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Ohio Sheriff Tells People To Write Down Addresses Of People With Kamala Harris Signs In Their Yard

from the whole-bunch-of-dudes-running-their-own-Nottinghams dept

Forget “defund the police.” Let’s just get rid of the sheriffs. Or, at the very least, change how the job is handled.

Sheriffs are elected, which means a lot of sheriffs are less interested in providing good law enforcement than ensuring they’ve catered to their voting bases enough that they’ll be re-elected. And since it’s an elected position, it’s almost impossible to get rid of a sheriff, no matter how awful they are.

To be sure, they’re routinely awful. The most severe abuses of power are carried out by these elected officials. They preside over some of the worst law enforcement agencies in the United States. When they’re not directly enriching themselves with public funds, they’re involved in corruption and giving their subordinates free rein to terrorize, torture, and kill the people they’re supposed to be serving.

Because their power is almost absolute (in terms of immunity), they’re absolutely corrupted. Even if they’re not, let’s say, starving inmates to increase their personal bank accounts, they’re doing stuff that shows how little they care about actual law enforcement in hopes of rousing the rabble that will return them to power during the next election.

That brings us to this Ohio sheriff, who used his personal Facebook page to encourage his supporters to engage in voter intimidation. That post has since been deleted, but here’s a screenshot, followed by a transcription of Portage County Sheriff Bruce Zuchowski’s missive.

When people ask me…What’s gonna happen if the Flip – Flopping, Laughing Hyena Wins?? I say…write down all the addresses of the people who had her signs in their yards! Sooo…when the Illegal human “Locust” (which she supports!) Need places to live…We’ll already have the addresses of the their New families…who supported their arrival!

Note the weird punctuation. Note the random capitalization. Not the over-reliance on ellipses. But above all else, note what Sheriff Zuchowski is telling people to do and how he phrases it. That’s some MAGA shit™ right there.

He’s asking the followers of his government-related page to engage in something that sure looks a whole lot like voter intimidation. The implicit request is that these addresses be shared with the sheriff. On top of that, there’s the use of the word “locusts” to describe immigrants, suggesting they’re an elemental force that only seeks to destroy and, more importantly, incapable of doing anything other than acting instinctively.

On top of that, note that Zuchowski doubled down on this by posting it to his regular sheriff account as well as his personal account, making it impossible to claim (as he’s attempting to do now) that this speech can be completely separated from his public office position. That may come back to haunt him.

But everything should come back to haunt him. The sheriff cannot be trusted to be an elected official that has the power to detain, arrest, seize property, deploy force (deadly or otherwise), or oversee other law enforcement officers.

Case in point: more than 60 voter intimidation complaints have been filed against the Sheriff’s office since the sheriff sent out these posts. Further case in point: the sheriff has been allegedly forcing local inmates to, in essence, campaign for him.

As reported by Cleveland 19 News, a former inmate named Christopher McCullough said he and other inmates were made to put up campaign signs throughout the county. They also set up and served at Sheriff Zuchowski’s campaign fundraiser steak dinner. They even constructed a building where Zuchowski sold campaign materials.

To be exceedingly fair, the inmates were paid $3/week (plus all the cigarettes they could smoke!) for doing Zuchowski’s campaign work for him. Of course, the fact that this was illegal doesn’t seem to have bothered the sheriff at all.

Ohio law prohibits using public employees for partisan political activities, but since when are MAGA sheriffs expected to obey the law?

More fun stuff about this asshat: he probably wouldn’t have taken his post down if it weren’t for a legal threat from the ACLU. The complaints about voter intimidation (most of which originated from inside his county) appear to have made no difference.

Then there’s this, which shows the sheriff still doesn’t care whether he intimidates Harris voters, subjugates immigrants by referring to them as pestilence, or is now bathing in the national spotlight as an example of everything that’s broken in the United States’ sheriff system.

His new post, which is still live on Facebook, offers up an “apology” that simply says everyone else is wrong, other than him and his supporters.

Here it is verbatim (with all weird spelling, capitalization, and punctuation marks intact):

As the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of Portage County, I have sworn to protect ALL citizens of my County. Recently, I placed a post on my personal facebook page that may have been a little misinterpreted??

I…as the elected sheriff, do have a first amendment right as do all citizens. If the citizens of Portage County want to elect an individual who has supported open borders (which I’ve personally visited Twice!) and neglected to enforce the laws of our Country…then that is their prerogative. With elections, there are consequences. That being said…I believe that those who vote for individuals with liberal policies have to accept responsibility for their actions! I am a Law Man…Not a Politician!

I would also like to Thank…The Overwhelming Support I am receiving from many people in Portage County who are afraid or are Not allowed to agree with me publicly!

Stay Strong and God Bless!!

First off, it’s weird/stupid that you would capitalize “Chief Law Enforcement Officer” (which isn’t a real position) but not “facebook.” Second, you want a comma after “I” in the second paragraph, rather than an ellipsis. Preaching to the electorate choir is the exact opposite of being “a Law Man…Not a Politician.”

Finally, “Thank[ing]” the “Overwhelming Support” you have received from Portage County residents suggests they are neither “afraid” or “Not allowed to agree” with you “publicly.” If anything, this non-apology makes you look stupider. You’re trying to play the victim while still being the bigoted bully who engaged in arguable voter suppression. Pretending your calls to write down addresses of supporters of your political opponents have somehow been “misinterpreted” means nothing more than you didn’t expect your churlish asshattery would make national headlines, nor subject you to comments and complaints for people who don’t actually support you or your irrational hatred.

The only upside here is that you and your department won’t be allowed to directly intimidate voters this November.

The Portage County Board of Elections voted to prohibit Sheriff Bruce D. Zuchowski or his deputies from serving as security at its office to ensure that November is “free of any concerns of intimidation with this security in place,” according to a Facebook post shared Friday by board member Randi Clites.

“As Board Members we are charged with preventing violence and disorder at the polls, and to conduct a safe and secure election process. It is clear by public comments in the past week there is perceived intimidation by our Sheriff against certain voters,” Clites’ Facebook post reads.

Good. Security will apparently be handled by private contractors or officers from the Ravenna Police Department. But even this statement contains hedging from board member that suggests the sheriff will still get to call most of the shots as long as he remains in office.

While it is not my responsibility to weigh in on the Sheriffs comments directly, I feel strongly it is in my responsibility to make sure I do what is in my authority to make sure every voter in Portage County feels safe casting their ballot for any candidate they choose.

My dude, it is literally your responsibility to weigh in on these comments. If you choose not to, you’re just signalling to the sheriff’s voting bloc that sheriff can say whatever stupid or illegal thing that slides across that massive wet spot the sheriff calls a “brain” without being directly criticized for his bigotry or implicit threats to disrupt the democratic process. Don’t be a coward. Do some direct commenting. And get to work figuring out how you can keep this dipshit from continuing to act as a force of political partisanship, rather than the law enforcement official he’s supposed to be.

Filed Under: abuse of power, bruce zuchowski, ohio, police misconduct, portgage county, sheriffs, voter intimidation

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from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

John Kerry Accurately Explains First Amendment, MAGA World Loses Its Mind

from the up-is-down dept

In this stupid partisan world we live in, the MAGA world has decided that simply accurately explaining that the First Amendment does not allow for the suppression of speech (which is a good thing!) is somehow a call for abolishing the First Amendment. This isn’t even “blaming the messenger.” It’s misinterpreting the messenger and demanding he be drawn and quartered.

We’ve pointed out a few times how ridiculous both Democrats and Republicans have been of late when it comes to the First Amendment. Unfortunately, both have been making arguments for trimming back our First Amendment rights. Donald Trump has called for jailing those who criticize the Supreme Court (something, I should note, he regularly does himself).

However, as we’ve pointed out, Democrats don’t have the best track record on speech either. They’ve been caught calling for jailing social media execs over their speech, punishing booksellers for selling books they dislike, and making certain kinds of misinformation illegal.

So, I was certainly concerned when I saw a few headlines this week about John Kerry’s conversation last week at a World Economic Forum event, in which he talked about the First Amendment as a “major block” to punishing companies that spread disinformation.

His word choice was awkward and could be interpreted as criticizing the First Amendment. However, after watching the video clip of him saying it, I realized he’s just accurately saying what reality is: the First Amendment is a block to removing disinformation.

Because… it is? And that’s generally a good thing.

He was asked about how to deal with disinformation online, and he says, factually, that you can’t use the law to suppress that speech:

“You know there’s a lot of discussion now about how you curb those entities in order to guarantee that you’re going to have some accountability on facts, etc. But look, if people only go to one source, and the source they go to is sick, and, you know, has an agenda, and they’re putting out disinformation, our First Amendment stands as a major block to be able to just, you know, hammer it out of existence…”

If he then said “and that’s why we need to repeal the First Amendment,” then I’d be right there with the people concerned about this. And I would rather he followed up that statement by saying something along the lines of “and it’s a good thing the First Amendment is a block to such things.” But he still doesn’t appear to be saying that the First Amendment needs to change. He appears to be explaining reality to a questioner from the audience who wants to suppress speech.

But, of course, the MAGAsphere has gone crazy over this. Fox News, the National Review, and RT (of course) are all hammering it. On YouTube, the MAGA nutjobs are going crazy over it. Just a few examples, starting with everyone’s most mocked Russian-paid troll victim, Tim Pool:

Except, nowhere does Kerry call for “ending” free speech at all. He just notes that the First Amendment blocks suppressing speech by the government. Which is true! You’d think that the Russian-paid Tim Pool would, you know, appreciate that?

There are a bunch of others just like this:

Again, if he had actually called to abolish the First Amendment or even to weaken it, I’d be here calling it out. And again, as mentioned above, there have been other Democrats that have, in fact, called for unconstitutional speech suppression.

From the descriptions I initially saw of what he said, I was all ready to write a piece slamming Kerry for this. But then I watched it. And he just was… explaining accurately that the First Amendment blocks the government from suppressing speech.

He doesn’t call for that to be changed. He certainly doesn’t (as some of the folks above claim) call for “abolishing” the First Amendment or for censorship. One of the screenshots above from one of Elon’s favorite Twitter trolls falsely quotes Kerry as saying that the First Amendment “stands as a major roadblock for us right now,” which is not what he said at all. That’s just false.

Since the question itself was regarding disinformation around climate change, he does say that the best way to deal with climate change is to “win the ground” and elect people who can “implement change.” But it’s clear that he’s talking about implementing change regarding the climate, not about changing the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure literally none of the people screaming about this have discussed Trump’s announced plans to jail people who criticize the Supreme Court (which is a legitimate First Amendment threat).

I wonder why?

Filed Under: 1st amendment, climate change, disinformation, free speech, john kerry, tim pool

Capacity Crunch Causes Musk’s Starlink To Sock Users With $100 ‘Congestion Charge’

from the please-pay-us-extra-for-no-reason dept

Tue, Oct 1st 2024 05:28am - Karl Bode

Analysts (and Musk himself) had been quietly noting for a while that Starlink satellite broadband service would consistently lack the capacity to be disruptive at any real scale. As it usually pertains to Musk products, that analysis was generally buried under product hype. A few years later, and Starlink users are facing obvious slowdowns and a steady parade of price hikes that show no signs of slowing down.

Facing these growing congestion issues, Starlink has now started socking users in some parts of the country a one-time $100 “congestion charge”:

“In areas with network congestion, there is an additional one-time charge to purchase Starlink Residential services,” a Starlink FAQ says. “This fee will only apply if you are purchasing or activating a new service plan. If you change your Service address or Service Plan at a later date, you may be charged the congestion fee.”

On the plus side, Starlink claims that it will also give some customers $100 refunds if they live in areas where there’s excess constellation capacity. But that’s something I’d need to see proven, given, well, it’s a Musk company, and Starlink’s customer service is basically nonexistent. Historically, they’ve been unable to even consistently reply to emails from users looking for refunds.

While low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite is a significantly faster upgrade to traditional satellite broadband, the laws of physics remain intact. There are only so many satellites in the sky, and with Musk constantly and rapidly boosting the Starlink subscription base to boost revenues (Starlink just struck a deal with United to offer free WiFi, for example) you’re going to start seeing more and more network management restrictions you won’t see on fiber, or even traditional 5G cellular networks.

For a while Starlink flirted with usage caps, but correctly realized that such caps don’t actually do much to manage congestion (something we’ve had to point out repeatedly over the years). So they’ve generally shifted to either price hikes or network management tricks to try and ensure that users consistently see relatively decent performance.

But the more militaries, consumers, governments, airlines, and boat owners that sign up for service across a limited array of LEO satellites, the worse the problem will get, resulting in ongoing complaints about degraded Starlink network performance over the last several years. And the more problems, the more weird restrictions that reduce the utility of the connection.

It’s a major reason why the Biden FCC reversed the Trump FCC’s plan to give Musk a billion dollars to deliver satellite to some traffic medians and airport parking lots, instead prioritizing taxpayer funding toward more future-proof, and less capacity constrained, fiber deployment efforts.

Starlink is a great improvement for a niche segment of off-the-grid folks who have no other option. But at $120 a month (plus hardware costs) it’s not particularly affordable (the biggest current barrier to adoption), and even with a fully launched LEO satellite array, capacity will always be an issue. Starlink was never going to be something that truly scaled, but that gets lost in coverage that treats Starlink as if it’s single handedly revolutionizing telecom connectivity.

Filed Under: broadband, caps, congestion, high speed internet, leo, leo satellites, network management, satellite broadband, telecom
Companies: spacex, starlink

Sony Keeps Requiring PSN Account For Offline Games, Modders Mod It Out

from the in-mods-we-trust dept

There’s that well known adage that if you want to teach a child not to touch a hot stove, just let them touch it once and that will be all the teaching needed to have them never do so again. Whoever came up with that saying obviously has never met my children, for starters. And it appears that Sony just can’t help but continue to touch the stove.

Earlier this year we talked about Helldivers 2, a Sony title that went cross-platform. That part is all well and good. Less good was that well after the game became a hit, the developers announced that the game would be patched to require that anyone playing on their PC also sign up for a PlayStation Network account, or else the game would be unplayable. While the patch came from the developer, it was done so as a planned requirement by Sony. And it was Sony that eventually rescinded that requirement after the backlash over it was extensive.

Which makes it all the more strange that Sony then decided to do the PSN requirement thing again, this time for the PC port of God of War Ragnarok. This resulted in all kinds of backlash again over the requirement, as this is a single player offline game that required an online connection communicating with a PSN account or the game wouldn’t run. In other words: a game that has no online component and is a standalone PC port of a game was saddled with online and PSN requirements that aren’t needed and that nobody but Sony wanted.

Fortunately, an enterprising modder out there has already created a mod that removes the requirements.

The NoPSSDK mod, hosted on NexusMods, promises to “fully strip the PlayStation PC SDK runtime requirement for God of War Ragnarok.” The open source mod makes use of a simple Microsoft Detours library to get around the game’s calls to the PlayStation Network API without “touch[ing] or modify[ing] any original game code.”

The mod, which has already seen one update related to simulating offline mode, has been downloaded just under 2,000 times as of this writing. “I will try to maintain the tool even if something changes, but hopefully nothing crucial happens,” mod author iArtorias wrote in a NexusMods post.

If you’re about to go click on those links and get the mod yourself, don’t bother. The creator of the mod has already pulled it down out of fear of reprisal from Sony. And I don’t blame them. My first thought when I started looking into all of this was to wonder whether Sony would DMCA the mod over anti-circumvention concerns. It appears that it didn’t have to. Merely the fear it might do so was enough to get the mod creator to do the takedown themselves.

t was my personal decision to remove the mod since it has become way too popular and people started promoting it on Steam forums as well thus generating tons of attention.

“I just wanted to avoid the possible threats from the Sony side, even though the code has never touched any of their products in memory. You never know and it’s really a grey area to me.”

So, let’s summarize. While Sony was very upfront on the game’s store page that a PSN and internet connection would be required to run the game, the fact of the matter is that nobody except Sony wanted any of that. Then a modder came along that made the game operate in a way that the public actually did want, likely making that game more attractive for purchase to more people. Then that modder voluntarily took the thing that made people happy down out of fear of reprisal from the same Sony that was pissing people off.

Everything is bad about this. Sony’s anti-consumer behavior is bad. The chilling effect that previous enforcement has had on the modding community is bad. And the fact that buyers of this game are saddled with these requirements they don’t want is bad. And now the press’ coverage of this is bad for Sony.

Is having people get PSN accounts really beneficial enough to Sony to make up for this ongoing giant headache?

Filed Under: god of war ragnarok, mods, offline games, psn, video games
Companies: sony

America’s Mayor Earns Second Permanent Disbarment For Being An Election Conspiracy Grifter

from the enjoy-the-fleas,-bro dept

Well, I hope it was worth it, Rudy. You sold out completely, offering up every last bit of your integrity for the chance to push election conspiracy theories in court on behalf of a man who won’t even bother to look in your direction now that you’ve professionally disgraced yourself on his behalf.

No matter how this election goes, there’s sure to be more lawsuits filed by Trump. Hell, he filed several after the election that put him in office back in 2016. If he loses again, he’ll need another army of shameless lawyers to do his bidding in what will ultimately be failed attempts to reclaim the presidency.

Unfortunately, Rudy Giuliani — the self-proclaimed hero of 9/11 and self-titled “America’s Mayor” — you won’t be one of them. You may have done the ex-president’s dirty work but Trump only cares about wins, not about how much of his filth still clings to your body.

Rudy Giuliani, who already owes at least $148 million to Georgia election workers he defamed, and who can no longer hide behind belated bankruptcy filings to avoid this judgment, is now unable to perform his lawerly duties in the district where Donald Trump might need the most help if he (deservedly) loses the upcoming election.

What was once a temporary suspension of his DC law license is now permanent. And that has been affirmed by the DC Circuit Appeals Court in a one-page ruling [PDF] that says plenty without hardly saying anything at all.

The upshot of this ruling is that Giuliani is no longer welcome to practice law in the DC area, compounding his previous disbarment in his home state, New York. Here’s Josh Gerstein with more details for Politico.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani had his law license permanently revoked in the nation’s capital, following similar action by a New York court earlier this year over Giuliani’s role in former President Donald Trump’s attempt to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

In a one-page order Thursday, the D.C. Court of Appeals did not directly address a bar committee’s recommendation in May that Giuliani be disbarred for pressing a legal challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania without factual support for the claims.

Instead, a three-judge panel of the D.C. court found that Giuliani failed to respond to an order requiring him to explain why he shouldn’t face “reciprocal” disbarment after a New York appeals court’s decision to strip him of his law license in that state.

You’re now officially useless, Rudy. Trump can’t use you even if he wanted to. And, as far as I can tell, he considers you to be just a failure — another in a long line of lawyers discarded because they couldn’t do the impossible, or refused to keep trying to do the impossible because self-proclaimed Best Business Guy Ever Donald Trump decided to stop paying them.

At least you won’t have to embarrass yourself for free, Rudy. Trump is no longer your boss. You’re no longer his subservient bootlicker. Or, at least, you could be if you’d recognize this judgment for what it is: an opportunity to walk away from an abusive employer. Without a law license, you can’t be asked to irritate courts with frivolous filings on behalf of the world’s sorest loser. Now, you can just recede quietly into the background noise of normal society, albeit with ~$148 million less left to spend on hair products, podcast tech, or Uber Black rides.

As much as it gives me pleasure to report this, there’s a unending supply of unserious people with law licenses willing to burden courts with outlandish election conspiracy theories for the sole purpose of electing the man who would be despot and/or trying to catch the most fleeting bit of recognition for their service to the cause. Rudy Giuliani just happens to be the flameout with the highest profile.

The garbage man with the largest cult of personality will always have someone willing to rush the litigation machine gun nests on his behalf. Until things finally settle down, the very least the rest of us can do is gloat over the corpses he leaves behind.

Filed Under: dc appeals court, defamation, disbarred, donald trump, election conspiracy, loser, rudy giuliani

Gavin Newsom Vetoes Terrible AI Bill 1047, But Brace For Something Worse

from the thank-you-next dept

I don’t think I’ve ever seen quite as much hype about a state bill as California’s SB 1047, a pretty terrible “AI Safety” bill. Its supporters were a really weird combination of AI doomers, AI haters (not the same as the doomers), technically illiterate concern trolls… and a few people with legitimate interests about how to properly regulate technology.

The problem was that the few folks who had legitimate concerns and legitimate interests were more than willing to hitch their wagon to a bunch of numbskulls.

On the flipside, there were plenty of critics to 1047, and not all of them were great either. Some critics had legitimate concerns about how 1047 could stifle open source AI in particular, effectively locking in a few AI giants, but there were also some folks who went a little overboard on how terrible 1047 would be as well.

Either way, it was a bad bill. While California Governor Gavin Newsom has no problems signing absolutely terrible AI bills, he balked on this one. Of course, he’s been signaling for months that this was what was going to happen. This is one of a few reasons we only wrote about 1047 once, even as it seemed to takeover the AI regulation media discussion. Since he always seemed likely to veto, why waste the energy?

On Sunday, he officially announced the veto and published a veto message, with an attempt to PR his way through the decision. Instead of just saying it was a bad bill, targeting the wrong things and written in a way that was not connected to the realities of how innovation works, he tried to still sound tough on AI. He said that effectively the bill was no good because it might make people think that other AI models not covered by the bill were safe:

By focusing only on the most expensive and large-scale models, SB 1047 establishes a regulatory framework that could give the public a false sense of security about controlling this fast-moving technology. Smaller, specialized models may emerge as equally or even more dangerous than the models targeted by SB 1047 – at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.

I… don’t think that was the main problem of the bill, dude.

Elsewhere, his argument did make more sense, noting that any regulatory regime right now must be adaptable. This technology is still quite new, and regulating out of a place of fear of the unknown is a terrible way to regulate. But that’s exactly what 1047 did. It assumed that fairy tales and moral panics were legitimate concerns about what AI tools could do… and also that there was some way to bureaucrat your way out of bad results.

Adaptability is critical as we race to regulate a technology still in its infancy. This will require a delicate balance. While well-intentioned, SB 1047 does not take into account whether an Al system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making or the use of sensitive data. Instead, the bill applies stringent standards to even the most basic functions – so long as a large system deploys it. I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.

My key takeaway from watching the debate of 1047 and other AI bills play out over the last few months is that a lot of people feel that (1) social media is bad, and (2) they missed a chance to regulate it when they should have, and (3) they don’t want to do that with AI, and, therefore, (4) they need to overcorrect and aggressively regulate AI.

I think all four of those points are problematic and wrong. But we’re living in the age of a raging tech moral panic, mostly because other shit is going horribly wrong on a societal level. But no one wants to do the hard work of actually fixing that shit, because that’s hard and people are used to those problems. But tech is new and therefore, if we can just blame the tech and regulate the tech, surely we’ll do something good.

It is not serious lawmaking. It’s performative nonsense from unserious people.

But have no fear. As we’ve learned in the past, there will be a new version of 1047 next year (along with other terrible bills) and we’ll get to have this kind of fight all over again.

Filed Under: ai, ai regulations, ai safety, california, gavin newsom, sb 1047

The Copyright Directive’s Link Tax Has Been A Failure; Will Anyone Learn From This?

from the another-failure dept

It seems so long ago that people were trying to stop the worst aspects of the EU Copyright Directive. It was quite a battle, as Chapter 6 of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) recounts in detail. The final legislation was passed in March 2019, but it is important not simply to accept what happened and move on. The copyright industry used many dubious arguments to convince MEPs to vote for the new copyright framework. Although many of us pointed out the flaws in these at the time, we were drowned out by the chorus of well-paid lobbyists employed by the copyright world. Now that the EU Copyright Directive has been in force for a few years, we can begin to see its real-world effects. That allows us to compare them with the claims that were made to get the law passed.

For example, the so-called “link tax” was supposedly about saving the newspaper industry. Many publishers say they are struggling, which is true, but not for the reasons they claim. It is largely their own failure to embrace the opportunities of the Internet in the 1990s that led to newcomers like Google becoming hugely successful in the online news space. Nonetheless, publishers argued that a new ancillary copyright should be created to allow them to generate revenue that was desperately needed if the world of newspapers was to thrive in the EU.

In fact, as I wrote in an article six years ago, for the link tax we did have some data points. Both Germany and Spain had introduced a link tax before the EU Copyright Directive, and the resulting income from them was pitiful – certainly nowhere near enough to “save” the newspaper industry. This showed the link tax was more about publishers asserting their right to demand a payment from the Internet giants, as part of their larger claim that any use of copyright material must be controlled by them.

There was another thread to the publishers’ argument that even more copyright protection was needed. According to the newspaper industry, the journalists who wrote the news stories deserved some remuneration from Internet companies that linked to it. This was a seductive argument, not least for journalists. But I knew from my own experience as one of them, that these grand promises from publishers to share with journalists extra revenue rarely materialized, and that this was just a ploy to win over doubtful MEPs. We are now in a position to see how this particular aspect of the link tax has worked out. A useful post by Ula Furgal on the Kluwer Copyright Blog summarizes what has been happening around the EU in terms of implementations:

Rather unsurprisingly, only a handful of the member states decided to implement the provision on the journalists’ share by explicitly indicating what part of publishers’ revenues creators are entitled to receive. And among those that did, the share varies quite significantly. While in Italy, journalists are due to receive between 2-5% of publishers’ revenues, in Bulgaria the share should be minimum 20% and at least 1/3 in Germany. In Greece, the percentage depends on the proportion of journalists employed by a publisher, compared to those involved on casual basis. It is either 15% or 25%, with the former owed to journalists when less than 60% of them are salaried employees, which could be read as the Greek legislator’s attempt to reward the publishers providing creators with more stability. The share guaranteed by the Lithuanian implementation (to be followed by Poland) is the most generous, reserving 50% of the revenues to authors.

The blog post notes that there is huge variation here, “which is difficult to justify as it is rather unlikely that the news production processes and sector practices vary so significantly between the countries”. That state of affairs is particularly ironic since one of the main justifications for the EU Copyright Directive was that it would unify copyright law across the twenty-seven member states and bring it into the digital age. In practice, it has simply extended the earlier fragmentation of copyright in new ways.

As for the key question of whether journalists are, as promised, benefitting much from the new link tax, Furgal writes:

It does not seem that the right to appropriate share is currently making a substantial difference to the journalists and their incomes.

That’s really no surprise, given that the earlier link taxes in Germany and Spain made very little difference to publishers’ incomes, and journalists get a (varying) proportion of that. But as well as confirming that the past was a good guide to what might happen with any new EU-wide ancillary copyright, this particular piece of copyright history is also important for some current discussions, as Furgal points out:

Considering its complex positioning, between big tech, content producers and creators, the appropriate share problem could offer valuable lessons for the ongoing discussion on remunerating creators in the GenAI age.

Sadly, the failure of the link tax to deliver anything worthwhile for anyone, despite all the time and effort involved in bringing it in, is likely to be a lesson that the copyright industry refuses to learn.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published on Walled Culture.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, journalism, link tax

Daily Deal: The 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

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Filed Under: daily deal

Big Tech’s Promise Never To Block Access To Politically Embarrassing Content Apparently Only Applies To Democrats

from the hypocrites?-in-big-tech?-how-could-it-be? dept

It probably will not shock you to find out that big tech’s promises to never again suppress embarrassing leaked content about a political figure came with a catch. Apparently, it only applies when that political figure is a Democrat. If it’s a Republican, then of course the content will be suppressed, and the GOP officials who demanded that big tech never ever again suppress such content will look the other way.

A week and a half ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing about the threat of foreign intelligence efforts to interfere with US elections. Senator Tom Cotton, who believes in using the US military to suppress American protests, used the opportunity to berate Meta and Google for supposedly (but not really) “suppressing” the Hunter Biden laptop story:

In that session — which I feel the need to remind you was just held on September 18th — both Nick Clegg from Meta and Kent Walker from Google were made to promise that they would never, ever engage in anything like the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story (Walker noted that Google had taken no effort to do so when that happened in the first place).

Clegg explicitly said that a similar demotion “would not take place today.”

Take a wild guess where this is going?

Exactly one week and one day after that hearing, Ken Klippenstein released the Trump campaign’s internal vetting dossier on JD Vance. It’s pretty widely accepted that the document was obtained via hacking by Iranian agents and had been shopped around to US news sites for months. Klippenstein, who will do pretty much anything for attention, finally bit.

In response, Elon immediately banned Ken’s ExTwitter account and blocked any and all links to not just the document, but to Ken’s Substack. He went way further than anyone ever did regarding the original Hunter Biden laptop story and the content revealed from that laptop. We noted the irony of how the scenario is nearly identical to the Hunter Biden laptop story, but everyone wants to flip sides in their opinion of it.

Elon being a complete fucking hypocrite is hardly new. It’s almost to be expected. That combined with his public endorsement (and massive funding) of the Trump/Vance campaign means it’s noteworthy, but not surprising, that he’d do much more to seek to suppress the Vance dossier than old Twitter ever did about the Hunter laptop story.

So, what about Meta and Google? After all, literally a week earlier, top execs from each company said in a Senate hearing under oath that they would never seek to suppress similar content this year.

And yet…

That’s the link to the dossier on Threads with a message saying “This link can’t be opened from Threads. It might contain harmful content or be designed to steal personal information.”

Ah. And remember, while Twitter did restrict links to the NY Post article for about 24 hours, Meta never restricted the links. It only set it so that the Facebook algorithm wouldn’t promote the story until they checked and made sure it was legit. But here, they’re blocking all links to the Vance dossier on all their properties. When asked, a Meta spokesperson told the Verge:

“Our policies do not allow content from hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections. We will be blocking such materials from being shared on our apps under our Community Standards.”

Yeah, but again, literally a week ago, Nick Clegg said under oath that they wouldn’t do this. The “hacked sources” policy was the excuse Twitter had used to block the NY Post story.

Does anyone realize how ridiculous all of this looks?

And remember how Zuckerberg was just saying he regrets “censoring” political content? Just last week, there was a big NY Times piece arguing, ridiculously, that Zuck was done with politics. Apparently it’s only Democrat-politics that he’s done with.

As for Google, well, Walker told Senator Cotton that the Biden laptop story didn’t meet their standards to have it blocked or removed. But apparently the Vance dossier does. NY Times reporter Aric Toler found that you can’t store the document in your Google Drive, saying it violates their policies against “personal and confidential information”:

As we’ve said over and over again, neither of these things should have been blocked. The NY Post story shouldn’t have been blocked, and the Vance dossier shouldn’t have been blocked. Yes, there are reasons to be concerned about foreign interference in elections, but if something is newsworthy, it’s newsworthy. It’s not for these companies to determine what’s newsworthy at all.

While it was understandable why in the fog of the release about the Hunter Biden story both Twitter and Meta said “let’s pump the brakes and see…” given how much attention has been paid to all that, including literally one week before this, it certainly raises a ton of questions to then immediately move to blocking the Vance dossier.

Of course, the hypocrisy will stand, because the GOP, which has spent years pointing to the Hunter Biden laptop story as their shining proof of “big tech bias” (even though it was nothing of the sort), will immediately, and without any hint of shame or acknowledgment, insist that of course the Vance dossier must be blocked and it’s ludicrous to think otherwise.

And thus, we see the real takeaway from all that working of the refs over the years: embarrassing stuff about Republicans must be suppressed, because it’s doxxing or hacking or foreign interference. However, embarrassing stuff about Democrats must be shared, because any attempt to block it is election interference.

Got it?

Filed Under: content moderation, hunter biden laptop, hypocrisy, jd vance, jd vance dossier, ken klippenstein, nick clegg, tom cotton
Companies: google, meta, twitter, x