Rocky 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (4403)

• On the post: 438 Experts Said Age Verification Is Dangerous. Legislators Are Moving Forward With It Anyway.

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2026 @ 12:48pm

  It’s almost like there’s a persuasive media bias, or something.

  In the whole world? Sounds like your belief is your center of the world and everything outside that is just unintelligible noise.

• On the post: 438 Experts Said Age Verification Is Dangerous. Legislators Are Moving Forward With It Anyway.

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2026 @ 12:44pm

  Which experts? Have you actually educated yourself on what happened and when? This is the sequence of events: 1. Hunter Biden (unverified) drops off a laptop for repair 2. No one comes to pick up the laptop for months 3. The owner of the repair shop starts tinkering with the laptop and pieces together a copy of the hard drive 4. The owner peruses the content, then tries to fob it off to various republicans 5. The owner also sends a copy to the FBI 6. A copy of the drive is passed around among Republicans and gets altered and modified several times 7. It finally ends up with Rudy Giuliani who sends a copy to the New York Post 8. NYP posts a story about the contents but no one at the paper wants to put their name on the byline 9. Links to the NYP story is posted on social media 10. Some links to the story is then removed on social media under the rule "hacked material" 11. A bunch of butthurt idiots scream censorship because surfing to the NYP article is impossible, only links on social media can work! 12. Social media companies walk back the decision to remove links. 13. After a lot wailing and gnashing copies of the drive eventually ends up with people that has knowledge of computer forensics 14. All examinations of the copies say some of the content appear to be authentic but there are signs of tampering and other content added, but no one can determine if the drive actually comes from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden 15. Mac Isaac, the repair shop owner, finally approaches CBS News with a "clean copy" because he didn't like lies being flung around about the "Hunter Biden Laptop". This drive is examined by a reputable third party which determines that the drive in all likelihood comes from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden 16. That's it. So these 51 experts you mentioned, did they examine the clean copy or the tampered copies?

  Hundreds of doctors and scientists wrote that covid obviously came from bats in a wet market

  No, what most said was that the virus in all likelihood came from bats that spread it to other animals which in turn ended up in the wet market. Do you understand the concept of zoonotic spillover and how bats are often carriers of very nasty viruses.

  But lol, no one cares about “letters from experts”. They probably never did, but they SURE AF don’t now.

  Willful stupidity is ignoring what knowledgeable people say. The right course of action is to listen, then actually determine if what they say is correct which may require people to learn new things that can contradict their beliefs. The latter makes the lotus eaters uncomfortable, because the apathy of belief is such a comfort in a complicated world.

• On the post: The CDC Doesn’t Want You To See A CDC Report On How Effective COVID Vaccines Are

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2026 @ 11:14am

  The interesting thing about the vaccine injury database is that it is mostly based on people self reported injuries. And no one is forcing you to take any vaccines, but that also means you can't force yourself into places you aren't wanted because your are a plague bearer. So let's make a deal, if you walk around unvaccinated and infect other people it's totally okay for them to give you lead poisoning. Fairs fair, right?

• On the post: The CDC Doesn’t Want You To See A CDC Report On How Effective COVID Vaccines Are

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2026 @ 11:09am

  I see no citations, ie you are lying as usual. Flag the reality challenged clown and move on.

• On the post: Section 230 Is Dying By A Thousand Workarounds, And Massachusetts Just Added Another One

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2026 @ 05:05pm

  I think you’re kind of missing the point of the example. It’s just using a hypothetical to establish a harm that isn’t tied to the specific content being shown.

  I can make up shitty contrived examples too that isn't tied to the specific content being shown: Every LEO who uses weapons must have smartglasses that show their department's environmental policy every time they try to use their guns.

  It’s a little contrived, but all it is at it’s core is a hypothetical where there’s some harm, without having to get bogged down in the details of harm (as there would be for e.g. addiction).

  A little contrived? No, it's all contrived.

  Nothing in the argument is based upon it being 2 mixed tasks. You can replace it by any other generic example, and nothing changes.

  I said different tasks. The context is reading shit on social media, not driving and getting forced fed shit from social media. Tell me, what kind of person points at someone saying "They believe this is right!" while using a fucking hypothetical and contrived scenario as the argument why that is? If you missed it, he is implying that Mike is just fine with people being run over by drivers busily reading tweets because displaying said tweets in a car are now suddenly elevated to editorial decisions. Heck, making the windshield opaque to the display the tweets with better contrast must of course also be an editorial decision, right? Btw, when your phone display a tweet or similar, was that an editorial decision by the phone manufacturer or the creator of the application you use? And if your phone explodes in your hand because of flaw triggered by the contents displayed, the phone manufacturer are of course protected under 230, right? Because the argument was: Displaying tweets are editorial decisions now and those are protected. In the real world, hypothetically contrived design and functional choices made by hardware manufacturers have fuck-all to do with actual editorial decisions and 3rd party content.

• On the post: Trump Threatens CNN For Very Basic Reporting On His Shitty, Unpopular War

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2026 @ 07:06am

  Stupid workaround: If your browser allows it, switch to "desktop site" If your browser has it: Settings -> Accessibility -> Always enable zoom Access to these settings is dependent on what browser you are using. And yes, disabling zoom because you are on a phone is stupid.

• On the post: Section 230 Is Dying By A Thousand Workarounds, And Massachusetts Just Added Another One

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2026 @ 04:12am

  Your example with Tesla and tweets are bad because you are intentionally mixing 2 different tasks that has no relation to each other. Most states (and countries) already have bans on things like that (distracted while driving laws). But if you want to compare operating something that can kill other people if they get distracted with someone doomscrolling, go ahead, it just makes your example a bit ludicrous and all reasoning based on that flawed.

• On the post: Prosecutors Still Trying To Convict 62-Year-Old Woman For Wearing Penis Costume To Anti-Trump Protest

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2026 @ 12:51am

  The latter has been considered ‘obscene’ and not covered under free speech.

  The funny thing about blanket statements like the one above is that it is seldom true in every case. It also equates being nude with a piece a clothing some people find upsetting.

• On the post: Jacob Siegel’s Error-Filled Book On ‘Censorship’ Got Fact-Checked. He’s Calling It Censorship.

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2026 @ 04:18pm

  The most effective way to silence a man is to kill him and I'm wondering when your killing spree is starting?

• On the post: Trump Celebrates Easter By Dropping An F-Bomb, Threatening More War Crimes

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2026 @ 04:14pm

  You’re an idiot, and you have no idea what is a “war crime”.

  Clownface, since you are so cocksure about what it actually means you can explain it to everyone here, right? I'm of course expecting crickets here, because a dishonest man will always avoid the truth.

  You just know that you hate Trump and everything flows from that.

  Dude, wipe the shit from your clown nose.

• On the post: America First? Paramount Finalizes $24 Billion In Middle East Backing For Warner Bros Deal

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2026 @ 04:00pm

  Our literal enemy owning Tiktok was no big deal, but relatively neutral middle eastern people investing in a movie studio is the devil’s bargain, for some reason.

  Was it too hard to read through even the first paragraph? I'm asking because you seem to base your entire life on headlines which makes anything you say quite stupid.

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2026 @ 07:09am

  Until the whole thing gets wrangled thoroughly legally some things are a bit of a grey area. The other thing that also matter here is that cases involving AI-generated content have come to the conclusion that it can't be copyrighted which also means slapping a license on such content should be null and void with the reasoning that human authorship is required: - Thaler v. Perlmutter / U.S. Copyright Office - Allen v. Perlmutter So what does this mean? Do original licenses apply or not? Was Blanchard just ducking a shit-storm like you suggested or are there more to it? And if AI-generated content can't be copyrighted as the courts have decided so far, can you really slap a license on it?

• On the post: Trump Fires Attorney General Pam Bondi For Not Making His Vindictive Fantasies A Reality

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2026 @ 12:20am

  It wouldn't surprise me if it was mutual.

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2026 @ 04:38am

  Copyright and licensing is a major potential problem. The person is telling Claude to avoid that problem. I don’t see this as much different than FedEx instructing their drivers not to speed (which would certainly not be proof of criminal intent).

  You are still not getting it, they didn't tell Claude to avoid the problem in general instead they told it to specifically avoid GPLv3 which is an admission that the original license of any code used to train Claude is a problem. If they want to slap a MIT license on the code Claude produced, they should have instructed it to only use MTI licensed code to begin with.

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2026 @ 01:29pm

  You’re talking about copyright licenses. What else would be relevant?

  What the license says and how it may carry over depending on what source material you used. Creating derivative works or copying OSS code isn't a copyright infringement, changing the license while trying to avoid the rules set out in the original license is. To reiterate the point, telling Claude to avoid using GPLv3 code to create new code is Blanchard explicitly acknowledging that licenses carry over - and then he slaps a MIT-license on the new code while ignoring any other licenses on source code the training material have ingested. If copyright and licenses wasn't a problem, why tell Claude to avoid GPLv3 sources in the first place?

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2026 @ 05:29pm

  I trust everyone can work out the implications of that: they’re fairly obvious.

  Your trust is misplaced, not everyone can work that out or want to. Also, relevant to this: Thinking—Fast, Slow, and Artificial: How AI is Reshaping Human Reasoning and the Rise of Cognitive Surrender (The Wharton School Research Paper)

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2026 @ 05:24pm

  Only you are talking about copying here. Let me quote the relevant part that I base my argument on:

  After that, Blanchard “started in an empty repository with no access to the old source tree and explicitly instructed Claude not to base anything on LGPL/GPL-licensed code

  Ie, Blanchard acknowledges through his instructions to Claude that licenses can carry over.

• On the post: In Chiles V. Salazar The Supreme Court Issues A Bad Good First Amendment Decision

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2026 @ 01:46pm

  It's obvious you aren't much of a thinker as evidenced by your simplistic arguments of made up shit and confused conflations.

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2026 @ 08:44pm

  There exists legal tests for such scenarios:

  • Copy and alter: Was there substantial labor and skill involved to create the new work?
  • Similarity: Is the new work similar to the old work or distinct?
  • Intent and obfuscation: Was there obfuscation and intentional changes made to make it appear to be a new original work?

  You can put a copyright on a work that's a derivative of an uncopyrightable work, but only for the new contributions.

• On the post: Can Agentic AI Coding Tools Finally End Copyright For Software While Re-Inventing Open Source?

  

  Rocky ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2026 @ 08:26pm

  While a lot of people agree with your view that it “looks like” breaking licenses, it’s far from obvious that the laws will support that. Sure, if it spits out an exact copy of something non-trivial and copyrighted, that’s not gonna go well (and people have seen LLMs to do that). Most cases will probably be much more ambiguous.

  I would argue that this case in unambiguous for the simple reason the instructions given to Claude was to specifically avoid GPLv3 source material which was them implicitly acknowledging that they knew they would be breaking software-licenses.

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