Tag: law

Patreon is suddenly, and belatedly, attempting to clean up its Factory of Filth, which would require Hercules to muck out the massive quantities of bestiality, rape, incest, and other perversions that are widely available on the platform:

Indie game creator Redamz, best known as the creator and sole developer of the upcoming adult-oriented adventure game Monster Girl Island, has announced that he will be leaving Patreon after the platform requested that he “make changes to the game” in order to continuing using their services.

In development since roughly 2015, Monster Girl Island finds players washing ashore on the sands of a mysterious island filled with monsters such as “dragons, slimes, giant bugs, centaurs and more,” who “are all… Oddly attractive!?”

Unsurprisingly, given the game’s subject matter and “oddly attractive” cast, Monster Girl Island has been marked as “Adult Only”, as a Mature Content Description on the aforementioned Steam page notes that the title features “full body nudity and detailed depictions of various sexual acts, ranging from vanilla to light sadomasochism, including watersports.”

Though the game has been featured on Patreon since it began development, with Redamz all the while openly and proudly wearing the game’s Adult label, it now appears that a recent attempt by the platform to elicit changes within Monster Girl Island has led the indie game developer to end this nearly six-year business relationship.

On April 28th, Redamz took to the game’s Patreon to post one final update, simply titled “Leaving Patreon”, to his supporters, notifying them of his decision and explaining that he had chosen to leave the platform.

He stated, “While I had avoided all of their previous witch hunts, it seems they finally don’t like MGI anymore. They’ve requested me to make changes to the game (stupid things like making ara and faranne not adoptive sisters if they are to share a scene), which if you all know me, you will know I’ll never do,” wrote Redamz.

About one-quarter of Patreon’s creators have been openly and egregiously violating the fake “zero tolerance” policy that Patreon has been falsely advertising since 2017, when VISA and Mastercard threatened to shut them down. Patreon played the payment processors by making a big deal of deplatforming the porn stars and cam girls, but didn’t touch the much more lucrative porn-game developers, some of whom are pulling in nearly $100k/month.

Anyhow, this belated attempt to get the porn devs to remove the incest and other “zero tolerance” elements that have been tolerated for years – that’s what Redamz is referring to – isn’t going to do Patreon any good once the facts are put on the public record. Because while Patreon may define pornography as only applying to real humans, that’s not how the Federal government or the payment processors define it anymore.

The legal stupidity of the new Twitch policy on off-platform comportment should be easy to understand on the basis of the idea that it assumes bloggers like me have the right to police your behavior away from this platform if you agree to this blog’s contract of adhesion by leaving a comment here.

On Wednesday, Twitch announced an expansion of its Hateful Conduct and Harassment Policy that takes into account behavior taking place off of the platform. A blog post from the company shared that the it is bringing on a “third party investigative partner” to support Twitch’s internal team with investigations, and to help enforce off-platform violations.

Per Twitch’s post, the new partner is an “experienced investigations law firm” that will help the company to “more thoroughly investigate and respond to reports of off-service misconduct.” In addition to adding sheer numbers to the team that investigates incident reports, the post also shared that there will a dedicated email address for people to report “egregious, off-service misconduct.”

While disciplining users for off-platform behavior isn’t new to Twitch — inappropriate behavior off the platform has led to bans since 2018 — this addition will beef up existing policies that the company started enforcing in Jan. 2020. Prior to the announcement, it was unclear how the company would address off-platform violations.

The problem, of course, is that virtually no one is willing to stand up and fight these anti-consumer abuses by corporations, despite the best efforts of the state legislatures to hand them effective weapons to do so. 

Because unless the jury is absolutely hell-bent on finding an obviously innocent police officer guilty of murder because racism, the prosecution is absolutely sabotaging what passes for its case:

Apparently, no one is watching the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer on trial for the murder of George Floyd. Otherwise, the media couldn’t get away with their spectacular lying to the public about how the prosecution is killing it.

It’s quite the opposite. In fact, in less than a week, the prosecution’s theory of the crime has subtly shifted from MURDER! to “failed to provide what we would say, in retrospect, would be a full and complete duty of care during the one- to three-minute interval between Floyd’s resisting the police to his dying, as a hostile crowd screamed obscenities at the police officers.”

The defense hasn’t even begun to make its case, but the prosecution’s witnesses keep helping Chauvin. (The only exception to the wild media lying is Headline News, where the lawyer commentators go the extra mile by watching the trial.)

Week One was chock-a-block with weeping bystanders wailing about how they felt watching Chauvin restrain Floyd. This would be tremendous evidence if the charge against Officer Chauvin were “first-degree upsetting bystanders.” But that’s not the charge. That’s not even a crime.

One especially distraught witness, Charles McMillian, an elderly black man, testified to seeing “foam” coming out of Floyd’s mouth.

QUIZ: Is foam coming out of the mouth a sign of:

a) a head wound?

b) strangulation?

c) a drug overdose?

ANSWER: c) a drug overdose.

Apart from that crucial fact, McMillian’s evidence only pertained to “first-degree upsetting bystanders.” Which, again, is not a crime.

My favorite witness — and the media’s favorite, too! — was Genevieve Hansen, Feminist Hero. She appeared in court in her firefighter dress uniform and a belligerent mood — though not as belligerent as the day Floyd died, when she showed up in sweats and began shrieking at the officers.

The headlines are along the lines of “Firefighter: I Could Have Saved Floyd’s Life, But Police Wouldn’t Let Me.”

Yes, apparently, Genevieve would have invented a time machine, gone back, and stopped Floyd from ingesting three times the lethal dose of fentanyl. I take it back: Chubby girls make the best firefighters! (Don’t get snippy with me: It’s beyond outrageous that fire departments have abandoned all physical fitness requirements solely in order to hire more women.)

According to Genevieve, the police on the scene unaccountably refused to step aside and take direction from her, despite her full ONE YEAR of experience as a firefighter.

Genevieve was totally on top of the situation. In her statement to investigators shortly after the event, she described Floyd as a “small, slim man.” Floyd was at least 6-foot-4 and weighed 230 pounds. The largest police officer on the scene was Chauvin, coming in at 5-foot-9 and 140 pounds. Genevieve missed nothing!

Even in the calm setting of a courtroom, with no agitated bystanders yelling at her, here are the things Genevieve says she would have done to save Floyd’s life!

In order:

“I would have requested additional help.”

“I would have wanted someone to call 911.”

Fortunately, when the fires start, the intrepid Genevieve will be there to call someone else to put them out. 

It’s so tragic when a man who was almost certainly on track for the Supreme Court should be derailed by such a minor incident coming to light:

A Milwaukee County Children’s Court judge and former president and CEO of the Cream City Foundation, which runs the city’s drag queen story hour program, has been arrested on seven counts of child pornography.

Brett Blomme, 38, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly uploading 27 images and videos of children being sexually abused on the messaging app Kik. Blomme was held overnight and released with a signature. He has been ordered to stay off social media and file-sharing services and is not allowed near any children except the two that he adopted with his husband.

Blomme is accused of uploading the images both from his home and from the judge’s chambers. The alleged pedophile judge was the president and CEO of the Cream City Foundation, which runs the Milwaukee Drag Queen Story Hour for local children.

And this is why traditional societies have always sought to keep the gays well away from the children. Although the media does its best to bury the statistical facts, homosexual men are more than 14 times more likely to abuse children than normal men. 

 Of course it is. Assuming that he’s still the President….

A simple majority of US Senators have voted to recognize the impending impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump as constitutional. Trump’s legal team insisted the chamber lacks the jurisdiction to try an ex-president. Six Republicans joined Senate Democrats on Tuesday to give the go-ahead for Trump’s second impeachment trial. Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, Ben Sasse, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Pat Toomey broke with the rest of their party to guarantee the trial moves ahead. The task was not daunting, as only a simple majority was needed, with the final vote tally being 56-44.

Lawyers love to talk tough about how they’ll fight to death for their clients, in much the same way that journalists love to talk tough about their commitment to free speech. But both groups are not only made up of paper tigers, on average, both tend to have commitments that are best described as transient and mercenary, as this account of President Trump’s legal team demonstrates in an account that rings disturbingly true.

After some time (20-30 minutes), three lawyers appeared together. They did not introduce themselves, and stood huddling in the back of the Oval Office, listening. In addition, Mark Meadows and someone else joined us by speaker phone. Eventually the lawyers in the back began muttering things to make their displeasure and disagreement evident. Finally President Trump said something indicating this was new to him, wondering why no one had shown him this route through the impasse. I said again, “Sir, again, CEO to CEO, you are not being served well by those around you in the White House. I’ve gotten to know staffers in your White House, and they tell me they are being told that leadership here is telling them to get you to concede.”

Trump started to say something to Mike and Sidney, but he stopped himself and turned back towards me. “Who?” He asked angrily, “Who wants me to concede?”

I was taken aback by his anger, because I thought what I was telling him was common knowledge. I thought it was generally understood that about half the White House was in on the program of getting him to concede, for that was the estimate I was repeatedly told. “Sir, I am surprised you’re surprised…. In your White House leadership is telling junior staff this everywhere. I am told that this fellow Pat Cipollone [indicating the lawyers behind me as I spoke, not knowing which was Cipollone] has been telling people since November 4, ‘Just help us get the President to concede.’ And for the last couple of weeks, Mark Meadows has been telling staff, ‘Help get the President into transition mode.’”

Trump turned to White House General Counsel Pat Cipollone, who began sputtering. “Mr. President, you know how hard I work, you know how many hours I have been putting in…” Both of which were mealy-mouthed, and neither of which was a direct denial, as was obvious to everyone in the room.  Trump faced him, his face darkening in anger.

“Sir,” I continued, “in 30 minutes I can have a number of staffers from within your White House  here to tell you that those are quotes from Pat Cipollone and Mark Meadows. This guy is lying to you through his teeth. They want you to lose.”

Trump turned, knowing I was correct. He indicated one of the other lawyers, said, “Did you know that this is his last day? He has a job starting Monday at a law firm up the street, getting paid 10 times what I can pay him here.” He continued wistfully, “Pat, can you imagine what I could have gotten done here, if I had not been fighting my own people?”

Cipollone and the other two lawyers scurried out the back door of the Oval Office. I heard them stay out in the ante room, caucusing. Meanwhile, the President, Sidney, Mike, Alyssa, and myself continued for a while walking through more of the details, reviewing some of what we had said earlier. At some point Allyssa, that quiet but razor-sharp female lawyer assisting Sidney, took over for a few points, and concisely explained aspects of the executive order, always clarifying with great precision whatever needed to be clarified.

After 10 minutes the three lawyers walked back into the room and stood, this time not in the back, but abreast and to the left of we four visitors: Alyssa, myself, Mike, and Sidney, sitting in chairs in a half-moon in front of the Resolute desk. Mike continued taking operational questions that arose, while Sidney and Alyssa handled the legal questions that arose. The three male lawyers edged closer to the front, and then as though as some hidden signal, they all started being bitches.

First was some comment about it not being right to use the National Guard. “The optics are terrible, Mr. President,” said one. “It would have to be the DHS.”  I liked the National Guard idea because we needed to reestablish trust of the American people in the electoral process, and the US institution with the most trust is the one where people dress in military uniforms. Yet the National Guard is local, they are all around us, our colleagues at work, our “Citizen Soldiers”. But perhaps in a sign of flexibility, Flynn and Sidney allowed as how one could use the DHS instead of the National Guard.

“The press would tear your apart,” predicted Pat Cipollone at one turn in the conversation. Sidney said what Mike and I were both thinking: The press is going to tear him apart? Really? What are they doing now?

At some point Cipollone objected, “Never in American history has there been this kind of a challenge to an election!” Flynn responded, “Never in American history has there been a situation like this, with counting being shut down for hours, foreigners connecting to our equipment, …..” and so on.

“He does not have the authority to do this!” Cipollone thundered eventually. Sidney rejoined, “Of course he does,” citing EO 13848 (and something else signed by Obama). “Without question he has the authority.” Alyssa whipped out EO 13848 again and showed the relevant language that we had just covered. Trump looked at Cipollone with an expression that said, You never even brought this to my attention, Pat. He said to Cipolloner, “You know Pat, at least they want to fight for me. You don’t even fight for me. You just tell me everything I can’t do.”

Fortunately, you can reliably tell when a lawyer is BS’ing you, as they transition from discussing the genuine legal issues to the practical implications without even noticing that they have done so. Once they do that, you know you can safely disregard everything they are saying, since lawyers tend to know considerably less about the practical realities than their clients who actually work in the real world. 

The mistake most people make is allowing their lawyers to make strategic decisions for them, which usually doesn’t work out well for the obvious reason that lawyers are trained to think in a purely tactical manner. My advice is that if you have a lawyer who prefers telling you what you can’t do instead of helping you figuring out what you can do, don’t hesitate to get rid of him.

If you wrote a negative review of Robinhood, and you were truly one of their customers, file an arbitration against them. If they had 100,000 filed in one day, they’d tank. They require arbitration. They wont allow group actions. So, let them get consumed by piranhas!

– Marc Randazza

Not all of them, of course. But as a general rule, it’s a good idea to keep in mind that even highly successful lawyers are considerably less intelligent than successful entrepreneurs and even modestly accomplished computer programmers. What compounds their mediocrity is the fact that they are trained to not think, but rather, to do the legal equivalent of “skim until offended”. As one lawyer explained it to me, in law school they are trained to look for “the magic sentence” in the case law upon which the argument depends, then regurgitate it for gold stars and favorable decisions. At no point is any contextual thinking or holistic understanding taught, required, or encouraged.

This is why Patrick Byrne’s account of encountering Rudy Giuliani and his team rings absolutely true, as well as why we were correct to have no faith whatsoever in Team Giuliani’s legal approach to attacking the 2020 election fraud.

 I explained to him carefully the outline of what we understood at that point, an outline such as the reader might have after watching this presentation by the MIT Math PhD Dr. Shiva, or the exposition by Seth Keshel, as well as the cascade of stories of porous security in election software all referenced above. I feared overwhelming him, so I tried to simplify. Given that he sat grunting stoically as I spoke, it was difficult to judge what was sinking in. Yet after only 10 minutes I saw Rudy checking his multiple phones for texts, right in front of me as we sat talking. Conversing with one of his assistants, sending someone on a side errand, or receiving a report back. It felt rather strange to be talking to a man who was paying so little attention to me, but the Commish, sitting on the side, motioned for me to continue. After no more than 30 minutes I was ushered out of the office, but told to hang around.

Eventually I was brought back into a smaller room with Mayor Giuliani, and again asked to explain what I think happened. Realizing I may have overwhelmed him with my earlier explanation, gotten him lost in the forest for the trees, I broke it down simply and slowly, like one would for, well, one’s 76 year old Grandfather. Again within 5-10 minutes he was fidgeting, grunting on occasion, sending people on unrelated side errands, checking his multiple phones for texts and typing some people back…. Meanwhile, I tried to stay on track. Yet there was a moment 15 minutes in when I got a whiff of something in that small office…. Medicine? Booze? Just as I was taking a sniff to decide, someone rushed in with something unrelated issue, and I was escorted from the office.

Again I wandered around among the staff, most of whom were professing to know nothing about what was going on, and many others of whom were packing up desks in bankers’ boxes.  I was perplexed, and found myself drifting around the convoluted office space. 30 minutes later I was strolling outside some other conference room down the hall, when I heard Rudy’s familiar voice saying, “…don’t understand a fucking thing this guy’s telling me…” drifting out of a doorway. Startled, I looked around the corner, and there was Rudy talking to whatever group of staffers happened to be sitting worshipfully in that conference room to which he had moved.

Several staffers pulled me aside in a hallway. What Mayor Giuliani  is going to need, one told me, is a one page summary. Very simplified.

Another added, but with graphs and data.  

Another piped up, And bulletpoints. The Mayor likes bulletpoints!

But no more than one page! Repeated the first.

Insulted at Mediocrity and the 20-something staffers who were telling me how to write, and giving such asinine advice in the process, I promised I would get them something by the end of the weekend. 48 hours. I asked them for one favor: any requests that came from them should be orchestrated through one of their people, who would call one person whom I would designate among my cyber-team, and that way we would have some structure, and keep track of deliverables as we sought to accommodate their needs, so that it would not all turn into a shit-show.

Then I left and drove back to DC. By late that evening, I had learned that there were three different open requests from three people on Rudy’s team to various of my colleagues within the Bad News Bears. One was only going to handle passing requests of this type, one only wanted to handle passing on requests of that type… And the shit-show began.

I do not want to claim that everybody in that large but melting office space was incompetent. As I said, there were three competent, skillful lawyers (a fourth if one counted a Constitutional law scholar who was in and out).  But the atmosphere was one of despair, there was zero leadership shown, staffers were wondering around in the dark, and the meetings seemed like sophomore bull sessions rather than anything organized and disciplined.

From occasional contacts with several of those solid staffers over the weeks that followed, I learned what had had happened that day just before I arrived. Rudy had declaimed that, “You can never prove election fraud in a courtroom!” and had declared it was not going to be the strategy. The strategy was going to be to challenge things on procedural grounds: “This county in this state had one set of rules, this other county in that same state used a different set of rules, that violates due process and Equal Protection of the 14 Amendment.” So I was correct: just before I arrived there had been a huge blow-up between Rudy and Sidney in front of everyone, with Rudy ending by shouting at Sidney Powell and sending her away, in front of an office of dozens of people. Declaring that none of this was going to be about election fraud, and putting his lawyers to work on their procedural filings.

I don’t think Giuliani was taking a dive. I don’t think he ever had the ability to do any better. My impression is that his legal campaign was little more than a feint to keep the media distracted. Only time will tell. 

The legal team of The New York Times sounds a little… panicked.

The New York Times filed a “Motion to Dismiss” request in an attempt to toss out the lawsuit and evade their wrongdoing.

Maggie Astor, The New York Times reporter who wrote the defamatory article, affirmed in her piece that the Veritas videos have “solely” unnamed sources. 

“The video then claims that Democratic operatives connected to Ms. [Ilhan] Omar’s campaign paid voters to hand over blank mail-in ballots and filled them out. This would be illegal, but the allegations come solely from unnamed people who speak with Project Veritas operatives in the video and whose faces are not shown,” she said.

In an affidavit, Astor said that the videos have “many” unnamed sources.

“Many of the individuals featured in the Video were unnamed, and there was no way for me to verify the claims that the unnamed sources purport to make in the Video,” she said.

Astor said she relied on Project Veritas’ “reputation” when making her unfounded claims.

“I know of Project Veritas and, before writing my articles about the Video, I knew that it had a reputation for publishing deceptively-edited videos and had been publicly criticized many times for doing so,” she said.

While arguing to dismiss the case, The New York Times’ legal team cited Wikipedia.

“Project Veritas bills itself as a ‘prominent independent journalistic organization,’ but it is described on its Wikipedia page (and just about everywhere else) as ‘an American far-right activist group founded by James O’Keefe’ that ‘uses undercover techniques to reveal supposed liberal bias and corruption and is known for producing deceptively edited videos about media organizations, left-leaning groups, and debunked conspiracy theories,’” they said.

Wikipedia themselves admit that their website is not a reliable source of information.

New York Times’ legal team also labelled Astor’s article an opinion piece to avoid Project Veritas’ charges of defamation.

Now, I’m no legal expert, but even a humble consumer advocate knows that if your defense against a charge of defamation involves relying upon Wikipedia, you’re probably in trouble. 

For the lawsuit, anyhow. The California Superior Court informs us that Patreon dropped its lawsuit against the Bears on January 13th.

2021-01-13 DISMISSAL OF ENTIRE ACTION OF ALL PARTIES AND ALL CAUSES OF ACTION WITH PREJUDICE

2021-01-13 NOTICE RE REQUEST FOR DISMISSAL WITH PREJUDICE FILED BY PLAINTIFF PATREON, INC.