Mason Wheeler 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (4010)

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

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2019 @ 11:17am

  Re: Re: Re: Define 'harm'

  Not in general, but considering the nature of this particular leak, and the careless, reckless manner in which it was published, it's a valid metaphor. It could easily have caused some very real harm, and the fact that it didn't doesn't mean anything other than that we got lucky.

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

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2019 @ 10:41am

  Re: Define 'harm'

  No one lost their lives... this time. If I fire a bullet into a crowd and it doesn't happen to hit anyone, does that mean I didn't do anything wrong? Of course not, and I suspect that that basic reality has more to do with the motivations in this case than petty desires for revenge.

• On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 01:42pm

  Re: UPDATE: Rudin Allows Local Theaters to Perform Sorkin's Vers

  Not surprised. This is perfectly consistent with my theory above that this is motivated by a desire to suppress ideological competition rather than the more traditional commercial variety.

• On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 01:36pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  The context you're missing is that there is no "context" that makes the violation of the right to Due Process acceptable. There are people today trying to get To Kill A Mockingbird taken out of schools specifically because it flies in the face of the ideology of always believing the victim. And that's precisely why it needs to stay, and not be messed with by people trying to dilute its message!

• On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 12:08pm

  Re: Re:

  It's not the "only takeaway" by any means, but it's the part that's really relevant today. The story has the ring of truth because it is true; the stuff that happened to Tom really happened to a lot of black men in the Deep South, and it's very disturbing to see old, historically racist tactics repackaged and deployed by people who make a big deal of being opposed to racism.

• On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 10:43am

  This is disturbing news. In this time of allegations of sexual misconduct running rampant, and powerful movements to uncritically believe the accusations in the absence of any proof, To Kill A Mockingbird is perhaps more relevant today than it's ever been. When this classic story is being suppressed in favor of a modern adaptation where Sorkin freely admits he took liberties with the characterization of the main characters because in the original they were the wrong kind of liberal, does anyone else get the feeling that maybe this isn't being driven by a desire to suppress monetary competition, but rather ideological competition?

• On the post: Don't Celebrate Copyright Being Used For Political Censorship Just Because You Don't Like The President

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 07:52am

  Whatever happened to "satire, parody, and commentary are protected as fair use" anyway?

• On the post: The Impossibility Of Content Moderation Extends To The People Tasked With Doing Content Moderation

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 11:21am

  Re:

  We've all heard the controversial notion that "too big to fail is too big to exist." It seems like it should be a bit less controversial to state that too big to succeed is too big to exist.

• On the post: Be Careful What You Wish For: Demanding Platforms Delete Disinformation May Make It Harder To Understand What Happened

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 07:12am

  Re: Re:

  Quick markdown hint: the brackets go around the plain text, and the parens go around the URL.

• On the post: Pissed Consumer Exposes New York Luxury Car Dealer's Use Of Bogus Notarized Letters To Remove Critical Reviews [UPDATE]

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 07:10am

  Re: Re: Irrelevant

  Either way she is about to have a bad day.

  How bad? Like, on a scale of 1 to Nuremburg, much trouble is she in?

• On the post: California AG Says Journalist Broke The Law By Obtaining A List Of Convicted Officers Via A Public Records Request

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 12:07pm

  Re: Re: Re: That can't be right...

  Not necessarily. Right around 85% of people are basically honest and decent in general, with the rest being willing to commit dishonest acts to further their own interests. Which suggests that California police are... well... basically normal human beings.

• On the post: California AG Says Journalist Broke The Law By Obtaining A List Of Convicted Officers Via A Public Records Request

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 11:38am

  Re: Re: Re: That can't be right...

  'There's a lot of cops total, therefore you'd expect even a small fraction to add up to a large number' kinda misses the point I was trying to make, in that the public is told again and again that police corruption isn't really a problem worth dealing with because it's only 'a few bad apples', yet twelve thousand is anything but 'a few'.

  Isn't that the whole point of the fallacy, though? That when you consider absolute numbers rather than relative population sizes, what might intuitively look like "anything but a few" can actually turn out to be a statistically irrelevant percentage?

• On the post: Be Careful What You Wish For: Demanding Platforms Delete Disinformation May Make It Harder To Understand What Happened

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 07:26am

  Wow. Whatever happened to "destroying evidence of a crime is a crime"?

• On the post: Beware The Rise Of Censorship Under The Guise Of Stopping Fake News: UK Regulators Push For Dangerous Plan

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2019 @ 12:53pm

  Re: Re:

  But laws like this don't make them accountable to the President; they make them accountable to the people, by way of the courts.

• On the post: Beware The Rise Of Censorship Under The Guise Of Stopping Fake News: UK Regulators Push For Dangerous Plan

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2019 @ 12:39pm

  Re:

  Remember this rule of thumb: any definition given by a specific individual or group of "hate speech" (or similar things such as "hate crimes," "hate groups," etc) can be best understood by prefixing the term with "I-" or "we-".

• On the post: AT&T Throwing FundRaiser For Senate Chair Ahead Of Privacy Hearings

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2019 @ 10:32am

  Re: Re:

  Given the presence of the "find" command in a browser, he has already satisfied that requirement.

• On the post: AT&T Throwing FundRaiser For Senate Chair Ahead Of Privacy Hearings

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2019 @ 07:28am

  Re: And the hoi polloi aren't invited

  Fun fact: when Shakespeare wrote it, the word didn't mean "attorney;" it meant "lawmaker."

• On the post: Beware The Rise Of Censorship Under The Guise Of Stopping Fake News: UK Regulators Push For Dangerous Plan

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2019 @ 12:13pm

  Even well-intentioned laws meant to tackle hateful views online often end up hurting the minority groups they are meant to protect, stifle public debate, and limit the public’s ability to hold the powerful to account.

  Those first few are valid points, but the last one feels like doublespeak. Laws created to help "hold the powerful to account" will limit the public's ability to do so?

  The only way that makes any sense is if you're coming at it from a twisted viewpoint in which "the powerful" only means government entities and does not apply to any other form of easily- and frequently-abused power, such as the corporate variety.

• On the post: Apple Shutting Down Stores In East Texas To Avoid Patent Trolling Cases In The Troll's Favorite Docket

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2019 @ 03:34pm

  Re: Oops

  They say everything is bigger in Texas. Apparently this includes the mistakes!

• On the post: Who Needs Article 13: Italian Court Finds Facebook Liable For Hosting Links

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2019 @ 10:07am

  Re: Next Link

  So you want to implement RFC 3514?

Next >>