What is more interesting to me is he could have persons of interest detained and disappeared as per the still-active surveillance, national security and anti-terror states from the aughts and 2010s.

I would avoid doing anything to Trump directly as the US wouldn’t want to martyr him but it would be delightfully ironic to detain the SCOTUS associate justices for sake of their own safety where they can stay at black sites within earshot of the screaming.

In the meantime there are Heritage Society members and other thinktank analysts who have been caught on hot mic or text discussing policies that would drastically change the character of the United States, that are contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States and parallel to the indictments in the Declaration of Independence.

So it would be entirely justified to introduce them to the US secret detention system and possibly to the enhanced interrogators to remind them what kinds of presidential power they endorsed in eras past.

I’m sure they plan to remind Trump of these resources when Trump wants to make someone sorry they were born.

Right I’m having a hard time not embracing my inner Magneto when I imagine being in Biden’s shoes. After all, these guys made it very clear what they will do to me when they have half a chance.

I realized today, by giving the president protection from the law, the opinion also implies the court system, including SCOTUS is too incompetent to adjudicate.

In another country where we had actual jurists on the bench representing the highest council for 320,000,000 people, I’d expect them to be more than capable and willing to wade through the delicate nuances of any presidental action, and determine if criminal acts were justified in the service of the state. But Roberts essentially is admitting he and his associates are either too inept or too corrupt, and either way are not up to the task.

If the US democracy is to survive, we will not just need a constitutional amendment, but a complete judicial overhaul, and a federal election reform to restore power to elections and thus, to the people. Until all this happens, we are governed at gunpoint, rather than by consent.

So put away your fireworks. The nation is too unwell to be celebrated.

Actually it does. It involves making use of a copy that is not the original. Fair use is about experiencing media for sake of dialog (criticism or parody) or for edification. That means someone is reading the book or watching the movie, or using it for transformative art or science.

AI training should qualify for fair use.

Cranky enough to demand satisfaction (in the courts if not the dueling field), but no one in the company will think their own ire warrants empathy for those from whom they pirate.

It’s even more okay when the bourgeoisie does it in the interest of potential profit gain.

This YSK offering does feel like a way to provoke a fight among boomers and Gen-Xers.

One can only hope. Copyright has, for a long time been wrongdoing against the public by denying it a robust public domain. We should have free access to ideas less than a century old.

This reveals, nonetheless, even European government is about control, not governance, enforcement of established hierarchy, not civil rights for all.

Here in the US, there are no progressive legislative bodies. The Democratic party treats its progressive members as the red-haired stepchildren who have to dine at their own table.

Here.. Article I, Section 8, Clause 8.

[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The whole point of IP laws (according to the Constitution of the United States) is to develop a robust public domain. Every registered idea, multiplied by every limited rights extention is a violation of public interest and public rights.

By burying or failing to preserve content, they are in fact stealing from the public, since we won’t be able to access it when it is our right.

Media piracy is in the tradition of oyster piracy (stealing from landlords trying to control the oyster market) and the golden age (robbing the Spanish silver train that was exploiting the nations of the new world) in that it’s crime against unreasonable state regimes.

This is not to say underground media sharing has always had the moral high-ground, and it’s not even to say that fair copyright laws are unreasonable, but since the mid 20th century (since Disney, essentially) intellectual property law has not served the public in a community effort to build a robust public domain of ideas and content, rather has been used to do the opposite, to favor established businesses over new ones with complete disregard for the public.

But then there’s the technological matter, where DRM is used to obstruct of sharing (reasonable or otherwise, legal or otherwise). Here in the states it’s legal to use DRM to obstruct legal backups and sharing, but it’s not legal to bypass DRM to facilitate legal backups and sharing. It shows us that our regulatory agencies are captured, that our government serves rich companies and plutocrats rather than the public. The law runs contrary to the social contract.

We are in an age in which our language (English) only has words for wrongdoing that acknowledges two authorities: Sin (wrongness against the Church – allegedly against God) and Crime (wrongness against the state, in accordance to what laws are enforced by a legal system). When we talk about other entities that can be wrong, say, individuals, the community, the world population, ecosystems outside of human society, we have to make do with the words we have, e.g. sin against nature, crimes against humanity, and so on.

Intellectual property law is a construct that (according to the Constitution of the United States) was intended to do a thing that it has totally failed at, going as far as creating perverse incentives to misuse the law. And given the companies that produce the media we might pirate are poor at compensating artists and developers, or at recognizing licenses already established (say, your DVD copy of Ghostbusters when the new medium emerges), given they pirate each other’s content shamelessly, and will steal yours outright if you can’t outspend them in court, it has actually become more ethical to pirate content than to buy it legitimately.

But I’d teach my kids not just to pirate, but to recognize shoddy work from good work, and to not consume at all when they can, since consuming content benefits its producers, whether or not it’s acquired legally. (The MCU is about hero-team organizations who defend the status quo from all enemies, including the far left, and including those who want the human species to have a future. So they’re not really our heroes, are they? Batman runs around and beats up poor people, leaving the wealthy to continue to rule over the rest of us whose last resort is crime.

If we’re going to consume content, let’s use it to inspire the content we make ourselves, until commercial content is entirely unwanted and unnecessary. This is the future the MPAA and RIAA fear. Not everyone pirating their stuff, but everyone not bothered to pirate their stuff.

Edit: Clarification

They’re spoiled from selling you the same movies over and over again whenever a new medium becomes normalized, despite all your previous licenses. Then they complain when your media breaks or you want to share with your best friend.

They want your money for not doing anything new.

Historically there have been several instances of anarcho-communist organizations and social movements flourishing.

Most of them were sabotaged by plutocrat agents invoking violence or mischief. Often just giving an angry militants in the region some materiel support and bad intel.

The practice of pulling and reseating expansion cards and cables in an effort to eliminate poor connections and hardware-dependent boot errors is, in the ancient era of blinkenlights called gestures and incantations.

Now you know corporations and government departments will lie to children to benefit the ownership class and harm the labor class.

Let your kids know who authorities really work for, to question everything.

Heck, let the grown-ups know too. Many didn’t get the memo.

I’m pretty sure the grift plays on rich Grandpa being aghast because rich grandson is his own person (e.g. doesn’t want to be a doctor or join the family business). And here comes this snappy looking salesman saying we can fix him for a price and make him the prodigy you want.

This is a risk of growing up in a family that is too wealthy. If those with money (or the ear of the moneyed folk) think somethings wrong with you, there are experts that will recommend kidnap brainwashing camps where they send you and they’re very good at convincing rich people they can fix their child.

It is the stuff nightmare fuel horror stories are made of, except it really happens all the fucking time.

When I was able to seed relentlessly, I aimed for 3.0. Typically, popular things got into the tens or twenties, while rare stuff would get lucky to cross the 1.0 threshold.

Thieves and beggars, never shall we die and all that.

They all collectively and individually enshittified until it became worthwhile to pirate again.

They can point fingers all they want, or change their attitudes for longer-term gain.

The problem is, of course, their shareholders who are pushing for maximizing short-term profits, and then shareholder primacy, meaning they are legally obligated to obey their shareholders, even at the cost of business collapse.

Let them die.

I feel no need to own any further Ubisoft games. That’s for sure.