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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31233 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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Two articles are popping today that I believe are related. Both are reasons for censorship or reasons the left has used to justify censorship.

  • Dr. Gottlieb cited his “safety” as a reason to censor doctors criticizing COVID vaccines. Here are his tweets showing “violence” against himself.

https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1612548694762745856?s=46&t=0qCqhJLXqMO-wn5FoPsWKg

The best he has is some anonymous account saying “execute this bastard”. Obviously with anonymous accounts anyone can just randomly vent and say something mean. It could even be Scott Gottlieb saying this about himself so that he can then asks for censorship of others in the name of “violence”.

Obviously people shouldn’t be threatened but a random message board comment I don’t think rises to the occasion of a real threat - though I’d agree those accounts should be suspended banned that make violent threats. They shouldn’t be used to censor non violent debates.

And the rest of the tweets he cited are not threats but calling him a murder and bastard. Being that he’s citing tweets that are not calls to violence does that means he total received only one anonymous threat to justify censorship of dissenting scientist?

  • Turns out NYU did a study and found that Russian trolls were barely seen by anyone on Twitter. And the trolls mostly interacted with people that were extremely highly likely to vote GOP and in the end there’s no statistical argument that Russian troll bots led to any changed votes.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/09/russian-trolls-twitter-had-little-influence-2016-voters/

Another claim for censorship especially in 2020 and especially for the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian troll/bots interferes with the 2016 election and now we need to censor people. NYPost/Zerohedge got censored on these justifications.

At first I thought these were both solid culture war stories to post about but didn’t feel like doing two posts. Then I realized their connected and both are weak reasons that have been used for significant censorship and deplatforming.

This is nothing new. Virtually all censorship, and indeed virtually all limits on civil liberties, are premised on the claim, usually false or overblown, that it is necessary to prevent harm. That is true on the right as well as the left, and everywhere, not just the US.

And the proper response is not to argue that the threat is not real, but rather, the response is, so what? See, eg, this colloquy at oral arguments re a state law requiring that all arrestees give DNA samples:

Katherine Winfree: Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: Since 2009, when Maryland began to collect DNA samples from arrestees charged with violent crimes and burglary, there had been 225 matches, 75 prosecutions and 42 convictions, including that of Respondent King.

Justice Antonin Scalia: Well, that's really good. I'll bet you if you conducted a lot of unreasonable searches and seizures, you'd get more convictions, too. [Laughter] That proves absolutely nothing.

Do you know of a site/blog that just collects Supreme Court clapbacks? I’m interested mostly as popcorn entertainment...but also as a reminder that we’re theoretically appointing some of the smartest, most experienced legal professionals in the country.

Anyway, to play devil’s advocate—that’s the correct response for our government. Not so for a private individual. Twitter as a medium is somewhere in between, and I don’t believe broadcasting death threats or even epithets are deserving of that maximum level of protection.

I don't know what you mean, exactly, by clapbacks. There are certainly plenty of blogs which analyze Supreme Court decisions.

Snark, ideally highlighting something the appellants should have known. I’ve seen good ones coming from Scalia and others, though I’m struggling to find them again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel,_Inc._v._MCA_Records,_Inc. is always a fun read.

Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp., Inc., 147 F. Supp. 2d 668 - Dist. Court, SD Texas 2001 is a treat in the sense that you can still see the ring marks where the judge backhanded the attorneys:

Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact—complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words—to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions. With Big Chief tablet readied, thick black pencil in hand, and a devil-may-care laugh in the face of death, life on the razor's edge sense of exhilaration, the Court begins.

And there is this Alex Kozinski classic:

After Mattel filed suit, Mattel and MCA employees traded barbs in the press. When an MCA spokeswoman noted that each album included a disclaimer saying that Barbie Girl was a "social commentary [that was] not created or approved by the makers of the doll," a Mattel representative responded by saying, "That's unacceptable.... It's akin to a bank robber handing a note of apology to a teller during a heist. [It n]either diminishes the severity of the crime, nor does it make it legal." He later characterized the song as a "theft" of "another company's property."

MCA filed a counterclaim for defamation based on the Mattel representative's use of the words "bank robber," "heist," "crime" and "theft." But all of these are variants of the invective most often hurled at accused infringers, namely "piracy." No one hearing this accusation understands intellectual property owners to be saying that infringers are nautical cutthroats with eyepatches and peg legs who board galleons to plunder cargo. In context, all these terms are nonactionable "rhetorical hyperbole," Gilbrook v. City of Westminster, 177 F.3d 839, 863 (9th Cir.1999). The parties are advised to chill.

Mattel, Inc. v. MCA Records, Inc., 296 F. 3d 894 (9th Cir 2002)

There is some prof who used to rate the funniest justices, based on number of laughs. But I don't know whether he or she posts the actual content of the comments.

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