mercurialshark

A character in Neal Stephenson's "Fall or Dodge in Hell" - exploits a hypothetical issue at the Belgium/French border to fence off his home and form a sovereign city state (enforced by armed guards, political influence and technology).

Yes and when Neal was asked about Enoch during a speaking appearance, he noted that Enoch was one of the first people in the bible whose death wasn't recorded/noted. Apparently, most people early in the bible that were mentioned had both birth/death notated. At some point they stopped bothering with so many new parties introduced and he was one of (if not the) first to not have their story/death brought to a conclusion.

I'm not addressing guilt, but to your point, it may be but one way to demonstrate their market dominance (even if the consequences are beneficial for consumers).

If you spent illicit funds on a good cause, it can still be used as proof of your control over the funds.

So Apple's position and influence over the market may raise antitrust concerns, but that doesn't mean I don't want privacy protections (I do!).

As an example, a drug dealer can give money to their community and while it's going towards a good cause, that doesn't change who/how they are donating. Companies can have similar conduct in hopes that an enforcement action would be perceived as harming the consumer/retail investors.

It is entirely appropriate to consider Apple's conduct as anti-competitive and/or acting as part of a cartel, without asserting that the appropriate remedy is an injunction allowing Facebook to utilize user's unique device ID's to the benefit of Facebook's ads systems for ad targeting.

In other words, this particular case may help elucidate Apple's dominance/influence on the market, but that does not necessarily mean that the privacy changes in and of themselves are the foundational antitrust issue.

I would encourage you to read this article from the EFF. They do an excellent job of explaining material concerns regarding private censorship and chokepoints for the freedom of expression:

"Beyond Platforms: Private Censorship, Parler, and the Stack"

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/01/beyond-platforms-priva...

If someone posts an inaccurate or untruthful comment that a reasonable person would not rely upon for their safety, I think the correct response is to mute, unfollow or retort (and if it's self-evident, hopefully it's easy to explain why it's inaccurate or link to countered evidence).

However, the imminent apprehension of harm (from a direct, credible or specific threat), does comport with the concept of assault and is grounds for moderation. Likewise, demonstrating proximate cause from someones actions to a specific harm/damages, would also be grounds for censorship.

Yes, and I fundamentally reject the premise that inaccurate expression should be censored or moderated without a proximate cause to a specific harm or credible imminent apprehension of harm.

I do not think censorship is justifiable for potential or non-quantifiable, collective psychic harm.

There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of the case. A TRO is simply a request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation.

Additional briefs following the TRO, replies, nor responses have been filed.

There has been no discovery, no fact finding, no expert witnesses, no oral argument, no jury trial and no opinion. The case has not been adjudicated by the District Court. It has not reached a stage where it can be appealed to the Circuit Court and it certainly has not reached post appellate petition for cert to the Supreme Court.

There are separate issues.

i) Antitrust - AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust issue, acting in conjunction with a cartel. A party does not need to have majority market share to function in coordination with other dominate players in order to form a cartel that can manipulate the market. There's case law concerning market manipulation, access to industry and consumer protection issues where parties didn't need to directly coordinate to be considered a cartel.

ii) Practical dependence on service providers for access to critical digital infrastructure. To what extent do we depend on particular services for participation in society and the marketplace will influence the analysis. At what point does a data service provider begin to resemble a common carrier (i.e. cable, phone or internet provider) and in what context would common carrier laws apply?

iii) Contract issues - A few of the foreseeable issues include sufficient notice, contract breach, degree of harm (irreparable harm?), performance obligations.

I don't think responding in less than five minutes was unreasonable. It's also not legal advice, simply my personal opinion on some of the numerous issues that are likely to be litigated.

I also think this entire thread will be worth revisiting upon appeal.

I do not possess power to read minds, nor anticipate the court's actions. I find it all, very interesting!

There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of the case. A TRO is simply a request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation.

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> Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state.

Amazon isn't the state.

- Correct. My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning potentially monopolistic behavior. IF data storage and/or social media can be viewed as critical digital infrastructure, an argument can and will likely be made that the services are tantamount to a digital company owned town. We'll see! Either way it's very interesting and highly relevant to the industry.

Without addressing the specifics of the TRO (which is simply an early stage request for injunctive relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate services pending litigation):

Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state.

Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of 1st and 14th amendments applicable within confines of “town” owned by a private entity.

Packinghan, viewed in combination with Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning a digit company owned town. If data storage and/or social media can be viewed as critical digital infrastructure and a private organization provides those services, an argument can and will likely be made that the services are tantamount to a digital company owned town.

As Justice Ginsburg said during oral argument regarding private digital networks, “the point is that these people are being cut off from a very large part of the marketplace of ideas. And the First Amendment includes not only the right to speak, but the right to receive information.”

And as Justice Kagan stated during Packinghan oral argument, "whether it’s political community, whether it’s religious community... these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights.”

Moreover, AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust issue, acting in conjunction with a cartel. A party does not need to have majority market share to function in coordination with other dominate players in order to form a cartel that can manipulate the market.

Also, they may or may not have provided sufficient notice (a contract issue).

Either way, it's definitely relevant to industry and likely to be litigated on appeal following the trial court's ruling (whatever it is).

Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment works. That's not how anything works...

Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the state.

Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of 1st and 14th amendments applicable within confines of “town” owned by a private entity.

As Justice Ginsburg said during oral argument regarding private digital networks, “the point is that these people are being cut off from a very large part of the marketplace of ideas. And the First Amendment includes not only the right to speak, but the right to receive information.”

And as Justice Kagan stated during Packinghan oral argument, "whether it’s political community, whether it’s religious community... these sites have become embedded in our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our constitutional rights.”

I appreciate your comprehensive answer, it's very helpful.

Question:

> "you'll starve, or poison, the brain long before you manage to starve out a cancer. (Yes, Ketone bodies are a thing, but that happens alongside your body mobilizing everything it can to feed the brain, not instead of.)"

Layman here, but my understanding is that depriving the body of the ability to replenish glycogen stores that are normally used for energy forces the body to metabolize fat in order to produce ketones, which in a ketogenic state, the brain is entirely fine utilizing as a primary energy source. Thus, if in a ketogenic state (or on a strict ketogenic diet), the body isn't being starved, just consuming stored energy reserves.

Am I oversimplifying the concept?

You could enable offsite donations that provide a receipt/hash that denotes (donation -> validated), without being tied to any individual. Then the user could copy/paste a generic, non-correlated code into Signal to authenticate activity.

The title should more accurately reflect that the regulators were the data custodians that were compromised.

'The European Medicines Agency (EMA), which assesses medicines and vaccines for the European Union, said hours earlier it had been targeted in a cyberattack. It gave no further details.

The two companies said they had been informed by the EMA “that the agency has been subject to a cyber attack and that some documents relating to the regulatory submission for Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine candidate” had been viewed.'

Wow, regulators and government entities are terrible custodians of personal data, I'm shocked...

I appreciate you addressing this, because it speaks to the point.

Lies, falsehoods, misinformation and irrational statements are all protected by the first amendment. As is uttering insane and unintelligible thoughts in public.

If speech is used to further a crime or directly causes civil harm that result in damages (ex. assault or nuisance), there are existing applicable criminal and civil laws to either punish or provide a remedy.

If for example, the police were to execute a lawful warrant to search your property, it would not nullify or burden your fourth amendment protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.

Similarly, civil remedies (i.e. tort law) allowing for compensation for damages due to negligence - say from getting trampled in a crowd that was spooked by someone yelling "fire" or "shooter" - would not place limitations on your protected right of freedom to assemble.

The biggest problem with the campaign to justify censorship or moderation of misinformation/disinformation under the guise that it causes harm, is that it removes the measurable injury element of tort law and replaces it with vague and abstract notions of either mass ethereal or psychic harm (which the Supreme Court has expressing found against).

It's not just the ruling that was problematic, but also Oliver Wendell Holmes' often referenced grotesque metaphor.

Holmes' used the metaphor to equate criticism of the government during wartime to being so dangerous for society, specifically speaking against the draft during WWI, that it was akin to yelling fire in a crowded theatre.

Clearly, criticism of the government, especially regarding matters of war and public safety, are protected by the first amendment. Not only was the metaphor used to justify an unconstitutional ruling, but it also furthered gross misperceptions regarding limits on protected speech that are still referenced today.

Disfavored and inaccurate dissenting views are to be censored? What could possible go wrong with suppressing diverse - even if entirely refutable - speech?

> Affective empathy, also called emotional empathy: the capacity to respond with an appropriate emotion to another's mental states.

This is what I meant by "emotional intelligence" in the comment below.

All good points, thanks. Yes, being on the receiving end - especially when you rely on the other person's best intentions - can be traumatizing.

And yes, that's a particularly terrible form of manipulation.

> a nightmare because they appear so charming outward to powerful people in decision making positions, while being cruel and sadistic to others

I wouldn't conflate emotional intelligence - i.e. the ability to modulate behavior based on person specific interactions - with necessarily possessing negative, vindictive, malign or cruel personality traits. That's definitely a stereotype.

It is entirely possible to be charming, without secretly being cruel or vindictive. Yes, it can be more difficult to judge a disarming person's intentions, but that doesn't mean the person is inherently sadistic or ill willed. Perhaps they are just good at making other people feel comfortable.

> They can also be confounded by the testee's charisma.

Agreed, but I don't think oral exams are the only type of effective live testing. Nor are live/timed exercises the only way to demonstrate knowledge.

Case studies, short/long form writing and creative exercises are all viable options. The primary concern seems regarding scaling grading and review, which with a little effort and ingenuity is solvable.

> move to live oral exams. Written long-form essays.

Yes. The application of principles, concepts and information is not terribly difficult to test in either a timed or take home setting.

He's expounding on why he agrees it was appropriate for the Court to deny the petition for writ of certiorari. Unlike for an opinion, they need not provide their reasoning in part or in full (or indicate concurrence) for their vote, however they may.

"I agree with the Court’s decision not to take up this case. I write to explain why, in an appropriate case, we should consider whether the text of this increasingly important statute aligns with the current state of immunity enjoyed by Internet platforms." (pg. 13)

Yes, this. As the old Soviet saying went, "show me the man and I'll show you the crime."

When you place the burden on the people and not the state - often through "common sense laws/regulation" - you inherently enable subjective and arbitrary enforcement of the law.

This unfortunate trend not only creates and enables petty tyrants, but disproportionally afflicts the most vulnerable in society and politically disfavored minorities.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc...

Nothing says long-term stability and prosperity like eliminating mechanisms to protect the populace from unlawful, illegal, or harmful conduct.

Rule of Law, who needs it?!