Telling a bigot that they are a bigot isn’t bullying or do you think it’s unfair to call bigots and assholes for what they are? Should we just roll over and let them spew their shit without saying anything because it would hurt their feelings?

Btw, I do love how you try to frame a bigots views as “minority views” – regardless of your desire to polish a turd, it is still just shit.

Oh, everyone gets their comments held in moderation from time to time – that you don’t think people have more important things to do than waiting for some bigot to post just to make sure the post is held in moderation is a you-problem and have nothing todo with factual reality.

Or is it just because the first individual was being bullied for a minority viewpoint (blame the user, not the tool) rather than being bullied as a member of a minority group

Blaming the user or abuser does not obligate everyone to ignore the problematic aspects of a tool. I can simultaneously blame a school shooter’s damaged background and criticize how easy it was for him to have access to dangerous firearms.

But, relevant to the topic of copyright, there are indeed issues with the tool. Namely: the huge maximum fines that plaintiffs and enforcers use as a threat to harass defendants into compliance (even though maximum penalties are rarely actively sought by plaintiffs and enforced by judges in the courtroom); the absurdly low standard of proof that plaintiffs bring to the table to demand identifying information with, despite questionable accuracy of their IP address evidence; the many options given to a plaintiff to pull out of a lawsuit the moment things don’t go their way or a judge requests for more evidence; and the ridiculous claims that a “life + 70 years” is necessary to motivate creators to make anything at all and we’d be irreparably damaged if that length was ever shortened, while the public domain continues to be encroached upon.

The way copyright is structured now staggeringly favors a plaintiff who wants to demand a settlement fee from a random person, then absolve themselves of all responsibility and costs as soon as it looks like the courts might get involved by yeeting themselves out of the case. Prenda Law, Evan Stone, Malibu Media, Andrew Crossley, SMAIS and all sorts of copyright enforcers and plaintiffs got as far as they did precisely because they’d followed the RIAA playbook and nobody thought there was anything amiss, until defense lawyers and judges started doing their homework and realizing that something was wrong.

Now, having a different view regarding copyright doesn’t make you a bigot. But a claim that criticizing copyright trolls convinces them to campaign for more favorable laws is a weak one. It’s the equivalent of saying “Rapists don’t like it when people criticize rapists and it’ll just make them rape people even more so we shouldn’t do anything about them”.

And for context, all this discussion was on an article pointing out how a company came close to unmasking an anonymous critic through a copyright claim, after using copyright law to demand that Twitter take down a tweet containing photos. Photos that did not have any registered copyright until after the tweet was made, meaning that it was clearly applied by a shell company solely for the purpose of harassing and unmasking an anonymous individual, not because copyright law had been violated. The fact that a shell company can hold onto copyright while refusing to reveal any information – contacts, employment, or otherwise – is entirely because copyright law allows them to. Criticism of the tool here is wholly, completely deserved.