Today's Reddit

It makes my head hurt sometimes.

You're free to express your views, and not have the government arrest you for it.

But no right is absolute or unlimited. We got rules, dummy.

That said, there are legal rules, there are civility rules, and there are jungle rules. So you're free to use the language however you feel the need - and then you're free to smash your face into somebody's fist.

Freedom of speech in the eyes of a Chinese student
by u/bwwsscnm3 in ThatsInsane

Today's Pinch-Faced Blue-Nosed Prigs

The Real Reason North Dakota Is Going After Books and Librarians

Last fall, I was the keynote speaker at the North Dakota Library Association’s annual conference. The theme was “Libraries: The Place For Everyone.” There were rainbow flags, paper-link chains and multicolor glitter scattered across tables. It was the safest I have ever felt back home as an out, gay man. When I was a young person, libraries were where I went to find stories that made me feel I could fit in, not only in North Dakota, but in the wider world. But two pieces of legislation that may soon be signed into law in North Dakota would make it possible to restrict libraries and, in some cases, to imprison librarians.

House Bill 1205 would prohibit public libraries from keeping and lending “books that contain explicit sexual material.” The bill’s definition of explicit material could include “pictorial, three-dimensional, or visual” depictions of anything from sex scenes in movies to educational materials meant to teach teenagers about puberty. As the bill states, libraries have until Jan. 1, 2024 to create a procedure “for the development of a book collection that is appropriate for the age and maturity levels of the individuals who may access the materials, and which is suitable for, and consistent with, the purpose of the library.” Currently, the bill contains no explanation of what “the purpose of the library” means or how to determine “appropriate” age and maturity.

The more far-reaching Senate Bill 2360 prohibits organizations open to minors from displaying “objectionable materials,” whether image or text, including visuals or descriptions of “nude or partially denuded human figures posed or presented in a manner to exploit sex, lust or perversion.” The bill defines “nude or partially denuded human figures” as “less than completely and opaquely covered human genitals, pubic regions, female breasts or a female breast, if the breast or breasts are exposed below a point immediately above the top of the areola, or human buttocks; and includes human male genitals in a discernibly turgid state even if completely and opaquely covered.”

note: politicians - especially the wingnuts way out there on the right - are fond of trying to "legislate their values". They're always telling us how they put a lot of themselves into the laws they wanna pass. So I guess the ND legislature includes a bunch of swollen bombastic pricks(?)

By that definition, a photograph or even a written description of the Venus de Milo could — depending on the eye of the beholder — be out of bounds. It’s not just a matter of interpretation, though: Senate Bill 2360 would make it possible to charge offending librarians with a class B misdemeanor, punishable with up to 30 days in jail and a fine of $1,500.

With these bills, North Dakota stands to become a model for other towns, cities and states to censor not only their libraries, but also their citizens.

Growing up in the closet in North Dakota in the late ’90s and early 2000s, I found sanctuary in libraries that I couldn’t find anywhere else. I ate breakfast every morning in Bismarck High School, combing the stacks and reading books by authors like James Baldwin, Truman Capote and Willa Cather. When some of the school’s football players circulated a petition to have the one openly gay boy in my class change in the girls’ locker room, I went deeper into the library shelves, tried to keep quiet and hide who I was.

The summer after graduating from college, when I was outed by my aunt, and my home was no longer a safe space, I searched the stacks of the Bismarck Veterans Memorial Public Library for stories of gay people disowned by family members to help me find my own way to stable ground. During those evenings, I would settle into a plush armchair with a pile of books and magazines and read. I read authors like Kent Haruf and Amy Tan and Mary Karr. I would listen to classical music CDs to try and calm myself. I was free to roam, peruse, and free to be myself, at least privately.

North Dakota is a part of a growing national trend. Between Jan. 1 and Aug. 31 of last year, the American Library Association recorded 681 attempts to ban or restrict library resources. There were 1,651 book titles targeted, up from 1,597 in 2021. According to PEN America, 41 percent of books banned throughout the 2021-22 school year contained L.G.B.T.Q. themes, protagonists or prominent secondary characters. Bills similar to North Dakota’s have also been introduced or passed into law in states like West Virginia, Texas, Mississippi, Montana, Iowa, Wyoming, Missouri and Indiana.

Under Missouri’s new law banning the provision of “explicit sexual material” to students, school districts removed works about Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo; comics, such as “Batman” and “X-Men”; visual depictions of Shakespeare’s works; and “Maus,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust.

But let’s be honest: It’s not the Venus de Milo these laws are going to come for first. It’s books with L.G.B.T.Q. stories, or books by L.G.B.T.Q. authors — the kind of books that have provided so many queer young people with a lifeline when they needed it most. I don’t know where I would have ended up if I couldn’t read my way out of despair. My heart breaks to think of all the kids now who won’t have that option.

Libraries should be places where everyone is welcomed, no matter who they are, and where everyone can find themselves reflected in the stories on the shelves. Laws like these make that a lot less likely.

Censorship of this kind is a flat-out straight-up contradiction in a country that's supposed to be all about equality, and free speech, and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge, and progress, and self-actualization.

So the good news comes from that glittering icon of liberal truth, Ayn Rand, who said:

Contradiction exists,

but it can't prevail

because it's self-defeating.

BTW, we've been here before.

And - oh yeah - today marks the last day of Freedom To Read Week.

Feb 19-25

Bannings and Burnings in History

Some of the most controversial books in history are now regarded as classics. The Bible and works by Shakespeare are among those that have been banned over the past two thousand years. Here is a selective timeline of book bannings, burnings, and other censorship activities.

Some highlights:

1983: Members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee called for the rejection of The Diary of Anne Frank because it was “a real downer.” It was also challenged for offensive references to sexuality.

1973: The school board in Drake, North Dakota, ordered the burning of 32 copies of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and 60 copies of James Dickey’s Deliverance for, respectively, the use of profanity and references to homosexuality.

1954: Mickey Mouse comics were banned in East Berlin because Mickey was said to be an “anti-Red rebel.”

1933: A series of massive bonfires in Nazi Germany burned thousands of books written by Jews, communists, and others. Included were the works of John Dos Passos, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Ernest Hemingway, Helen Keller, Lenin, Jack London, Thomas Mann, Karl Marx, Erich Maria Remarque, Upton Sinclair, Stalin, and Leon Trotsky.

1885: A year after the publication of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, the library of Concord, Massachusetts, decided to exclude the book from its collection. The committee making the decision said the book was “rough, coarse and inelegant, dealing with a series of experiences not elevating, the whole book being more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people.” By 1907, it was said that Twain’s novel had been thrown out of some library somewhere every year, mostly because its hero was said to present a bad example for impressionable young readers.

1807: Dr. Thomas Bowdler quietly brought out the first of his revised editions of Shakespeare’s plays. The preface claimed that he had removed from Shakespeare “everything that can raise a blush on the cheek of modesty”—which amounted to about 10 per cent of the playwright’s text. One hundred and fifty years later, it was discovered that the real excision had been done by Dr. Bowdler’s sister, Henrietta Maria. The word “bowdlerize” became part of the English language.

1559: For hundreds of years, the Roman Catholic Church listed books that were prohibited to its members; but in this year, Pope Paul IV established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. For more than 400 years this was the definitive list of books that Roman Catholics were told not to read. It was one of the most powerful censorship tools in the world.

35: The Roman emperor Caligula opposed the reading of The Odyssey by Homer, written more than 300 years before. He thought the epic poem was dangerous because it expressed Greek ideas of freedom.

Liberty

This kinda shit boils down to this: Republicans are so afraid of women being free to make their own decisions about what happens to their own bodies, they've started passing laws prohibiting people from even talking about abortion in public.

The nonsense about "cancel culture" gushing out of their pie holes has to be stomped on.

'Chilling effect on free speech': Idaho universities disallow abortion, contraception referral

Idaho universities are warning staffers not to refer students to abortion providers, and at least one public university is barring employees from telling students how to obtain emergency contraception or birth control as well. It’s the latest restriction in a state that already holds some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.

“This is going to have a very broad impact,” said Mike Satz, an attorney and former faculty member and interim dean at the University of Idaho’s College of Law. “It’s going to have a very strong chilling effect on free speech and it’s going to scare people. I’m afraid it’s going to scare people from going to school here or sending their kids to school at Idaho institutions.”

The prohibition against referring students to abortion providers or “promoting” abortion in any way comes from the “No Public Funds for Abortion Act,” a law passed by Idaho’s Republican-led Legislature in 2021. Boise State University, like the University of Idaho, told faculty members in a newsletter earlier this month that they could face felony charges for violating the law. Idaho State University did not respond to phone messages from The Associated Press asking if it had issued similar guidance.

The law also bars staffers and school-based health clinics from dispensing or telling students where to obtain emergency contraception, such as the Plan B pill, except for in cases of rape. Emergency contraception drugs prevent pregnancy from occurring and do not work in cases where someone is already pregnant.

The University of Idaho’s guidance released Friday goes a step further, also warning employees about a law written in 1867, 23 years before Idaho became a state. That law prohibits dispensing or “advertising” abortion services and birth control — leading to UI’s advice that condoms be distributed only to prevent sexually transmitted diseases, but not to prevent pregnancy.

It’s not yet clear how the the law barring “advertising or promoting” abortion and birth control services could impact students or other state employees who may use state-owned computers or wireless networks to share information about how to access reproductive health care on Instagram or other social media sites. Scott Graf, a spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, said his office planned to discuss the guidance given to university staffers and the abortion laws in an internal call Tuesday morning.

Jodi Walker, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho, said the university follows all laws and said UI officials were still “working through some of the details.”

“This is a challenging law for many and has real ramifications for individuals in that it calls for individual criminal prosecution,” she said of the public funds law. “The section does not specify what is meant by promoting abortion, however, it is clear that university employees are paid with public funds. Employees engaging in their course of work in a manner that favors abortion could be deemed as promoting abortion.”

Abortion can still be discussed as a policy issue in classrooms, Walker said, but the university recommends that the employees in charge of the class “remain neutral or risk violating this law.”

“We support our students and employees, as well as academic freedom, but understand the need to work within the laws set out by our state,” she said.

But that could be nearly impossible, said Satz. Both the University of Idaho and Boise State University rely on grants to fund major research and academic projects, and the federal government is among the largest sources of those grants. The federal government also provides abortions through the Veterans Administration, Satz noted, and the “No Public Funds for Abortion Act” bars the state from contracting with abortion providers.

Idaho’s lawmakers could fine-tune the laws to ensure they don’t violate 1st Amendment free speech rights or lead to major funding losses, but the deeply conservative state Legislature isn’t scheduled to meet again until January.

Boise State’s advisory to employees noted that abortion-producing medications or procedures can still be prescribed if they are used to remove a dead fetus caused by spontaneous abortion, to treat an ectopic pregnancy or to “save the life or preserve the health of the unborn child.” But some of those scenarios are gray areas under other state laws criminalizing abortions, including one targeted in a U.S. Department of Justice federal lawsuit against the state of Idaho.

Idaho isn’t the only state where employees have been cautioned not to give abortion advice. In the summer, librarians in Oklahoma City were warned against using the word “abortion,” though that changed after the city’s library team reviewed the laws. Still, social workers, clergy members and others have raised concerns in Oklahoma about being exposed to criminal or civil liability just for discussing abortions.

A Brief Passage

1894

Perhaps the highest praise an author can receive, John Steinbeck’s depiction of the harsh working conditions in Depression-era California was so brutal that it was banned in the county the Joad family moves to, despite historians confirming that Steinbeck’s portrayal was true-to-life. Local officials in Kern County convinced workers to burn the book in a number of photo opportunities, ironically further enforcing the manipulation experienced by migrant workers in the area that Steinbeck portrays so blisteringly well in The Grapes of Wrath.

Excerpt, Chapter 25:

There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our successes. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And the children dying of hunger, must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates - "died of malnutrition" - because the food must rot if not sold at a profit.

...and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy - growing heavy for the vintage.

The soliloquy:

Straight Up

Mary Trump explains:

Today's Weak Tea

If you sell products and services that facilitate people getting hurt or killed, then you own some of the responsibility.

You can't duck that responsibility simply by intoning some magic phrase like, "Well gee, we didn't know some asshole was going to use it that way."

OK, you didn't know. But now you do know, and now you have to step up and do something.

Content platforms have enormous power, and power has to be closely monitored and counterbalanced.

I don't know how to do that with Spotify and Facebook et al, and nobody wants a new era of Hayes Office or Catholic League bullshit, and we sure as hell don't want official government censorship. But waiting for "the free market to fix it" is inadequate because it's totally retrospective, having always resulted in unnecessary immiseration while we diddle around fretting about the delicate sensibilities of corporations who seem incapable of understanding that killing the customers is a really bad idea.

So anyway, here's a WaPo piece (pay wall)

Spotify responds after Joni Mitchell and others join Neil Young and demand the platform remove their content

Spotify broke its silence on Sunday and announced slight changes to its policies around content concerning covid-19, after facing a week of criticism for allowing its creators — particularly podcaster Joe Rogan — to spread misinformation about the pandemic.

“You’ve had a lot of questions over the last few days about our platform policies and the lines we have drawn between what is acceptable and what is not,” Spotify CEO Daniel Ek wrote in a news release. “We have had rules in place for many years but admittedly, we haven’t been transparent around the policies that guide our content more broadly.”

That last sentence is perfect CorpSpeak

24 words that say exactly nothing.

The new changes include publicly publishing the company’s internal rules for what is allowed on the platform, “testing ways to highlight” those rules to its creators and “working to add a content advisory to any podcast episode that includes a discussion about COVID-19.”

“We know we have a critical role to play in supporting creator expression while balancing it with the safety of our users,” Ek wrote. “In that role, it is important to me that we don’t take on the position of being content censor while also making sure that there are rules in place and consequences for those who violate them.”

The controversy began last week, when rocker Neil Young posted a letter on his website demanding that his music be removed from Spotify in response to “fake information about vaccines” on the platform. He singled out Rogan, who hosts “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, as part of his issue with Spotify, writing: “They can have Rogan or Young. Not both.”

Two days later, Spotify began the process of pulling Young’s music, saying in a statement that they “regret” Young’s decision “but hope to welcome him back soon.”

Days later, others began joining Young. “I’ve decided to remove all my music from Spotify,” eight-time Grammy-winning songwriter Joni Mitchell wrote in a statement on her website on Friday. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives. I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”

Nils Lofgren, the frontman of rock band Grin and a member of both Crazy Horse and Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, wrote in a statement on Young’s website that he would “cut ties with Spotify” and urged “all musicians, artists and music lovers everywhere” to do the same. Brené Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston who hosts the “Unlocking Us” and “Dare to Lead” podcasts on Spotify, tweeted Saturday that she “will not be releasing any podcasts until further notice,” though she did not say why. Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, who have a deal to host and produce Spotify podcasts, expressed “concerns” in a statement released Sunday.

Folk rocker David Crosby, a former bandmate of Young’s, tweeted that he would remove his music from the service, but “I no longer control it or I would in support of Neil.” That’s true for many rock stars lately, who could deal a blow to the streaming service if they hadn’t sold their entire catalogues already for large sums.

Others, including Howard Stern and “The View” host Joy Behar, have argued that while they don’t agree with Rogan, they don’t think the platform should remove his podcast, equating such a move to censorship.

The resulting fallout, according to Variety, found Spotify’s market capitalization falling more than $2 billion last week.

Spotify’s newly published platform rules shed light on why Rogan — who has suggested healthy, young people shouldn’t get vaccinated; praised ivermectin, a medicine used to kill parasites in animals and humans that has no proven anti-covid benefits; and invited prominent conspiracy theorists onto his show — has not been heavily penalized.

The rules include disallowing “content that promotes dangerous false or dangerous deceptive medical information that may cause offline harm or poses a direct threat to public health,” such as asserting that covid-19 is a hoax or “promoting or suggesting that vaccines approved by local health authorities are designed to cause death.”

Rogan doesn’t quite do any of that. He often argues that he’s merely asking questions and has insisted that he’s “not anti-vax.” And he’s particularly skilled at insulating himself from criticism by arguing that he knows nothing, so he can’t tell anyone anything. “I’m not a respected source of information, even for me,” he said.

And then finally, we get Rogan's attempt to cop out completely - "Who am I? I'm nobody. People shouldn't make decisions based on anything they hear from me."

And my favorite - the classic DumFux News Defense: "I'm just asking questions - I'm not telling anyone what to do or not do - they're all free to draw their own conclusions and make their own decisions and blah blah blah."

And ultimately, of course, they're right. No one should listen to them. At all. Ever.

But people do listen, and they do make decisions according to what they've heard.

When those decisions are based on bullshit being spouted by some asshole making bank on the ignorance and gullibility of his audience, that asshole has to be held to account. Which must then lead us to devise ways of prospectively mitigating the harm done by those assholes - and their asshole audience.

eVilleMike has spoken. So let it be written. So let it be done.

The Trump Tapes

The Hill:

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee leading the probe into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, said Friday that President Trump’s tweet about FBI Director James Comey was “inappropriate.”

"But to say more would be a mistake,” Burr added, according to WRAL.

Burr was referring to Trump’s Friday morning tweet in which the president threatened the former FBI chief.

No, guys - that's not how you respond to 45*'s threatening tweet.

This is how you do that:

Mr President, if you have something on Comey - like a taped conversation that indicates something nefarious, or is just embarrassing, or whatever.

If you have something, then bring it. Otherwise, fuck the fuck off you fucking fuck.

This is just another attempt to put the chill on people - folks who want to stand up for something honorable by showing us just how fucked up this Daddy State bullshit is getting.

Can you say "Prior Restraint"?

Censorship

Intellectual property is an important thing.  You have a reasonable expectation to own your work, and to profit from it.

That said, I tend to take a fairly expansive view of The Fair Use Doctrine.  I think the creator of the content usually derives benefits from the use of his creation which - again, usually - outstrip the costs of lost revenues and/or watch-dogging.

The reflex of jealously guarding your proprietorship generally has the effect of narrowing your audience, which is kinda not the fucking point, now is it?


PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.


Anyway, the larger point is that ceding control over the internet to anybody other than the users is just a bad idea.