Dan Brown 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Content Moderation Is Impossible: You Can't Expect Moderators To Understand Satire Or Irony

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2019 @ 11:21pm

    Re: CDA 230?

    CDA 230 requires no such thing. It encourages moderation (or, more properly, removes a disincentive to moderate), but it does not require anything of the kind.

  • On the post: Turkish Gov't: Erdogan's Bodyguards Needed To Attack DC Protesters Because They Were Too Close When They Said Mean Things

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2019 @ 12:28am

    Re: Re: It's called an F-BOMB for a reason you know

    Expect to hear from the estates of the thousands of Germans who died laughing after reading this.

  • On the post: The Future Of School Safety Includes Round-The-Clock Surveillance Of Students

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2019 @ 05:56am

    Expectation of privacy?

    These programs are deployed under a number of faulty assumptions, not the least of which is students have zero expectation of privacy.

    Since the part that appears to concern you the most (since you spent the lion's share of the article discussing it) is the social media monitoring, what expectation of privacy do students have there? What expectation of privacy should they have? I believe the correct answers to both of these questions are close enough to "none" as makes no difference. This has nothing to do with "students", and everything to do with "social media".

    What you post to Facebook is public, and it never truly goes away. This is true whether you're an adult or child, student or not.

    The false assumption in play is that students have no First Amendment rights. While courts have limited those rights when students are at school, there's nothing that limits them when they're off-campus and not at a school activity.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 10:57am

    Re:

    Other constitutional violations against pro ses involve the award of attorney fees to a represented party against a pro se who cannot collect fees.
    Which provision(s), of which constitution(s), does this violate? Awards of attorney fees are intended to cover the expenses incurred by that party. Why should a pro se litigant be reimbursed for costs he didn't incur? Court costs can, of course, be awarded to either party.
    they should be granted counsel.
    Why? If a law license is as meaningless as you suggest, why do they need a lawyer? Why can't they competently handle the case on their own? And ffs, why should I pay for their lawyer?

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 10:39am

    Re:

    Nancy Pelosi is the one who just got a crash course in Section 230 immunity, and she's got the power to nuke it.
    The Speaker of the House can unilaterally pass legislation? Maybe you want to revisit your High School U.S. Government class.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 10:32am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "Can't"?

    The former. Specifically (though I recognize implicitly) court decisions.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 03:19am

    Re:

    Perhaps it's time to appoint counsel in all pro-se cases or require prefiling review
    I'd completely agree with a postfiling review. Anything that doesn't state a plausible claim can be immediately dismissed, with prejudice, saving defendants from having to respond to utterly idiotic claims like those contained here.
    it's obvious the judiciary is biased against them.
    My observation is that the judiciary bends over backward to accommodate pro se litigants, usually to the detriment of everyone else involved. Nonetheless, yes, there's some bias against litigants with utterly inane ideas about how the law works--which seem to be very common among pro se parties.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 30 May, 2019 @ 06:29pm

    Re: Re: "Can't"?

    You have no idea what you're talking about.
    Yeah, I guess that law degree, licenses, and 20+ years of practice don't mean anything. But if you haven't seen a decision here that you thought was way off the mark, you just haven't been reading long.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 30 May, 2019 @ 06:18pm

    Re: Re: "Can't"?

    You might want to ask a lawyer.
    I am one, thanks.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 30 May, 2019 @ 03:43pm

    Re: Let me guess: Self filed.

    Yep, it's pro se.

  • On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 30 May, 2019 @ 04:14pm

    "Can't"?

    But you can't win if you're so completely wrong about the law, as these plaintiffs are.

    Well, you'd hope not, anyway. There have been some stunningly-bad decisions reported here...

  • On the post: Our Legal Dispute With Shiva Ayyadurai Is Now Over

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 19 May, 2019 @ 03:42am

    Re: Re: Techdirt is now Toothless

    He just didn't invent email.
    ...and is a lying fraud when he continues to claim that he did.

  • On the post: Judge Alsup Slams Patent Troll For Basically Everything

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 16 May, 2019 @ 01:47pm

    Re: Corporate power on "platforms" is government-conferred SO

    If your position were not so moronic (and if you actually understood the meanings of terms you used), your persistence would be adorable.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Again Ducks A Chance To Clarify First Amendment Protections

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2019 @ 07:55am

    The correct standard to use was mens rea, meaning the government needed to prove Elonis knew his posts were illegal

    "Correct standard" according to whom? You? Since you don't seem to know what mens rea is (tip: it isn't "Defendant knew what he was doing was illegal"--as the very definition you linked to shows), I'm not inclined to accept you as an authority on the subject.

    In the current case, sounds like an entirely appropriate result. And if it's characteristic of "rap music" (sic) to threaten death to specific individuals by name, the sooner it goes away the better.

  • On the post: Stupid Law Making Assaulting Journalists A Federal Crime Revived By Congress

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 28 Mar, 2019 @ 08:34am

    Re: Re:

    One would think this law was to protect journalists from law enforcement.
    ...and that would even kind of make sense. It would even be within legitimate Federal authority. But no, pretty sure that isn't what's going on here.

  • On the post: Federal Prosecutors Recommend Paul Hansmeier Spend The Next 12 Years In Prison

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 02:33pm

    So...

    ...is this the time to welcome him to the big leagues?

  • On the post: Facebook Screws Up Again

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2019 @ 07:48am

    Re:

    War is peace! Freedom is slavery! Ignorance is strength!
    I don't think that's necessarily what's going on here, though I'm far from sure that Facebook deserves the benefit of the doubt. What it sounds like, based on the anonymous dev who's quoted, is that passwords were written in cleartext to an error log file, presumably along with lots of other information about the user's environment and what they were doing. Devs (2000 of them, apparently) queried those log files, and the results of those queries included the passwords. But there is (allegedly) no evidence that those passwords were misused. Believe it or not, it's at least facially plausible, and it's reasonably consistent.

  • On the post: Florida College Asked Local Sheriff To Declare Faculty Member's Artwork Obscene

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2019 @ 09:18am

    Re: Re: Re: So... crack a book open bro

    unis are private institutions just like Twitter or Facebook
    Um, no, they aren't. At least not when they're public universities, as the school in question is. They're state actors, and as such, the First Amendment can be implicated by their actions. I don't see that their choosing not to show this piece of alleged art does violate the First Amendment (Tim apparently thinks this point is obvious enough to not require any support--I'm a lawyer who has researched the issue a bit, and I disagree). But the school is nowhere close to the same position as Facebook/Twitter/etc.

  • On the post: Florida College Asked Local Sheriff To Declare Faculty Member's Artwork Obscene

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2019 @ 12:05pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm...

    seeing him hit with a few hundred copyright violation claims would be entertaining.
    ...except that his use of those works is almost certainly fair use.

  • On the post: Florida College Asked Local Sheriff To Declare Faculty Member's Artwork Obscene

    Dan Brown ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2019 @ 10:30am

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    All of this is irrelevant. His view of the 1A is irrelevant. The quality of his works is irrelevant. His motivation for creating them is pretty much irrelevant. The 1A itself, and the relevant case law (as defined by courts, not by him), are what's relevant. Under that case law, I don't see any way that the work is properly deemed obscene. The sheriff may not have known better, but the DA should have. I don't see any other reason that the work wouldn't be protected (i.e., it isn't defamatory, it isn't a threat, it certainly isn't fighting words, etc.). Without a clear-cut exception, the work is protected, as is his right to create and display it. However, from what I've found (and I'll acknowledge that the case law I've found is both scanty and old), the First Amendment doesn't guarantee him space at the school's exhibition. Tim seems to think the contrary position is so obvious as to not require any explanation at all. I'm still waiting for a citation to relevant authority.

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