Wednesday, September 11th, 2024

Time	Event
2:47p	Urgent: Congressional stock-trading US citizens: call on Congress to pass the ETHICS act so that they can't profit by buying and selling stocks that their votes will affect If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 (Comment on this)
2:47p	Internet age-checking bill, AUS South Australia is considering a bill to require social media platforms to check the ages of users, which would have the effect of requiring them to demand that each user identify perself. (Comment on this)
2:47p	US solidity with Israel atrocities Arwa Mahdawi argues that it is now demonstrated that no amount or gravity of Israeli atrocities against Palestinians will make Biden act to restrain those atrocities. Sad to say, it looks like that is true. However, I can't understand the fuss about Israeli soldiers who put on the underwear of Gazan women. They meant that as mockery, which is not nice, but mockery is as nothing compared to the atrocities committed against those same women (and almost all of Gaza). Those women (and their families) have been driven from their homes. Some have been killed, and more are being killed. Those soldiers have probably participated in the real atrocities. A person who would get more outraged about making fun of women's underwear than about these violent atrocities would seem to lack a sense of proportion. (Comment on this)
2:47p	Prime minister pick unacceptable, FRA The French president, Macron, who is on the plutocratist right-wing, appointed a plutocratist right-wing prime minister, Bernier. There have been massive protests. Bernier and Starmer seem to get along very well. (Comment on this)
2:47p	Windfall profits tax, North Sea oil The planet roasters of the North Sea have warned that the proposed increase in the windfall profits tax levied on them would result in decreased amounts of drilling, and decreased extraction rate, over the coming decade. The author of that article seems not to understand that that is part of the overall goal, which is to move from civilization-endangering fossil fuels to renewable generation. All the arguments that planet roasters make for letting them extract more and more are based on burying this point. One of the things that disappoints me about The Guardian is that it continues to publish articles with this slant. (Comment on this)
2:47p	Ad-blocking as copyright violation Digital game publishers are trying to twist copyright law to construe ad-blocking as copyright infringement. That would magically make them illegal without consulting the people's thoughts on the matter. The article linked to above makes the deep mistake of using the term "IP" to refer both to copyright and to other disparate laws. That usage might leads you to suppose you could generalize about those laws and reach one single conclusion that would apply to all of them. That is a path to confusion, because these laws are dissimilar in almost every point. If you want to think clearly, treat copyright as one issue, patents as another unrelated issue, trade secrets as another issue unrelated to those, trademarks as yet another issue unrelated to the other three, and likewise for plant variety monopolies, IC mask monopolies, design patents and publicity rights. If you assume that any one of them is similar to any other, you're headed for error. Instead, do as I do: I think about just one law, I call it by its distinguishing name, and I never imagine that what I learn or conclude about it applies to any other law. (Comment on this)
2:47p	Institutions canceling journal contracts MIT canceled its contract for reading Elsevier journals several years ago and has suffered no great inconvenience as a result. This is great news, because it suggests that more universities can cancel their contracts too. MIT saved a substantial amount of money by doing this, but that is a secondary issue. What's important is that if more universities cancel these contracts, the result could be to wipe out the journal publishers or make them desperate enough to agree to be bought out for an affordable sum. After buying them out, the new copyright holder could make all the online copies libre. Please join me in shunning the term "open access" and using the term "free scientific publishing" instead. The article linked just above explains why that term is better. Analyzing this situation as an instance of a "collective action problem." I think that one of government's missions is to fix these problems for the people. To do that, we need to elect representatives and officials who won't hesitate to say that some profitable business is a parasite and advocate laws to nullify its business model. (Comment on this)

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