US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7512

On May 12 2017 03:30 Plansix wrote:

I would like Google to be held liable to the same degree I would be held for using a photo of someone without permission. I would like them to be held accountable to the same degree that I would be.

On May 12 2017 03:49 Plansix wrote:

If I used someone’s photograph without approval and took it down in a reasonable period of time upon request, I would not be held accountable. If googles search does the same and they try to remove it, they are fine. But they are also fine if they don’t do it at all and claim it isn’t their fault because software.

Also, the library isn't running ads every time I use the Dewey Decimal System.

On May 12 2017 04:27 Trainrunnef wrote:


Its not about google, P6 used it as a loose example and it led people to the wrong conclusions. the issue isn't google so much as origanizations who purposely use the freedom from liability to host content that would otherwise be illegal.

On May 12 2017 04:51 opisska wrote:


First, back off with the "son". We are likely of a similar age anyway and I see it as a sneaky method to assert that because your opinion is apparently more conservative it's also more mature, which is a very weaselly way of getting sympathy.

Second, you have explicitly stated that you want Google to remove search results. I know it's already happening, but it doesn't make it less wrong. Removing the information from Google doesn't make it not be there. It makes it more difficult for a random person to get it, but it doesn't stop a dedicated crook from getting it at all. In the extreme case they can make their own crawler. What you are advocating here is the restriction of the ability yo see reality unhindered to those with a lot of resources. Only good things will come from it, I am sure.

edit: you acknowledged in the meanwhile that the example was bad, good on you

On May 12 2017 16:52 LegalLord wrote:
The entire point of the much-maligned DMCA (or at least the relevant part of it) is that the custom content aggregators aren't directly responsible for users abusing their service assuming they make the necessary good faith effort to police that content and remove the offending material. While the law itself has problems I don't see any reason why that principle of "not their fault if they police it" needs to change.

On May 12 2017 18:28 opisska wrote:


Well, I do. I oppose the "police" part. Law enforcement should not be delegated to private companies. If the state doesn't want some content to exist, they are supposed to go after the publishers themselves. A train company isn't responsible for drug trafficking on board their trains. Neither the ISP nor any provider of a tool to manipulate content published by others should be liable for such content. I am quite sure that the DMCA is the best we are gonna get in US in this way, but for me it's still not satisfactory

@grumbels: if Google decides to self-regulate, it's their choice. I still however feel​ free to question whether they made the choice for the fear of legal enforcement or just to disagree with their choice and the social pressures that led them to it. I do not want Google regulated and I do want people to not want Google to self-regulate, that's a consistent stance, isn't it?

On May 12 2017 18:35 Acrofales wrote:

I want Google to self-regulate. In fact, I want everybody to self-regulate. If someone tells Google "there's a load of internet sites that are abusing a picture of me. Please help me by at least not plastering it all over your search results", I think Google should say "that makes sense, we'll do it" and not "INTERNET FREEDOM, ROOOAAAAR".

The whole world could do with a bit more self-regulation and a lot less trolling.

Robots are getting cheaper and smaller and, as a result, sales have grown significantly over the past year, particularly in North America, as more companies move manufacturing operations closer to U.S. markets.

North American manufacturing companies bought a total of 9,773 industrial robots, valued at approximately $516 million, in the first quarter of 2017.

That means 32 percent more robots were bought this year than at the same time in 2016 — it’s the strongest first quarter on record for robots ordered by North American companies, according to the Robotic Industries Association.

Last year, 7,406 were ordered by North American companies, valued at $402 million.

It’s also a significant jump from the previous year. Between 2015 and 2016, the number of robots sold to North American companies jumped only 7 percent in the first quarter.

Manufacturing companies are more often turning to robots to increase productivity, as opposed to chasing cheap labor around the world. And that’s causing some operations to stay in the U.S. or move production facilities closer to major markets.

Take that Carrier furnace manufacturing plant that Trump claimed he helped court to stay in the U.S. last year. That decision was driven in part by the company’s decision to save money on labor by automating the plant. Adidas, for example, is opening a new plant in Atlanta this year, but that factory will be staffed in large part by robots. Only about 160 human workers are expected to be employed at the plant.

Robots are also getting cheaper and smaller. This is why the dollar value of robots ordered dropped between 2015 and 2016, despite the fact that the number of robots ordered went up. Unit price dropped 3 percent from the first quarter of 2016 to the same time in 2017.

But more robots means fewer jobs. For every new industrial robot introduced into the workforce between 1990 and 2007, six jobs were eliminated, a study published earlier this year from the National Economic Research Bureau found.

And robot sales are expected to increase worldwide. Annual shipments of industrial robots are set to see double-digit growth through 2025, according to projections from ABI Research. In less than 10 years, global shipments could hit one million units annually.

On May 12 2017 18:49 opisska wrote:


This is not only "INTERNET FREEDOM, ROOOAAAAR", though. While I just genuinely do enjoy freedom for its sake, I also thing that there are deeper reasons for demanding opposing information regulation. It's really very similar to the logic of the free and equal voting right - which isn't probably the most optimal thing for a good government but it's great in that it's simplicity is efficient in fighting tampering (outside the US ). The "everyone gets to speak" approach is in a similar vein a counterpoint against silencing specific opinions. The DMCA is a great example - many organizations have been proven to abuse DMCA takedown notices to take down not just their copyrighted contents, but anything they find unpleasant to them, such as simply negative reviews. In the huge volume of DMCA takedowns, stuff like that gets easily drowned.

I can see you want CP blocked from your internet, but who gets to label stuff as CP? Are you sure they have no agenda? Are you sure that they don't "accidentally" also block something else? In Czech Republic, we have a new law requesting the ISPs to block foreign gambling sites. The list of the sites is assembled by the Ministry of Finance, head of which is the very same oligarch I have been talking about in the EU thread, who owns media and has manipulated 30% of the country into believing he is fighting corruption while he is drawing billions from the budget into his own pocket. I don't really see the regulation of illegal gambling to be worth the risk that he also puts things critical to him on the list.

After all, this is all the same "don't give up a little bit of freedom for a little bit of security, because you end up losing both" problem all over again. I am not under the illusion that we get to see and what we don't now on the internet isn't heavily influenced by a host of forces with agendas we don't really know about, but at least I don't think we should actively fight to make it worse.

The city of New Orleans pulled Jefferson Davis from his pedestal early Thursday morning. By noon – this being New Orleans – a tour group on bicycles stopped to gawk at the empty spot where his likeness had stood.

“Gone,” the tour leader said.

With Davis’s removal, New Orleans is halfway through its effort to remove four Confederate monuments around the city. Authorities approached its removal like they did the first: at 3am a crew wearing masks and bulletproof gear, heavily guarded by police, took the statue in two pieces, which were secreted away to an undisclosed warehouse.

Protests in response have been muted, and largely driven by objectors from out of state. By Thursday afternoon protesters on both sides had dispersed, for the moment giving way to hurrying university students and tourists.

Police did arrest one person overnight; that was Jason Sutton, a 46-year-old fabrication engineer. He introduced himself Thursday afternoon by saying, “I’m not a white supremacist. I’m local.”

He described himself as “pro-statue” and a cultural preservationist. In the early hours of the morning, he said, he was taking photos of the monument and wandered into a group of anti-statue protestors. One of them pushed him, he said, “So I slugged him.”

Police charged him with disturbing the peace, he said, “But I’d do it again. The city is losing valuable history here. They’re erasing it.”

The push to remove the monuments started almost two years ago, after white supremacist Dylann Roof shot nine black members of Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina. In the days after the shooting, photos emerged of Roof posing with Confederate battle flags, resulting in a nationwide debate about Confederate symbols on public land. In December 2015, the New Orleans city council voted remove the local statues from public display; they will eventually be housed in a museum or somewhere similar, according to the mayor’s office. That decision has withstood legal challenges from various groups in favor of keeping them in place.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued a statement on Thursday, saying: “These monuments have stood not as historic or educational markers of our legacy of slavery and segregation, but in celebration of it. I believe we must remember all of our history, but we need not revere it. To literally put the Confederacy on a pedestal in some of our most prominent public places is not only an inaccurate reflection of our past, it is an affront to our present, and a bad prescription for our future.”

Sutton said he believes Landrieu is only using the monuments and the spectacle of their removal as a play for higher office outside the city. “He’s pleasing people far away from here,” Sutton said. “It’s not an issue here. Not a single African American person I’ve talked with has said they feel oppressed or bothered by the statues. If they did, I’d say, ‘Fine, let’s take them down.’”

That reasoning doesn’t stand up to widespread local support for the removals, including by the next person who walked past Sutton on the sidewalk.

“We all grew up knowing what those statues stood for. Badness, in a word,” said 57-year-old Nathan Albert, who is black.

He said he didn’t mind Sutton’s particular objections – being local matters here – but others anger him. “What’s really upsetting is the people from other states coming down here and getting mad,” he said. “If y’all want them that much, you can take them back to your own state.”

The battle over the statues will likely intensify before it ends.

The first of the four statues to come down – a monument to the Battle of Liberty Place, and last night Confederate president Jefferson Davis – were the least contentious of the four. The remaining statues of Gens PGT Beauregard and Robert E Lee evoke a more romantic, ennobled view of the civil war, and may draw a more impassioned response.

On May 12 2017 16:50 Acrofales wrote:


That's a valid point. Then again, the problem of ascertaining real identity over the internet is not a feasible one to be solved. Reddit doesn't​ ask for your identity, because they know identity is meaningless. If you're not interested in hiding it, your IP address is sufficient. If you are interested in hiding it, the barriers to assuring you were actually who you say you are would break the internet as we know it.

Especially as P6 seems to think Reddit and TeamLiquid are different in any significant manner. If all the Reddit trolls came to TL and posted their illegal content here instead of there, how would TL be any different? They could, and would, ban the users and take the content down, which I think Reddit does too. Beyond that, what do you advocate? That Reddit be responsible for what trolls do? It's like making the paper company responsible for what someone wrote on their paper.