ke9tv 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (191)

• On the post: Wisconsin Pushing Bill That Requires Websites To Treat All Users As If They’re Children

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2023 @ 06:11pm

  Time zones don't exist on a flat Earth.

• On the post: Judge Dumps Trump’s Retaliatory Defamation Suit Against The Winner Of A Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Against Him

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 03:22pm

  I never thought I'd see the politicians spending so much time obsessing about so many penes. Trump's penis and whether or not it entered Ms. Carroll, and Hunter Biden's penis and whether or not it appears on video on some laptop that may or may not exist and may or not have belonged to Mr. Biden. Considering what the right wing thinks about sexual orientation, I would have imagined that they'd be upset that so many of the male right-wingers take such an interest in any penis of which they're not the proprietor.

• On the post: My Distaste For Your Solution Does Not Mean Disregard For The Problem

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 03:12pm

  My suspicion is that a kid who's sophisticated enough to crack browser security is not going to have their innocence ruined by seeing porn on the Internet. They've seen it already. For that matter, any kid who's old enough to be interested in porn is going to be able to find it. Heck, when I was a boy (I'm an old man now), every other boy I knew had a stash of girlie magazines somewhere. Well, at least, every straight boy, and most of the others might not have been that interested but still stashed them to fit in better with the peers. We didn't talk about alternative sexual and gender preferences very much. My barber did a lot of clandestine sales of raunchier stuff than you could pick up on the newsstand or in a regular bookstore. (He had some 8mm movies, too, but I didn't have a projector that I could use surrepetitiously, so never bought.) I can't imagine that finding sexually explicit material is any harder nowadays than it was back then. My answer to "it'll harm the children!" is "it never did you or me all that much harm, did it?"

• On the post: FCC Hits Robocall Scammers With $300 Million Fine That Still Somehow Means Nothing

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 08 Aug, 2023 @ 02:58pm

  I can't forget the time, about 10 years ago, when I strongly suspect that whatever cellular provider I was using at the time had a data breach. I started getting one telemarketer who consistently spoofed my boss's number! (I eventually had to say, "Boss, I'm going to have to consistently send you to voicemail because of this nonsense. I'll call you back, I promise, or text me and I'll call you," and block the number from ringing the phone.)

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 07 Aug, 2023 @ 08:27am

  When in doubt, just use the word “Defamation”, which covers both slander and libel. "Calumny" is also a useful word in this context.

• On the post: Academic Book About Emojis Can’t Include The Emojis It Talks About Because Of Copyright

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 04 Aug, 2023 @ 02:24pm

  Copyright is no longer about protecting intellectual property from plagiarism. It's about publishers with deep pockets using their money to purchase the power of imprimatur. No piece of information, fragment of text, or work of art shall appear without their blessing.

• On the post: By Making Its Porn Age Verification Law A ‘Bounty’ Law, Utah Able To Deflect Challenge To The Law’s Validity

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 04 Aug, 2023 @ 02:15pm

  Can you spell “Brown Shirt Germany of 90 Years Ago” boys and girls?

  Red hats are the new brown shirts.

• On the post: NFL Returns To Threatening Local New Orleans Businesses Over Fleur De Lis

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 01:07pm

  This ignorant Yankee knows that the ancient arms of France (azure, semé de lys or) were borne by the French kings from Hugues Capet until Charles V changed his armorial in 1376 to azure, three fleurs de lys or. The latter arms continued to be the French royal arms through the time of the Second Restoration, until the restored monarchy was finally deposed in 1831, and the fleurs-de-lys remain in various forms as a symbol of Ancien Régime heritage in the New World, from Nova Scotia and Québec to N'Awlins, to Nouvelle Calédonie. And the only thing this ignorant Yankee needed to do a few minutes of research to look up was the 1376 date.

• On the post: NFL Returns To Threatening Local New Orleans Businesses Over Fleur De Lis

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 12:56pm

  Tabarnac! C'est Québec, et pas Quebéc. (Comment est-ce q'on écrit «câlice» au Québec?) Tu as raison, les québecois et les français possèdaient le fleur de lis depuis plusieurs siècles. Le NFL n'a que cinq ou six boîtes de tomates vartes.

• On the post: Jim Larkin, Backpage Exec, Dies By Suicide A Week Before His Trial

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 12:08pm

  You can, but some of us don't.

• On the post: French News Agency Sues ex-Twitter For Not Paying Snippet Tax

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2023 @ 11:56am

  Summary: "You must allow us to post links to ourselves and snippets from our sites, you may not block us from doing so, and you must pay us for the privilege. If you object that these rules make you pay all the cost but allow us to derive all the value, you are not negotiating in good faith." Shorter summary: "Nice platform you have there. Be a shame if anything happened to it."

• On the post: Meta Begins The Process Of Ending News Links In Canada

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2023 @ 01:01pm

  I think the next predictable move by the Canadian government will be to try to impose some sort of "must carry" rule, outlawing the suppression of links to news outlets that charge for linking: "You must both send traffic our way AND pay us for the privilege of doing so." After all, that's close to the model in the US for cable systems to carry local broadcast stations. And the correct response for Alphabet and Meta would be to say, "very well, then, our services will no longer be available to Canadians, because under the Canadian model the revenue we obtain from them will no longer support the cost of providing them."

• On the post: Legal Subreddit Bans All Ex-Twitter Links Due To Safety Risk

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2023 @ 01:38pm

  and if did so very definitely did so to shame the pedos in question.

  Rule of Goats.

• On the post: The Weird Trademark Issue That Shows Up In The Harlan Crow / Clarence Thomas Mess

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2023 @ 01:24pm

  Your use of the word 'leftist' appears simply to be a 'snarl word' meaning 'enemy'; semantic content otherwise null. (I'm pretty sure that if asked to define it, you'd simply respond with other words that to you simply mean 'bad' or 'hated'.) (FWIW, my own political leanings would be center-Right anywhere but the US, where my beliefs appear to lie far outside the current Overton window. A one-line summary might be 'what you do on your side of the fence is your business,' which in the US is a far-Left social position, unthinkable to both major political parties.)

• On the post: The Weird Trademark Issue That Shows Up In The Harlan Crow / Clarence Thomas Mess

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2023 @ 01:10pm

  Except except..

  there are limitations on what you can claim as an employee business expense that don't apply to the business owner. Including that the 'drive to or from work' is not available for travel to your regular work site - and that really screws over field workers who don't have a regular work site in practice - all the W&T on their personal cars is just 'daily commute', and the travel is often on their own time as well. Then on top of that, the expenses you can claim get a certain percentage of your gross income simply subtracted; you can start deducting them only to the extent that they exceed that number. Again, this doesn't apply to the business owner; business owners can have the business reimburse them for expenses and write them off on the business's return. Plus, the little guys are so much easier to audit, and can't afford good lawyers and accountants to push back. It's cheaper to extract a thousand bucks from each of a hundred little guys than to get a hundred thousand from one one-percenter. And getting millions from a fat cat? Impossible, your grandchildren will still be litigating it. So, while 'big or small' might not matter, 'employee or owner' does matter, a lot.

• On the post: Prime Minister’s Brother Latest Victim Of Singapore’s ‘Fake News’ Law

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 01 Aug, 2023 @ 11:11am

  It's far from unheard of for autocrats to throw family members under the bus when the heat is on. I wouldn't call this use of the law entirely surprising.

• On the post: Chicago PD Sued Over Mass Traffic Stops Of Minorities That Do Almost Nothing To Stop Crime

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2023 @ 08:36am

  I suspect that 'indiction' was a portmanteau of 'indictment' and 'conviction' that happened to pass a spell checker.

• On the post: Study: The Overwhelming Majority Of Historical Video Games Are Endangered

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2023 @ 08:22am

  "It hurts sales" is meaningful only when it refers to the sales of the copyrighted work. Hurting the sales of other properties is (at least under the law) irrelevant to copyright protection. Of course, other torts, such as defamation, interference with contract, and so on, could also have "hurts sales" as part of the calculus of damages, but copyright protects the sales only of the copyrighted work. Of course, as I observed above, those with enough money enjoy the power of imprimatur.

• On the post: Study: The Overwhelming Majority Of Historical Video Games Are Endangered

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 14 Jul, 2023 @ 08:19am

  They don't own the ideas, even temporarily

  They enjoy a temporary monopoly on the expression. Ideas are the subject of patent, not copyright - and patented ideas have to demonstrate utility. At least that's what the law says. What happens in practice is that people with enough money enjoy the power of imprimatur.

• On the post: Third Circuit Says First Amendment Protects Cops Who Want To Be Racist Assholes Online

  

  ke9tv ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2023 @ 11:09am

  When your boss is the government

  When your boss is the government, constitutional rights do come into it. Otherwise, for instance, you'd see university professors fired left and right for teaching things like evolution or Marxist critical theory. It's fairly well established that a state university can't sanction a professor for such things. Some states have even tried to enforce such things on private schools. Usually the legal fiction that enforces such things is that they accept students who have received state grants-in-aid, and are therefore subject to every whim of the state government. (-1 when the same legislators say that the school can't refuse to admit such students because that would be discrimination.)

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