This Week In Techdirt History: November 3rd – 9th
from the as-you-were dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2019, we noted how the FCC’s freakout about Huawei was out of step with the way it ignored the internet of broken things. We were not shocked to learn ISPs were cutting back 2020 investment plans despite all the tax breaks and the death of net neutrality, and not thrilled that CBP was getting access to NSA and CIA data collections. The FBI’s top lawyer from the Apple encryption fight said it was time to suck it up and embrace encryption, while the government was threatening to kill free trade with South Africa because Hollywood complained about fair use. And Devin Nunes was still demanding silence from the satirical internet cow, while PragerU lost another silly lawsuit against YouTube.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2014, Congress was getting ready to push a dangerous cybersecurity bill, James Comey was demanding tech companies grant the FBI complete access to whatever it wants, and documents obtained by the ACLU showed how the NSA was unable to prevent collection of data on US citizens. Roca Labs was threatening sites for writing about its case and suing a witness who came forward in its lawsuit against PissedConsumer, while Lena Dunham was threatening a lawsuit over an interpretation of her book that she disliked, and pianist Dejan Lazic was doubling down on his abuse of the right to be forgotten. Meanwhile, a court told the US government it can’t just wave “state secrets” like a magic wand to make cases go away.
Fifteen Years Ago
Speaking of the magic wand of state secrets, this week in 2009 that’s exactly what the Obama administration was waving to try to block all cases about warrantless wiretapping. Meanwhile, new details on ACTA were continuing to show how it was an entertainment industry wishlist, the MPAA was saying the internet will die if it doesn’t get to police piracy, and the FCC was worryingly close to letting Hollywood break your TV and DVR (although the evidence showed DVRs were helping, not hurting, the industry). The Swedish Pirate Party won a second EU Parliament seat, and EU officials were slightly pushing back against Hollywood demands. Also, a sea change in the world of navigation kicked off as Google struck out on its own and made navigation tools free.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: November 3rd – 9th”
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Reading this latest installment of TD history makes me think that the Republican Senate majority is really great.
If Trump names 2-3 more SCOTUS justices the Senate margin may help him pass the most recalcitrant, far right reactionaries.
Tbh Gorsuch, Coney Barrett, and Kavanaugh have been a little squishy and Trump needs to make up for them.
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The ideal SCOTUS nominee will be so offensive that an additional senator will be pealed off in addition to Collins and Murkowski and Vance will have to cast the deciding vote.
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“I don’t give a shit about other people.” That’s you. That’s you right now.
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Mike really needs to start blocking IP addresses and requiring logins. This place is becoming a Nazi bar.
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I’d gladly make an account myself if it meant we wouldn’t have MAGA-fanatics parading around the comments, agreed.
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sadly he won’t becuase he wants people to still chat without login
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I will never get tired of how you people are incapable of having a thought independent of what your masters tell you to think.
Yes, you have to see comments from people you disagree with. That does not make everyone who disagrees with you a nazi. I’m aware you’ve been brainwashed to think otherwise, but I encourage you to try anyways.
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If those commenters espouse an ideology that is fundamentally the same as Nazism, they can call themselves whatever the fuck they want, but they’ll still be Nazis. Anyone who doesn’t want to be called a Nazi should stop trying to act and/or sound like a Nazi.
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This seems a bit hyperbolic.
Discussing nominations to the US Supreme Court and how legislators might react is hardly the equivalent of espousing Nazism.
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Either you’re ignorant or you’re disingenuous. Neither is a good look. They’re talking about far right reactionaries. They’re talking about authoritarian fascist SCOTUS nominees who will usher in further rights revocations against minorities, women, LGBTQ people, etc. and champion christofascist ideology.
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That’s one of the shabbiest strawmen I’ve seen.
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Correct! Not everyone we disagree with is a nazi.
But that does not change the fact that some people we disagree with are, in fact, nazis.
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You don’t care about anyone else, so why would we have empathy for you?
Projection ejection what’s your deflection? Bootlicking authoritarians claiming that other people are group thinking followers of a master is rich, just like your masters.
And I welcome comments if they’re just disagreements. But I responded to a non sequitur comment that was intentionally engaging in gleeful authoritarianism. We’re not disagreeing about which is the better backstreet boy here. We’re disagreeing over fundamental human rights. Pretending that it’s absurd to disagree with people who embrace genocide makes you the irrational person here.
Nor would I claim everyone who disagrees with me to be a Nazi. Maybe you’re confused about how every is calling actual fascists Nazis and you think it’s just a bad word instead of an accurate description of fascist behavior and ideology.
I don’t encourage you to do anything because if you were capable of being a decent person, you wouldn’t be trying to sealion and gaslight and project and straw man. That you must resort to all these tactics indicates how afraid you are of someone who disagrees with you, which is the most delicious of ironies.
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Which masters are these? Are they currently in the same room as you?
Your problem is that you are badly educated and lack the facilities for actual reasoning and thus never question the world around you.
This thread of comments is, in a way, a preview of what the doanld administration will be like. A bunch of bickering and name calling will consume them completely. They will accomplish none of those silly 2025 things they are so thrilled about, they are unable to agree on anything and the infighting will become thunderous … and possibly quite humorous in a leopards eating sort of way.
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Depends. We may still be unlucky that they manage to push through some awful-ass legislation. Like a section 230 repeal (although there’s not been much traction for these like, ever, last I checked), or a porn ban (a full ban would be hard to pull off but they certainly already know how to disrupt access to it.)
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Like a section 230 repeal
It isn’t being repealed, but it is getting a revision.
Want 230 protection? Going to have to show you are being fair and unbiased.
Better flag me now and get your rocks off to it while you still can
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Why do you lie?
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I get your point but you kind of, can’t touch section 230 much at all without it imploding.
That and I’m not sure how genuine you’re being.
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First, the 1st Amendment doesn’t require you to be fair and unbiased in your moderating practices. Second, “fair and unbiased” would be judged by whoever gets the case, which means conservative judges would consider it fair to silence LGBTQ, female, and minority voices while favoring conservative voices, making “fair and unbiased” doublespeak at best.
Re: Re: Re:2 'You banned my side twice as often!' 'You violated the rules twice as often.'
Yeah, the last thing they(both the posters and conservatives in general) want is an actually unbiased system of moderation, as that would mean platforms no longer bending over backwards to give them preferential treatment in fear of being accused of holding an ‘anti-conservative bias’.
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The leopards will eat the faces of the useless idiots, but the useful idiots aren’t the ones who will implement the policies. Trump’s agenda may be thwarted in different cases, but he will have the legal power to continue his legacy of fucking the country over for decades to come. He’ll nominate regressive judges in great numbers such that the judiciary will be almost completely captured so that if the Democrats do come back into power anytime in the next twenty years, they’ll find their legislation and presidential policies challenged and declared unconstitutional if they clash with the conservative agenda. That’s just one area that doesn’t require any novel approaches to executive power. He can just do that. He did it before.
I’m not sure how other readers here feel about this, but a lot of ‘wokeness’ is only superficially ideological where what’s really at work is technological, professional, and ideological succession (and a reaction to it).
It would be great to have heuristics and technical language that makes these distinctions.