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Comment Re:Something to improve consumer laws? (Score 1) 45

What in modern society requires signing up for monthly payments to any service? The only thing that even comes close for the average person is renting a property to live in.

Even if electric power, water, sewer, trash pickup, and gas for indoor heating (in areas that get snow) are included in your rent, other services with recurring payments include home and mobile Internet access, renter's insurance, car insurance, and health insurance.

Even the streaming services I have either have month to month options or bill me for the full year at the time of purchase. I don't need to use any of them as I could always choose to rent or purchase to own any of the content on those services.

A lot of shows on streaming services are never released on DVD.

Comment Re:The Empire is dead. (Score 1, Flamebait) 122

One thing to bear in mind that the UK isn't trying to interfere in 4chan's freedom of speech. Not with this fine, anyway.

Media regulator Ofcom said 4chan had not responded to its request for a copy of its illegal harms risk assessment nor a second request relating to its qualifying worldwide.

The fine is apparently because they won't provide the online equivalent of a building permit. I find myself ambivalent; the OSA is a bad piece of legislation and should be amended, but it's not unreasonable to expect foreign companies who serve content in one's country to follow the laws there. If they don't like it they're free to do as imgur did and make a token effort to block UK visitors.

4chan and Kiwi Farms filed a lawsuit in the United States against Ofcom in August, arguing that the threats and fines issued by the regulator "constitute foreign judgements that would restrict speech under U.S. law." The lawsuit claims that both entities are entirely based in the U.S., have no operations in the U.K., and therefore are not subject to its local laws.

This is a red herring. OFCOM isn't trying to restrict 4chan in the United States. They can serve whatever they want within the US.
The fine itself is also obviously also a purely performative act; I doubt that anyone at OFCOM seriously expects 4chan to comply or pay the fine*. I also doubt that 4chan being the first site to be fined is an accident.

* Just as 4chan and Kiwi Farms can't possibly expect to successfully sue a foreign government, in the US, for actions taken outside the US.
Oh, the irony. Perhaps that was the point.

Comment Re: Someone is confusing copyright with trademark. (Score 1) 56

Until Apple Computer started selling music.

No. Apple Corp's 1989 lawsuit came about when Apple (Computers) added MIDI capabilities to the Apple IIGS. Apple (Computers) had previously agreed to stay out of the music business but it was perhaps inevitable that they would renege eventually.

Comment Re:I don't understand why this is so difficult (Score 1) 48

Why not make a simple API to that digital ID that would be a simple yes/no to any app or web page's query (permission permitting) to whether or not the user is over X age?

Your suggestion is defeated by parents' habit of handing a phone to a child as a digital babysitter. It's how we lost comment sections on animated videos on YouTube in December 2019.

Comment Re:Crimes against women and children (Score 1) 16

Yes, to an extent, but I believe that sort of mob justice tends to be directed more against actual child abusers than seventeen year olds threatening to release some private data into the wild. It's unlikely that the two suspects would face real prison time either, given that they were both minors when the alleged crimes were committed.

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