The site needs a new tag, something to indicate that the article refers to the death of personal responsibility. That seems to be a pattern that grows with every passing day, and shows up in way too many posts here.
This is a great example of where money and power gets you in litigation, even at this early stage. A plaintiff on a budget would never be able to afford a lawyer who would put his reputation on the line for this kind of drivel.
"Want me to file your silly, performative litigation? That's gonna cost you extra."
The fact that none of these lawyers are any of the usual suspects isn't that surprising to me. He's either chased away the others, stiffed them, or thrown them under the bus to be arrested. That is how one-way loyalty works.
What we're discussing here is obviously quite different, legally speaking, from the concept of net neutrality, but the irony is not lost on me that they'd be proposing something similar to it to be used here. And all of their arguments as to why social media should bend the knee to them actually apply better to the telecom companies where NN is involved. The post-Trump Republican Party version of US political hypocrisy at its finest.
Mosby is a litigator whose job it is, objectively, to know the law. That she sent this request shows either a) she's ignorant of the law, or b) feels she's above it. Neither has a place among public legal officials, and at the very least, she should be held accountable for it.
Cops have been using protests against police violence to engage in police violence against journalists. The addition of federal cops to the heated mix in Portland, Oregon made this worse.
For some reason, I read this as "feral cops", and after further reflection, didn't change the overall meaning much.
I may be a non-lawyer and a non-constitutional scholar and not really grasping the intricacies of all this, but isn't forcing manufacturers to act as content editors violating the prohibition on government-compelled speech?
Sci-Hub obtains the papers through a variety of malicious means, such as the use of phishing emails to trick university staff and students into divulging their login credentials. Sci Hub then use this to compromise the university's network and download the research papers.
It is not lost on me that PIPCU cares far less about citations than SciHub's research papers do.
Oh, goody. I can't wait to have to deal with the cops on a weekly basis because a random nosy Karen in the neighborhood saw a 25ft portable dipole in my back yard.
On Monday, Georgia's (Republican) Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, spoke out, saying that Senator Lindsey Graham had called him and implied that Raffensperger should look to throw out ballots that were legally cast in the state.
I noticed that all of the "states rights" opinions that the Republicans are so adamant about are conspicuously missing. Weird, huh?
Between this, the GSA, and all of the other sycophants, there's little you can do to convince me that T**** (to borrow a Colbert habit) kicked it old school and just has career-ending smut on everybody that's enabling him. Makes the people he's "only fired" seem pretty virtuous.
Funny, I seem to remember the same comments about IBM back in the day. And Oracle. And Microsoft. And the big three TV networks. And Lotus spreadsheets. And Atari. And Clear Channel Radio. Companies that were too big or too popular to fail, and not all of them did. Everybody just stopped caring about them as much, as the next big thing whizzed by and took up the lead.
Relevance comes and goes at it's own leisure, no matter how much money you throw at it. A funny thing happens when you fight your way to the top: you get complacent about doing what it takes to stay there.
Whether or not you split up Google, sooner or later, some new kid on the block is gonna knock them off their mighty perch with the next killer app. Anybody who doesn't see that kind of cyclical process in tech hasn't been paying attention for the last 50 years. The wheels of justice aren't the only wheels that grind slowly.
I'm a little confused about this "barrier to entry" argument. How exactly is Google preventing others from competing? Does it have a patent on the robots.txt file, that it can exclude everybody else's crawlers? Does it tell web sites to deny entry to all but Google's own search agent?
I think somebody is confusing "barrier to entry" with "barrier to popularity". They say in their own motion, "[t]he creation, maintenance, and growth of a general search engine requires a significant capital investment, highly complex technology, access to effective distribution, and adequate scale." Did Google just conjure all of that out of thin air? No, they worked their asses off to develop it, and hired some of the best and brightest minds to implement it. Microsoft did the same thing, but spent way too much time shooting itself in the foot with some of its implementation decisions. That's why Bing doesn't have as much of a market share. And that's even after trying to ram their product down everybody's throats through their browser. Say what you will about the company itself, Google just creates a better product, even with all its warts.
Where you differentiate yourself is in value added services. Duck Duck Go is a perfect example. According to the DOJ, they have about a 2% market share. But hell, until Android came around, Linux never had a 2% market share in operating systems, and it had been around for a couple of decades at that point. So to be a new company and only single digits behind 800-lb gorilla Microsoft means you must be keeping things interesting. In their case, it's the privacy angle.
So DOJ, don't confuse barrier to entry with barrier to create a product that anybody's interested in.
A hypothetical thought exercise for a Tuesday afternoon:
Let's say I defamed random politician Joe Smith. Let's say that I don't do anything halfway, and that there is really no gray area here. I defamed him, and I defamed him good. I have all of $20 and a coupon for a free Slurpee as my assets, and Mr. Smith's representation knows this. Without liability protection, which includes section 230, other court precedent, and, well, you know, common fucking sense. Mr. Smith's lawyers might file a suit naming:
Me (as a matter of course).
The social media site that displayed my defamatory content.
My broadband provider, who's copper I transmitted my defamatory content.
The manufacturer of my computer, which I used to write the defamatory content.
The landlord of my apartment, where my computer is located.
The local electric utility, for providing me power to that computer.
My employer, for providing me a source of income to pay power and rent during the defamation.
My roommate, for subsidizing my living expenses incurred during the defamation (by splitting room and board).
Antifa for radicalizing me (not true and can't be proved, but when has that stopped anybody in our gov't).
John Does 1-25, because council is just absolutely convinced that I couldn't have accomplished such a dastardly deed on my own.
I'm sure your first reaction to this is that nobody would ever try and go that far, that it's an egregious use of judicial resources to even attempt it, and none of those associations would stick anyway.
I'm sure five years ago, you also would have agreed that somebody who was having to protect their very freedom and liberty in a court of law after voicing protected political opinions anonymously on the internet while pretending to be a cow was absurd, too. We are living in an era where nothing is too outrageous to make a buck off of.
No matter how absurd, every one of those named entities would have to expend money to defend themselves against baseless accusations, money that they wouldn't be able to recover. Now multiply that by 100 a day. And the bottom feeders that represent Mr. Smith would just keep raking in the billable hours.
If the past twenty years has taught us anything, it's that if you give unscrupulous opportunists even a little opening, they'll try to use it to establish precedent. How about we just take care of it now and do the right thing.
The summary of every Anti-230 bill in Congress right now:
The people who don't contribute nearly enough to our re-election campaigns, and don't provide nearly enough jobs and tax income for [insert legislator's home state here], are breaking no laws, and are, in fact, behaving in such a way that the law actually encourages.
They promote the free exchange of knowledge in an uncluttered marketplace of ideas by large multi-national corporations and private individuals alike, on a playing field more level than at any point in the history of the Earth. They combat those who would pollute that commons with self-serving tripe designed to foster division instead of cooperation, in favor of their own selfish interests.
They do all of this under a legal framework that mimics existing liability, present in our system for decades and backed by an immeasurable amount of common sense. It provides efficient ways to reduce court burden by offering a viable defense to those who have been wrongfully targeted by opportunists that would choose to simply shift blame to an entity with deeper pockets.
It's abhorrent and must be stopped [so that I can show people how tough I am during an election year].
We must do something [no matter how counterproductive].
Think of the children [and lawyers, but mostly lawyers].
One could be forgiven for thinking that the people who actually write laws would know that none of them are actually being broken. Hauling Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey into a Senate Hearing because you're butt-hurt should be considered professional malpractice, and in a perfect world, would hammer the last few nails into the coffin of your legislative career.
(untitled comment)
The site needs a new tag, something to indicate that the article refers to the death of personal responsibility. That seems to be a pattern that grows with every passing day, and shows up in way too many posts here.
(untitled comment)
I don't know what they're all worried about. It's "just" metadata.
Yes, that was snark.
(untitled comment)
This is a great example of where money and power gets you in litigation, even at this early stage. A plaintiff on a budget would never be able to afford a lawyer who would put his reputation on the line for this kind of drivel.
"Want me to file your silly, performative litigation? That's gonna cost you extra."
The fact that none of these lawyers are any of the usual suspects isn't that surprising to me. He's either chased away the others, stiffed them, or thrown them under the bus to be arrested. That is how one-way loyalty works.
(untitled comment)
What we're discussing here is obviously quite different, legally speaking, from the concept of net neutrality, but the irony is not lost on me that they'd be proposing something similar to it to be used here. And all of their arguments as to why social media should bend the knee to them actually apply better to the telecom companies where NN is involved. The post-Trump Republican Party version of US political hypocrisy at its finest.
(untitled comment)
Mosby is a litigator whose job it is, objectively, to know the law. That she sent this request shows either a) she's ignorant of the law, or b) feels she's above it. Neither has a place among public legal officials, and at the very least, she should be held accountable for it.
(untitled comment)
For some reason, I read this as "feral cops", and after further reflection, didn't change the overall meaning much.
(untitled comment)
I may be a non-lawyer and a non-constitutional scholar and not really grasping the intricacies of all this, but isn't forcing manufacturers to act as content editors violating the prohibition on government-compelled speech?
(untitled comment)
It is not lost on me that PIPCU cares far less about citations than SciHub's research papers do.
(untitled comment)
Oh, goody. I can't wait to have to deal with the cops on a weekly basis because a random nosy Karen in the neighborhood saw a 25ft portable dipole in my back yard.
Tim, KO4JZM
(untitled comment)
A Florida entity stepped up and did the right thing? The election and the vaccines are just an illusion. it seems we're still in the Upside Down.
--- a Floridian
Re:
Al Qaeda...can't even sarcasm without screwing it up today...
(untitled comment)
Al Jazeera...Al Quida...you mean that's not close enough for due process???
(untitled comment)
I noticed that all of the "states rights" opinions that the Republicans are so adamant about are conspicuously missing. Weird, huh?
Between this, the GSA, and all of the other sycophants, there's little you can do to convince me that T**** (to borrow a Colbert habit) kicked it old school and just has career-ending smut on everybody that's enabling him. Makes the people he's "only fired" seem pretty virtuous.
Re: Re:
Funny, I seem to remember the same comments about IBM back in the day. And Oracle. And Microsoft. And the big three TV networks. And Lotus spreadsheets. And Atari. And Clear Channel Radio. Companies that were too big or too popular to fail, and not all of them did. Everybody just stopped caring about them as much, as the next big thing whizzed by and took up the lead.
Relevance comes and goes at it's own leisure, no matter how much money you throw at it. A funny thing happens when you fight your way to the top: you get complacent about doing what it takes to stay there.
Whether or not you split up Google, sooner or later, some new kid on the block is gonna knock them off their mighty perch with the next killer app. Anybody who doesn't see that kind of cyclical process in tech hasn't been paying attention for the last 50 years. The wheels of justice aren't the only wheels that grind slowly.
(untitled comment)
I'm a little confused about this "barrier to entry" argument. How exactly is Google preventing others from competing? Does it have a patent on the robots.txt file, that it can exclude everybody else's crawlers? Does it tell web sites to deny entry to all but Google's own search agent?
I think somebody is confusing "barrier to entry" with "barrier to popularity". They say in their own motion, "[t]he creation, maintenance, and growth of a general search engine requires a significant capital investment, highly complex technology, access to effective distribution, and adequate scale." Did Google just conjure all of that out of thin air? No, they worked their asses off to develop it, and hired some of the best and brightest minds to implement it. Microsoft did the same thing, but spent way too much time shooting itself in the foot with some of its implementation decisions. That's why Bing doesn't have as much of a market share. And that's even after trying to ram their product down everybody's throats through their browser. Say what you will about the company itself, Google just creates a better product, even with all its warts.
Where you differentiate yourself is in value added services. Duck Duck Go is a perfect example. According to the DOJ, they have about a 2% market share. But hell, until Android came around, Linux never had a 2% market share in operating systems, and it had been around for a couple of decades at that point. So to be a new company and only single digits behind 800-lb gorilla Microsoft means you must be keeping things interesting. In their case, it's the privacy angle.
So DOJ, don't confuse barrier to entry with barrier to create a product that anybody's interested in.
(untitled comment)
A hypothetical thought exercise for a Tuesday afternoon:
Let's say I defamed random politician Joe Smith. Let's say that I don't do anything halfway, and that there is really no gray area here. I defamed him, and I defamed him good. I have all of $20 and a coupon for a free Slurpee as my assets, and Mr. Smith's representation knows this. Without liability protection, which includes section 230, other court precedent, and, well, you know, common fucking sense. Mr. Smith's lawyers might file a suit naming:
I'm sure your first reaction to this is that nobody would ever try and go that far, that it's an egregious use of judicial resources to even attempt it, and none of those associations would stick anyway.
I'm sure five years ago, you also would have agreed that somebody who was having to protect their very freedom and liberty in a court of law after voicing protected political opinions anonymously on the internet while pretending to be a cow was absurd, too. We are living in an era where nothing is too outrageous to make a buck off of.
No matter how absurd, every one of those named entities would have to expend money to defend themselves against baseless accusations, money that they wouldn't be able to recover. Now multiply that by 100 a day. And the bottom feeders that represent Mr. Smith would just keep raking in the billable hours.
If the past twenty years has taught us anything, it's that if you give unscrupulous opportunists even a little opening, they'll try to use it to establish precedent. How about we just take care of it now and do the right thing.
(untitled comment)
The summary of every Anti-230 bill in Congress right now:
(untitled comment)
As always, backpfeifengesicht...
(untitled comment)
One could be forgiven for thinking that the people who actually write laws would know that none of them are actually being broken. Hauling Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey into a Senate Hearing because you're butt-hurt should be considered professional malpractice, and in a perfect world, would hammer the last few nails into the coffin of your legislative career.
(untitled comment)
I'd make a comment about your penis being bricked, but that kind of sadism really belongs in other message fora....
More comments from Tim R >>
Techdirt has not posted any stories submitted by Tim R.
Submit a story now.
Tools & Services
TwitterFacebook
RSS
Podcast
Research & Reports
Company
About UsAdvertising Policies
Privacy
Contact
Help & FeedbackMedia Kit
Sponsor/Advertise
Submit a Story
More
Copia InstituteInsider Shop
Support Techdirt