Scary Devil Monastery 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (8913)

• On the post: [UPDATE] Elizabeth Warren Is NOT Cosponsoring A Bill To Repeal 230

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2022 @ 01:26am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "Yes, this is more familiar. " You making an obviously false claim and people flocking to correct your broken logic? Yeah, I guess that must feel pretty familiar by now. "Techdirt posers trying their (pitiful) best to define words in a new way..." As in "Sane people refusing to let you redefine old words in new ways that fit your narrative" you mean? "...with arguments like "well other people said it too" and "that word doesn't mean what you think it means"." Because an outfit acting like the dictionary-definition of a patent troll and the dictionary itself must be cast into doubt at your sole assertion. I think we'll want a bit more context and logic around why you think observable evidence and the dictionary are incorrect before taking your word for it, Baghdad Bob. "Congratulations. The old Techdirt reappears." The one where gormless fuckwits like you don't get a single chance to assert blithering nonsense without someone calling that bullshit? Yeah, it never went away. But thanks for playing.

• On the post: Monster Energy Buys A Brewery; Trademark Lawsuits Are Almost Sure To Follow

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2022 @ 01:11am

  Re: Liquor?

  "Reasonable in relation to general brand crap complaints." I'm afraid "Monster" left the domain of "reasonable" a long time ago. Trademark, to me, is the one rational part of Intellectual Property I can respect but there are some people, like Nintendo and Monster, who partake in the sport of firing lawyers more or less at random.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2022 @ 01:07am

  Re:

  "As a reminder, those who use “spew” about the exercise of speech indicate that their argument is partisan rather than principled." You were doing so well until the point where you decided to make a personal judgment and claim it was objective. No, someone using a pejorative only means that person chose to use a pejorative. Some terms are politically loaded, to be sure, but those are fairly limited and recognizable. "Fake News" for instance is a term which in a land of tort and lawyers essentially replaces "If I take a complaint over this to court they'll all find out the implication I object to is true enough to bother me really bad so I'll just try to dismiss the implication with a one-liner and run". See also Goebbel's Lügenpresse for the normal use of this term. Multiculturalism is a dogwhistle word usually deployed heavily by bigots when they don't want to make with the ethnic slurs out loud. Another way of saying it's inherently dangerous for white people to be too closely associated with people from Asia, Africa or the Middle East. And so on. I don't see how someone saying "idiots spewing nonsense" is a partisan statement. But I do see how the targets of that evaluation might do their damnedest to marginalize that evaluation. A derivative use of "Fake News".

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2022 @ 12:57am

  Re: Re: Re: If Josh Hawley had been in charge of the Jan 6 putsc

  "I more had in mind what Josh Hawley might do for himself, in 2024" It will take Il Duce Arancione being literally dead for him not to run, I think. No, I believe Hawley will kneel and bob before Trump until Dear Leader finally ceases being politically relevant. At that point, not before, is when he'll wipe his lips, stand up, and loudly deliver the narrative that as a lifelong proudly independent statesman he's the best candidate to run the nation.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2022 @ 12:51am

  Re: Re: Re: would love to see

  "only real diff, I see is Who gets the money, and HOW they wish to regulate the corps. BOTH think the corps are the answer. IT ISNT." THAT is the only difference you see? I beg to differ. I don't know if americans have actually started to normalize the shit-show which is the GOP by now but when one of the parties hit every last one of Umberto Eco's 14 defining characteristics of fascism then that is most decidedly not a party playing in the same ring as ordinary politics;

  1: "The Cult of Tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.
  2: "The Rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.
  3: "The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.
  4: "Disagreement Is Treason" – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.
  5: "Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.
  6: "Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.
  7: "Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite's 'fear' of the 1930s Jewish populace's businesses and well-doings; see also antisemitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.
  8: Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.
  9: "Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.
  10: "Contempt for the Weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.
  11: "Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "[t]he Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."
  12: "Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."
  13: "Selective Populism" – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People."
  14: "Newspeak" – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

  Many political parties and politicians hit a few of these. Some openly fascist parties don't hit all of these. The GOP? Ten-rings every last one. And in doing so may be the first truly major political western body after the nazis to do so. There is no both sides debate here. No more so than you can put the drug-dealing murderous thug on the same page as the misbehaving child just because both break the rules.

• On the post: The World Handled A 'Wordle' Ripoff Just Fine Without Any IP Action

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 05:28am

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "...as time passes, all the pirate services will be destroyed..." <looks at The Pirate Bay> Seems to me the only thing destroying pirate "services", ever, is the emergence of newer and more effective pirate "services". But you do you, tp, and keep imagining that somehow your wishful thinking will make human nature change. "...and all their millions of customers will need to move to legal services instead." The irony of that statement is that we already have evidence that it's the reverse of that causal relationship which applies. Once legal services such as streaming came online piracy started dropping. Then when Streaming began splitting access and became inconvenient again, piracy surged.
  Once again your wishful thinking will not alter established reality. "...And once that keeps happening, all the legal services like meshpage.org will benefit from the flood of old customers of piracy services." Not happening. Primarily because your meshpage services aren't outcompeted by piracy but by fully legitimate open source alternatives, freeware, and various models supplied by legal businesses. What makes your argument truly pathetic, tp - as in more incoherent than that of the average five year old who doesn't understand why he can't have a pony - isn't just your fanatical devotion to copyright maximalism of an order not even Nick Valenti was deranged enough to push. It's that your business model hasn't failed because of piracy in the first place. It's failed because your offer can't survive the legal competition. And, I'd wager, because rather than work at fixing that you waste your time barking up the wrong tree.

• On the post: How To Destroy Innovation And Competition: Putting SHOP SAFE Act Into Innovation And Competition Act

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 04:28am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  [Addendum] How the heck did I manage to drop the reply to the wrong comment?
  Sorry, PaulIT, meant to drop this to one tier above.

• On the post: How To Destroy Innovation And Competition: Putting SHOP SAFE Act Into Innovation And Competition Act

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 02:37am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  "We can take the learnings out of what happened with the DMCA and the private technologies that were built from that like ContentID to build something fairer that takes into account all of the stakeholders." We really can't. And the reason for that is because the fundamental issue with the DMCA is that in practical terms it reverses burden of proof. Take that away and the DMCA becomes a paper construct without enforcement ability. This is where you should spot a significant problem - of "borrowing" a methodology which in principle turns law from "innocent until proven guilty" into "presumed guilt upon accusation". No, the thing is that we can have either an open marketplace which operates without sellers and buyers having to put up with incredible cost of verifications - or we can begin choking the marketplace completely until only major actors with the legal muscle to defend themselves can exist. And as is we've already tried everything else and are beginning to slide into the paradigm where small enterprise can't exist anymore because the burdens of legal threat become too large for anyone without a full legal department to shoulder. This is how you kill an entire industry with Red Flag Acts.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 02:28am

  Re: If Josh Hawley had been in charge of the Jan 6 putsch...

  Hawley reminds me, to an uncanny degree, of Rudolph Hess. The "reasonable" voice of fascism combined with the unswerving efforts to make Dear Leader's dream reality. I'm not sure Hawley even puts his pants on in the morning without wondering how he can combine that with giving Trump another reacharound.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 02:20am

  Re: Re:

  "If this is the quality of pro-copyright fucknuggets your movement is doomed, friendo." I think I recognize that particular brand of incoherent nonsense followed by an all caps statement that "PUNISHMENT awaits. Any day now". My guess is Bobmail/Baghdad Bob/Jhon Smith/out_of_the_blue is in his "meltdown" phase again. It's where he fails to pour the products of his trembling sphincter into a wordwall before tipping it into the comment textbox. We've seen it before.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 01:50am

  Re: Re: Re:

  "After the Jan 6th coup attempt it's like the collective intelligence of the copyright camp just went down several notches. Not that it was a brightly shining font of wisdom before, mind you." I remember when old Bobmail used to have these meltdowns on a regular basis, back on TorrentFreak. His love for fascism was obvious even back then and his recurring cries of "You'll all pay! PAY I Say!" were well known. But he can't get back on Torrentfreak because there's login verification now and he can't dwell on Ars because they're even harder in their restrictions and so he's relegated to spending all his time here, prompting most of us to agree with Mike and Tim that "There's motherfuckers, stupid motherfuckers, and then there's you" about him. It's just that every now and then poor Baghdad Bob just can't muster the energy to wrap a word wall around his sadism, ghoulish glee and fascist inclinations and that's when his loosened sphincter leaks stuff like what we just read in some poor defenseless text box.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 01:42am

  Re: Why Techbribe why?

  Ah, the incoherent ramblings lauding copyright and fascism finished with a "YOU'LL ALL PAY!". Pure Baghdad Bob drivel, like a word salad made by an AI weaned on Mein Kampf and old Rote Armee Fraktion PR slogans. Delivered, as per usual, with a random anon nick. I'm sure we're all impressed.

• On the post: Josh Hawley Was The Democrats' Partner In Trying To Regulate Big Tech; Then The Public Realized He Was A Fascist

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2022 @ 01:37am

  Re: would love to see

  "It might Light up a few faces when they understand that there is no such thing as a REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT, except by label." People keep saying this, especially older people. And I have to say they're wrong. Democrats and Republicans used to be comparable. A few ideologists, a bipartisan divide between progressive and conservative, a similar bipartisan divide between authoritarians and liberals. But that all changed after Reagan. The democrats are still business as usual - politicians of varying degrees of shady, occasionally trying to wedge a few actually constructive and benevolent bills in between carrying water for their biggest campaign contributors while largely being utterly ineffectual at addressing the most primary ills to plague the nations because that would upset those people they're beholden to. It's just that today their Big Tent contains all the progressives and liberals while the republicans have slid down to where they now no longer have any platform other than populism and no ideology other than outright fascism. You're half right. The democrats are largely the same as they always were. Their playbook remains that of stale old realpolitik. The republicans, however, have changed to where they are no longer on the same page. Their playbook is now literally Mein Kampf. And that should surprise no one given that Hitler wrote that manuscript while thinking of how to undermine a barely functioning democratic republic by quiet means with his beer hall coup having failed.

• On the post: How The Financialization Of Music Could Lead To Demands For Perpetual Copyright

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2022 @ 03:09am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: 'You broke the deal, we're returning the fav

  "While the common man gets swindled to support the cause." The common man, pinning his/her faith to the preachings of whatever cult holds their allegiance, has always been swindled though. The way to fix this is to teach people the value of critical thinking and education. What will never work, though, is to point out to the common man that he's been grifted. We do not live in the world of fairytale where the boy who shouts makes people aware the emperor has no clothes. We live in the world where the people irately beat the stuffing out of the young troublemaker for loudly agreeing with the evidence of their own lying eyes.

• On the post: NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2022 @ 02:54am

  Re: Re:

  "True, race is a social construct, and not a difference in our humanity." Hmm...not quite. Genetic markers do exist which categorize ethnic background. A few of whom point to environmental adaptation bringing a few characteristic appearance factors to the surface. Its just that none of those differences make any difference in the humanity of the person bearing them, because being better adapted to heat, cold, or UV radiation says nothing about your quality as a person. The issue is that a lot of people are still stuck in tribalism and all too eager to look down on what they perceive as different. Visible aspects of ethnicity, behavior, culture, sexuality, gender, religion...all of these are will serve well as a ready excuse for the bigot. Race isn't the social construct. The determination of worth is.

• On the post: Big Tech 'Antitrust Reform' Agenda Sags, Revealing Mostly Empty Rhetoric

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2022 @ 02:32am

  Re: Re:

  "I'm amazed you're still believing in the strawman Mike who only exists in your head." Baghdad Bob's made it pretty clear his whole world only exists inside his head. Why would the Mike he sees be any more real than the rest of his dystopian hallucination?

• On the post: Big Tech 'Antitrust Reform' Agenda Sags, Revealing Mostly Empty Rhetoric

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2022 @ 01:54am

  Re: until the United States finds creative ways to break the cyc

  "...by scrapping capitalism and moving to a more equitable and democratic form of government, i.e. communism!" Except that people being people Communism won't work. The USSR actually tried but no regime today calling itself communist managed to get around the fact that people are neither perfect nor machines and thus there is communism remains an "if pigs could fly" theorem only spoiled by the absence of winged porcines. China underlines this point by, in effect, having a market more red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalist by far than the US at this point.

• On the post: The VPN Is On Everybody's Shitlist After Years Of Scammy Providers And Empty Promises

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 12 Jan, 2022 @ 01:22am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  Are you suggesting AT&T would lie to its consumers? Its bread and butter? ...Sorry, can't even type that with a straight face...????

• On the post: NYPD Officers Are Again Whining About Being Asked To Document Their Biased Policework

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 12 Jan, 2022 @ 01:18am

  Re: basically an admission of racist policing

  "Translation: I decide whom to pull over based solely on that person's skin color. I believe that my behavior will be exposed if I use this system and continue my racist policing practices." Random Not-A-Racist-But: "I can't help it if black and latinos are more often criminals than white folks." Me: "assuming that's true why do you think that is so?" Random Not-A-Racist-But: "They live in ghettos and they're poor. Criminal life comes naturally to them." Me: "So why are they poor and live in ghettos?" Random Not-A-Racist-But: "Because they're too lazy. It's just how they are." Me: "Uh-huh. So basically you assume they are inherently lesser as a people?" Random Not-A-Racist-But: "Don't you call me a god damn racist, asshole!!" The lack of self-awareness of the average racist is staggeringly lacking - and when you hold a mirror up to them rather than reflect they throw a tantrum and try to blame their own shitty values on everyone else.

• On the post: Please Join Techdirt In Celebrating 'National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day!'

  

  Scary Devil Monastery ( profile ), 12 Jan, 2022 @ 01:00am

  Re: What _will_ get police officers fired.

  "Meanwhile, if killing unarmed black men in cold blood won't get police officers fired, you know what will?" A manifestly unfair comparison. From the view of police leadership and unions killing a black man is often seen in a positive light.
  Playing games rather than actively hurting or killing people means you aren't doing your job as a US law enforcement officer. No wonder the guy got the sack.

Next >>