TKnarr 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: As Congress Grandstands Nonsense ‘Kid Safety’ Bills, Senator Wyden Reintroduces Legislation That Would Actually Help Deal With Kid Exploitation Online

    TKnarr ( profile ), 31 Jan, 2024 @ 08:51pm

    I just wish one of those CEOs had, when a Senator asked what they plan to do about CSAM on their platforms, stood up and said: "We already report X items a year to the authorities to investigate and prosecute, and they all apparently get ignored. What do you plan to do about that?"

  • On the post: California DA’s Office Used A Made-Up Story About A Dead Kid To Pitch Its Fentanyl Fantasies

    TKnarr ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2024 @ 07:54pm

    Apparently they did in fact make that movie. https://vimeo.com/375751997

  • On the post: ‘AI’ Exposes Google News Quality Control Issues, Making Our Clickbait, Plagiarism, And Propaganda Problem Worse

    TKnarr ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2024 @ 04:13pm

    I've already gone that route. Google News has too many aggregators/reposters (whether they use AI or just scrape content doesn't matter), paywalled sites and just plain click-bait farms. I've always had a bookmarks folder full of non-news sites that actually originate the stories the news sites report on, but I've started another folder for reliable news sites.

  • On the post: Amazon Brand Spammers Are Getting Lazy, And Letting Failed ChatGPT Queries Name Products ‘I Cannot Fulfill This Request It Goes Against OpenAI Use Policy’

    TKnarr ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2024 @ 10:02am

    My policy for Amazon has become to ignore their general product search (because it's too contaminated with spam listings) and search for specific known vendors instead. Or to bypass Amazon entirely and go directly to the vendor's own web site. I'll even deal with Newegg over Amazon, come to that.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    TKnarr ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2024 @ 04:12pm

    Only if you define what SBF got convicted for as "not a crime", or what John Miller got convicted for (https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/former-executive-director-philadelphia-non-profit-fund-charged-stealing-over-16), or what Kaival Patel got convicted for (https://www.justice.gov/usao-nj/pr/west-new-york-financial-advisor-convicted-11-counts-trial-multimillion-dollar-health), or a long list of other similar "white-collar" crimes.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    TKnarr ( profile ), 14 Jan, 2024 @ 02:16pm

    I have news for you: Singapore is absolutely riddled with crime. It's just the right sort of crime for the people in power.

  • On the post: EFF Asks Pennsylvania’s Top Court To Stop Cops From Googling For Suspects

    TKnarr ( profile ), 11 Jan, 2024 @ 10:38am

    You very well might. Maybe not with that generic a search, but look up T. Kingisher's novel "What Moves the Dead". When writing it, they searched for a lot of things that made the CDC very concerned when they checked with them to confirm whether something would work or not. One can imagine what'd happen if a bio-terrorism incident had occurred shortly after that research spree.

  • On the post: Blame All Around: Lawyers Bicker Over Who Is Responsible For Former Trump Fixer Michael Cohen Submitting AI Hallucinated Case Citations In Court

    TKnarr ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2024 @ 07:23pm

    Cohen is an attorney. He got disbarred in New York but that doesn't make him not be an attorney any more, just unable to practice law in New York. That notwithstanding, even a non-lawyer is responsible for giving their lawyer all the information including where they got their information from. If you leave your lawyer in the dark, that's still on you even if it's his job to check everything you tell him and make sure it can be backed up in court. There's a school of thought that says not to tell your lawyer things that could hurt your case because then he's not lying when he says he knows nothing about those things. That never ends well, for you or your lawyer.

  • On the post: Blame All Around: Lawyers Bicker Over Who Is Responsible For Former Trump Fixer Michael Cohen Submitting AI Hallucinated Case Citations In Court

    TKnarr ( profile ), 08 Jan, 2024 @ 01:08pm

    Cohen is responsible, for digging up the bogus cases in the first place. Schwartz is responsible, for not checking his work before filing (regardless of the client, the attorney is supposed to verify everything in submissions he makes). Perry isn't responsible, she correctly noted she couldn't verify the cases cited.

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    TKnarr ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2024 @ 03:26pm

    But allowing an intentional design feature, transient messages, to be considered as possibly a defective design is also very worrying.
    I don't know, we've a long history of exactly that. The design of the gas tank on the Ford Pinto is probably the canonical example. The question, I think, is more which parties should be considered when deciding whether the impact of a design decision makes it defective by design or not.

  • On the post: Iowa’s New Book Ban/Anti-LGBTQ Law Mostly Dead Following Federal Court Injunction

    TKnarr ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2024 @ 06:54pm

    If you think it's new, you haven't read your history books. The Ku Klux Klan has been willing to go to those lengths for at least a century and a half, the American Nazi Party and friends for over half a century, and various Christian sects for several centuries (although their targets are most commonly other Christian sects). They're just going back to traditional levels after a few decades starting ~1970 where their attitudes were slightly less well-tolerated.

  • On the post: Millions Of People Are Blocked By Pornhub Because Of Age Verification Laws

    TKnarr ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2024 @ 02:21pm

    Stopping adults from viewing porn is the silent purpose behind these laws. The whole "protect the children" part is camouflage because the authoritarians know if they stated their purpose openly they'd face a voter revolt.

  • On the post: New Year’s Message: Moving Fast And Breaking Things Is The Opposite Of Tech Optimism

    TKnarr ( profile ), 29 Dec, 2023 @ 02:51pm

    One of the things I notice is that all those "enemies of progress" Marc mentions are all also things that oppose the unlimited and unregulated ability of business to pursue profit at any cost. All of them are things that are based on the viewpoint that there are things we should prioritize over profits. I don't think that's a coincidence.

  • On the post: The NY Times Lawsuit Against OpenAI Would Open Up The NY Times To All Sorts Of Lawsuits Should It Win

    TKnarr ( profile ), 28 Dec, 2023 @ 11:51am

    One thing though: the basis for the suit isn't so much that the model was trained on NYT articles, as that the model reproduces NYT articles verbatim when asked for them. Regardless of anything about training, that right there is copyright infringement: distributing a verbatim copy of the content to someone else without permission of or a license from the content's creator/copyright-holder.

  • On the post: Substack Turns On Its ‘Nazis Welcome!’ Sign

    TKnarr ( profile ), 26 Dec, 2023 @ 01:19pm

    Tolerance is less paradoxical if you view it as a social contract: I'll accept your existence and leave you alone if you accept mine and leave me alone. The intolerant expressly reject that contract, so they don't get to claim it's protection and demand that I abide by it when dealing with them.

  • On the post: Google Promises Unlimited Cloud Storage; Then Cancels Plan; Then Tells Journalist His Life’s Work Will Be Deleted Without Enough Time To Transfer The Data

    TKnarr ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2023 @ 02:11pm

    Don’t take their explanation for the interpretation of the document as the legal definition of what is written in that document. Make them spell it out.
    A quote from Colleen Doran about contracts. In her case it's an artist's contracts with their publishers, but it applies everywhere. Even if you're paying, get the terms in writing. Assume any ambiguity will be interpreted in the other guy's favor and if that matters make them spell it out explicitly so there is no more ambiguity. Make sure there's explicit (and explicitly specified) penalties for failing to follow the terms of the contract for both sides. Make sure the case where they want to cease offering the service is covered. If you can't live with the terms they're willing to agree to, you have to assume everything you have on their service will disappear at any moment with no warning and your only consolation will be that you don't have to pay them any more. Remember, the penalties won't enforce themselves either. They won't stop the service from violating the contract, and they'll only get you compensation if you're willing and able to sue over them and fight until you win.

  • On the post: NY Appeals Court Says Law Enforcement Can’t Withhold Misconduct Records Containing Only ‘Unproven” Allegations

    TKnarr ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2023 @ 09:21pm

    This'll continue until judges start sanctioning the attorneys assisting the departments in doing this (sanctioning the departments just results in the public having to bear the penalties so the departments don't care).

  • On the post: Even If You Hate Both AI And Section 230, You Should Be Concerned About The Hawley/Blumenthal Bill To Remove 230 Protections From AI

    TKnarr ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2023 @ 10:13am

    I'm of the opinion that Section 230 shouldn't apply to algorithmically-generated summaries and the like. It's one thing for an algorithm to select and display someone else's content. It's another thing for it to select content, analyze it and generate new content different from the original and display that content. When a person does that, writes their own summary of someone else's work, they're responsible for what's in their summary. If the summary contains falsehoods or incorrect information, the person doing the summarizing is responsible for them and not the person who wrote the original content. IMO it shouldn't matter that a tool is being used to write the summary, the person having the summary created and selecting the tool they'll use to do that who should be on the hook. And yes, that means if you use an algorithm to generate summaries on a massive scale so that it's impossible for you to review all of them you're still on the hook for them. If a company produces so many widgets that it's impossible to check all of them for defects, we don't give that company a pass on liability for defective widgets. We might limit their liability to replacing the defective item if there was no harm done, but we don't absolve them of all responsibility.

  • On the post: You Still Don’t Own What You Bought: Purchased TV Shows From PS Store Go Bye Bye

    TKnarr ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2023 @ 11:07pm

    It's a question of "what are they selling". They don't say so explicitly, but in the fine print you'll find you're buying not the item but a license for the item. More specifically, a license for the item from the seller, not a general license for it. So when you "bought" that movie from the PS Store what you were unwittingly buying was a license to stream that movie from the PS Store. After they removed the content you still own that license, but it didn't contain any term obliging them to make that movie available for streaming for any particular span of time so your license is now worth the paper it's (not) printed on. Sucks to be you, doesn't it? Now, it shouldn't be this way. In the UCC there's clauses that set the rules for consumer transactions that say the terms are what the consumer would expect and require that any seller who wants to change them has to do so explicitly and in writing before the buyer hands over their money. But the sellers have managed to get everybody thinking that the UCITA applies (only Virginia and Maryland adopted it, every other state rejected it) and consumer purchases of software etc. aren't subject to the UCC's rules. But nobody's brought a clean case to court, one where they can prove they didn't accept any new terms after the sale was completed. Since the courts accepted click-wrap licenses, that's almost impossible for online content accessed through an account and incredibly difficult with in-person sales of things that don't require an account.

  • On the post: Google Takes Down ‘Downloader’ App Again After Bullshit DMCA Complaint, Restores It Again

    TKnarr ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2023 @ 01:31am

    Turn the DMCA around on MarkScan: file one claiming that the web site they named infringes on Saba's copyright on the Downloader app. They're the ones who claimed their site was similar enough to the app to be considered infringing, and Saba can prove he holds the copyright on the app or has a license for the parts he doesn't own outright so it's not his half of the pair that's infringing on anyone's copyright. Then insist that Google treat MarkScan and Saba equivalently when it comes to takedown requests seeing as, per Google's own claim, they have no choice but to remove the content from their listings.

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