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Google's removed all mentions of an Intercept investigation from Search (twitter.com/theintercept)
322 points by donohoe on Dec 23, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 117 comments



The Lumen "DMCA removal request" linked from the Google search results page:

    A Removal Request Sent To Google - Notice in Process
    Re: Unknown
    NOTICE TYPE:Other
    ACTION TAKEN:Unspecified
    Explanation of complaint
    This is NOT a notice.
    It is a PLACEHOLDER for a notice that is not yet available for viewing. 
    Do not request to view the URLs associated with this placeholder, there are none.

    Lumen has recently received, from Google, notification of a removal request
    originally sent to Google. Once that removal request has been processed by
    Google, it will have its own unique ID number, URL, date and other
    associated information, and a copy of the request will be present within
    Lumen's database.

    Thank you for your patience. 
https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/15710816


In general it seems Google honors all DMCA requests immediately, and only rejects them after they're able to review it.

Wonder if this could be used maliciously for stuff closer to Google's chest, eg. blacklisting youtube.com/premium or store.google.com/product/pixel_6_pro (of course, this would be illegal, however IIRC there haven't been any cases involving punishment for issuing false DMCAs)


They’re required to.

The DMCA safe harbor provisions require claims to be taken as true by default, and then if the victim responds with “this is false” the original claimant has two weeks (iirc) to respond, during which the recipient is meant to keep the content unavailable.


My recollection is that the recipient of the claim could also voluntarily waive DMCA immunity over that specific claim by consciously deciding not to honor it. I don't know how to substantiate that recollection, though, and even if that's right, it would definitely be a heightened risk for the service provider to choose to take on.


> My recollection is that the recipient of the claim could also voluntarily waive DMCA immunity over that specific claim by consciously deciding not to honor it.

This is another way of saying if you don't follow the DMCA you become liable for the infringing content (if the content owner sues and is successful, of course), which is indeed what the DMCA says :)


But another intuition or worry people might have is that they will completely lose the safe harbor for all of their activities if they refuse to honor any takedown. I can see why people would have that fear, but I don't think it's right.


It’s also not real. This is civil law. One claimant has nothing to do with the other.


If you look at how it's described in, say,

https://www.copyright.gov/512/

there's a fair amount of ambiguity because they're talking about the ability to qualify for safe harbors in general, presumably mixed together with the ability to qualify in a specific case, without drawing that distinction explicitly.


I think you're allowed to ignore requests if they are obviously false or missing required info.

I know wikipedia ignores 75% of the dmca notices they get (source: https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/transparency/2021-2/dm... )


In other words, guilty until proven innocent.


Doesn't the DMCA allow hosting providers a reasonable time (e.g. 24 hours) to respond to takedowns?


Possible, but if you're running a fully automated company... what difference would that make? If anything it'd be a liability... a risk of your "cron job" being a bit late or something.


Delaying the takedown by 23 hours or so could prevent this exact kind of screwup.


Alas it wouldn’t in the case that it doesn’t get press.

Because the person who made the original claim has like two weeks to respond and the content can’t be returned until they respond or two weeks is up


Such a takedown would be reviewed and reversed within minutes, of course.


DMCA complaints against Google's own property are sure to get special review. They're not involved as just an index or host, you're directly accusing them of copyright infringement.


Yes, that is the reason for the special review, and not that it hurts them instead of a 3rd party. (/s, in case it isn't obvious)


for a moment I thought this lumen and URL was in some way related to the giant amalgamated telecom/ISP entity Lumen, the combined centurylink/Level3.

not a bad name for a project to shine light on things but could be confusing.


Whether you like the intercept or not I think we can all agree that bogus DMCA complaints (and the forced downtime even when you report the claim is bogus) needs to be stopped.

The core problem that makes incorrect and fraudulent claims possible is the complete absence of any penalty for such claims.

Until there is a penalty for a false claim we’ll keep seeing stuff like this.

Minor edit: I mean the core problem of the DMCA wrt false claims, not the core problem with the whole of the DMCA, which I would argue is the existence of the DMCA :D


Agreed. Our site was almost completely delisted a couple of months ago due to a completely fabricated claim. https://playerassist.com/4000-playerassist-urls-removed-due-... We’re still submitting the urls one by one. 10 days ago they said the complainant had 10 days to file suit or they would relist. Still waiting on relisting.

Unfortunately we didn’t generate the negative pr that the intercept was able to generate. And I’ll never know who did this either. Very frustrating


I think one of the problems is that content review requires human moderation, which takes some time to occur. So the question is what to do in the meantime? You can either default to leaving the content up or taking the content down. Both are problematic for different reasons.


No, human review isn’t a solution to the DMCA. The DMCA is absurd in the lengths it goes to encourage/force automatic acceptance of a claim. If you don’t comply with a claim, and it is later found that the claim was correct then you can be held liable. At the same time there is no penalty for false claims.

Basically the legal penalty if you auto comply is 0, and the penalty if you don’t is atmospheric. At the same time you have no way to recover legal fees for a lawyer to audit the takedown requests even if they are clearly fraudulent.


Successful claims under 512(f) are rare, but that doesn't mean the section doesn't exist. There certainly is a penalty for false claims brought in bad faith.

Online Policy Grp. v. Diebold, Inc., 337 F. Supp. 2d 1195, 1205 (N.D. Cal. 2004). The defendant subsequently settled for $125,000.

Automattic Inc. v. Steiner, 2015 WL 1022655 (N.D. Cal. March 2, 2015). Court awarded ~$25,000 in damages.

*Btw, I think you meant "stratospheric." I'm pretty sure the atmosphere is everywhere.


Thanks for those citations.

Weirdly, another 512(f) case was just won:

https://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2021/12/a-512f-plainti...


Eric Goldman is the man! :)


From the article, some 20min into the reading:

"...The mere existence of a separate union for Black police officers rubs many in Little Rock the wrong way. White officers, some city officials, and many white residents see the Black union as unnecessary, a stubborn refusal to move beyond the city’s ugly racial history. Black officers said that sentiment reveals a misunderstanding of why the union exists: It isn’t to win special rights for Black officers, they said. It’s to demand they be treated equally."

This passage should have been earlier in the report. Before, the report emanated a stench of trying too hard to find racism behind every rock.

Instead, the reporter later describes a story of a bureaucractic racket - primarily driven by state powers and labor, to promote corruption & nepotism, which has disproportionately impacted black officers.


To be quite frank, this is a really unfair mischaracterization. The article describes black police officer's direct interactions with racism. One of them describes often hearing "She’s one of the Blacks that’s OK." Another described hearing the N word by white officers at work since their very first day. They also pointed out things like the fact that the mostly white Fraternity of Police voted 84% no confidence in the Black police chief (they had also been very vocally opposed to him even during the campaign that led to him being chief). While a vote amongst Black police officers found 89% approval of the chief.

This isn't just "trying too hard to find racism behind every rock". This is very clear examples, using both data and personal experiences, that illustrate what it's like to be a Black police officer in that department


Twitter thread claims its back, search for Radley Balko Little Rock Police chiief put it number 2 in results for me.


Worth familiarizing yourself with this remarkable reporter (Radley Balko), if you don't already know who he is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radley_Balko


"Balko has advocated the abolition of laws criminalizing drunk driving, arguing that the "punishable act should be violating road rules or causing an accident, not the factors that led to those offenses. Singling out alcohol impairment for extra punishment isn't about making the roads safer"

That's such a naive and irresponsible, and frankly stupid, position to take. That's the first advocate for drunk drivers/driving I've ever heard of. I'll assume he wrote that for the "shock" value (i.e. click bait). I guess that makes him "remarkable", but not in a positive way.

Regarding the Little Rock police chief -- it sounds like race has nothing to do with it. Rather, sexual improprieties and personnel issues are what peoples' complaints are about. The Intercept is hardly a credible journal anymore (hear what its founder, Glenn Greenwald, has to say about it (https://rumble.com/c/GGreenwald).


I won't support this entire position, but there are a number of regulations for behavior which are correlative and not causative. Good examples for a more nuanced position are zero tolerance laws punishing drivers with any detectable level of bac, without any claim of danger or impairment. Open container laws are similarly problematic. Last but not least are intent to drive' provisions which allow charging of a drunk sleeping it off in the back seat with a DUI.

These are examples of enforcement based on questionable assumed outcomes, essentially boiling down to probabilistic pre-crime.


I know someone who spent two years fighting an open container charge for an empty beer can in the centre console he was using as an ashtray.


Yeah, great example. How did it turn out for them?


Well, he was demanding a jury trial and the judge didn't want a jury trial for such a petty offense, so the judge scratched out the ticket (the ticket is the formal indictment in a traffic violation in Illinois) and wrote "noisy muffler" on it and asked if the defendant would plead guilty to that instead. He did so. I met him about five minutes later when he realized he'd made a mistake and wanted to get back in front of the judge and rescind his plea.

[I just tried to look the case up in the county's court computer system, but it only shows a fraction of his dozens of criminal cases and sadly does not include this one, so I am unaware of the final disposition]


I'll play devil's advocate: I doubt increasing the punishments for drunk driving is the most effective way to dissuade people from doing it. It's true that endangering people's lives by driving a vehicle while impaired is detestable behavior, but the desire for retribution should not be allowed to fuel unreasonable sentences and punishments. (Unfortunately, it often is, and it plays well into politicians getting re-elected into positions of power, so I suspect much of it creeps far higher than optimal.)


Looming punishment at least puts it in people's minds, even if a majority still doesn't follow the law; there's a reason a lot of people have a 'designated driver', and I imagine it's more about avoiding the ticket & punishment rather than avoiding endangering lives on the road.

Of course, there are indeed other solutions that should be studied if they have a chance of reducing harm & death initiated by the act of driving under an influence.


Well, it is definitely good that a DUI is taken seriously. And maybe it is necessary for alcohol to have specific laws against it in order to make that dissuasion effective. I can, however, understand the position that the current punishments are unnecessarily harsh. What would probably be nice, is if we had data to back up which approaches are effective.


> I imagine it's more about avoiding the ticket & punishment rather than avoiding endangering lives on the road.

I wonder about that.

We always hear the trope about the drunk driver usually not dying because they're "relaxed," but being relaxed isn't going to do jack when you smash into an overpass at highway speeds or dump your car over a cliff.

Keep telling everyone that drunk driving is dangerous and they're easily going to infer that it's dangerous for themselves. And then which is more of a deterrent, a nasty fine, or death?


Drunk people are notoriously bad at judging their impairment. The threat of DUI has an deterrent effect on people who believe they could drive safely but are still concerned about a life altering criminal punishment. This is rational given that you are much more likely to get a DUI than kill yourself or someone else. There are ~10k alcohol related auto fatalities/year and approximately 1.5 million DUI arrests.


> Drunk people are notoriously bad at judging their impairment.

They are notoriously bad at executive function generally; deterrents aren't aimed at them.

The deterrent effect of DUI laws isn't on drunk people, it's on people who would otherwise choose to drink when they would then have to drive.


That is a good point, but I think it is both.


You should have been alive in the 1970s (maybe you were) when drunk driving was truly a slap-on-the-wrist offense. In 1980 came MADD, and though their ad campaigns were annoying -- they and other similar efforts were effective. Since 1982, drunk driving fatalities in the US has decreased 52%, while total traffic fatalities have declined 18%. Among persons under 21, drunk driving fatalities have decreased 83%.[1]

[1] https://www.responsibility.org/alcohol-statistics/drunk-driv...


I wasn't alive in the 1970's, so I indeed lack that context. However, I'm not arguing against punishment for drunk driving or anything crazy like that, just that it's possible we've passed the ideal point for how much punishment is appropriate for drunk driving. As far as I can tell, the journalist isn't either, just arguing that it should be covered by more generalized offenses rather than ones specific to alcohol. To be honest, that doesn't seem too radical.


A journalist "advocating" for anything is already pretty radical.

I'm sorta one, and I'll be the first to say that the newsroom is not a place for activism.


Fun with statistics…my gut tells me that if we looked at all fatalities on road miles driven basis, I’m not sure these statistics would look so impressive how much of that number is due to people wearing seatbelts, airbags/safer cars?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the...


You can use total fatalities as the baseline - 18% drop, which includes effects of the massive drunk driving fatalities.


https://www.slatervecchio.com/bc-drunk-driving-laws-saves-li...

TLDR: British Columbia implemented the toughest anti-drunk-driving laws in Canada. Automobile accident rates dropped 20%. Pretty damn effective.


Correlation is not causation. I'm sure those new laws saw a lot of press and surrounding commentary around the dangers of drunk driving as well.


My opinion: what would be nice is a robust set of studies that you can do a sort of meta analysis of. Ideally it would include measures that _decrease_ drunk driving offenses too, although I admit that it is unlikely to find a good example of that in today's world.

I do think that one study that shows a robust correlation is a good start, though. That would be the starting point for trying to decide what the optimal tradeoff is.

The thing is though, I think it's a matter of diminishing returns. I bet if you made the penalty for drunk driving death it would reduce drunk driving further, but I don't think many would agree that is a measured and reasonable response to the offense.


Good christ that tired old chestnut needs to be retired: it adds nothing of value to any conversation.

Here, take a look at the pretty pictures and tell me again that the results of the new laws are just a result of news media hype: a decade later and DD fatalities still down more than 50%.

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/driving-and-transportation...

TLDR: lowering the acceptable BAC level and putting some teeth behind the law radically and permanently changed the DD accident rates in BC. Gosh, such a surprise, that.


> Good christ that tired old chestnut needs to be retired

People so consistently ignore it or get it wrong that people have to bring it out time and again. For example:

> a decade later and DD fatalities still down more than 50%.

We're trying to distinguish between the effect of the law and the effect of hearing about the dangers.

If the law is still actively being publicized, presumably so are the dangers, so that doesn't work.

If nobody has heard a word about the law in ten years but people remember hearing about the law ten years ago then they also remember being warned about the dangers ten years ago. Maybe once people change their behavior it sticks.

If people don't remember things they heard ten years ago then they don't remember that the law exists either and it can't be deterring anything.

If you really want to do the experiment, repeal the law but keep publicizing the dangers and see if the rate goes back up.


If you are saying it is due to increased publicity you will not have a problem finding an example where an anti drink driving campaign has a similar effect.

Also the way you use correlation isn't causation is disengenous. By your usage apples falling down is correlation not causation. The whole point about that statement is that we should not infer causation if we don't have a good understanding of why the causal relationship exists. In this case we do.


Really? You’re proposing that before the law was implemented in 2010, people were not hearing about the dangers? That the previous 30-odd years of MADD were not seen nor heard by the citizens of British Columbia? That the behaviour of BC drivers in 2020 is due to the burst of media activity in 2010? cORrELatioN DoES NOt IMpLY cAUSATion!!ELeVeNtyOnE!

Pull the other one, it has bells on.


> You’re proposing that before the law was implemented in 2010, people were not hearing about the dangers? That the previous 30-odd years of MADD were not seen nor heard by the citizens of British Columbia?

Something explains why the law was passed in 2010 and not 30-odd years before. How do you know the same thing that caused legislative action isn't the same thing that caused the behavior change?


This is the dumbest possible conversation and I’m out.


Do you actually think that correlation proves causation? Wet streets cause rain?


Dismissing a journalist because he holds one view you disagree with is an interesting standard. Can you honestly say you hold to it consistently?


Well just as long as it would mean that people would actually get punished for bad driving. Right now things are a bit bizarre in that bad driving is mostly OK if you are not drunk. There is no general duty of care. If you didn't do it on purpose then it is just an accident.


Isn't this why some places are moving from driving while intoxicated (DWI) to driving under influence (DUI)? Doesn't matter the influencer so that it's not specific to alcohol.


Balko started out his career as a bog-standard libertarian and staked out some unrealistic positions during that time, but has since evolved into a serious reporter on issues related to civil liberties.


Allowing drink driving is a not unusual libertarian view, much like the their desire to remove the requirement to be licensed to drive.


To be clear, a license is not required to drive, although it is required on public roads.


Greenwald's not much of a credible source these days.


Please explain. He’s one of the last journalists that I still trust these days. Care to elaborate on your claims?


I'm guessing he means Glenn Greenwald is no longer in exact alignment with the narrow railroad tracks of a particular ideology.

Personally I find him very impressive. A genuinely independent and courageous thinker, this is incredibly rare in the media.


There is no possible way you don’t know what OP means. I can understand if you insist on regarding Greenwald as anything but yet another hack these days: you’d be wrong, of course. But there are too many wrong in that specific way to consider it as remarkable in any way.

But Greenwald 2021 is something different than Greenwald 2010, and denying that difference is not believable.


This is not helpful. I asked the OP to back up his drive-by claims. I wasn’t asking for more of them.


Google "Glenn Greenwald is unreliable" or simply type his name into Quora's search and you'll soon see the substance of the complaints. Here's one article on the topic.

https://quillette.com/2015/12/19/glenn-greenwald-fascisms-fe...

Or you could look to his support for Putin, Fox News against traditional media (CNN, NYT, WaPo,...), and his denial of Russian interference in the 2016 election.


All of these things are nonsense.

Accusing someone of bigotry while arguing that their speech shouldn't be censored is not inconsistent with the position that their speech shouldn't be censored. It's just answering speech with more speech.

His "support for Putin" is some kind of farce where he'll e.g. speak approvingly of Snowden being granted asylum and this is taken as proof of loyalty to the Kremlin.

He appears on Tucker Carlson periodically, typically to advocate for Assange. It's not obvious why saying the same things he does anywhere else is to be condemned just because he's saying them to the audience of Fox. Should we not be trying to convince them of anything? Why is that bad?

He consistently calls out CNN/NYT/WaPo/etc. when they get something wrong, presumably because these are the media he actually reads.

No one seriously denies that Russia attempts to influence US elections, as they always have in every election for decades. What many deny, because there is no credible evidence of it, is that Trump colluded with Russia. The people providing non-credible "evidence" of this have since been caught out as frauds and one is currently under indictment for lying to the FBI.


How can anyone with a brain think like this? Drunk driving should come with harsher penalties in my opinion... How to lose all credibility in less than 10 seconds.


We live in an age of legal weed, and probably soon to be other substance.

How can anyone with an IQ above freezing seek to criminalize any one substance rather than just criminalizing a) bad results b) impairment?

I don't care what, if anything, you're on. If you can't drive you can't drive. If you can you can. Penalizing any one substance simply because we can measure it seems farcical at best.


A DUI isn’t “drunk driving”. It is driving under influence, and covers all impairments: alcohol, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, etc. If the drug impacts your ability to safely operate a vehicle then DUI laws apply.


<rolls eyes in loop>

Sure, on paper.

In reality 99% of enforcement is against alcohol because that's what they have the breathalyzers, blood tests and established law to go after.

It's exceedingly rare for someone to get a DUI for anything other than booze unless they are so high they fall asleep at the wheel


Australia uses saliva tests to perform roadside THC, Methylamphetamine and MDMA tests. My understanding is that the Netherlands also performs similar roadside tests, and Canada is piloting doing so.


You're forgetting it's also what most people are on, which is the reason why it's the most tested for. 3 million deaths caused by alcohol every single year according to the WHO! It's almost like some sort of pandemic, only it's been going on forever and society isn't in the slightest way bothered.

I find it so odd few see the absurdity in all these public health debates. Now we have a virus going around and people go full authoritarian, even though the majority of deaths is way above the median life expectancy in many countries. Meaning they'd not have lived much longer anyway. But drunks kill tons of random people including kids every year - no biggie.

Just to be clear I'm against prohibition, I think all drugs should be legalized. There are millions of people who have serious issues with alcoholism though, and we have to do something against that, because they cause a lot of problems, even beyond killing others. It's farcical that drugs like LSD are highly illegal, even though users aren't known to harm others, but then others like alcohol are so accepted we even arguing about allowing people to drive while impaired with them.

If there were data showing that legalizing drink driving would lead to fewer accidents I'd be absolutely willing to consider it. I've never heard of anyone seriously make such an argument though, it seems like total bunk. A professional drinker may be driving inconspicuously, until one day their slow reaction time may not be enough to not hit that person crossing the street at night.


It is incorrect, at least in the US, that "the majority of deaths is way above the median life expectancy". While people over 75 have been hit the hardest, they are less than half the deaths, and Covid has caused US life expectancy to drop by two years.


> I don't care what, if anything, you're on. If you can't drive you can't drive.

Yep, and the law agrees… as you agreed. Does it take a freezing cold brain to argue against itself?


I don't care what people do in the privacy of their home. All of that is out the door when you step foot in a vehicle and put others at risk while driving intoxicated.

You can get upset that we don't have the tools to measure other substances but as soon as we do I can guaranteed they'll be deployed and I won't mind a bit. Don't drive intoxicated, it's simple, I do it all the time. If I drink or smoke, I uber to and/or from. It's not a hard concept to abide by.

Who said anything about penalizing any one substance? Alcohol abuse is just the most rampant and its effects tend to be the strongest when compared to other illicit substances. I think people that are selfish and ignorant enough to drive intoxicated deserve harsh penalties. Sorry not sorry.


criminalizing based on impairment is fine but criminalizing based on 'bad results' is what is sometimes called 'moral luck' philosophy and dubious because it attributes punishment based not on intent but on factors beyond one's control.

If two people throw a stone at your head and one misses because he happens to be a bad thrower few people would argue that this matters rather than the intent to harm.


You're taking a deontological[1] view instead of a consequentialist[2] view. That's a valid viewpoint, but legal systems typically incorporate both views, and consider both intentions and outcomes.

In your example, how much of a civil penalty should each perpetrator pay to reimburse the victim's medical expenses? If we only considered intentions and not outcomes, the civil penalty would depend on the average cost of medical expenses the victim would incur from this type of attack, multiplied by the probability such a throw would result in a hit, regardless of whether the stone actually hit the victim's head.

But in reality, a court would focus more on outcomes than on intentions for this kind of civil penalty. The perpetrators would pay a civil penalty that depends on the victim's actual medical expenses. It's simply not practical to make accurate probability-based calculations for every damage assessment, and the victim should always be fully reimbursed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontology

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism


I don't think the issue is deontology or consequentialism here, I think you're actually giving a consequentalist account in both examples, just one time collectively and the other individually.

My point is rather that for criminal culpability to exist, there needs to be intent. And (excuse me if this is somewhat inaccurate because I'm not from a common law region), in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?

Insofar as people receive lesser judgements for crimes without adverse outcomes the argument is that the better outcome reflects less willingness to commit or go through with a crime.

To take an extreme example, no jurisdiction I'm aware of punishes attempted murder substantially less severely than actual murder even if the outcome is that there's no harm done at all. Likewise an accidental death is not a crime.


> in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?

It's called "mens rea"


On moral culpability, I agree with you. Whether the stone hits the victim or not, the perpetrator is just as morally culpable in either outcome. The perpetrator is equally "bad" for throwing the stone, even though the punishment varies depending on the outcome. The problem is that it is very difficult to quantify moral culpability, especially in a way that could be evaluated in court.

> I think you're actually giving a consequentalist account in both examples, just one time collectively and the other individually.

That's an interesting point, so let me revise my example. If we only considered intentions and not outcomes, the civil penalty would depend on how much damage the perpetrator intended to inflict (interpreted in monetary terms) by throwing the stone, multiplied by what the perpetrator believed to be the probability that the stone would hit the victim. The amount of the civil penalty could be wildly different from the victim's actual losses.

A financial system could be set up to ensure that the victim would always be compensated for their actual losses, while the perpetrator would always pay an amount that scales with the monetary interpretation of their moral culpability. There would be no guarantee that the incoming payments would equal the outgoing payments.

I don't think it's possible to implement this system, because there is no way to determine the required numbers with a reasonable degree of accuracy. As long as intent is established, courts rely on outcomes to determine judgments when the extent of the intent is unclear.

> My point is rather that for criminal culpability to exist, there needs to be intent. And (excuse me if this is somewhat inaccurate because I'm not from a common law region), in general a 'guilty mind' is a requirement in criminal law, no?

Yes, intent is an important factor in criminal cases. I'm not trying to argue that intent doesn't matter in court, because intent does matter. My point is that, for a legal system to be practical, outcomes also have to be taken into consideration.

> Insofar as people receive lesser judgements for crimes without adverse outcomes the argument is that the better outcome reflects less willingness to commit or go through with a crime.

Outcomes aren't necessarily a good approximation for intent. A perpetrator who is more competent at executing crimes would generate more adverse outcomes, while an equally willing but less competent perpetrator would generate fewer adverse outcomes. The more competent perpetrator should receive a greater sentence, but the reasoning would be based on the perpetrator's greater harm to society rather than their intent.

> To take an extreme example, no jurisdiction I'm aware of punishes attempted murder substantially less severely than actual murder even if the outcome is that there's no harm done at all. Likewise an accidental death is not a crime.

The counterpoint is that, at least in the U.S., states differ on whether attempted assaults are recognized as crimes, and whether assault charges require actual injury. There are related charges that vary per state, so I'm not able to make a generalization on the difference between attempted crimes and successful crimes.


If two people throw a stone at your head, and one misses and the other hits, then there are (probably) two crimes involved: Both people assaulted you, but only one battered you.

These two crimes have different punishments. It's quite normal to have outcome-based laws.


He’s a conformist that hops into line on command, just like the rest of the staff of The Intercept. Unsurprising he also writes for WSP.


What an insightful, emotionally-intelligent comment.


Go read why Greenwald left. Seems that you’re out of the loop.


It's interesting how regularly US social media have these "oopsie" moderation [0]/copyright [1] "accidents".

Even more interesting when they openly admit to censoring content [2].

I wonder how much of that is actually "accident" and how much of it is just testing out boundaries how far they can go before it gets noticed too widely [3]?

[0] https://nypost.com/2021/03/24/twitter-censoring-detention-ce...

[1] https://juliareda.eu/2017/09/when-filters-fail/

[2] https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/11/04/goog-n04.html

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-37318031


Are you saying Google is, on it’s on volition, protecting the interests of some unknown red-state police chief?


Quit being prejudiced toward Native Americans, man.


It's like how people will make hurtful comments and suddenly change courses and claim it's "just a joke" if anyone calls them out on it.


But "It's a PrIvAtE CoMpAnY they can do whatever they want", despite the fact(s) that:

-google had received numerous subsidies and continues to do so,mainly in part because of their lobbying;

-google (&others, but mainly google) received contracts and got paid by US gov. (a.k.a american people through taxpayers dollars) to facilitate US Army projects, mainly software-side[but recently with robotics aswell]: intelligent systems for UAVs:remote control, aviation, 'bombing', etc. On top of this they publicly declined to do so and the moment the public knew is through google leakers who were concerned by the "don't do evil" hypocrisy.

-numerous other issues, which don't need to be reminded here like a broken clock.


[flagged]


Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. We ban accounts that do that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


WTF? Care to explain, or just trolling for fun ?


"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html


Google (D-CA) has been doing this more and more lately.

For example, I just searched for "are conservatives being silenced by big tech" and here are the results in private windows for Google, DDG, Yandex, and Brave search: https://i.imgur.com/MVlshAT.png

You can draw your own conclusions from the bias in the results. Several of the top results - from notoriously left wing results - are directly claiming they aren't. I've seen worse, but I forget the exact query I used. It might be good faith in that the people running Google think right wing sites are disreputable/misinformation, but...that's a bias.

I ditched them for DDG months ago.

I'm a registered pacific green, and not a conservative by any quantifiable measure, but this is still alarming to me. Decades of watching politics have mostly taught me one thing: Neither federally funded party gives a shit about me.


freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. google is a private company and can show whatever they want.


I'm curious about what kind of consequences you think that investigative journalism deserves.


They are a monopoly in search, right? Doesn't that place extra obligations on them, such as to not abuse their power against competitors or the public?


In what way are they monopoly on search? There are perfectly viable alternatives, some even from other trillion dollar companies (i.e bing).


Google Search has a market share of over 85% [0], if that's not a monopolistic market share I don't know what is.

0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/216573/worldwide-market-...


This is the unintentionally funniest comment I've seen all week (sorry googlers)


It doesn't seem to.


This from the same company who disables youtube dislikes? Talk about excuses.


>freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.

Freedom of speech is literally freedom from consequences:

>Freedom of speech[2] is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or a community to articulate their opinions and ideas without fear of retaliation, censorship, or legal sanction.

Note the "without fear of retaliation" part. Retaliation for words is the litmus test for a lack of freedom of speech.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech


    "The version of Article 19 in the ICCPR later amends this 
    by stating that the exercise of these rights carries 
    "special duties and responsibilities" and may "therefore be 
    subject to certain restrictions" when necessary "[f]or 
    respect of the rights or reputation of others" or "[f]or 
    the protection of national security or of public order 
    (order public), or of public health or morals."
So no, freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences.


That only applies to the government, not to individual companies.

Freedom of Speech does nothing for you outside of the government...


You're conflating the 2400 year old concept of freedom of speech with the American first amendment.

Where did you learn this horrifying misconception?


So how does this all encompassing freedom of speech work? Am I allowed to come to your house and say whatever I want and you can not throw me out? Now you might say your house is not a public space. So what about your garden? I guess I can come over and place any signs I like in your garden because it's my freedom of speech.

That is the problem with these arguments if you actually think them through consequently it becomes completely impractical, because by forcing a "freedom from consequences" you violate every other right.


I am saying there is only one legal precedent for Freedom of Speech, at least where I live.

I don't think these platforms ever mention they are trying to protect freedom of speech, so why would you expect them to?


>I am saying there is only one legal precedent for Freedom of Speech, at least where I live.

That's not what you said though. This is:

>Freedom of Speech does nothing for you outside of the government...

Again, where did you learn this? I've asked everyone who says it and they never answer. I'd love to learn the source of this horrible misconception so I can do something about it.

>I don't think these platforms ever mention they are trying to protect freedom of speech, so why would you expect them to?

Reddit did, repeatedly. Then pulled a bait & switch:

>We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.

— Reddit FAQ 2005

>We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content

— u/kn0thing 2008

>A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets.

— u/kn0thing 2012

>We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.

— u/reddit 2012

>We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse).

— u/yishan 2012

>Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech

— u/spez 2015


> Again, where did you learn this?

Comprehension of the words in the amendment. It's what it means.


But it doesn't define free speech...


I would have to reference previous defining court cases if you want specifics: https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re...


I mean it still doesn't define it.

All the first amendment does is place restrictions on the government. Free speech is not defined by the amendment at all. It's a wholly separate concept.


They are acting as the digital public square and free speech is protected in the public square.

But don't take my word for it. Please, let hipster Rasputin Jack[off] Dorsey explain: https://twitter.com/jack/status/1037399105306324993


But then he immediately essentially says its unsustainable? https://twitter.com/jack/status/1037399132116340736




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