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This Week In Techdirt History: July 7th – 13th

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from the that-was-that dept

Sat, Jul 13th 2024 12:00pm -

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, we wrote about how getting rid of Section 230 would just strengthen the internet giants, the dangers of forthcoming deep fake legislation, and why thinking of privacy as a property right would end badly. We looked at the backwards approach of the UK’s online harms legislation, while UK ISPs were vilifying Mozilla for trying to secure the internet. An appeals court affirmed the ruling that Trump couldn’t block follows on social media, which quickly led to a lawsuit against AOC. And Prenda’s John Steele insisted he was very, very sorry as he got sentenced to five years in prison.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, we learned about how Hollywood studios tried to get file sharing sites added to New Zealand’s CSAM blacklist, while Keurig was demonstrating its terrible idea for coffee DRM, and Aereo was pivoting in reaction to the ruling against it. New emails revealed that the NSA knew in advance about GCHQ’s plan to destroy The Guardian’s computers, Lindsey Graham was offering up a hysterical defense of NSA abuse, and the US Courts wiretap report showed just how easy it was to get wiretaps. Also, the judge in Ross Ulbricht’s trial was not impressed by his “bitcoin isn’t money” defense.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the RIAA was fast out of the gates in attempting to extend the interpretation of its victory over Usenet.com, the future of the Pirate Bay was uncertain (and some of the reporting on it was incorrect), and an appeals court punted on the constitutionality of the Copyright Royalty Board, while the Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, Christian Engstrom, was explaining the party’s position and goals. One court worryingly decided that blogs aren’t legitimate news sources and don’t get shield protections, while another decided that IP addresses aren’t personally identifiable information. And the Shepard Fairey case about transformative works got even more complicated.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re:

Fun fact: Left-wing terrorism usually focuses on causing property damage.

Fun fact: Right-wing terrorism usually focuses on taking people’s lives.

Fun fact: Most terrorists are right-wingers.

In other words, the shooter was most likely someone who aligned with the Republican Party. I have always believed that if someone were to kill the former president, it would be a fellow Republican who thinks that Trump is not extreme enough.

Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re:

There is an equally plausible chance that the shooter is someone with left-leaning political views who took at shot at Trump based on all the “Trump is a threat to democracy” rhetoric. We don’t know anything about the shooter at the moment (other than “they’re dead”), so let’s try to avoid baseless speculation and concentrate on the facts as they become clearer.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4

And yet, no credible news source has reported so much as the shooter’s name, let alone anything to do with their political affiliation. Speculation without facts is baseless and therefore meritless. Bring verified facts from credible sources to the discussion or fuck off⁠—and no, InfoWars is not a credible source.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:9

someone divinely-protected

One would think that a man under the protection of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent supernatural deity with the power to make and unmake existence as we know it wouldn’t get so much as scratched without the explicit permission of that deity. So why did God let Trump get hit?

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:10

God knows how to run a successful campaign. That’s why he let Trump survive miraculously but still be bloodied–for the photo op.

Biden is literally demented and soiled his pants on stage. Meanwhile, President Trump shrugs off a literal gunshot wound and tells his supporters to keep up the fight for victory.

You couldn’t script this better, and libs are seeeeething.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:9

Now is a good point for a reminder: “Breaking news” may be first, but it isn’t necessarily correct.

…and I know you didn’t bring this up, and neither has anyone else, but since I’m gonna duck out after this comment, I’mma go ahead and say it here and now:

In the coming hours, days, weeks, and months, conservatives will blame Joe Biden, Democrats, and “the left” in general for inciting violence against Donald Trump. Conservatives will claim that talk of Trump and his acolytes being threats to democracy inspired someone to take a shot at Ol’ Donny. They will say a lot of things about political violence and toning down rhetoric and all that (right before Trump says something to undercut that obvious bullshit).

Don’t fall for it.

Yes, the idea that someone was inspired to shoot at Trump to “protect democracy” is entirely plausible. But the rhetoric of Biden/Democrats/“the left” has been focusing primarily on the threat that Trumpian policies present to the nation and the fact that Trump/GOP victories in the election means those policies will get rammed through a friendly Congress and rubberstamped by a friendly SCOTUS. And as much as the rhetoric has been tinged with somewhat violent language (e.g., the usual “we have to fight” type of speech), Biden or Democrats have never seriously talked about committing actual violence against Trump or Republicans. Donald Trump is the one who has either asked his followers to commit violence on his behalf, used worse language when talking about Biden/Democrats than they have used against him, and endorsed candidates/approved of conservative pundits talking about political violence and civil war and all that. (“Some folks need killing”, for example.) If either major political wing has committed to using stochastic terrorism as a means to a political end, it’s the right wing.

Something does strike me as amusing in a dark way, though. Conservatives have been more than happy to claim that Trump’s obvious stochastic terrorism was anything but, and now they’ll claim that Democrat rhetoric about the threat Trump/conservative policies pose to American democracy is nothing but stochastic terrorism. Republicans (especially Trump) will likely ramp up their rhetoric as Democrats tone theirs down⁠—and when an act of political violence is aimed at Democrats, Republicans will refuse to take any responsibility for their rhetoric while demanding that Democrats take full responsibility for theirs. Every accusation, a confession⁠—all it takes is time.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:9

The shooter was a 20 year-old local to Butler County. Pictures of him alive and then dead circulated on X long before the lamestream media would touch them. In fact, videos of the shooter shooting, and the shooter being shot were on X when the Washington Post had nothing. That regime stenographers at failing entities like the NYTimes haven’t already fed you every detail of this Attack on Our Democracy and the Future President isn’t my fault.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:6

Pictures (alive and blown-away) and info on the Shooter’s Identity are already circulating on [Twitter]

How many of those images have come from verified and credible sources? How much of that information has been independently verified by credible sources or released by law enforcement (including federal agencies)?

If the answer to both questions is “none”, your claims have no merit. I don’t need to search for a bunch of bullshit to know it’s bullshit. If it were real factual information, you’d be able to repeat it and credit a credible source for that information. So please, give me specific and verifiable information from credible sources or give yourself the dignity of going away with only slight humiliation.

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PaulT (profile) says:

Re: Re: Re:4

Since you mentioned Infowars, I’ll just mention that a few days ago Alex Jones went on a truly disgusting rant where he’s still claiming that Sandy Hook was a false flag, while misrepresenting the content of the publicly available deposition recordings. He’s doing that because he knows his audience is too stupid and lazy to check, and because he’s desperately trying to move his income stream to his Dad’s company, which he mistakenly believes will be exempt from paying the victims of his actions over several years, which included employing or funding people who hounded the families of the victims.

So, it’s worth waiting for confirmation from a credible source about this incident. As I search now, I’m not seeing a credible source identify the shooter, so I’ll assume claims of “ANTIFA” are as credible as his claims that he’s fighting literal demons and that COVID was a race-specific bioweapon – that is, not credible. Though, I’m sure he’ll have a heavily edited demo reel in a few months to pretend that when he’s been saying that someone will try to kill Trump that he was prophetic. He’s not, he just makes so many “predictions” that something looks similar to an event that happened.

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Anonymous Coward says:

Re: Re: Re:3

NBC finally reporting that the shooter has been identified. Let’s see if they’ll name him, next.

Federal investigators have tentatively identified the man who shot at Trump today in Pennsylvania: He is about 20 and is from Pennsylvania, according to five senior U.S. law enforcement officials briefed on the matter.

This info was already available on Elon Musk’s X.

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Stephen T. Stone (profile) says:

Re:

Let’s get a few things straight here.

  1. As of this moment, nothing is known about the shooter, other than the fact that they’re dead.
  2. To say the shooter had a certain set of political motivations without any evidence to back up the claim means you’re engaging in pointless speculation.
  3. You’re attempting to further divide Americans by acting as if “libs” wouldn’t condemn this Congressional Democrats and even President Biden have condemned the shooting.
  4. Political violence of any kind, targeting any politician regardless of party affiliation, is unacceptable; in an ideal world, everyone would condemn such violence.
  5. We don’t live in an ideal world, which means someone will try to get “revenge” for this shooting and potentially start a cycle of horrific political violence.
  6. Before you think to asl: Yes, despite my ceaseless core-of-my-being hatred of Donald Trump, I condemn the shooting and anyone else who attempts any other kind of violence against Trump or any other Republican lawmaker or candidate.
  7. The chances of Donald Trump winning the 2024 election will look much better for him because of this shooting, which is yet another reason to condemn it.

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Anonymous Coward says:

The shooter, some white guy registered as republican.

So … wild speculation is wrong again, go figure.
Tell us all again how this was a liberal .. idiots.

Trying to recall something Donald said after several children were shot in Iowa, one died. Here it is:

““It’s just horrible, so surprising to see it here. But have to get over it, we have to move forward,””

I think we all should follow Donald’s advice in this matter.

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