This Week In Techdirt History: August 30th – September 5th
from the the-years-that-pass dept
Five Years Ago
This week in 2015, the NSA was renewing its bulk records collection after a worrying and slightly suspicious court ruling. The FBI was somehow using Hurricane Katrina as an excuse to get more Stingray devices, just before the Wall Street Journal got a “win” (though the devil was in the details) in a lawsuit related to Stingray surveillance orders, and the DOJ told federal agents that they need warrants to use the devices. Meanwhile, the NYPD was volunteering to be copyright cops in Times Square, Sony was downplaying the damage done by the same hack it was hyping up before, and the entertainment industry was freaking out about Popcorn Time.
Ten Years Ago
This week in 2010, we were saddened to see the US Commerce Secretary siding with the RIAA and telling ISPs to become copyright cops, even as more ISPs were stepping up to fight subpoenas from the US Copyright Group (and in France, some ISPs were fighting back against Hadopi, which was also becoming a tool of scammers). One court refused to dismiss a Righthaven lawsuit involving a copyright that was bought after the alleged infringement happened, while another court was seeking ways to minimize a Righthaven win with minuscule damages — and the LVRJ was defending the Righthaven suits and mocking a competitor for criticizing them.
Fifteen Years Ago
This week in 2005, we were pleased to see that the judge in one of the first instances of someone fighting back against RIAA lawsuits seemed to recognize the issues, and less pleased to see another court give its assent to yet another form of DMCA abuse. It wasn’t as crazy as what was happening in India, though, where it appeared that their equivalent of the MPAA got an open search warrant for the entire city of New Delhi to look for pirated movies. And even that didn’t match the panic over mobile porn that was gripping parts of the world, leading to things like Malaysian police performing random porn spot-checks on people’s phones.
Comments on “This Week In Techdirt History: August 30th – September 5th”
This week in Techdirt history: Shiva Ayyadurai done fucked up his Republican nomination for the Senate, then claimed that fraudsters "cheated" him out of his win.
Wow, Hamilton. Even the Massachusetts tiger fairies don’t want your boi… sucks to be you, asshole!
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Well, he has whined about some kind of unspecified fraud causing him to lose, rather than claiming it’s due to racism, so he’s evolving his arguments somewhat. Although, most likely he’s just aligning himself with Trump’s inevitable whining about the same things when he hopefully loses in November.
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Gotta love one of the comments over there regarding the supposed ‘fraud’.
‘Massachusetts has a Republican governor, so if somebody cheated on the Republican primaries, it had to be a Republican cheater, right? So is he arguing that Republicans cheat on elections?’ -fenris_uy
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Holy crap, that Twitter thread…
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"So is he arguing that Republicans cheat on elections?"
Well, it does seem to be documented that almost all of the examples of voter fraud are Republicans trying to "prove" that it’s a widespread problem, so he might actually be telling the truth for once. If there was fraud, anyway, which is less likely to be a fact than it simply being a case where the party still isn’t quite broken enough for them to push someone whose only claims to fame are a con game and anti-vaxxer frauds.
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Election fraud is always local, even if it occurs in a statewide race. A plutocrat-run city can swing a statewide race in a mostly-demagogue state. (The poster child is, of course, Illinois.)
Presumably, the local demagogue ward-heelers COULD rig votes to swing the plutocrat primary election, but I can’t imagine that’s one of the commoner forms of voter fraud.
I’m really not understanding parts of this. What’s the point of opposing the whole medical establishment in national politics? After you get your free vaccinations, you’re not obligated to seek medical care ever again. Poison yourself with tree leaves, treat yourself with tree-bark, medicate for pain with fermented grain. What’s it to you if someone else doesn’t die as quickly or painfully of disease as you do?
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Winning over voters who believe the following: Vaccines are tools of Satan, healthcare shouldn’t be a basic human right, and they know more about medicine and diseases than any of those fancy learnin’-school doctors.
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"What’s it to you if someone else doesn’t die as quickly or painfully of disease as you do?"
"It’s not fair if you point out my self-destructive stupidity by suffering less than I do".
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I see he presented about as much evidence to prove his fraud claims as he did to prove his claim that he, and not the people who worked on the ARPANET messaging systems or the three major backbone protocols, invented modern email.
"…he has whined about some kind of unspecified fraud causing him to lose…"
Well, he did invent fraud…
We Have Gone Mad Down Under
"One court refused to dismiss a Righthaven lawsuit involving a copyright that was bought after the alleged infringement happened" – I’m certain that’s the same for when Men At Work got sued over a few notes in their song, that the rightsholder bought it years after the fact!