Bill Poser 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Facebook Allowing Israeli Security Forces To Shape The News Palestineans See

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2018 @ 04:11pm

    Re: Re: They've turned down multiple offers of a state ...

    Judea and Samaria are not, as a matter of law or ethics, exclusive Arab territory. Indeed, the League of Nations Mandate, the Balfour Declaration, the agreement with King Faisal, and the UN partition resolution all anticipated that Jews would live in Judea and Samaria. The current proposal for apartheid, with only Arabs in the "Palestinian state", has no basis in law. Nor are the settlements illegal. But, to answer your question, the UN partition plan, which Israel accepted but the Arabs rejected, gave the Arabs more than they had after the 1949 Armistice and internationalized Jerusalem. Subsequent Israeli offers have been for almost all of Judea and Samaria, with small swaps of territory, and in one case even included East Jerusalem.

  • On the post: Facebook Allowing Israeli Security Forces To Shape The News Palestineans See

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2018 @ 03:09pm

    Re: Re: Trump merely reiterated the existing policy of the United States ...

    The Palestinians are not interested in peace. They've turned down multiple offers of a state and have repeatedly stated that their real purpose is the destruction of Israel. They pointlessly demand Jerusalem as their capital. They haven't satisfied their obligations under the Oslo Accords; why expect them to live up to a peace treaty? The peace process is a farce - it has produce nothing other than the release of terrorists. It makes sense to have a neutral broker when there are two sides to a dispute and both would like to resolve it. There is no point when one side does not want to resolve the dispute and has no case.

  • On the post: Facebook Allowing Israeli Security Forces To Shape The News Palestineans See

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2018 @ 01:37pm

    Re: Re: Minor correction...

    No, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Knesset, the Supreme Court, the President's office, and the various Ministries are all in Jerusalem. When the representatives of a country whose embassy is in Tel Aviv want to meet with the Israel government, they have to go to Jerusalem. The location of a country's capital is not up to other countries. What you mean is that many other countries are opposed to Jerusalem being the capital of Israel.

    Furthermore, the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital was not due to Trump. Congress recognized Jerusalem as the capital in 1995 by a large, bipartisan margin. Trump merely reiterated the existing policy of the United States and went ahead with the long delayed decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem.

  • On the post: Facebook Allowing Israeli Security Forces To Shape The News Palestineans See

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Jan, 2018 @ 01:43pm

    incitement

    It would be interesting to see exactly what Israel has requested be taken down. What Israel usually calls "incitement" is not news but explicit calls for terrorism and/or rioting, such as those frequently issued by the Palestinian Authority, the various terrorist groups (Fatah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad), and the preachers at Al-Aqsa mosque. Such calls for violence are not protected by the First Amendment in the United States, but requests to take them down as inappropriate are routinely rejected by Facebook in the United States. Indeed, the Palestinian Authority is required by the Oslo Accords to suppress "incitement", an obligation which it frequently violates.

    I don't like censorship, but this article does not convince me that Israel is censoring news or legal political expression.

  • On the post: Trump Advisor Pens Almost Totally Clueless Piece About 'Intellectual Property Theft'

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 02 Feb, 2017 @ 12:01pm

    clothing design

    It is possible that clothing designs are included in spite of the fact that they are not currently protected because she wants them to be. Some people in the fashion industry have raised this ill-advised possibility.

  • On the post: Macedonia Copyright Collection Group Forces All Macedonian Music Off Of All Macedonian Broadcasts

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2016 @ 07:47pm

    macedonian radio music

    I predict a surge in Macedonian talk radio.

  • On the post: NYPD Says Software Built To Track Seized Property Can't Actually Do The One Thing It's Supposed To Do

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 25 Sep, 2016 @ 07:35pm

    nypd seizure database

    If the problem is that the system doesn't support complex queries, they can simply release the entire data set in some standard form and let other people load it into their more capable query systems. It is hard to imagine that they don't have such an export capability, and as far as I can see there is nothing confidential about such data, so they would need to do little or no redaction.

  • On the post: Moosehead Lager Makers At It Again: Suing Moose Whiz Root Beer For Trademark Infringement

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 30 Aug, 2016 @ 02:05am

    Moose Drool

    I wonder what they think of "Moose Drool", a beer made in Montana.

  • On the post: How Section 1201 Of The Copyright Statute Threatens Innovation

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2015 @ 11:32am

    Re: amending Section 1201

    Why not simply repeal Section 1201? That will eliminate the problems. Infringement will still be infringment - copyright holders just won't have this additional dubious tool for preventing it.

  • On the post: Boston City Employees Barred From Hating On Olympics; Mayor Says Free Speech Still Intact

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 26 Jan, 2015 @ 08:54pm

    Re:

    Uh, actually, the animal trails were laid down by animals, such as cows, not by Native Americans.

  • On the post: UK Court Blocks Author From Publishing A Book About His Own Sexual Abuse, At Ex-Wife's Request

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 17 Oct, 2014 @ 08:45pm

    Re: Re:

    She need not have seen the manuscript to take this action. As his ex-wife, there is a good chance that he told her about his childhood himself.

  • On the post: Court Tells DOJ To Stop Stalling And Figure Out If People Suing Over No Fly List Can Get Off

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2014 @ 12:18am

    Re: Re: Don't need a magic ball to see where this will head...

    Actually, federal courts do have guns. They can use federal marshalls to enforce their decisions, and federal marshalls are most certainly armed.

  • On the post: $600 Billion 'Fat Finger' Causes Deals Worth More Than Sweden's Economy To Be Cancelled

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 04 Oct, 2014 @ 11:10pm

    Re: Don't Question Normal Activity

    $600b is far out of the normal range of transactions. That's the Gross Domestic Product of South Africa, 25th in the world. The software could easily flag transactions considerably smaller than that and require confirmation.

  • On the post: The Worst Legal Advice Ever, Presented By A Clueless Blogger For An Insurance Company

    Bill Poser ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2014 @ 10:51am

    "stupider"

    Actually, "stupider" is perfectly acceptable. Many fluent and highly educated speakers of English use it. I myself am a native speaker of English with a Ph.D. in Linguistics and I strongly prefer "stupider" to "more stupid". Virtually all speakers of English accept -er comparatives of monosyllabic adjectives and reject them for most adjectives of more than two syllables. There is considerable variation with regard to disyllabic adjectives like "stupid".