope. We should do both. Practically speaking we should just do the latter. Your suggestion is hard to differentiate from a strawman a lobbyist (or shill) would use to seem responsive while ensuring the status quo.
Paraphrasing: "the right solution is not ."
The problem with that is that focusing people on the long-term and difficult thing is often just a way to put an issue on the back burner long enough that it's no longer in the headlines.
On the post: Ladar Levison Explains How The US Legal System Was Stacked Against Lavabit
Re: How do we fix it?
A corporation has the combined power and money of many people (employees and shareholders) which one or a few people, the executives, can deploy in a coordinated fashion for every transaction. An individual consumer has effectively no power to balance that if they don't like what the corporation is doing. The power to *not* do business with a large corporation is only effective when there is sufficient and strong enough competition, and only when the competition have not all adopted the same objectionable tactics. These conditions rarely hold.
So, how do consumers band together? Their government, at least in theory. The people can say, "we don't think binding mandatory arbitration is fair" and outlaw it. But this doesn't work anymore because business and money have too much influence on politicians and the people have too little.
That's what needs to be fixed. We need to eliminate business's ability to influence politics, or we need to form another political "collective bargaining" entity (like a "consumers' union" or something).
Our system is not fair until power is balanced.
On the post: Lessig's Anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC Raises First $1 Million In Just 12 Days
Re: Re: Re: And there you have people talk about how left wingers are naive
On the post: Court Tells Ex-Wife Of Husband Who Killed Himself To Use Copyright To Delete Anything He Ever Wrote Online
Re: Re: Did Judge say or suggest copyright?
It seems possible to me that the judge might find the use of copyright takedown notices to be *unreasonable*.
On the post: Court Tells Ex-Wife Of Husband Who Killed Himself To Use Copyright To Delete Anything He Ever Wrote Online
Did Judge say or suggest copyright?
I don't see where the judge suggests copyright is the tool to use. Is that spelled out anywhere. The judge gave Dina the legal power to do what she wants, and she and her lawyer may have chosen copyright as their tool, but the judge didn't really say or imply that, or did I miss that detail.
It seems Dina and her lawyer are the ones that got the coypright ball rolling, no?
On the post: George W. Bush Used Top Google Results For All His Paintings; Will He Be Sued For Copyright Infringement?
Meritocracy, hah! Mediocracy, surely.
Next >>