from the strong-(arm)-copyright-protections dept.
The COVID-19 Stimulus Bill Would Make Illegal Streaming a Felony:
Providing relief via direct assistance and loans to struggling individuals and businesses hit hard by COVID-19 has been a priority for federal lawmakers this past month. But a gigantic spending bill has also become the opportunity to smuggle in some other line items, including those of special interest to the entertainment community.
Perhaps most surprising, according to the text [PDF link] of the bill (a combination of COVID relief and annual government spending), illegal streaming for commercial profit could become a felony.
It's been less than two weeks since Sen. Thom Tillis released his proposal to increase the penalties for those who would dare stream unlicensed works.... [I]t's had very little time to circulate before evidently becoming part of the spending package. If passed, illegal streaming of works including movies and music tracks could carry a penalty of up to 10 years in jail.
[...] On Monday night, lawmakers voted in favor of the package.
The provision was not entirely without opposition, as TechCrunch notes:
When Tillis released a draft of his proposal earlier this month, the open internet/intellectual property nonprofit Public Knowledge released a statement arguing that there’s no need "for further criminal penalties for copyright infringement," but also saying that the bill is "narrowly tailored and avoids criminalizing users" and "does not criminalize streamers who may include unlicensed works as part of their streams" — instead, it focuses on those who pirate for commercial gain.
[...] Now that the House and Senate have approved the bill, it’s going to President Donald Trump for his signature. Since the full text was only released yesterday, we can probably expect plenty more debate over its implications in the weeks and months to come.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:04AM (11 children)
Luckily Trump just vetoed, demanded $2000 each and told them to cut the pork [twitter.com] in both stimulus and spending packages. Also, Rashida Tlaib entered maverick territory by voting on principle. [newsweek.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:27AM (2 children)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/22/trump-covid-stimulus-bill-450204 [politico.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:09AM (1 child)
Huh? [speakingaboutnews.com] Democrats under Pelosi control the House, they can table any legislation they like and even if it's completely insane (as here) the Senate will pass it too. Trump pushed direct stimulus checks for the CARES Act, R's wanted tax rebates and D's wanted unemployment benefits.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:16PM
I want to see if anybody in the house "progressive" caucus (with 90+ members WTF) or any D for that matter is in favor of people having health insurance. https://forcethevote.org/ [forcethevote.org]
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:28AM (1 child)
Thank you Trump. This bill is what's wrong with politics today.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:44PM
4 years of Lawful Evil should be fun, I'm sure it will be a positive pork-fest.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:14AM (2 children)
Trump's getting the boot anyway, even if this bill somehow doesn't go ahead another one will come along. Question to the Americans is how will your newly minted shiny angel of a President respond?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:21AM
Biden is going to take all that money back, by executive order. The IRS is just going to add it to the "taxes due" line in January.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:04PM
Maybe he'll have sex with some porn stars.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RamiK on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:03PM (1 child)
Forestry & Forest [opensecrets.org] are Republican while Carpenters & Joiners Union [opensecrets.org] are Democrat so what you're seeing here is the craftsmen for furniture, upholstery, mattresses, window blinds, etc trying to open their raw sourcing markets to competition from abroad. The net effect should they succeed is:
1. Reduced prices for American consumers.
2. Increased profits for American craftsmen.
3. Decreased profits for American forestry.
4. Increased foreign trade.
So, overall, reducing costs to American consumers and craftsmen at the expense of big and few industries that generally hire a few low-wage laborers shifting all the profits to a few owners is a form of progressive stimulus and has everything to do with such a bill.
Regardless, it's a pretty good example of how the US has been in an internal trade civil-war between Republican and Democrat donors for a while and where the lines cross.
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:18PM
Forestry jobs typically pay pretty well, as do jobs in mills and other wood processing industries.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:23PM
It was Bill Clinton that passed the DMCA. Hillary Clinton was pro TPP. Trump was against it.
It's convenient that this clause is now being snuck into the bill now that Trump is on his way out and hence he doesn't really have time to negotiate the bill. He can either pass it or wait for the next administration to pass it but he has little time to ask for changes.
Not that the republicans are really all that much better when it comes to intellectual property. IIRC, Trump was also ranting about how China steals our technology and intellectual property and I hear the same nonsense coming from the republican party just as well. It's quite ridiculous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:14AM (1 child)
I'm not hopeful it will be expunged even with the press its now getting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 25 2020, @02:37AM
Thanks to the Covid lockdowns it's more difficult for people to physically go out and protest like they used to so that we can spread pictures of all the protesters (you will never see large crowds of protesters in favor of these laws). I think politicians realize this and they are using this as an opportunity to pass laws that no one wants.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:37AM (6 children)
Even if it is just self-serving spite driving Trump we'll have to thank him if he blocks this bullshit and actually gets the pork allocated back to the people. I reserve the right to see it before I believe it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:59AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55420366 [bbc.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:20AM (4 children)
But let the streaming felony be, eh? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:02AM (3 children)
No, that was covered in "this bullshit" /wipes_grin_off
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:15AM (2 children)
Wanna bet it won't happen? I.e. Trump won't wipe that streaming bullshit off as long as he sees the $2000.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:23PM (1 child)
No bet! (grin)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:25PM
Shit!
Coulda had a pedantic win. Yes, I would bet he won't remove that scummy rider.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:38AM (6 children)
A scenario that might lead to felony criminal charges: You restream video, including films/TV, live pay-per-view events, or sports, to your own viewers on some platform.
The copyright claim tribunal could be useful for small "creators", but it could also end up being a hassle and have a chilling effect on video commentary, for instance.
Pirate/illicit streaming services are targeted, but they will just get around that by not being located in the U.S. And you can still access them.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:42AM (5 children)
Senator Thom Tillis is also working on a DMCA successor:
https://torrentfreak.com/us-passes-spending-bill-with-case-act-and-felony-streaming-proposal-201222/ [torrentfreak.com]
https://torrentfreak.com/dmca-2-0-draft-hints-at-filters-with-notice-and-staydown-scheme-201223/ [torrentfreak.com]
Maybe the only potentially good part (assuming it has teeth):
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:04AM (2 children)
A more novel suggestion in the ‘DMCA 2.0’ is to keep a list of companies and copyright holders that repeatedly send false takedown notices. These ‘flagged’ abusers are placed on a list maintained by the Copyright Office.
When online services receive takedown notices from blacklisted senders they are not required to act. In other words, they can ignore these takedowns without losing their safe harbor.
Finally! This was the most brain-dead thing about the DMCA, and it's amazing it isn't fixed yet, all these years later. From the big tech companies' perspective, this is the worst thing about DMCA, that they have to actually take every claim seriously, even if it's from some troll and the claim is bogus. If the copyright holders want laws that force the tech companies to police their crap, then they need to be held accountable when their own kind abuses the system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:55PM
Like it'll ever work like that
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @03:26AM
No. You'll end up with a ton of pop-up corporate shells, one per takedown campaign.
The other provisions are a death list for companies if they aren't worded carefully. If you have to maintain records of all submitted takedown content, then anyone can spam the company with takedown notices with massive 'original content' files and the company will be forced to keep those files* and match everything they receive against them. Sure they can make hashes, but if the hashes aren't aggressive enough then they'll be sued so the only safe thing to do is maintain the original media and update your hashes as fingerprinting tech evolves. That's going to be too much for any small to medium business so they'll contract that service out to one of the larger companies. Now that larger company gets a copy of everything uploaded to the smaller sites without having to life a finger. What a nice data mining gold mine for those few mega tech companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:05PM (1 child)
This is still very one sided. Infringement is a felony but false takedowns are, at worst, punishable by potentially allowing platforms to not be punished for not immediately responding to your takedown request. If anything the exact opposite should be true but you know who keeps lobbying for these laws.
But then many of these takedowns are done by shell companies that can change their name and become other companies and keep on doing more takedowns so the question is will takedown requests be tied to specific individual people so that false takedown requests could also be tied to those people.
The stay down order is also ridiculous because it makes it more difficult for startup platforms that don't have the same resources as Youtube to start and it also makes it harder for big platforms to sponsor user generated content (which, I imagine, is the true purpose of this). Copy protection trolls can try to keep uploading their own content so that they can try and go after the platform for not taking it down on time (and it's not like the IP extremists pushing for these laws have any moral values whatsoever) and this would make it harder for various platforms to host legitimate content.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @10:20PM
(and here is a recent example of this happening, which is not very surprising. I figure the people doing this have learned their lesson by now in terms of not doing anything that's obviously going to get you caught but I guess not. Using the same IP address is rather sloppy).
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/12/21/2133239/youtube-class-action-same-ip-address-used-to-upload-pirate-movies-and-file-dmca-notices [slashdot.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:17AM (8 children)
This is a reminder that juries have the power to decide both facts and law.
If you are ever a juror in a copyright case, regardless of the evidence and the law, you can side with the defense. You can encourage your fellow jurors to do so on the grounds that the law is unjust. You have the power to nullify laws. Use it. It seems inevitable that bad laws like these will eventually pass, even if it's because they sneak through in omnibus bills. We still have the power to reject these laws, no matter what lobbyists, big businesses, and Congress says.
The last thing we need is to be putting more nonviolent "criminals" in prison. Jury nullification is used in drug possession cases. It should be used in copyright cases, too.
We would be much better off banning omnibus bills than increasing penalties for illegal streaming. More campaign finance reform would go a long way to preventing bad legislation like this, too. Here's a bit of information about the lobbying done by the film industry:
https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary?cycle=2018&id=D000027729&year=2006 [opensecrets.org]
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/background.php?ind=C2400 [opensecrets.org]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:05AM (6 children)
I doubt anyone who even looks like they know the phrase "jury nullification" would make it through the voir dire process.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:37AM (5 children)
How hard can it be to pretend to be ignorant?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:52PM (1 child)
Most of the posters here do a pretty good job of that, every single day. :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:08PM
The sad thing is they're aiming for smart.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:44PM (2 children)
Considering that they swear you in before they start your jury selection session? Lying and claiming you don't know about jury nullification then whipping it out later could have legal consequences.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:52PM (1 child)
I've eaten all kinds of crazy shit at buffets. No idea what it is, but if it looks like the right thing to put on my plate, I put it on my plate. Frittered dingleberries, you say? Yeah, whatever. When on a jury, just put the judgement you feel is right on your plate. Let the high-fallutin' lawyers debate about what it's called.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday December 25 2020, @04:47AM
The catch-22 is that anybody who is interested in this is going to know what the term is and how it works, hence you'd have to be lying to say you didn't.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:13PM
and let anyone off on murder charges if they kill a seditious politician, CEO, etc. they'll quit their shit real quick.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:46AM (28 children)
Forget about a few bucks that will mostly go to china. The American people need damn JOBS right now.
How about spending some money on programs to help people find jobs? And I don't mean idiots with blanks stares pointing people to a computer to fill in hopeless job applications. How about some programs to create jobs or encourage job creation? How about some strict laws to keep all US jobs in the US? Because you know once restrictions are lifted, all these new teleworking jobs will be sent to India.
Dare I even ask where this "stimulus" money is even coming from this time?
Sure, locking more people up is soooo fucking productive. Everyone in Washington DC needs to spend 10 years in jail.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:01AM (10 children)
No they don't, they need damn CASH right now. As in, if the USA had either a universal basic income or a no-questions-asked-no-time-limit public dole sufficient for basic expenses for the unemployed, the American people would be completely fine economically.
We know this because millions of jobs that were being done haven't been done since March, and while it absolutely sucks for the people who were unemployed, it turned out those jobs didn't need to be done. It's not that those teleworking jobs will be sent to India, it's that they'll cease to exist entirely because they were bullshit jobs [strike.coop] to begin with. And if the USA weren't so afraid of anything that might smack of communism, then we'd get a whole lot of people with a lot more free time on their hands, and based on available research that would create a burst of entrepreneurship, artistic creations, science, and other benefits.
But instead, we have this bill, which is being advertised as $600 checks for everyone, but anyone with a calculator and a bit of math can figure out is mostly yet another big giveaway to rich people.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:45AM (4 children)
Service-based economy, babeh!
Make-work plus a number of barbers and waitresses passing the buck from one pocket to the other; all the while, slowly trickling it up from one bust moment to the other in an endless boom-bust cycle. Until nothing to suck out from them remains.
(large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 23 2020, @12:47PM (3 children)
What does the employer "suck" from a make-work relationship? Instead, it sounds like a give rather than take. Something wrong with the narrative.
The problem goes back to that tricky word "need" from the earlier post by Thexalon which can mean whatever you feel like it meaning. Humanity doesn't need to exist. Humanity needs to collect them all. And needs can be turned against you easily. All those out of work people who need $2000 in cash? Who needs them? When you go the need route, you start getting into the genocide problem. After all, they're not giving back to society. How many moochers does society need again?
That's why economics deals with wants not needs - with the goal being designing a system that's not dysfunctional (like people killing each other in the streets). Service jobs (at least the service jobs that go away in a covid pandemic) exist to provide for wants not needs. People don't "need" $2000 from massive spending bills when they have jobs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @01:17PM
Employers? No. Money printing and easy credit will do.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:10PM (1 child)
In a "real" job, the employer is looking to maximize their profits from hiring you, so what any boss will do is try to coerce or bullshit you into working as many hours as possible as hard as possible. So in a very real way, they're sucking away your stamina and your life.
In a make-work job, what the employer takes is usually more intangible: People who do these kinds of jobs generally lose their self-respect first, then comes their mental health, then their physical health. They usually figure out pretty quickly that their job isn't a real job, which means that their survival in that job (and thus their economic well-being) depends on office politics, which means that they tend to be the people who are desperately worried about every re-organization and efficiency expert visit while the people doing the real jobs mostly just continue getting on with their work regardless of what's going on in the executive suites. You'll see them get really focused on minor status symbols like nameplates and parking spaces, because they see themselves as hanging onto a tree over the edge of a cliff. And strangely enough, that takes a fair amount of stamina too, along with hours of every day that really don't need to be spent in the office.
You might think holding a make-work job is bliss, but it really isn't.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Thursday December 24 2020, @09:54AM
> every re-organization and efficiency expert visit
Maybe you didn't spot it, but these are make-work jobs as well. The "efficiency expert" comes in and makes a bunch of recommendations which management use as a vehicle to hire more staff, so building bigger empire to make them more important.
The wheel of time turns, and ages come and pass...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:27PM
But jobs=cash that keeps coming in, and strengthens the economy around it much more than any one time handout.
Minimal basic income is a nice dream, but that will never happen in the United States of Walmart. Even if it could, it would not happen in time to fix the problems at hand. We might as well dream about Star Trek matter replicates that eliminate all material want.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:11PM (2 children)
"they need damn CASH right now."
So if everyone has cash but we have no jobs that would fix the problem, right?
Wait, with no jobs where are we going to get food? Where are we going to get the things that cash is intended to buy if there are no jobs producing those things? Everyone will have cash but no one will have anything. Cash is useless if you can't buy anything with it. Money in your bank account is just a number in a computer. It has no value. It's what you can buy with it that has value. Without jobs there is nothing being produced and hence nothing to buy.
Socialism doesn't work.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:33PM
As long as someone has money in their pocket and has something that needs to be done the job will appear. 🙄 Honestly, why some of you believe jobs come before demand is beyond me... it makes you protect the wrong entities!
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Touché) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:54PM
Put your money where your mouth is - pay me to do it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:16PM
"$600 checks for everyone"
No, it's checks for federal income tax payers. So only the dumbest and most sycophantic people in the country will get checks. The Real Americans will get nothing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mhajicek on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:46AM (13 children)
There are help wanted signs all over the place. The problem is you have to be able to show up reliably and on time, put in effort, and have some motivation and attention to detail. Seems there aren't many people who meet those qualifications these days.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 5, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:48AM (10 children)
And work-for-nothing, don't forget the work-for-nothing.
Because a decent pay will get you all motivation and attention to details you need.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Marand on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:39AM (9 children)
If someone pays minimum wage they should expect to get minimum effort; but instead they complain about "lazy" employees not working hard and not giving up their personal lives for the job.
Same idea but in meme form [kym-cdn.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:02AM (8 children)
"So long as the bosses pretend to pay us, we will pretend to work."
Google for the origin if you don't know it already.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:18PM (7 children)
In Capitalism if you want to get ahead you work harder. In socialism the system is designed so that working harder doesn’t really get you ahead. The only way to really get ahead is to cheat the system. That’s why things like bribery are more common in socialist countries.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:15PM (6 children)
Hmmm. Interesting. Then America must be veiled socialism, because I've worked harder and harder and not even been given a "thanks" or "atta-boy", certainly let alone $ or "gotten ahead" for it. You pretty much just raise your own bar and are simply expected to work that hard always. Which is why labor unions came into being and are unfortunately necessary.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:33PM
and why should I trust your own judgement about how hard you worked? If everyone just gets to evaluate themselves then we can all be winners, right?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:03PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:04PM
To be demonstrated.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:21PM (1 child)
"Hmmm. Interesting. Then America must be veiled socialism, because I've worked harder and harder and not even been given a "thanks" or "atta-boy", certainly let alone $ or "gotten ahead" for it."
that's correct. regulations, licensing, protectionism, etc. not free market capitalism. chrony capitalism and state socialism.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:56AM
Ok Ivan, turn on your US english spell checker.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:57PM
Had you owned the means of production, your additional work would have yielded more that you could sell, and thus brought you a larger market.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:08AM
And, you have to not get sick and die of the Covid. But if you do, it is not your employer's fault for exposing you to life-threatening work conditions, just to make a buck! The obvious rebuttal, well, you know the obvious rebuttal. Signs all over the place, but the boss is a bitch, so they have no workers. Betsy? Betsy De Vos? That you? Do you have gig-based pyramid marketing scheme you would like to substitute for education? Of course you do!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:55PM
I take it then that you have never tried applying for a typical "help wanted sign" type job. Most of the time we are talking about grueling pointless physical labor, very little pay, 12-14 hour days with no overtime, tiny or no breaks even for lunch or the restroom (despite what law might say), and complete shit management. I know someone who just quit a job like this because it was literally killing him, even though his paid better than some others.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:47AM (2 children)
There's a lot of infrastructure that needs working on.
I was in the Bi-State Justice Building last week. The rot is horrifying. I mean, slap-you-in-the-face rot. I parked on State Street, and walked around to the front doors. The columns on the left side of this image have little if any grout and/or weatherproofing in the joins. http://www.courthouses.co/wp/wp-content/gallery/cache/32671__1000x1000_1028t17.jpg [courthouses.co] Having seen that, I looked at the columns in front, on the right side of the image. They are in better shape, but sadly in need of being regrouted and weatherproofed. The interior of the building is slightly less scary. Water damage in ceilings, gouges and chips in walls, an elevator motor in need of being rewound, doors that slam shut and are hard to open, and a general atmosphere of squalor. At today's prices, that building probably needs 10 or 12 million invested in it. The alternative is to allow it to decay for a few more years, then condemn it as unfit for human occupancy.
NOTE: The top floor with the windows almost too short for a human to crawl through is the jail house. So, the building is occupied by some number of prisoners - at a guess, maybe 150.
If this is representative of government buildings, we need a LOT of infrastructure work!
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:10AM
Wot? Runaway got arrested again? And this is all the report he gives us? Lame, Bro!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:12PM
All completely true, but unless you can find a way for politicians to hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to do routine maintenance, it won't happen.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:10AM
So I like to hoard feral rat shit.
I like to make things out of it,
I am special because no one else does this,
I like to make dolls out of it,
trousers, boots, fleshlights,
the sky is really the limit
well then why can't we go past that limit
because we can't have turds in space
4 more years!
lock him up!
4 more years!
lock him up!
4 more years!
888888888888888888888====m====D Multi testie penis because why not? Triple bonus word!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Wednesday December 23 2020, @05:27AM (6 children)
And nobody saw this coming? Well, to be honest, it was expected, guess it's just one of those things... couldn't be helped
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:04AM (5 children)
Everyone saw it coming.
You're not very clever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @03:50PM (4 children)
Ah, then you let it happen
You're not very nice. In fact, you're kind of an ass
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:30PM (3 children)
Mirror mirror on the wall, help fusty self-reflect before he falls
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:15PM (2 children)
ho hum, you poor dumb democrat..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @12:58AM (1 child)
I am a registered Republican, but ok.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @08:56PM
Same difference, dumb as dirt
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @11:54AM (8 children)
Thus it's only a felony if you make money from it, right? In other words, illegal streams should be free! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by requerdanos on Wednesday December 23 2020, @02:58PM (4 children)
I could be just naive, but I sort of pictured this being aimed against streaming sites like putlocker, couchtuner, and vipbox/viprow, which seem to be advertising supported. Remove the ads, and where'd you be?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:54PM (3 children)
That is actually true. The law only applies to operators of commercial restreaming site. If you stream a movie on Discord with your friends on Friday night, it doesn't affect you. It doesn't affect Discord either, because they don't control the content of the stream.
The *proposed* law is the one that mandates a proactive censorship apparatus, with government-mandated blocking software, controlled entirely by media companies, and creates a new government agency of content censorship. The stuff in the stimulus bill, while it would still be better not to have it, is not actually that bad.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @06:37PM
You just advocated for creating the base infrastructure of the Ministry of Truth. Freedoms are lost by inches to allow time for the oppression to become normalized. If the **AAs want gov to police for them then we should change copyrights to more sane levels. Anything copyrighted or patented for more than 15 years (at most) is a crime against humanity.
(Score: 2) by Barenflimski on Wednesday December 23 2020, @08:10PM
Aren't these guys trying to get Section 230 changed as well? Won't that make every site responsible for anything that passes through it? Wouldn't that then make this a thing?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 24 2020, @03:44AM
It does affect you because until the cops bust down your door to collect and analyze all your electronics, they won't know if there's money being traded behind the scenes or not, so they will attempt to track you down if your chat gets automatically flagged. I really hope you and your friends didn't buy a pizza together when one of them is streaming the content. That turns it into a commercial exchange, at least that's that the lawyers will say when you're pissing your pants wondering if you should risk the jury or agree to a reduced sentence of one year in jail as a slave doing forced manual labor. Too bad you'll no longer be able to vote after that.
Seriously, a federal crime means you'll no longer be able to vote. Is streaming content really that heinous of a crime that you should be excluded a voice in government activities? The only one injured is a company's profit margin and if you attacked that directly through fraud you'd only get a minor fine and some community service.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday December 23 2020, @04:38PM (2 children)
In all seriousness, yes, it should be: Information wants to be free (in both the freedom sense and the beer sense), and there's a very good argument that the business model for creative works should be "People who like a particular creator of creative work and have some disposable income should pay for them to make stuff, and everybody gets to enjoy the stuff they make."
We wouldn't even need to support much server infrastructure if peer-to-peer torrenting were legal and allowed by ISPs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday December 23 2020, @07:38PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patronage#Arts [wikipedia.org]
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 23 2020, @09:25PM
"if peer-to-peer torrenting were legal and allowed by ISPs."
wtf are you talking about? p2p torrenting is legal and the ISP has no power to decide how i use the internet. If they start trying they will get their trucks shot the fuck up and their buildings burned down.