DNY 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Senator Hawley Proposes Law To Force Internet Companies To Beg The FTC For Permission To Host Content

    DNY ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2019 @ 09:04am

    Re:

    If Twitter is a publisher, then it shouldn't have Section 230 protection. The whole basis for Section 230 was that the platform (note, platform, not publisher) is not responsible for the content posted by others. So, no Twitter should need to publish white supremacist content, but if it's a platform, not a publisher, I would suggest as a way forward on the issue of censorship by internet platforms it should be required to allow its users to publish any legal content they want.

  • On the post: Supposedly Disadvantaged Conservatives Not Exactly Rushing To Support Josh Hawley's Anti-Section 230 Bill

    DNY ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2019 @ 02:16pm

    Re: 'You shut up when I'm talking for you!'

    Yup. Hawley has not taken the obvious approach of conditioning Section 230 protections on the platform mirroring the First Amendment's free speech/free press (and for that matter freedom of religion) stance, but instead is empowering bureaucrats to judge lack of bias in the political sphere (only). Conditioning Section 230 protections on commitment to First Amendment standards does not violate anyone's free speech or property rights, since Section 230 protections are a grant by the government of an unusual protection from liability, which the government can condition on whatever it likes -- anyone (individual or corporation) who wants to control what's on their servers is free to not accept and to control what's on their servers in any way they like.

  • On the post: Caterpillar Now Going After All The Cats For Trademark Cancellations

    DNY ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2019 @ 06:23am

    Bullies only pick on smaller folks

    I see no mention in the article of Caterpillar going after Target for having a line of children's clothing sold under the Cat and Jack brand.

  • On the post: Senator Hawley Proposes Law To Force Internet Companies To Beg The FTC For Permission To Host Content

    DNY ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2019 @ 07:52am

    A simpler approach

    The same thing can be accomplished more effectively without empowering bureaucrats by making Section 230 protections dependent upon non-removal and equal treatment with regard to offers of revenue streams from advertising of all legal content.

    Yes, you can take down content that prima facia meets the definition of a true threat, yes you can take down child porn (in each of those cases reporting the matter to appropriate authorities), yes, you can perform DMCA takedowns, but if it's legal to publish, if you want to have Section 230 protections it stays up, and the host can't demonetize it because they don't like the content (if they offered users/subscriber a way to earn ad revenue in the first place). Let hosts comment on content (e.g "Goggle content monitoring believes this blog contains Holocaust denial," or "Facebook content monitoring thinks this post is false and over-the-top rude.") but not censor, edit or otherwise control user/subscriber posted content.

    Is this a violation of free market principles? Well the government is giving protection from liability that otherwise in an environment regulated only by case law would attach to the ISP or hosting platform, so the government can impose conditions on the grant of immunity.

  • On the post: New Assange Indictment Makes Insane, Unprecedented Use Of Espionage Act On Things Journalists Do All The Time

    DNY ( profile ), 24 May, 2019 @ 06:09pm

    Re: Not a citizen of the United States

    Indeed that is a problem with this. The US government might be able to persuade the Australian government or the government of another allied nation in which Assange was located when the alleged conspiracy took place, provided that country has laws against espionage against not only its own government, but the governments of allies -- I'm not sure that status of such laws as an aspect of "Five Eyes" cooperation. The real question is whether we really like a precedent that says our laws can be applied to non-US-citizens outside the borders of the United States. If so, what's to stop Chinese, or Russian, or Iranian, or EU laws from being applied to American acting within the United States? Next thing you know Americans tried and convicted in absentia by courts in some unfriendly country will be being snatched while on vacation.

  • On the post: New Assange Indictment Makes Insane, Unprecedented Use Of Espionage Act On Things Journalists Do All The Time

    DNY ( profile ), 24 May, 2019 @ 06:00pm

    Re: Re: You do realise Nixon was guilty as hell

    Of course Hiss was a spy. The Soviet archives released after the collapse of the Soviet Union tell us his code name was "Antenna".

  • On the post: Big Pharma Companies Accused Of Conspiring To Inflate Prices Of Over 100 Generic Drugs By Up To 1000%

    DNY ( profile ), 21 May, 2019 @ 05:51am

    Re: Novartis - Gleevec pricing victim here

    We recognize that natural monopolies (utilities) must have their prices regulated because they are not subject to market competition, but do not regulate the prices charged under government-granted monopolies (patents) even in circumstances where what is being sold is literally a matter of life and death, there are no effective substitute products to provide market competition, and thus demand is highly inelastic. Enforce laws against conspiracy in restraint of trade, and offer Big Pharma the choice for each newly patented drug between very short price-unregulated patents (say 3 years), or patents of double the normal duration, but with prices regulated in the public interest, and most of the problem with the pharmaceutical aspect of health care will be fixed.

  • On the post: Big Pharma Companies Accused Of Conspiring To Inflate Prices Of Over 100 Generic Drugs By Up To 1000%

    DNY ( profile ), 21 May, 2019 @ 05:44am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Actually both the inability of consumers to compare prices and the ease with which rampant corruption have flourished in this sector are both due to the fact that there is no effective market in health care services or in health insurance, on which fact the first poster was laying the blame.

  • On the post: DOJ Moving Ahead With Its Attempt To Prosecute Julian Assange; Subpoenas Chelsea Manning

    DNY ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2019 @ 06:51am

    An example of Assange, but an example of what?

    By all means throw the book at Americans who violated our statutes regarding the handling of classified information. But Assange?

    He's not a U.S. citizen. His activities were undertaken outside of the United States. If he can be prosecuted for violating our secrecy laws, the precedent is established. Americans violating the secrecy laws of the People's Republic of China or the Islamic Republic of Iran or the Russian Federation, despite never having set foot in those countries can be prosecuted by their governments, subject to arrest and extradition the moment they set foot in a country that would honor an extradition request from the PRC, Iran or Russia.

    Extraterritorial application of our laws to non-citizens should be a non-starter for reasons of international law.

  • On the post: If You're Worried About Bad EU Internet Regulation, Just Wait Until You See The New Terrorist Regulation

    DNY ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2018 @ 05:32am

    Paging Jacob Rees-Mogg

    Yet another argument for a proper "no deal" Brexit.

  • On the post: The DOJ's New Net Neutrality Lawsuit Is A Giant Middle Finger To State Rights, Consumers, Competition & The Democratic Process

    DNY ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2018 @ 06:03am

    Irony (in the classial, not hipster sense)

    A Southerner is leading the charge against states rights!

  • On the post: Europe's New 'Plan S' For Open Access: Daft Name, Great News

    DNY ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2018 @ 05:28am

    Re: Re:

    Ah, but as we've seen with the Greek debt crisis "negotiations", the Brexit "negotiations", and the reaction of EU officialdom to elections in Poland, Hungary, and Italy, and most recently Sweden, the 500 million individual people don't really matter much, only the hive-mind in Brussels matters.

  • On the post: Europe's New 'Plan S' For Open Access: Daft Name, Great News

    DNY ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2018 @ 03:15am

    Re:

    This is about authors rights, not proprietary trade secrets or secret military research. The only difference between this plan and what is now done is that an academic publisher (the biggest ones, Springer and Elevier are EU-based) doesn't get to collect monopoly rents on published papers the EU's tax-payers funded.

  • On the post: Internet Content Moderation Isn't Politically Biased, It's Just Impossible To Do Well At Scale

    DNY ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2018 @ 06:55am

    Actually, bias might not be that easy to recognize

    The difficulty is that if there is bias involved, it is harder to recognized than might otherwise be the case, because it is not bias on behalf of an extreme position, but bias on behalf of the normative political view in Silicon Valley, which is decidely center-left. That being the case there will be content deleted as beyond-the-pale both to the left of that normative view (e.g. posted by Black Lives Matter and affiliated movements) and to the right (not just the lunatic conspiracy-monger Alex Jones, but the temporary deletion of Prager U.), with a bit more being deleted from the right end of the political spectrum -- as an extreme example I strongly suspect on many social media platforms posts advocating mass executions and expropriation of property on the model of Stalin's and Mao's policies are much more likely to survive (for longer at least) than posts advocating mass deportation of people of color.

  • On the post: Amazon Alexa Instantaneously Justifies Years Of Surveillance Paranoia

    DNY ( profile ), 26 May, 2018 @ 03:17am

    Re: Re: SO I'm right yet again. Thanks, minion.

    Ah, perhaps he's merely one of their minions, too. I recalled one of item from "Cellblock A" of the Evil Overlord list at http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/dungeon_a.html :

    109.I will see to it that plucky young lads/lasses in strange clothes and with the accent of an outlander shall REGULARLY climb some monument in the main square of my capital and denounce me, claim to know the secret of my power, rally the masses to rebellion, etc. That way, the citizens will be jaded in case the real thing ever comes along.

  • On the post: The GDPR: Ghastly, Dumb, Paralyzing Regulation It's Hard To Celebrate

    DNY ( profile ), 26 May, 2018 @ 02:57am

    Annoyance to the large incumbents, death to small enterprises

    The wonderful Scotland-based hexgrid wargaming site hexwar.net has been killed by the GDPR.

    Evidently the "private information" that must be rigorously protected includes the state of games being transmitted back and forth between players in an internet analogue of play-by-mail. Somehow the same company's e-commerce side that sells play-against-AI hexgrid games and deals with things like credit card numbers, actual names and addresses and actual money has managed to comply, but the "private data" of where my virtual Marshal Ney, Marshal Grouchy and Napoleon, along with the various divisional-sized groupings of the Grande Armee are located on a hexgrid a map of the Belgian countryside couldn't be brought up to snuff for the EU's regulators.

    And yes, those of us who played games there would have all opted-in to have that data shared with the company and the other players -- heck I wouldn't care if it were published for the whole world to see.

  • On the post: In-N-Out Sues Australian Burger Joint, Despite Having No Restaurants In The Country

    DNY ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2018 @ 07:17am

    Why? Rent seeking

    The legal department at In-N-Out seems to have noticed that Australia has allowed copyright succcesful claims against transformative homages to songs (the flute riff on Waltzing Matilda in Men at Work's Down Under) with monetary damages,and figured they could apply the same "principle" in the trademark domain to get a bucket of money for very little work.

  • On the post: New Open Source Standard Hopes To Cure The Internet Of Broken Things Of Some Awful Security Practices

    DNY ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2018 @ 05:34am

    The problem in a nutshell

    When the assertion, "I think my refrigerator is spying on me," represents a sound, rationally held belief, rather than evidence of paranoid schizophrenia, something is definitely wrong.

  • On the post: EU's Mandatory Copyright Content Filter Is The Zombie That Just Never Dies

    DNY ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2018 @ 07:59am

    feature or bug?

    Are you sure that suppression of free speech is something the EU doesn't want? I suspect that's a feature, rather than a bug, from the point of view of the European Commission.

  • On the post: EU Commission Says Social Media Companies Must Take Down 'Terrorist Content' Within One Hour

    DNY ( profile ), 06 Mar, 2018 @ 08:19pm

    Re: Re:

    Not likely. While Spain has some influence, Poland's influence on the European Commission is just about nil. A proposal this sweeping isn't going to come out of the Commission without France and Germany being behind it. The only authoritarian influence in play here is the EU itself.

    Quite frankly this sort of thing should make everyone in the UK glad that "Leave" won, no matter how rocky the change to trading with the EU under WTO rules proves to be. (Yes, I think it will come to that, precisely because of the "we are to be obeyed" attitude of the European Commission.)

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