Paul Alan Levy 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The NY Times Challenges ‘Worldle’s’ Trademark

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2024 @ 06:09am

    That's a strong retraction

    Eating humble pie is never fun. But the open and honest confession of error was the right thing to do, and I admire you for it

  • On the post: Supreme Court To Nick Sandmann: ‘Lol, No’ To Hearing His Omnibus Defamation Lawsuit Against News Orgs

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 04 Apr, 2024 @ 12:12pm

    Was the Washington Post foolish to settle?

    Maybe not so foolish as you assume. The WaPo's position had some problems that not all of the defendants had.

  • On the post: Why Are So Many ‘Free Speech’ Elon Musk Lawsuits About Suppressing Speech?

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2024 @ 05:40pm

    Well, if that's your position

    Then I just think you are wrong as a matter of First Amendment law. Private sector employers are constrained in the exercise of their economic operations even if they choose to characterize specific economic actions as an expression of their beliefs. Employers don't get to discuss prices and then set pricing by parallel action just by saying, the First Amendment protects my right to disclose my prices to my competitors. Employers cannot get away with firing union activists by saying, this just expresses my opposition to unions, or by saying, I don't want my customers to think I tolerate union activity. Same for firing for going to the feds to complain about discrimination, even if the employer is an arrant racist and wants his company to be known as such.

  • On the post: Why Are So Many ‘Free Speech’ Elon Musk Lawsuits About Suppressing Speech?

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2024 @ 10:55am

    "in the technical sense"?

    Stephen, is your point that a private sector employer might be able to present a sound First Amendment defense to an employee's claim under such laws? Or only that you think there could be sound public policy arguments for recognizing a right not to associate with employees based on their views

  • On the post: Why Are So Many ‘Free Speech’ Elon Musk Lawsuits About Suppressing Speech?

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2024 @ 10:08am

    Free speech rights of employees in the private sector

    Glad to join in dumping on Musk, but the contention that legal protection for private sector employees' expression of social and political views infringes the free speech of their employers gives me pause. There are, for example, any number of state and federal laws that forbid companies from disciplining their employees for whistleblowing, or for speaking up against discrimination, or from advocating concerted action with other employees (for example, for supporting a union). And then there are laws protecting employees from being fired for voting for the wrong candidate or supporting the wrong political party. Your view is that these laws violate the employer's First Amendment right of association? Hateful though Chloe Happe's speech may have been, Musk's support for her lawsuit does not seem to me to be an attack on free speech.

  • On the post: Ridiculous: Journalist Held In Contempt For Not Revealing Sources

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 02 Mar, 2024 @ 08:45pm

    Maybe not so ridiculous

    Suppose some cops conduct an investigation into the activities of a naturalized person of color, as part of a generalized feeling of suspicion about people with that national origin. They cannot come up with evidence persuading the prosecutors that there was a crime. But the cops think the immigrant is guilty so they make public some information about the innocent immigrant to make that immigrant’s life hell. The way they do that is by providing it to a reporter who works for a racist news organization that stirs up hatred against immigrants of color, especially immigrants of that nationality. So the immigrant sues for the violation of her right by the cops, The only way she can win her case is so identify the cops who deliberately violated her rights. Do the cops get away with publicizing the information because they used a reporter to do it?

  • On the post: No One Cares That Bill Ackman’s Wife May Have Plagiarized; They Care About Ackman’s Hypocritical Double Standard

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2024 @ 10:40am

    which Clare Locke seems to want you to believe they can produce in every case

    My experience is that a level response to a Clare Locke demand letter can back them down.

  • On the post: Would You Trust A Cryptocurrency Whose Operator Sues Journalists For Reporting On Lawsuits Calling You A Scam?

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2024 @ 12:39pm

    While the GOP breathes....

    If only it were that simple.

  • On the post: ‘Lord Of The Wings’ Food Truck Trademark In New Zealand Defeated By Tolkien Estate

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2024 @ 11:32pm

    Better chance of success

    The issue is less what the rights holder might believe (not the estate, as discussed in a different comment thread), and more whether the food truck owner is likely to succeed in his argument.

  • On the post: ‘Lord Of The Wings’ Food Truck Trademark In New Zealand Defeated By Tolkien Estate

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2024 @ 12:45am

    Much more likely to fly under the radar

    By seeking to register a mark, he called attention to his plans. And had he been subjected to a threat of litigation, he would THEN have said that he was not playing on any mark, just using a clever name for his business.

  • On the post: ‘Lord Of The Wings’ Food Truck Trademark In New Zealand Defeated By Tolkien Estate

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 03 Jan, 2024 @ 02:34am

    Using a name versus registering a mark

    This guy had an idea for the name of a food truck which, I take it, he had not yet started using. But his first step was not to start selling wings using that name, but to try to register a trademark to prevent anyone else from using that name. Allowing him engage in trademark bullying, perhaps? Why does that make any sense? Why should we sympathize? b Eat More Kale. Trump Too Small. Nothing prevents the use of these phrases, but they don't have to be registered for exclusive use. And in US terms, Lord of the Rings is a famous mark. His use might well be non-registrable for reasons of blurring

  • On the post: News Media Alliance Already Plotting How To Get Free Cash Payments From AI Companies

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 08 Nov, 2023 @ 09:43am

    Well, not quite

    Quoting spoken words does not implicate copyright at all, and printing a short quotation from a longer document is fair use. That is not at all comparable to copying an entire article for the purpose of training. Apples and oranges. Whether the training is fair use is an issue currently being litigated. My copyleft friends are supremely confident. We shall see how all those cases come out.

  • On the post: Sure, There’s Disinfo On ExTwitter, But The EU Should Not Be Demanding Censorship

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 11 Oct, 2023 @ 04:10pm

    "Genocidal lawfare"?

    Litigation is answered in court. But the blog post in question is about SPEECH, and content moderation of speech on X. Your query about "genocidal lawfare" is a tangent based on buzzwords that I decline to follow

  • On the post: Sure, There’s Disinfo On ExTwitter, But The EU Should Not Be Demanding Censorship

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 11 Oct, 2023 @ 02:56pm

    Well, you Coward

    Right. I am a big boy. I get called names. I get threatened with violence over my speech. I got the brick through my window for my speech. I have learned to sluff it off and proceed. But I fully appreciate the harm that aggressive and nasty speech can cause, to my friends and to my family, yet I consider that protecting free speech against government action is a high value that ought to be preserved except in narrow circumstances. And I make those points in my own name, not as an anonymous coward.

  • On the post: Sure, There’s Disinfo On ExTwitter, But The EU Should Not Be Demanding Censorship

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 11 Oct, 2023 @ 01:29pm

    Posturing? Or Ignorance?

    Mike, as much as I agree with you about what the role of government SHOULD be, the fact remains that the EU is not constrained by a First Amendment; as result it can regulate speech in ways that the government never could do here. For example, the right to be forgotten could not constitutionally be imposed in the US; similarly, rules against racist speech and advocacy of Naziism. I prefer to have our First Amendment despite the impact of such speech on those whom I love. But Google and its ilk have decided to find a way to live with that regime because they want access to the EU market. X is going to have to make that choice as well. And what strikes me about Musk’s posturing on this issue is that he may well not have thought very much about the economic consequences of his position. Maybe he just doesn’t care, but maybe this is another of the many blind spots in his supreme self-confidence

  • On the post: NY Times Considering A Potentially Very Dumb Lawsuit Against OpenAI Because It Learned From NY Times Content

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 18 Aug, 2023 @ 08:25am

    Don't be so sure the NYT will lose this one

    The same folks who insisted that there is no way Internet Archive could lose the copyright suit by book publishers over e-books have been saying there is no way that that the various suits over the use of copyrighted matter for training AI systems could succeed.

  • On the post: The Supreme Court May Not Have Read Our Brief About The First Amendment And Copyright, But You Can

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 30 May, 2023 @ 03:15pm

    "The decision must be overturned"

    And how do you propose to accomplish that, Cathy?

  • On the post: Ninth Circuit Says A Horn Honk Isn’t Protected Political Expression Even When That’s The Honk’s Entire Point

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2023 @ 05:51pm

    Not quite

    This was a facial challenge to the statute, not a challenge to the individual enforcement decision, and according to both the summary and a passage at the end of the opinion (I confess I have not read the record), the plaintiff did not argue selective enforcement and the majority expressly did not reach that issue. "We make one final observation: It appears that Section 27001 citations are not common, and officers are taught to use 'sound professional judgment' in deciding whether to give a warning or a citation for a violation of Section 27001. As the dissent aptly observes in footnote 6, such broad discretion could open the door to selective enforcement. Porter does not allege, however, that the State has a policy or practice of improper selective enforcement of Section 27001, so we have no occasion to address that possibility here."

  • On the post: Taamneh Case Gave Us A Glimpse Of The Horror Websites Would Face In A Post-Section 230 World

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2023 @ 02:42pm

    Nothing inherently wrong with imposing liability on a substantial defendant that can afford to pay

    As you know, I am a strong proponent of section 230 protection, but “bring the suit against the person who did the wrong” is a bit too simplistic. There are a variety of areas of the law where liability is placed on a large entity to give it an incentive to prevent dangerous situations. For example, under the doctrine known as respondeat superior, the individual truck driver may have run the light and hit your car, but you can sue that driver’s employer – it gives the trucking company an incentive to select and train its drivers better. Similarly, even when it is the individual government staffer who violates someone’s constitutional rights, the municipality may be held liable – this gives it the incentive to select and train employees better, not to speak of adopting better policies which that employee may have been enforcing. Even when the individual vendor at a flea market is the one that sells merchandise that violates IP rights, the flea market can be held liable for the infringement if it failed to take stop infringements that it knew, or should have known, were taking place. Or a newspaper can be held liable for defamatory statements in a letter to the editor or, indeed, paid advertisement published in the hard copy of the paper -- the facts of New York Times v. Sullivan. (Same for Fox when it allows loud mouths to come on the air and accuse companies of deliberately fixing an election). The media regularly do libel review and can protect against deliberately false statements about members of the public. Tort law also takes into consideration which actors can most easily insure against liability, and hence allows suits against defendants who can most easily spread the risks -- and provide compensation to the injured -- by financing insurance coverage. The better argument for section 230 is that placing liability on the platform provider threatens serious consequences, including for the ability of those who may publish unpopular or controversial speech to be heard. Better to stick with that argument.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Denies Cert To NSA Case, Allows State Secret Privilege To Roll On Unaltered

    Paul Alan Levy ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2023 @ 11:50am

    No, the Supreme Court in the Parma case did NOT "sa[y] basically the same thing"

    Denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari says NOTHING about the decision that the Supreme Court is not going to review. Despite the amusing amicus brief from the Onion in support of the petition, that got us all yucking, this was a qualified immunity case with a striking fact pattern and unfortunately the Supreme Court chose not to take it

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