Repeal the Comstock Act before the GOP tries using it to ban abortion
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you'll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you'll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you'll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you'll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.
you don't even need a laptop for that nowadays; you can pull up such a thing directly on your phone.
I think workplaces in general should allow for sick leave whenever it's needed anyways; regardless of your sex.
This would make it easier for people who are ill with something that is not transmissible and does not completely prevent them from working to show up to work to do only necessary and essential workplace tasks, and go home so that they can recover more quickly from their illness while maintaining the income they need for themselves and provide some productivity that the company can benefit from without taxing their health.
To be clear; there should never be a penalty that you are forced to pay with your health in order to keep your job. You should be allowed to show up to work to work as much as your health permits you to; and you should be entrusted entirely to decide how much work you can output without jeopardizing your own health and wellbeing.
Mandatory https://archive.is/Dt8FX link
Personally I'm of the opinion that they can't take it back now. It's too late.
They cannot undo or erase the harms it's caused. However they could regulate it...and that would be fair. No one under the ages of 18-21 should be able to buy or access this stuff ever; and the required packaging and regulations surrounding that should reflect it.
This should be no more heavily restricted than tobacco products; which already ARE restricted heavily through taxation, permitting, and ID checking at the Point of Purchase.
It would even be fine if you had to obtain these products from behind a dispensing counter; with no prescription needed...just an ID and a clue of the risks that these products carry. There is no need to amend the previous law, just make new ones.
With that being said; I do fully support an Instance's choice to federate, not federate or even limit their federation with them.
In most cases this should not affect instances; but unfortunately there are people who will ignore all warnings and use the Fedi Garden as a whitelist instead of a list of instances that you know will handle policy violations quickly.
On the other hand I absolutely also respect the needs of communities who ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY WILL NOT TOLERATE instances who choose to federate with either X, Threads, or any other instance they deem to be too toxic to play nicely. As instance operators you absolutely have the right to block problems BEFORE they happen, and if you happen to KNOW an instance will absolutely be a HEADACHE, you have every right to say NO. If the users do not like your decision; they are free to find a better instance for themselves; or spin up an alt account on a better instance.
I would argue that federating with either of the biggest companies on the fediverse is a monumentally bad idea.
Not just because of "Reports of genocide" or anything specious like that; which can be debated for days and days on end by people in both good and bad faith; but because both Threads and Meta are simply too large to be moderated correctly and be capable of managing basic issues such as harrassment and extended bouts of hate-speech which should never be considered acceptable; even if you do not necessarily agree with all of the goals and policies of the Fedi Garden; as strict as they are.
Copying is not theft. It does not remove the original.
If I send you a PDF copy of a book that I own, that I scanned into a PDF myself; that is not theft, that is ownership. So long as I make you pay nothing for that copy; and I do mean $0.00, I cannot charge you for any costs incurred while making that copy; I am not breaking the law until a judge summons me before them and tells me I am abusing my rights and are summarily breaking the law in another manner as is judge's right to do.
I own the physical book and I am allowed to enjoy it in any manner I see fit...including loaning the book to you physically or digitally in perpetuity.
The law supports and recognizes fair use and ownership. It is up to us not to abuse that ownership. I do not recommend making 1,000,000,000 copies of a book and giving them away just because you are mad at the author. That's an asshole move and likely to get the metaphorical judge I described involved in the matter.
Similarly; it is an asshole move for a content creator to sell you a copy of a book or some other media and then go about trying to tell you how you may or may not enjoy the material you just purchased. They can recommend ways to enjoy it; but they do not have an enforceable right, even through contracts, to tell you that you cannot exercise your ownership rights in a certain way...unless you overdo it to asshole levels and a judge and/or the police get involved.
In most cases either they filled option 1; or having no access to a purchase option they feel is reasonable fills option 2.
Few people, if any, are truly rank 15. I don't give a damn what the corporate folks say or think. Most of the time they're basically blaming the victims of their own poor decision making anyways.
I don't agree that Rank 10 should be placed where it is; it is more akin to Rank 15 in similarity...the attitude is more entitled than it should be. Ripping your own copy should be something you are not only allowed; but encouraged to do...as it often nullifies any content protection that might interfere with your right to enjoy the content that you purchased in a way that the rights holder didn't expect. Furthermore it removes all doubt that your digital copy is legitimate, as you derived it from a physical copy that you already own...and have fair use doctrine as well as purchase license and access to.
Ripping your physical copies is also a further message to creators that DRM and Copy Protection is an unacceptable format.
As an additional note: I firmly believe that people who sell copies of things they pirated are ranked at 15. They are blatantly ignoring the law for no justifiable reason. You as a customer purchasing from those people are not liable for their law breaking however; similar to how you are not liable for people who are ignoring the law by handing out free pirated copies to everyone. The burden of breaking the law is upon the one committing the crime.
The reason I advocate ripping your own copies; is simple. If you got caught with a copy you obtained from someone else's physical copy; you could be reasonably ordered by a judge to "Forfeit (delete all copies in your possession of) that illegitimate copy". It's likely to happen when they catch the person making the illegal copies. Ripping your own personal digital copy from your physical copy is provably not piracy. It's a different act altogether; as you are using something you already own within your rights of possession and property. Instead, ripping your own copies is legal preservation.
Ranks 1 through 9 Is Not Piracy as you've paid for your copy in some manner typically. Rank 11 & 12 is not piracy
Ranks 10, 13, and 14 are JUSTIFIABLE Piracy. You are free to debate the merits of doing these things or choose not to do them yourself.
Rank 15 is blatant piracy and is arguably socially unacceptable and fully subject to full penalty of law. Don't be that guy!
My ethics are simple; You must fulfill one of two conditions:
- You pay for a legitimate copy (license) in some format. How much you pay does not matter as long as the transaction is for a permanent (indefinite time length) license and not blatantly a rental. This legitimate copy does not have to be purchased directly from the IP Rights holder or their designated and authorized (re)sellers.
- You are 100% unable to obtain a reasonable, purchasable, legal copy in your city of residence through any physical or digital means. Any Digital options available to you must not be reasonably obtainable due to unreasonable cost of buy-in.
Notably:
Both rules exclude the ability to "Rent" a piece of content from somewhere, "Borrow" it from a library and "Buy" it online from a digital market place that is exclusive to a piece of technology you do not own and do not plan to, and would not elect to purchase.
As an example; any and all content that is exclusively available on iTunes or exclusively through using an iDevice is not reasonably obtainable; I do not own an Apple device, I do not wish to buy or own one. I would be within my rights to pirate any content I see as desirable. I despise Apple and refuse to use their products; so I am within my rights to pirate anything that requires you to use an Apple device or account to access the right to purchase it.
This would not be acceptable if the content were available through Google Play; as I already own an Android Smartphone, and the marketplace is reasonably accessible and reasonably priced in most cases.
This does not include situations where accessing the ability to purchase content requires a large number of convoluted steps. For example; I shouldn't be required to mail in a letter only to obtain a temporary credential necessary to access the purchasing front-end, submit more personally identifying information than necessary to fill an order in an account creation process, or be required to call a specific phone number to support to ask for an exception to a policy or permission to purchase or retain access to a purchase.
As a final clarification: Streaming == Renting.
No 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts' about it. A streaming service is renting access to a specific batch of content for an agreed upon price, paid at a regular interval. This is not a purchase. Instead it is a patronage agreement.
Personally I think there are possible federal wiretapping laws that might have something to say about a telecom that is offering an E2EE secure phone line to someone who is not on duty as a police officer (cop), federal agent (glowie), or other authorized federal, state or local employee (bureaucrat, with data that has legitimate need to be protected).
That's not even considering the entitled political hand-wringing about terrorists, spies, drug dealers, pedophiles and other so called "EVIL" people who "should not have access to such a powerful tool" because "it's our law enforcement's right to catch them in the act." Unfortunately it's a nuanced problem and we can't wave away all of that hand-wringing, even if we think most of it is dramatic and performative. They do have some points.
But...even if we were to suppose for a moment that all of the above issues are not a problem... because something likely happened to wake people up to the need for privacy...we would be facing an entirely new set of technical challenges to hurdle over.
As our current cell networks are structured; we would need to deploy cell phones with phone numbers that do not typically allow routing of outbound unencrypted calls...instead all phone calls would need to be routed over cellular data (AKA LTE or 5G). These calls could definitely be nominally routed by an existing application such as Signal and would require that remote recipients also install the Signal app to receive encrypted calls.
Essentially you'd have a phone which is a Data+SMS only line with a phone number for ease of access. You wouldn't be able to make outbound unencrypted calls or send SMS messages except to emergency services.
I'm sorry to say; but that feature genuinely does not seem to exist in any Open Source PDF reading/editing application.
That is a valid stance and feeling to have; and you can in fact turn off and opt out of the AI features in Android to reduce the issue to a non-issue.
Might help; but this is a nuclear approach which will just kill all data when all you needed to to was make it forget what it learned in the settings.
No ROM exists without it. This is a core part of AOSP.
Please do not spread misinformation. Instead read this comic: https://federated.withgoogle.com/ and look at the wikipedia article to learn how this works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federated_learning
The best way to prevent misuse of the Comstock Act is to hit them where it hurts. Find out what items their funders sell or trade in the most; then find logical ways to link it to sex or abortion.
Pretty soon you'll gum up all trade and they will cry for mercy.