Tag: law

Milo corners Twitter

Either Twitter is desperate or they have some seriously incompetent lawyers handling @nero’s data request.:

Twitter attempted to dodge Milo Yiannopoulos’ data request by falsely claiming that he lives in the United States of America and is therefore ineligible to receive the information.

“Twitter International Company provides the Twitter Services to individuals who live outside the United States of America. We understand that you live in the United States,” said Twitter in their reply today, despite the fact that Yiannopoulos has permanent residence in the United Kingdom and remains a citizen there.

“As a result, we are not a data controller in respect of your personal data. Consequently, we will return your postal order, in the sum of €6.35, to you.”

Yiannopoulos replied shortly after, stating:


TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN


I do not live in the United States. I am a permanent UK resident at the address listed on my letter, and a citizen of the United Kingdom.


You are clearly prevaricating by waiting until now to make this statement as opposed to making simple inquiries as to my country of residence.


Twitter has the choice of waiving the EUR 6.35 or paying the shipping and handling costs of sending a new money order, which will be EUR 7.


As a matter of interest, given that you have my UK address, where did you send the money order back to? To dispatch it to a UK address seems quite at odds with your proposition that I am a resident of the United States.


You have 21 days from the date of the original Subject Access Request to reply in full. This situation has not changed. I look forward to receiving the information requested within the time frame permitted by law.


Yours


Milo Yiannopoulos”

Seriously, who advised them to try to play that sort of ridiculous game? I’ve noticed that American companies often fail to take foreign courts very seriously, as if they assume they are merely some sort of state-level court that can be beaten at the federal level. No wonder so many of them end up paying massive fines.

I know for a fact that Milo’s been in London recently anyhow. It’s just a bizarre, time-wasting response by Twitter.

Heat Street debate: marital rape

My latest debate with Louise Mensch of Heat Street is on the subject of marital rape, concerning which my view that it is an oxymoron has been declared controversial in certain circles:

Louise Mensch: Do you agree that there’s no such thing as rape within marriage?

Vox Day: Yeah, I think it’s quite obvious that it’s not even possible for there to be anything that we describe as rape within marriage. I find it remarkable that someone would try and claim that it is beyond debate when this new concept of marital rape is not only very, very new but is in fact not even applicable to most of the human race. It’s very clear, for example, in India it’s part of the written law that it’s not possible, for even if force is involved, there cannot be rape between a man and a woman. In China the law is the same.

LM: Mm-hmm (affirmative) but there’s a difference between saying what the law is and saying what is morally right. You would agree that just because somebody says something is a law doesn’t make it so. Let’s just start with that basic principle.

Vox: There’s huge difference between morality and legality. I’d be the first to agree with that. The fact of the matter is that the concept of marital rape hangs on consent and because marriage is and has always granted consent, the act of marriage is a granting of consent, therefore it’s not possible for the consent to be withdrawn and then for rape to happen. In fact, the concept of marital rape is created by the cultural Marxists in an attempt to destroy the family and to destroy the institution of marriage.

LM: I’m going to say that that’s patent nonsense. If you consent to something once it doesn’t mean that you’ve given a blanket consent to it forever. We agree on the definition of rape – that rape is when one party forces sex on the other without their consent?

Vox: Yes.

LM: Good. We go that far. Your argument then hinges on the statement that to get married is to give an all-time consent forever to sex with your spouse?

Vox: Exactly. It’s no different than when you join the army. You only have to join the army once. You don’t get the choice to consent to obey orders every single time an order is given. In certain arrangements, and marriage is one of them, the agreement is a lasting one, and that’s why it’s something that should not be entered into lightly.

I find it both amusing and mildly disconcerting that a view which is consistent with the entire legal and philosophical history of the human race is suddenly supposed to be unimaginable. I mean, precisely how ignorant, precisely how brainwashed, does one have to be in order to be completely unable to imagine that which is not only recent history, but is still the law for most of the human race?

Vaccine lawsuit in Japan

This anti-Gardisil lawsuit could prove interesting, as Big Pharma’s political influence is considerably less in Japan:

Sixty-three young women are seeking a combined 945 million yen ($9 million) in compensation in the first mass lawsuit concerning side effects from cervical cancer vaccines.

The women are suing the central government and pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline Plc and MSD KK.

The lawsuits were filed July 27 in the district courts at Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. The plaintiffs are aged between 15 and 22.

The women argue they have suffered health problems, such as pain in various parts of their bodies, difficulty in walking and also impaired eyesight, as a result of taking the vaccines that were meant to prevent cervical cancer.

They were mostly in junior or senior high school when they took the vaccines between July 2010 and July 2013.

The vaccines under question are GSK’s Cervarix, which was approved for domestic use in 2009, and MSD’s Gardasil, which was approved in 2011.

The plaintiffs argue that reports had been filed overseas where the two vaccines were in use before Japan about various side effects, including cases of death and serious illness.

On the downside, it looks as if the Japanese government is one of the defendants, which may be a tactical blunder by the plantiffs’ lawyers. But perhaps not; I know very little about the Japanese legal system. However, Japan is very big on taking full responsibility even when the individual is known not to be directly to blame, so I expect the pharmaceutical companies’ customary utilitarian defenses will not go over particularly well.

Trolls are federal criminals now

This Court of Appeals decision should making policing the blog considerably easier for the moderators:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has handed down a very important decision on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Facebook v. Vachani, which I flagged just last week. For those of us worried about broad readings of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the decision is quite troubling. Its reasoning appears to be very broad. If I’m reading it correctly, it says that if you tell people not to visit your website, and they do it anyway knowing you disapprove, they’re committing a federal crime of accessing your computer without authorization….

As I read the court’s opinion, the main issue is state of mind. Did you know that the computer owner didn’t want you to visit the website? At first, Power didn’t know Facebook’s view. But after the cease-and-desist letter, Power knew Facebook’s position. As a result, it was a federal crime to use Facebook after having received Facebook’s letter telling it to stay away. If I’m reading the opinion correctly, it appears that every contact with the computer that its owner doesn’t want is “without authorization.” The main question becomes mens rea: The visit becomes a federal crime when the visitor knows that the computer owner doesn’t want it.

Got that, everyone? If I tell you to go away, and you continue to visit or comment here, you are committing a federal crime. I’m sure the FBI doesn’t have anything better to do than investigate violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, so I trust you will comply.

Reason enough to vote for him

Ruth Ginsburg fears a President Trump:

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believes “everything” will be up for grabs if Donald Trump is elected president and has the opportunity to appoint several justices to the high Court.

“I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs,” Ginsburg said of the presumptive Republican nominee succeeding in his bid for the White House in an interview published Friday by The Associated Press.

The 83-year-old justice, who belongs to the court’s liberal wing, said it’s “likely that the next president, whoever she will be, will have a few appointments to make.” Ginsburg is the oldest of the eight justices currently on the bench, while two of her colleagues – Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer – are closing in on 80.

If the Left is more afraid of Trump than any Republican nominee since Reagan, isn’t that alone sufficient reason to support him? Trump isn’t a Good Republican like Chief Justice Roberts, who will fall in line when the global elite snaps its fingers.

What he is, we don’t really know, but at least he isn’t that.

Hillary skates again

Well, Justice Thomas already warned us that the Rule of Law no longer applies to the United States of America:

FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday announced the agency is not recommending the Justice Department bring charges against Hillary Clinton, while also denouncing the former secretary of state and her aides for the way they handled classified information through private email servers.

“Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is information that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information,” Comey told reporters in Washington, D.C., noting that the probe has found that the former secretary of state used several different email servers and numerous devices during her time in office.

Even so, Comey added later, “Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before deciding whether to bring charges.”

Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the campaign was happy the FBI probe was now in the rearview mirror. “We are pleased that the career officials handling this case have determined that no further action by the Department is appropriate,” Fallon said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “As the Secretary has long said, it was a mistake to use her personal email and she would not do it again. We are glad that this matter is now resolved.”

Seriously, how on Earth does this woman continue to get away with everything? I mean, even if you were a Power That Be, why would this, of all women, be the one that you’d go out of your way to protect no matter what she does?

They can’t find anyone more competent? They can’t find anyone less cartoonishly hateful?

The corruption continues

As if we needed more confirmation that there is no rule of law in the USA:

According to sources that are familiar with the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton‘s use of a private email server, the former Secretary of State is not expected to face charges in the probe. This, according to CNN’s Senior Producer Edward Mejia Davis, who took to Twitter shortly ago to indicate the likely announcement of “no charges”:

Edward Mejia Davis @TeddyDavisCNN
Sources tell CNN’s Evan Perez: expectation is that there will be announcement of no charges in Clinton email probe w/in next two weeks or so

The world of the 1980s appears to have gone full circle. The Americans are evil totalitarians bent on global conquest through their third-world proxies, the Russians are good guys defending Christianity, and Italy’s politicians are less criminal and corrupt than their US counterparts.

#GamerGate wins! #GamerGate wins!

Gawker Media files for bankruptcy:

Gawker Media has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after a Florida judge issued a $140 million final judgment in favor of Hulk Hogan in the invasion-of-privacy lawsuit over the posting of a sex tape.

The online news organization founded in 2003 by Nick Denton which now includes other sites like Deadpin, Jezebel and Kotaku, reports that it has less than $100 million in assets and hundreds of millions in liabilities. Gawker is currently facing a wrath of litigation that’s been connected to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel. Besides the Hogan suit, there’s claims from a journalist and the alleged inventor of e-mail who both say they were defamed. Gawker is also facing off against the parent company of Daily Mail in court and was hit with a copyright lawsuit this week over a photograph of an Uber car.

Gawker has hired the investment bank Houlihan Lokey to advise it on both a possible sale and the restructuring process.

According to bankruptcy papers, Gawker has also secured a $7.66 million loan from Silicon Valley Bank with a line of credit of $5.3 million. Additionally, it’s got a second credit agreement worth $15 million with US VC Partners. All told, that’s $22 million in debtor financing as Gawker aims to restructure itself and fight off collection efforts from Hogan as its dispute with the former professional wrestler goes to an appeals court.

Thank you, Peter Thiel! We are all Hulkamaniacs now.