carlb’s Techdirt Profile

On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

carlb ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2018 @ 07:57pm

a big sack of coal with that?

It knows when you are sleeping
It knows when you're awake
It knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake!

On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

carlb ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2018 @ 12:46pm

Yes, lock them up!

The only difference I can see between these two incidents?

The e-mail sent by the blonde has a stamp on it!

Lock. Her. Up.

And yes, Ivanka, that means YOU.

On the post: Voting Device Manufacturer Encourages Users To Use (And Re-Use) Easily-Guessed Passwords

carlb ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2018 @ 11:28am

the super-secret 31337 p@ssw0rd

username: DJT
password: Росси́я

Have fun! ;)

On the post: Employee Watching Porn At Work Infected US Government Agency's Network

carlb ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2018 @ 01:09pm

Re: EROS?

Yes, the geologists only go to the EROS Centre to get their rocks off. :)

On the post: John Oliver Exposes The Sketchiness Of Political Grandstanding State Attorneys General

carlb ( profile ), 31 Oct, 2018 @ 06:54pm

Re: Backpage.com and Kamela Harris, anyone???

It's not just Backpage. A long list of state attorneys general managed to pretty much blackmail Craigslist into removing all of the "adult services" categories - that's how this stuff ended up moving to Backpage in the first place.

Craigsfist even removed the category for many non-US cities where the services may have been lawful. They shouldn't have caved in this manner, but as a small organisation who is up against an adversary with unlimited access to taxpayer-funded lawyers, their resources to defend basic liberties are limited - and that's typical of many victims.

SESTA is a bad law which has only made this worse. Instead of removing "services" categories, all of the Craigsfist personals (except "missed connections") are gone... even for Canadian cities which should've been beyond reach. The price of hosting anything stateside?

On the post: Shitty Man Shows How Shitty Men Can Shit On Free Speech By Suing Over The Shitty Media Men List

carlb ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2018 @ 12:52pm

Odd double standard

Odd that the questionable accusations against Julian Assange are pretty much repeated as gospel in US propaganda, even though he has neither been charged nor convicted, but when it comes to actually cleaning up the cesspool of actual rape suspects stateside... suddenly all we hear is ambulance chasers whining about the supposed rights of the perps to engage in reputational management and put victims on trial?

On the post: Warner Media Opposes Trademark Filed By Actual 'Wicked Witch' Over Its Wizard Of Oz Trademarks

carlb ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2018 @ 08:38am

She turned me into a newt!

Well, it got better...

That said, if Wicca is a religion, shouldn't it have the same constitutional protections as flying spaghetti and all the rest?

On the post: A Mix Of Good And Bad Ideas In NAFTA Replacement

carlb ( profile ), 06 Oct, 2018 @ 10:26pm

"But requiring life plus 70 is already problematic. It's especially bad for Canada in that it will involve a massive taking of the public domain, and locking it up for two extra decades for no good reason."

Actually, there is only one good reason: the original Mickey Mouse cartoons were created in 1928 by a person named Walt Disney who died in December 1966 - a little over 50 years ago. The corporation which bears his name has a long history of having copyright law changed so that mouse never becomes public domain. It's self-serving and does nothing to benefit authors (as the creator is long dead) but that's business as usual.

On the post: Brazil's Government Wants Twitter To Turn Over Data On Users Who Mocked Victim Of Assassination Attempt

carlb ( profile ), 03 Oct, 2018 @ 08:35am

Brazil has a poor record for freedom of expression

They seem to be infamous for a few things, such as criminalising libel or having police show up on someone's doorstep to intimidate citizens into silence if a well-connected public figure is insulted. It's even worse than the dystopia in which lawyers for everyone from DJT to Theranos are paid to silence whistleblowers stateside.

Sue for libel and, instead of a hired process server, a court official shows up uninvited:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/in-brazil-the-justice-prevails-again/article21578225/

It all looks very official, very intimidating but actually bringing a case to trial can take two years or more in Brazil's broken system and the outcome is likely anyone's guess. That's bad for freedom of expression, but Western governments tend to give Brazil the benefit of the doubt as it could be worse - back when Canada was entrenching its flawed Charter of Rights and Freedoms in its constitution in 1982, Brazil was still living under outright dictatorship.

That can have unfortunate consequences. I owned a parody website and found more frivolous legal threats arrived from Brazil than from any of the other problematic countries (Turkey, Thailand, China, Russia) combined - although part of that may be that the worst countries simply block the website so no one can see it, Great Firewall of China style.

Of course, none of the lawsuits ever actually materialise, as applying Brazilian law to a website in some other country with no Brazilian presence is nonsense - but I've had one lawyer tell me not to travel to Brazil after police in that country abused Interpol channels to demand that federal police here ask me for personal identifying info on individual users. My only defence is not to store that info in the first place in any permanent form, so that it does not exist if my government makes the mistake of giving full faith and credit to what is a broken system which directly violates the principles behind our domestic laws on privacy and free expression.

As long as individual platforms and individual webmasters cave to these people and their spurious demands, the problems will continue. The only way through this is to have a very thick skin and no physical presence in Brazil.

On the post: Legislators Pushing A Patriot Act, But For Human Trafficking In The Wake Of FOSTA

carlb ( profile ), 27 Sep, 2018 @ 07:36am

Prostitutions dirty little secret? It pays the rent for the poor

"The police cannot watch for traffickers on those sites because they either stop existing or stop carrying ads that lead to traffickers..."

...or they still exist, but they've all moved to Bleechistan to get away from American efforts to trample the 1st Amendment. Without a Bleechistani court order, there is no access to records or data - unlike Backpage, which was US-based and subject to US law.

I look at news like https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/human-trafficking-pavao-windsor-sex-trade-1.4840039 in which a victim states "And the johns themselves — it always amazed me the one who's getting the service never bothered to ask, 'How old are you, are you OK, do you want to do this?' They just service themselves and go on to the next one" and can't help to note the obvious - if it's illegal to buy sex, the johns can't go to police to report suspected trafficking or abuse because the cop will jail the john, the victim or both - possibly while the pimps get off scot free. If there are immigration issues, the victim may be deported; the cops may also use this as an enforcement opportunity for other laws, such as those jailing drug addicts. There's also the not-so-minor detail that any info a witness or victim of crime gives police will be given to the accused (or their lawyers) when this goes to trial; that means a violent criminal now has the home addresses of these people, which can be used to retaliate.

There is a need to distinguish consensual activity from trafficking and slavery. When police deliberately ignore the distinction, using platitudes like "You're just revictimizing them … you're exploiting people for sex and if there wasn't that form of exchange, whether that's money or whatever that exchange is, the consent would no longer be there," then it should be no surprise that johns and service providers do not call 9-1-1 (or other 112-style emergency numbers). The "I only do this for the money" could be said of many mainstream jobs... would you like fries with that?

The FOSTA-like initiatives don't make these distinctions and that is by design. The intention isn't to shut down trafficking. The intention is to shut down discussion of all manner of consensual activity (for instance, everything in Craigslist Personals - some of it non-commercial). Silencing discussion does nothing to help victims of trafficking.

Who does it affect most? Likely the small-time independent escort who, behind the scenes, turns out to be a divorced/single mum who needs the extra cash because it's the only way she can afford her exorbitant big-city rent on the first of the month. Politicians don't want you to see that; they want you to see the streetwalker with the pimp and the drug addiction as revictimising these people is a way to rack up cheap political points. Unfortunately, there is more to this than a blind assumption that everyone who engages in evil fornication is being trafficked and enslaved. That's why these interventions do more harm than good. Focus just on trafficking and slavery and a john or victim who sees something would be able to say something.

On the post: Couple Get Back $10,000 Seized By State Trooper After Local Media Starts Asking Questions

carlb ( profile ), 12 Sep, 2018 @ 06:39pm

Odd then that en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Driving_in_the_United_States doesn't have a huge red {{warningbox}} saying not to go there, as would be applied to any other destination where the voyager is routinely robbed blind. Standards must be slipping?

On the post: Saudi Government Outlaws Satire; Violators To Face Five-Year Prison Sentences

carlb ( profile ), 07 Sep, 2018 @ 06:45am

Re: How long before #46 issues a statement...?

According to a prediction made back in 2000, #46 is President Lisa Marie Simpson (D-Springfield). As much as I've lost faith in the rest of the American system, I'd have confidence that she'd be above that sort of conduct. #45, on the other hand...

On the post: United Airlines Made Its App Stop Working On My Phone, And What This Says About How Broken The Mobile Tech Space Is

carlb ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2018 @ 07:02pm

If automakers made motorcars this way?

Can you imagine what would happen if Bill Ford made motorcars the way Silly Valley makes computers? Automakers are required to recall defective models and are required to keep parts available for several years after the vehicle is discontinued. Computer makers, meanwhile, are free to sell products with serious security deficiencies and tell the victims of these shoddy products that they should have to buy the entire OS again because they have no intention of fixing the existing product. I read today's headlines about a DPRK operative being charged for a ransomware attack against various UK NHS trusts, and the responsibility for the manufacturer of the flawed, insecure Win XP systems that created these vulnerabilities? Zilch. If these were exploding Pintos instead of bugware PC's, this would be going to the highest court and their makers would have to recall and fix everything. Fine double standard, that.

On the post: Disney Fixes Its Sketchy DVD Rental License, Wins Injunction Against Redbox Over Digital Downloads

carlb ( profile ), 31 Aug, 2018 @ 10:14pm

Re: Re: The end of first sale is just the tip of the iceberg!

If there were no right of first sale, there would be no public libraries and there would have been no video rental stores. Those weren't created out of the goodness of publishers' hearts, but out of rights which the law gave the original buyers of the item.

On the post: Australian Gov't Likes Intrusive Border Device Searches Just As Much As The US Does

carlb ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2018 @ 10:44pm

Re: criminals

Yes, the 13 colonies were an Imperial dumping ground for criminals who had been "sentenced to transportation" for crimes committed in the United Kingdom, but it would be sad to see Australia dragged down to the same level.

On the post: Appeals Court: City-Owned Utility Pulling Electric Use Info Every 15 Minutes Is A Search

carlb ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2018 @ 05:54pm

SaskPower had those... eight of them caught fire

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/saskpower-to-remove-105-000-smart-meters-following-fires-1.2723046

On the post: Verizon Throttled The 'Unlimited' Data Plan Of A Fire Dept. Battling Wildfires

carlb ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2018 @ 10:08am

it should work both ways

Gotta love private enterprise, but if it applies here it should apply equally everywhere. Taxpayer funds have been wasted responding to silliness like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_New_York_Telephone_exchange_fire for far too long.

A more cost-effective alternative should be to stop dispatching public resources and leave extinguishing these fires to the highest bidder. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_firefighting#Rome "Marcus Licinius Crassus was born into a wealthy Roman family around the year 115 BC, and acquired an enormous fortune through (in the words of Plutarch) "fire and rapine." One of his most lucrative schemes took advantage of the fact that Rome had no fire department. Crassus filled this void by creating his own brigade—500 men strong—which rushed to burning buildings at the first cry of alarm. Upon arriving at the scene, however, the fire fighters did nothing while their employer bargained over the price of their services with the distressed property owner. If Crassus could not negotiate a satisfactory price, his men simply let the structure burn to the ground, after which he offered to purchase it for a fraction of its value."

I'm certain that Verizon would be more than content with this level of service, if it were wrapped in a clever marketing campaign misbranding it as "unlimited".

Can you hear me now?

On the post: Only 12% Of Music Revenue Goes To Actual Artists

carlb ( profile ), 21 Aug, 2018 @ 09:48am

Re: stealing?

If you are so offended by "stealing", why aren't you complaining that the nice prison in the 'Blues Brothers' picture is currently sitting empty instead of being filled with greedy record company executives, in chains, breaking rocks?

While you're at it, why not throw the ticket scalpers from the live performances in Joliet with them? That's just one more bit of rent-seeking that should be on these pie charts.

On the post: AT&T Sued After SIM Hijacker Steals $24 Million in Customer's Cryptocurrency

carlb ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2018 @ 07:25pm

Auntie beeb says the Vodafone is just as rubbish...

From https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45213774

"Vodafone customer service agents can receive monthly bonuses worth up to £150 for high customer satisfaction scores alone. However, low scores can also result in them being placed on action plans to improve their performance."

One more incentive for lax security. Gotta love it.

On the post: Automated 'Content Protection' System Sends Wave Of Bogus DMCA Notice Targeting Legitimate URLs

carlb ( profile ), 16 Aug, 2018 @ 06:24am

There need to be consequences...

The term for falsely accusing someone of doing something illegal isn't "bugs in the system". The term for falsely accusing someone of doing something illegal is "actionable libel".

Pity that the "under penalty of perjury" nonsense in the DMCA wording is so hollow - this is a fraud perpetrated on the public and it is causing harm. If someone were to steal a $1 item from a department store, the police would be there. If someone steals something as intangible as freedom of speech, that had to be fought for, the loss is greater but the consequences are less? That seems so backwards.

There need to be consequences for this sort of thing, not just "oh well..."

carlb 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (157)