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Comment Re:"Erroneous" or not... (Score 1) 18

Was anyone harmed by this error?

Good question. Seeing as how the government doesn't send apology letters to everyone whose data they "accidentally" hoovered up and potentially abused in any number of inventive and worrying ways, how are they to know what harm they may have suffered as a result?

Regardless, they've all been harmed statutorily as there was no probable cause for any warrant to issue for their data. The Constitution doesn't have a "no harm, no foul" clause.

Comment This is Starbucks' real business (Score 4, Insightful) 73

I saw an interesting post a few years ago whose thesis was that Starbucks isn't a coffee company; it's a poorly-regulated bank, masquerading as a gift card company, which happens to own some coffee shops on the side. Someone broke down all of the company's public reports to demonstrate that the vast majority of their income derives from investing the money customers pre-load onto gift cards (whether they ever spend it, or not). The amount of cash that Starbucks holds "on deposit" through gift cards rivals the assets of some of the larger banks. I wish I could find the post again.

Comment Re:Internet Archive is theft [Re:Copyright] (Score 3, Insightful) 61

I understand the distinction you're making. What I'm saying is people don't care about the distinction, because it burdens readers unnecessarily, which is why people circumvent it. If the only way you can make money is to limit a reader's ability to access the book, it's not the reader who's wrong for circumventing your limits, it's you that's wrong for trying to impose them to begin with.

Your business model needs to adapt. You need to learn to attract more flies with honey than vinegar. Use carrots, not sticks. Your strict whack-em-with-the-stick enforcement attitude just leads people to ignore your distribution channels entirely and pirate things. You can't stop it, but you can adapt to it and stop screaming into the void about a reality that won't change.

Comment Re:Copyright (Score 5, Interesting) 61

We should legalize noncommercial infringement fully.

We created copyright law to stop people from selling the work of others as their own, not to force people to pay a toll every time they read a book, listen to music, or watch a movie.

We created free public libraries so that people could consume as much culture as they want for free.

What the Internet Archive did and the very idea of the internet itself basically is a global free public library.

We need to accept that as the reality we live in and business models need to adapt to that reality. Legal prohibitions to deny reality don't work. File sharing is widespread and inevitable. Adapt.

Comment Monopoly is the problem, not political ads (Score 1) 177

Public debate about banning on political ads on Twitter vs. not on Facebook has gone fully off the rails. Both Dorsey and Zuckerberg are wrong about it, but--counter intuitively--Zuckerberg has it less wrong than Dorsey.

Where Zuckerberg's instincts are kinda right is I think he recognizes on some level that when one company has control over like 90% of a media market and can make decisions about what speech is or isn't allowed, we might want to consider applying 1st amendment protections.

Yes, there is a "bUt pRiVaTe pLaTfOrMs aRe eXeMpT fRoM tHe FiRsT aMeNdMeNt oBLiGaToRy xKcD https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fxkcd.com%2F1357" trope. Spare me.

Companies with monopolies are effectively the same thing as governments because they replace government as the de facto public square.

As such, speech on such platforms should either be subject to 1st amendment protections, or the company should be broken up into federated platforms that set their own speech rules. Zuckerberg seems to prefer the former. We should prefer the latter.

The root of the problem is Facebook's/Twitter's monopoly, not political advertising. Break up Facebook/Twitter into a bunch of independently-owned, federated services (e.g. Diaspora / Mastodon) that each set their own speech rules.

TL;DR:

Dorsey: Preserve my monopoly and I want to censor things on it with impunity.

Zuck: Preserve my monopoly but I'm skeptical of censorship.

What we should actually want: No monopolies, so the question of regulating speech on these platforms is fully moot.

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