Upstream 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Iowa Senate Approves Bill That Would Add Qualified Immunity To The State Law Books

    Upstream ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2021 @ 06:47am

    Re: Hope and Change

    QI was supposed to be for actions that a reasonable cop would, in good faith, believe to be lawful. Three very important qualifiers there. It has since been bastardized to cover damn near anything and everything any cop ever does, no matter how heinous. Big difference.

  • On the post: Court Says Two Cops Who Deployed Deadly Force Can Use Florida's Victims' Rights Law To Hide Their Names From The Public

    Upstream ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2021 @ 06:17am

    Joke-a-Thon

    Joke 1)

    This does not mean that the public cannot hold law enforcement officers accountable for any misconduct.

    Jokes 2) and 3)

    Maintaining confidential information about a law enforcement officer who is a crime victim would not halt an internal affairs investigation nor impede any grand jury proceedings.

    Joke 4)

    Nor would it prevent a state attorney from reviewing the facts and considering whether the officer was a victim.

    Joke 5)

    If a prosecutor determines that the officer was not a victim and instead charges the officer for his conduct, then the officer would forfeit the protections…

    Ha Ha! This Appeals Court is just a barrel of laughs!

  • On the post: Patent Loving Judge Keeps Pissing Off Patent Appeals Court, But Doesn't Seem To Care Very Much

    Upstream ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2021 @ 04:29pm

    Re:

    if a judge is doing it, then it's acceptable behavior
    A very similar idea didn't work for Nixon, and this idea shouldn't work for this guy, either.

  • On the post: Patent Loving Judge Keeps Pissing Off Patent Appeals Court, But Doesn't Seem To Care Very Much

    Upstream ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2021 @ 04:26pm

    Re:

    it's a judge going litigant-shopping? soliciting bribes/kickback,
    Asked and answered.

  • On the post: Tennessee Lawmakers Decide Chris Sevier Has Good Ideas, Push His Bill To Compel Speech From Media Outlets

    Upstream ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2021 @ 10:39am

    presumably non-insane legislators

    Might be a bit too presumptuous. Appears to be contrary to facts in evidence.

  • On the post: Iowa Senate Approves Bill That Would Add Qualified Immunity To The State Law Books

    Upstream ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2021 @ 04:59am

    Either / Or

    Either the Iowa Senate is just not "reading the room" or they have decided that it is OK for an authoritarian government to publicly make a hobby out of kicking the people in the teeth.

  • On the post: FBI Scores Itself Another Lawsuit For Using The No Fly List To Punish A Lebanese Man For Not Becoming An Informant

    Upstream ( profile ), 12 Apr, 2021 @ 03:50pm

    Re:

    Yes, AFAIK the FBI has a long-standing policy of not recording "meetings" or "interviews." That way it is their word against the word of whoever they were talking with. The people they typically talk with are unsympathetic characters, or people that can be portrayed as unsympathetic characters, the implication being that whatever those people say cannot be trusted, versus the "unassailable truth" that comes from the untouchables. Far too many jellyfish judges are accomplices in this subversion of justice in that they continue to treat the word of almost any LEO as gospel in spite of an increasingly large mountain of evidence that LEOs are generally serial liars.

  • On the post: Khloe Kardashian Streisands A Photo She Wanted Taken Down By Issuing Takedowns

    Upstream ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2021 @ 05:23am

    Key word: "ask"

    "When someone takes a photo of you that isn’t flattering in bad lighting or doesn’t capture your body the way it is after working so hard to get it to this point, you should have every right to ask for it to not be shared - regardless of who you are," she wrote.

    It's OK to want things.

  • On the post: Filecoin Foundation Donates $10 Million Worth Of Filecoin To Internet Archive

    Upstream ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2021 @ 01:00pm

    Re: Re: Re: So, they got nothing - because cryptocurrency is com

    What about pizza_and_beer (which is actually one word)? Seriously, I think some things like food can be said to have some intrinsic value, at least to critters that eat said food. Unless there is an infinite and effortless source of said food, which really isn't a possibility.

  • On the post: Crime Rates Drop After The City Of Baltimore Decides It's Not Going To Waste Resources Prosecuting Minor Offenses

    Upstream ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2021 @ 04:02pm

    Correlation versus Causation

    I am very much in favor of not prosecuting non-serious non-crimes, but this part struck me as a bit odd:

    The data showed that 911 calls about drug use, public intoxication and sex work (a proxy for public concern) did not increase following the policy; rather, from March – December 2020, there was a 33% reduction in calls mentioning drugs and a 50% reduction in calls mentioning sex work compared to the prior 2 years.

    This could be the result of one or more of several different causes. One might be people thinking "Why report something if the prosecutor / cops aren't going to do anything about it?" Another might be people realizing "These things aren't really causing anyone any harm anyway, so why report them?" A third might be a reduction in the incidence of these activities, which could itself be the result of one or more of several different causes.

    Of course, rather than simply not prosecuting these non-serious non-crimes, it would be much preferable to repeal the immoral laws making such activities illegal to begin with.

  • On the post: Uninformed Legislators Shoot Down Right To Repair Legislation In Colorado

    Upstream ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2021 @ 02:18pm

    Re: 'You're just giving me words, they're giving me money, so...

    This is another case where the "Hanlon's Razor" benefit of the doubt should not apply. Given the evidence:

    A) . . . even after hearing testimony about how repair restrictions are harming health care providers during COVID by hamstringing access to essential repair technology and documentation or replacement parts B) Even after folks clearly testified about the scope of the harm repair monopolies cause to agriculture, health care, and other sectors, and after folks clearly illustrated the environmental impact of a wasteful culture routinely incentivized to avoid repair and buy new, the lawmakers made oodles of comments suggesting they'd bought into corporate narratives on the subject:
    and
    C) In their own comments, the legislators repeated lines Apple and other companies often use to defend their repair monopolies.
    It is perfectly reasonable to conclude that the legislators were bought out beforehand. It would be completely unreasonable to come to any other conclusion.

  • On the post: Filecoin Foundation Donates $10 Million Worth Of Filecoin To Internet Archive

    Upstream ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2021 @ 07:28pm

    Future of cryptocurrencies

    I am all in favor of the concept of decentralized means of exchange that cut out governments and bean-counters altogether. However, I am not yet convinced that our current crop of cryptocurrencies are the solution. I am also a late-adopter in general, and I try to avoid getting cut on the bleeding edge of any new technology.

    Bruce Schneier and Barath Raghavan have an interesting article on some of the positive features and possible pitfalls of blockchain cryptocurrencies as they stand right now.

    tl;dr
    The last line of the article:
    "We are watching a public socio-technical experiment in the making, and we will witness its success or failure in the not-too-distant future."

  • On the post: Fourth Circuit Appeals Court Takes Aim At Police Officers' 'Training And Expertise' Assertions

    Upstream ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2021 @ 08:46am

    Re: Re:

    I believe the anwser is "Yes." Lack of training is often a feature, not a bug, from the cop's point of view, as it increases the plausibility of ignorance of "clearly established rights," etc. Often what training cops do get primarily involves techniques for avoiding accountability, such as yelling "Stop resisting!" over and over again as they repeatedly punch a person (who is clearly not resisting) in the face.

  • On the post: Uninformed Legislators Shoot Down Right To Repair Legislation In Colorado

    Upstream ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2021 @ 11:24am

    Wow.

    Shannon Bird (D), for example, said that manufacturers have the right to dictate how a customer uses its product.

    This is clearly hypocritical because Shannon Bird seems to have ignored the manufacturer's dictates not to drink the joy juice and smoke the prime kush prior to legislative committee meetings.

  • On the post: Fourth Circuit Appeals Court Takes Aim At Police Officers' 'Training And Expertise' Assertions

    Upstream ( profile ), 07 Apr, 2021 @ 05:20pm

    "Expert" witnesses?

    In my view, judges can begin to curb these ill effects by dialing down the deference—even slightly—and treating police officers like other expert witnesses.

    Many non-cop "expert" witnesses are granted a great deal of undeserved deference, and often grossly exaggerate their qualifications and the evidentiary value of their opinions. Our criminal legal systems in general, and judges in particular, are notoriously bad at keeping charlatan "experts" and their snake oil "evidence" out of courtrooms. Juries are then left to determine the validity of an "expert's" testimony, often without having any objective or reliable way of determining the validity of the "expert's" qualifications to give said testimony to begin with.

    It is a hole in our legal systems big enough to drive a convoy of honeywagons through.

  • On the post: US Press Continues To Pretend The 'Digital Divide' Just Mysteriously Appeared One Day

    Upstream ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2021 @ 05:48am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Once upon a time in the US one of the functions of journalism was to be a government watchdog, not so much "challenging" government wrongdoing as pointing it out, so that people could be well-informed and act on the basis of that information however they saw fit. Today most of the larger journalism outlets are merely government lapdogs, leaving the watchdog function to much smaller outlets like Techdirt, Reason, ProPublica, The Intercept, and a host of others. As long as the readership (viewership?) of these smaller watchdog outlets was fairly small, the government could simply ignore them. However, of late the number of these smaller outlets has grown rapidly, and their combined presence has been significantly amplified by the megaphone of social media, to the point where they can no longer be ignored. Rather than try to crack down on the sources, (the many small investigative journalism outlets themselves, which would be a really bad look, and would be difficult, due to their growing numbers), the government has set it's sights on censorship by way of the amplifiers, with both factions presenting the issue in ways that appeal to their respective bases. Hence we are seeing the horror of bipartisan support for things like eliminating Section 230, which could very effectively accomplish the same censorious goal in ways that we read about repeatedly right here on Techdirt.

  • On the post: Judge Says DEA, TSA Can Continue To Be Sued For Stealing Cash From Airline Passengers

    Upstream ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2021 @ 06:05am

    Better still

    even better if that can serve as the first step in the process of shutting down such an abhorrent practice.

    Better still if that can serve as the first step in the process of charging, trying, convicting, and imprisoning the TSA and DEA theives / armed robbers that participated in such an abhorrent practice.

    No "Nuremberg defense" should be allowed here.

  • On the post: It's Apparently Bipartisan To Threaten To Punish Companies Via Antitrust Law For Speech You Don't Like

    Upstream ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2021 @ 11:20pm

    Forest view, anyone?

    Usually lost in "tree view" discussions of issues of bipartisan evil-do, or just plain failure, is the admission that both "parts" have being doing the same shit for many decades (swapping sides occasionally, but the same shit nonetheless), and the admission that what we really need to do is kick both parts of our multi-generational bipartisan failure of a government to the curb and go with another option.

    The bipartisan Punch & Judy / professional wrestling shit-show of corruption has been going on for far too long, and most of the issues covered by Techdirt provide rather clear evidence of that.

  • On the post: Georgia Republicans Try To Punish Delta For CEO's Statement About Voting Rights Law

    Upstream ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2021 @ 10:48am

    Re: Watch it escalate

    I think we are more likely to watch it fizzle into the dustbin of "old news that doesn't matter anymore (and never really did)" as we move on to the the next headline-making "(not really a) crisis" in the next few days.

  • On the post: US Press Continues To Pretend The 'Digital Divide' Just Mysteriously Appeared One Day

    Upstream ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2021 @ 10:06am

    Re:

    There is some overlap, which would explain some of the media silence on this particular subject. However, I think a better explanation that addresses most of the media's silence on a broad range of government failures is that most of the the media are very statist. This is always the case in authoritarian societies. The media dare not poke the bear too much, lest the bear bite back. The only hint of criticism of "government" that you see in any of the major media outlets is really just parroting the performative partisan jabs of the red and blue teams. The reds and blues must keep this up in order to maintain the facade of a two-party system, and the media are their PR partners in this charade.

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