As one European to another, thank you for giving an honest outside-in perspective, downvotes be damned :)

You know I really can’t tell, and as a non-American outsider see that both sides are being extremely alarmist at this moment. Although the main criticism of Harris is that she is more of the same, there are plenty who try to paint her as a radical and dangerous left-winger, when she is nothing of the sort of course. Makes one wonder where the real Donald Trump ends and the caricature begins on the other end of the spectrum.

This is simply what we call polarization in politics, and is very hurtful to any semblance of unity that nationhood requires. America will likely not heal from this for a while, no matter who wins. Unless, whoever wins, delivers on something that matters to everyone, regardless of politics, that is usually something having to do with the cost and quality of life. That tends to placate people, even while their freedoms are being curtailed.

But I do feel that Trump is more symptom than cause. And the article suggests as much as well:

“…rising political antagonism in America is a perennial outgrowth of its defining conflict over race and national identity — with the current round of conflict sparked largely (albeit not entirely) by backlash to Barack Obama’s 2008 victory.”

Unfortunately unless you are a tiny niche community that isn’t ever targeted by spam or idiots (and how common is that really), moderators are a necessary evil. You probably don’t hate moderators. You probably hate bad/aggressive/biased/etc moderators. Or maybe sometimes you are the problem, I don’t know. It is not a problem with an easy solution. Usually large forums with no moderation become quickly unbearable to most people. And then moderators become in turn unbearable to some people.

Maybe a trusted AI can do a better job at this - like give it the community rules and ask it to enforce them objectively, transparently, and dispassionately, unless a certain number of participants complain, in which case it can reverse its decision and learn from that.

What you are saying is you don’t want creators to be able to make a living off their work. Because that is what “professional” means.

Do you use the integrated AI in new versions of Excel or do you ask ChatGPT or some other AI to write it out for you?

Since some commenters on here seemed a little too eager to go with “fuck copyright” and outright dismiss the particular copyright claim the story was about, I thought I’d help make sure they understand that it’s not all bad. Too often have well intentioned people been too quick to dismiss a setup, only to replace it with something worse - or without really having any idea what to replace it with. You seem to understand that copyright serves a useful function in the current market-based economy, warts and all.

It is very difficult to make money in a market economy if you cannot sell the products of your labor. And to be able to do that, you need to have some ownership over said products. Ownership means exclusion, no way around it. Then you can transfer that ownership to an employer in exchange for a salary, or trade in an open market as a freelancer. Or create a collective wherein you share ownership. There are different models, but culture, to an extent, has always been monetized one way or another because creators have always needed to make a living, so they can continue to practice their craft while sustaining themselves and their families.

Copyright abolitionism sounds cool until you’re a professional creator with mouths to feed in this economy.

Of course there are smart ways creators can make money while also waiving their rights under copyright, but this does not work for everyone and many really just need to be able to sell the product of their labor to make a living.

I’m not saying it’s a perfect system, not by a long shot. But there’s no easy solution either.

I understand the sentiment, and you are right, that copyright is an obstacle to some forms of creativity, especially anything that involves direct reuse of somebody else’s work without their consent. It has also enabled a marketplace for content that has, like many other markets over time, led to the concentration of market power in a small number of business concerns, who effectively dominate their fields with extensive content libraries and armies of lawyers and lobbyists to promote their interests.

However, one should still not forget, that if you’re just an independent creator who depends on their creativity to make a living and at some point manages to create something of great value, it is more likely than not that other small or big fish will try to take that and sell it without giving you a penny. And your only recourse will be copyright law. As in this case here. Saying “fuck copyright” without critically engaging with what is actually at stake in a specific case, can lead to a problematic stance where you may find yourself defending grifters against honest creators trying to make a living off their work.

Well if you want an argument based on ‘first principles’, because the photographer actually put work into producing this picture, let alone their knowledge, likely expensive equipment, and hard earned skill to take a truly great shot, whereas you did nothing for it. Unless you are a professional model, but then you probably got compensated for your work as part of a deal.

Now the uses you describe are very different. Some are more casual and non-commercial in nature. Courts will consider such factors in a copyright infringement case.

Now does the above mean you have absolutely no say in what happens to a picture of you taken by someone else? Not exactly, you can also prevent third parties from using the likeness of you for purposes that might be damaging to your dignity or reputation, again, in some jurisdictions, I do not know the details. I am not a lawyer and it was a long time ago I studied these subjects. But basically my point is that the fact that it’s you in the picture may matter to an extent, depending on laws protecting personhood in your country, but not in the way you assumed where every photo of you is yours for the taking.

It is different only in that - in some jurisdictions at least - you can ask for the picture to be taken down or destroyed, and then not if you are a public person appearing in public like Trump is in this case. But that still does not give you the right to use the picture for your own gain without compensating the photographer. Because then you clearly not only have no objections to the picture being taken, but you value that picture, want to use it publicly, commercially even, and again, you owe a debt to the person who took it and in fact depends on people paying for their pictures for their livelihood.

Actually no, when you go to a professional photographer to have your picture taken, you pay for it. Because they put in the work and need to be compensated for it. By that logic people would never have to pay photographers for portraits, weddings, none of that. Just because you’re in a picture doesn’t mean you don’t owe a debt to the person who took it.

Sure, until you become a creative professional and you see someone with a lot more money than you making even more money off your work, and then you might instead say “fuck that guy”!

Really? The Telegraph? All the while downvoting the poor bot that’s trying to signal that this is a website know for rather poor quality journalism? (to put it mildly)

I guess it’s sometimes done in the spirit of forcing men to really consider their actions, because most of the men I know tend to think abusive men are always other men. And we usually have plenty excuses for our own abusive behavior. So it is like saying: “no, stop with the excuses, the problem is you”, in the hopes that this message will also reach its intended audience, ie the many men who are abusive to women in one way or another and, largely, in denial.

But I agree, these kinds of slogans annoy the hell out of me too and are totally not helpful in more ways than one, e.g., when men seek protection from abuse. I guess there are better ways of making a more forceful point about holding men accountable.

I’m all for putting some blame on the West, but the responsibility for the human rights abuses in these countries currently lies much more with their rulers than anyone else. And they are not just “right wing” by western standards, as there is also virtually no “left wing” over there that I know of by the same standards. I think that resorting to a leftie “colonialism bad” and “right wing bad” argument waves away the role of religion and local culture. It is, in essence, a very western critique I feel. Far from being an expert on this myself, just my 2c.

Maybe that person had trouble adjusting to SK life and was missing his country and/or people back home. Nothing to see here. It is only “surprising” because presumably they took some risk in leaving and because we only ever hear about NK in the context of its authoritarian government and it being some dystopian nightmare presumably, though if we’re being honest most of us don’t know two shits about the country and I bet to some people it’s simply home.

Why does anyone want to go back to any country that others are desperate to leave? For reasons…

This is a prime example of how big business can cozy up to authoritarianism. Of course in the name of offering a service to the nation or saving something precious to all, I guess it’s “democracy” in this instance. Deep down I think it’s about asking a simple question: which regime will be most accommodating to fulfilling my ambitions, i.e. sustaining and growing my business empire with the least amount of oversight or regulation? Who is more likely to be anti-union? Who is more likely to employ migrants without granting them political rights? Who is less likely to tax the rich? Who is more likely to give me more power to influence public opinion and public policy? Elon is, in some respects, correctly betting on Trump. Of course it is a risky bet, and a marriage of convenience; one will sooner or later lose favor with the other. It would probably be wiser of Musk to stay out of the limelight and play Democrats against Republicans whenever and however it suits him. But I guess he can’t help himself. To be honest I don’t even know whether it’s possible for a major business figure to remain neutral in a country where perhaps the best predictor of a presidential candidate’s success is the amount of donations their campaign receives.

I think you have expressed my fear quite well. Maybe it is as I feared. I don’t know much about Sweden, but I do have the feeling that the far right everywhere gets brownie points for just naming things the left will leave untouched (with a huge amount of hyperbole, racial hatred and scapegoating to be sure). I’m not in any way trying to force an “immigrants bad” argument, just fearing that a surge in crime involving migrant populations benefits the far right disproportionately, especially if the rest of the political spectrum seem unable to effectively address the issue in a more socially productive and progressive manner.

So, if i got this right, you seem to be implying that immigrants, or at least non-native Swedes as some may have citizenship, don’t know, are implicated in this violence, right? But that the situation today is a result of several policy failures by different governments and it’s not necessarily something to be tied to more recent waves of immigration. It wasn’t clear from the article. I just wanted to understand whether this plays right into the far right playbook once more. Of course poverty is a common factor in crime, but (unfortunately) the topic currently dominating European politics is immigration, and a surge in crime is an almost certain win for the extreme right in this climate.

That is not what I said, but ok, let’s leave it at this :)