This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Another Kevin responding to some of the persistent false claims about Section 230:
Section 230 doesn’t protect editorializing. The First Amendment does that.
You seem to be arguing that once the operators of a platform have editorial content, anywhere on the platform, that they lose Section 230 protection for anything posted by users. In effect, you consider all speech on the platform to be from a single speaker.
In other words, if I am entertaining Alice and Bob in my parlor, and Bob tells a lie, I’m not allowed to point out the lie to Alice without then becoming subject to prosecution for anything that either Alice or Bob might say? In such a regime, I obviously can’t have guests in my house at all.
In second place, it’s an anonymous response to a commenter bringing up popular claims of OnePlus ripping off Apple’s earbud design:
Lots of people are blaming Apple for “ripping off” Xerox’s design.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got a pair of comments from the same anonymous commenter talking about copyright issues and what legacy publishers actually want. First it’s a pretty apt summary of their goals:
The legacy publishers are advancing their real objective; which is to ensure that they are the only route to have a work published. That way they decide what few works are actually made available at any time. They are not interested in a flowering of culture, but rather in restricting culture so as to maximize their own profits.
To anyone who claims this will protect creators, they should note that the legacy publishers restrict what is published to a small fraction of that created, and so ensure that most creators will never have their work published.
Next, it’s an important reminder that publishers aren’t creators:
Those pushing this agenda do not actually create content, although their accounting can be creative. They make money from works that others produce, and hate the Internet because it allows creators to escape their control, and grabbing of most of the profits, for the few works that they publish.
Their whole business model was developed in a world where producing copies, or distributing content was the limiting factor on the works that could be published. The Internet has removed that limitation on publication of works, and that means they lose control over published works unless they can cripple the Internet.
Over on the funny side, both our winning comments come in response to our post aboiut Richard Liebowitz getting in more trouble. First, it’s That One Guy finding himself unsurprised:
How very Liebowitz
Ordered to take a course on ethics, gets caught ‘cheating’.
Some people just refuse to change, but at least his various benchslaps provide some well-needed moments of humor during the hell that is 2020.
In second place, it’s an anonymous commenter with an illustrative summary:
Judge “Your in a deep hole, so stop digging and grab the rope I am lowering”
Richard “toss me down a bigger shovel”
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with Get off my cyber-lawn! offering up one more response to Liebowitz:
I didn’t realise
that “In Deep Shit” could be a lawyers default mode.
Finally, it’s Norahc on our post about Banksy’s attempt to abuse trademark law, with a nice tie-in:
My popcorn futures would really appreciate it if Bansky partnered with Liebowitz for that legal advice.
That’s all for this week, folks!
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Author: Leigh Beadon