deborah
You’re thinking of my brother, Zathras.
they probably do. I worked for a content-as-a-service company that had a contract to deliver our product, airgapped, to a three-letter agency on a regular schedule, and we were a tiny company. Microsoft’s biggest customer is probably the U.S. government; I’d be shocked if they don’t provide an in-house airgapped set of full Azure services for the entire intelligence agency system.
From the just released GOP 2024 party platform (PDF), this is a single bullet point in CHAPTER THREE: BUILD THE GREATEST ECONOMY IN HISTORY:
Republicans will pave the way for future Economic Greatness by leading the World in Emerging Industries.
Crypto
Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency. We will defend the right to mine Bitcoin, and ensure every American has the right to self-custody of their Digital Assets, and transact free from Government Surveillance and Control.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
We will repeal Joe Biden’s dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology. In its place, Republicans support AI Development rooted in Free Speech and Human Flourishing.
Expanding Freedom, Prosperity and Safety in Space
Under Republican Leadership, the United States will create a robust Manufacturing Industry in Near Earth Orbit, send American Astronauts back to the Moon, and onward to Mars, and enhance partnerships with the rapidly expanding Commercial Space sector to revolutionize our ability to access, live in, and develop assets in Space.
When your party platform is just a long-form weird tweet that you wrote after bong rips with Elon Musk.
every single bathroom bill requires that the most masc, bearded trans guys legally have to use the women’s toilets because they were AFAB. It has never not boggled my mind.
(Except that what it actually means, obviously, is that those trans guys are prohibited from peeing and perforce existing in public, because anywhere with bathroom bills is somewhere where a trans guy is sure as hell putting his life at risk by using the women’s toilets. Goddammit.)
(Edited to add: I know this is obvious to everyone. But it’s still enraging.)
It is not, in fact, bad that copyright applies to a wider group than publishers, unless you are using “publisher” extremely broadly to apply to “creators”.
If “someone gets attacked for posting an image on social media”, that rarely means “lawyers came after me because I posted a screenshot of a page from Sandman”. It often means that the poster took someone else’s art, snipped off the artist’s signature, and posted without attribution, and the artist is rightfully angry. Copyright is what enables that artist to continue to eat and make more art. The same goes for music, or software, or movies.
Sure, the system is horribly abused by uneven power structures, as every system in the world is. For music especially, we all know that the takedowns are usually issued by people who have nothing to do with the creation of the protected work, because of the way licensing and rights grants work in that industry. Automated takedown systems (which have to exist because of the scale of online content) also have no reasonable appeal mechanism, and the people making the decisions don’t (and can’t) make reasonable assessments about fair use and transformative works.
I’m not saying that everyone who participates in piracy is a bad, wicked thief–I absolutely participate in it myself. But copyright is not the villain here; that’s just trying to make us feel justified about our actions. Someone made a creative work I enjoyed, and I don’t have a moral right to the product of their effort for free.