Beginning 1 September, we will need to geoblock Mississippi IPs
passing unconstitutional statutes > independently of the real legal system
The former is literally the real legal system, nothing shadow about it. Shadow would be some hidden deal to drop charges or something.
It's also not DDOS when a huge part of what you call "real" is exactly the same, so not unwillingly overloaded but willingly complicit.
The vulnerability comes from one bad faith party flooding the system with bad faith cases and appeals
No, this is literally a "both sides" issue. Lawfare is not new. See the continuous legal battles over the second amendment in states like NY, NJ, and CA.
Two other judges, John Higgitt and Llinét Rosado, said James had the authority to bring the case but argued for giving Trump a new trial. And the fifth judge, Justice David Friedman, argued to throw out the case, saying James lacked the authority to bring it.
The reason a democrat would be involved in such prosecution is because every GOP member has effectively sworn fealty to Trump and they will fiercely protect him from any accountability.
Biden was many things, but not corrupt in the sense that Trump is. Yes, his son did business trading on his relationship but that was legal (albeit distasteful).
Most dem voters dislike corruption, even if it's one of their team; I don't see that on the other side of the aisle. Disclaimer: I am not a dem.
If you're talking about the criminal case, it's even worse, as CNN's chief legal correspondent explained: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-was-convicted-... ("Most importantly, the DA's charges against Trump push the outer boundaries of the law and due process."). Or, as an MSNBC legal columnist explained: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-guilty-hus... ("Most DAs wouldn’t have pursued this case against Trump. Alvin Bragg got lucky. Let’s be honest with each other. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump was convoluted.").
You could write an entire Harvard law review issue about the novel legal issues raised by the Trump criminal case: Can a state crime be predicted on an uncharged federal campaign finance violation? can someone violate campaign finance law--which is focused on preventing candidates from misusing donated funds--by using their own money to pay off a porn star? Can you bootstrap a misdemeanor into a felony through a triple-bank-shot involving an uncharged secondary crime and a choice of three possible tertiary crimes? When you prosecute someone for a business records misdemeanor, but almost all the allegedly bad conduct relates to unspecified secondary and tertiary crimes, how do you instruct the jury? When you give the jury three different options of uncharged tertiary crimes to support the uncharged secondary crime, which in turn supports the charged primary crime, on what points must the jury reach a unanimous decision?
Google's and Apple's "Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich" was a more straightforward legal theory than the Trump criminal case.
1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life.
2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1
3. If the roles were reversed and this was Biden we were talking about, most dem voters would still be for prosecution of blatant corruption. The magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of) are fine with him doing anything he wants, up to and including shooting someone on Fifth Ave
Another example is the Mackey case, where the appeals court unanimously overturned the entire conviction, attacking both the legal reasoning and the evidence underlying the entire case. It’s pretty clear the whole thing was cooked up to “get” an influential pro-Trump Twitter user. See: https://ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/5d7bf858-ff...
The legal system bends to those in power and "justice" occasionally makes an appearance.
Meanwhile the DOJ has been weaponized to serve as the president's personal attack dogs and the entirety of the federal workforce is being staffed with only those who swear fealty to Trump, rather than the constitution and what it stands for.
IANAL, and I'm not equipped to review whatever legal fancy footwork is involved, but I am 100% confident that the Biden admin was as stand up as could be hoped for (i.e., flawed but not devoid of principles), and that Trump has only these principles:
* self-enrichment
* self-aggrandizement
* deflection of any criticism or culpability
What rubs salt into the wound is that tens of millions of my fellow citizens literally worship him as a gift from God and will defend him to the end. Watching democracy die before my eyes is beyond heartbreaking.
Trump corrupt" !=> "this case was sound.
I also provided an example of the Mackey case, where the DoJ was weaponized to go after Trump supporters on Twitter.
I don't like the twitter case and think it was a mistake. Not as bad as the case that drove Aaron Swartz to suicide (under the Obama admin).
But to lecture on the propriety of the prosecution and declare that it was "weaponized" is a stretch. The feds have made plenty of bad decisions across both sides of the aisle, and their intentions should always be worthy of scrutiny.
The DOJ (and every other federal agency) is being gutted of anyone who does not swear fealty to Donald Trump (the person, not the office) -- that's weaponization.
I'm happy to call out each and every mistake the Biden admin does, but it's almost quaint in comparison to what his successor is doing. We've moved well past the "both sides" debate -- what is happening now is fascism and un-American to it's core. So yeah, boo hoo about the twitter case.
1. Trump is the epitome of a corrupt pol and has pretty much gotten away with everything his entire life. > 2. Prosecuting him was not in the form of of attacking a rival, it was addressing issue #1
You're correct about (2), and that's the problem! A criminal case that relies on an uncharged secondary crime, which in turn relies on one of three uncharged tertiary crimes, to bootstrap a primary misdemeanor into a felony must stand on its own. Uncharged, unproven past conduct is irrelevant.
magic of Trump is that his supporters (which apparently you are one of)
My wife and I are Fed Soc members, but we like the Georgetown cocktail parties and voted for Biden in 2020! We weren't going to vote in 2024 until the Trump criminal conviction. It was literally radicalizing. My wife used to loathe Trump, but she drove up to Pennsylvania to volunteer for his campaign after that conviction came down.
It was literally radicalizing.
No shit.
You're a case study in radicalization by this point and one that I follow with some morbid fascination. If you, an intelligent lawyer and son of an immigrant can be radicalized to the point that you are cheering on the people who would be more than happy to deport you and most of your family on the basis of your skin color alone without any kind of due process can be radicalized then anybody can be radicalized, including me and that is a very sobering thought.
I sincerely hope that when this is all over you are still living where you do and that you and yours get through this in one piece but I would hate to be in your shoes when - if - the moment comes that you realize you are on a very dangerous path. Note that your strengths - intelligence, knowledge of the law - are being used against you.
I've seen a similar thing happen with two close friends who after 9/11 fell in with the wrong crowd and turned into 'truthers'. They were both very smart but also apparently quite gullible and they and their fellows were pushing each other ever further down into the hole.
I wrote about them:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/2020-12-19-complot-theory-believ...
Since then, after burning up all of their friendships they moved to the heartland of Australia where they are now prepping for the end times.
Sometimes it doesn't take much for a person to be radicalized and the way out is a lot more difficult than the way in.
immigrant can be radicalized to the point that you are cheering on the people who would be more than happy to deport you and most of your family on the basis of your skin color alone
Based! I can just picture Kash finishing the job by deporting the last remaining immigrant: himself.
Regardless, it’s telling that we were talking about legal theories but you couldn’t keep out that intrusive thought about my skin color and immigration background.
There was a time that I looked up to you, but that time is definitely past.
As for KP: he is just an even more extreme example of the same thing.
That's because you seem to be carrying water for the regime in your increasingly narrow interpretations of legal issues to defend that which is clearly indefensible.
Hey now, my interpretation of legal issues has been narrow since I was a law student. My second-year administrative law class used Gary Lawson's textbook (https://fedsoc.org/contributors/gary-lawson). The seminal cases all had notes after them along the lines of "isn't this clearly unconstitutional?" I remember nodding along and getting angry that the mid-20th century Supreme Court had fucked up the Constitution so badly.
So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place. Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land. So far, Trump hasn't been doing that.
Putting all that aside, I'm perfectly fine for you to attack me as a constitutional Taliban. But why bring my skin color into it?
I remember nodding along and getting angry that the mid-20th century Supreme Court had fucked up the Constitution so badly.
As opposed to what is happening right now?
Do you think Trump is fixing the constitution somehow? He's all but wiping his ass with it.
So, no, I don't care that Trump is dismantling an administrative state that shouldn't exist in the first place.
He's not just dismantling an administrative state. He's wrecking your countries' institutions left, right and center and those institutions are the glue that kept the country alive and together. It kept you healthy, educated and employed.
Despotism is not when the President fires Department of Education bureaucrats. It's when the President tells you what you can and cannot build on your own land.
I don't think that matters much when your land is bought at firesale prices right out from under you because otherwise you won't be able to make ends meet. The manufactured crisis you are going through right now is redistributing wealth at a fantastic rate. And guess who is on the receiving side.
But why bring my skin color into it?
Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests. Skin color is exactly the thing that this administration seems to be using as the distinguishing factor between the 'in' and the 'out' groups and that does not change because there are a couple of convenient exceptions. Or do you think giving White South Africans a speedrun through US immigration is an accident of chance?
Maybe you think that you too will be one of the exceptions but more and more people are finding out that they too voted against their own interests. This doesn't stop just with illegals, criminals, immigrants or homeless people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump
Have a look there and then look through that lens at the last six months. See a pattern?
It's racism as one major theme and probably misogynist overtones as another. The last thing Trump has respect for is the law (whether private, constitutional or criminal does not seem to matter much) unless it is as a tool to exact revenge.
That a lawyer would support the man whose own lawyer needed a lawyer and ended up convicted is already weird enough.
Recently someone commented to me that the whole point of the tariffs is to curb consumerism in the United States, without further explanation when asked where they got that outlandish idea from. There is no point in arguing anymore, it is literally a waste of time...it's so sad to see obviously intelligent people fall for for this, even against their own interest as you mentioned.
There's so much to criticize Trump about! A lot of the COVID-era inflation was Trump's fault thanks to those Trump checks. You could provide a stirring defense of free trade. RJK, Jr. is a kook! Anything that doesn't put you in the untenable position of arguing that the non-whites in the U.S. aren't as smart as you in knowing their own interests.
The man is single-handedly eliminating racially polarized voting in this country.
Ok, so you're just trolling. Fine. It is not funny.
Anything that doesn't put you in the untenable position of arguing that the non-whites in the U.S. aren't as smart as you in knowing their own interests.
I have six months of evidence and I think that is enough. I'll happily collect another 6 months and we'll see how you are going to twist to justify whatever they'll do between now and then. Prediction: it won't be good. Best of luck.
I find the exact same reaction in anti-vaxxers and people of faith. Try to get a religious person to recognize the folly of their faith -- it only makes them stronger.
I think there's two paths of resistance that might help:
1. Concise messaging
2. Mockery and humor
A prime example of this is anti-abortionists labeling themselves as "Pro-life". Who doesn't love life? And babies? Then there's "entitlements" for public insurance programs. Death taxes for estate taxes. And for our esteemed council in this debate, "Law and Order". And so on...
I don't have any easy or immediate remedy here, but I believe this path needs to be followed to help sway hearts and minds.
And for #2 (poop!), most people are vulnerable to the sting of mockery, certainly evidenced by how Diaper Don himself lashes out when made fun of. We need more of that, and more for the Deplorables who worship him. Yes, there needs to be a parallel track of trying to be nice and inviting, but we are literally at war for the survival of democracy in the United States (the civil war never ended -- the south had their fingers crossed when they surrendered).
Another unfortunate note: this war is also waged by religious fundamentalists (and white nationalists), and while I respect an individual's right to their own worship, we should be vigilant in pointing out that: "Religion is like a penis. It's nice to have one and fine to be proud of. Don't whip it out in public or shove it down someone else's throat"
He's wrecking your countries' institutions left, right and center and those institutions are the glue that kept the country alive and together.
What keeps America alive and together is the virtue of the average American, not counter-democratic "institutions." America was a stable democracy from the beginning long before we had any of these institutions. I'd trade every Ivy-league grad in the world in all the most august institutions for a million ordinary Iowans.
> But why bring my skin color into it?Because unless you are living under a rock it should be painfully clear by now that you've voted massively against your own interests.
But that wasn't relevant to our discussion. Why are you so fixated on the racial angle that you brought it up in unrelated conversation? Why does it feature so prominently in your mental model of Trump?
What keeps America alive and together is the virtue of the average American
if we take the results of 2016 and 2024, then our "virtue" is on life support lol, still this is an inspiring speech and I'm honored to quote it and I thank you for writing it, hacker news thrives on good content like this.
counter-democratic "institutions."
the US is very big, and a government is going to have a civil service, hopefully that span administrations as is often the norm, institutional knowledge is a thing. Obviously yes, some folks hate that shit.
America was a stable democracy from the beginning long before we had any of these institutions.
history has entered the chat
I'd trade every Ivy-league grad in the world in all the most august institutions for a million ordinary Iowans.
oh man, reminds me of my IT days, like database consistency was always some "ivory tower thinking", I hated 3 am troubleshooting sessions, especially since I was locked out of the bugfest that caused them. gives me flashbacks! you could literally be my boss lol
Why does it feature so prominently in your mental model of Trump?
yeah, racism features prominently in my mental model of trump too. I think its part of the "reputation" part of reputation, resume and rapsheet.
As you are proudly a Fed Soc member, are you also a follower of Jesus? From the makeup of your compatriots in SCOTUS, I'm guessing you're a devout Catholic. Does your faith inform you in your voting?
an intelligent lawyer
Well, some food for thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOAl8EYlz1s
The 6 members of SCOTUS who are of your ilk are the exact enablers of our subject of discussion.
And yet you dodge #1. How artful. Now I know that you've not been engaging in good faith, either intentionally or just how Fed Soc taught you.
And yet you dodge #1. How artful. Now I know that you've not been engaging in good faith, either intentionally or just how Fed Soc taught you.
I didn't "dodge" it. I explained it was irrelevant. The conduct for which Trump was convicted was having a payment to Stormy Daniels recorded in the books of his family owned company as "legal expenses" instead of "hush money." To turn that into a felony, prosecutors invoked several other uncharged crimes--which means they didn't have to prove them--in a triple-bank-shot legal theory so convoluted it's best explained with charts: https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/charting-the-legal-theo.... The prosecution never clearly articulated the exact legal theory, but what comes closest to their trial presentation is something like:
1) Violation of New York records law (175.05). But this is a misdemeanor. To step it up to a felony, you need to prove that the records were misrecorded to cover up a second crime.
2) Stepping (1) up to a felony based on New York Election Law 17-152, which makes it illegal to influence an election by "unlawful means," which requires a third crime. According to the press: "Attorneys specializing in state election law believe the statute has never been prosecuted." https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-hush-money-case-relies.... Moreover, the prosecutors never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
3) Supporting (2) based on violation of federal campaign finance law. Notably, the FEC, which is charged with administering federal election law, had declined to bring any charges against Trump in connection with the Stormy Daniels payoff. Prosecutors also never actually charged this crime, meaning they didn't need to prove all the elements.
The prosecution also threw out two alternative crimes for (2), and the judge then instructed the jury that they didn't need to be unanimous as to which other crimes the business records were doctored to cover up.
The merits of this prosecution are entirely about the legal theory and the legally relevant facts. Whatever else you think Trump did is completely irrelevant. That's one of the few things Fed Soc folks and liberals agree on. If the target of this prosecution had been a child-trafficking kingpin, the lawyers at my former white shoe firm would be lining up to take on the multiple Supreme Court cases that would come out of challenging this prosecution.
Fed Soc, eh? I'm shocked you'd consider Biden as everything I see about the org is as a right wing networking club, culminating in ownership of SCOTUS.
Fed Soc has far more Democrats than your typical non-ideological lawyer's organization (e.g. the American Bar Association) has Republicans. It's just lawyers who aren't feelers, and those are on both sides of the aisle.
Yes, it wasn't brought by Biden
Isn't that the crux of the matter? You have a (crypto)billionaire president using his presidential powers and personal wealth to start frivolous lawsuit to shut down his opponents. If that doesn't worry you I really don't know what to tell you.
I've come to the conclusion that the only proper response to norm violations is a 10x counter-response.
That may be true --- or even a 100x response. But the thing is that a 100x (and probably even a 10x) response to many of these norm violations would take us well beyond the entire realm of lawfare. A 10x response would be at least "ignore everything the entire federal court system says because it's irredeemably corrupted", if not actual armed resistance.
Even going back well before Trump, norm violations like McConnell holding Scalia's seat open already made it clear that the Supreme Court was no longer a meaningful institution (if it ever had been). I don't mean I didn't like some of their decisions. I mean the entire thing is a meaningless charade, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and 366 in leap years. And that is just one example. The level of "counter-response" required to recover from the norm violations we've had over the last 10-20 years requires an overhaul to the very foundations of our system of government.
The level of "counter-response" required to recover from the norm violations we've had over the last 10-20 years requires an overhaul to the very foundations of our system of government.
You might just get it. If the country survives as an entity. Otherwise you might get several new systems of government.
the real legal system is slow by design, to carefully review cases and ensure fairness. It should also be based on good faith.
It isn't, and it isn't designed to be based on good faith or good faith actors.
there are many many resources online you can find on the matter
Contract law requires many things, including "a meeting of minds"; that does not imply that all civil lawsuits and criminal hearings require "a meeting of minds".
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law)
There are many resources online you can find on the matter.
That is specifically limited to contract law
That is false, and the wiki paragraph does not say that
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcp/rule_11
quite distinct from criminal law.
Trumps frivolous lawsuits have been civil matters, which is obviouos because private persons do not file criminal lawsuits, prosecutors do that.
That is false, and the wiki paragraph does not say that
Are you sure? This is the first sentence of my link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith_(law)
In contract law, the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing is a general presumption that the parties to a contract will deal with each other honestly, fairly, and in good faith, so as to not destroy the right of the other party or parties to receive the benefits of the contract.
This is the first sentence of your original link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_faith#Law
In law, bona fides denotes the mental and moral states of honesty and conviction regarding either the truth or the falsity of a proposition, or of a body of opinion;
There is nothing in there that supports the assertion:
It [the legal system] should also be based on good faith.
Any legal system based on good faith will fall over in its very first year of operation. They are usually designed to be resilient to bad faith actors. The problem (which you seem to be alluding to) is that, by design, the system errs on the side of caution.
In order to actually be punished for barratry, for example, there needs to be evidence beyond reasonable doubt. Any doubt as to the bad-faith intention and the system will not proceed with punitive measures.
And that's just for barratry - the other sins that people perpetrate on the system have equally cautionary consequential actions taken.
flooding the system with bad faith cases and appeals (as trump is doing).
Trump is winning most of these fights in the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. Activist groups are flooding the system with a bunch of weak cases, getting weak, poorly reasoned district court rulings, then getting overturned on appeal.
Activist groups are flooding the system with a bunch of weak cases, getting weak, poorly reasoned district court rulings, then getting overturned on appeal.
Trump's > 90% success rate at the Supreme Court should be read as an indictment of the Supreme Court, not of the lower courts.
I feel like you're unfamiliar with the Supreme Court rulings
I feel like you are unfamiliar with who you are replying to. That doesn't make it any less amusing.
are they some sort of legal expert
Yes.
If so, I'd expect them to understand that recent decisions such as Trump v. Casa and McMahon v. New York are pretty flimsy.
That's what makes it extra interesting.
McMahon v. New York is obviously correct. A preliminary injunction is an “extraordinary and drastic” remedy requiring a showing that the plaintiff is likely to succeed in the merits: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/civil-resource-manual-21.... The argument that federal courts can supervise a reduction in force where the individual firings aren’t themselves illegal (e.g. race based) is a tenuous argument. Besides, what’s the irreparable harm? Being fired is one of the classic examples of something that can be remedied by after a trial with reinstatement and backpay.
With regards to McMahon v. New York, what makes you think that the plaintiff is unlikely to succeed in the merits? The court can absolutely take into consideration the intent of the Trump administration and McMahon as his secretary to illegally shutter the Department of Education. On the one hand, you have the executive branch's ability to oversee a reduction in force; on the other, you have the executive reducing force as an end-run around the duty charged to them by law. If the "unitary executive theory" means that the executive can discharge duties they are bound by law to execute, then the Constitution is meaningless (as Sotomayor cites at the very beginning of her dissent, Article 2 section 3 charges the President to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed"). Your argument that irreparable harm extends only to the staff being fired is also naively narrow; the states brought the suit, not the staff of the DoEd. The states argue--correctly--that if the Department cannot carry out its duties, then a vast array of students and teachers that rely on services funded or administered by the DoEd would be harmed. It seems batshit to argue that the harms done to the executive by temporarily curtailing that power outweigh the harms that will be done to an uncertain but certainly vast number of people in the interim. It's worth noting that, in this case, providing relief simply means that the government must maintain the status quo for a few months or however long it takes for the case to work through the courts. Restoring someone's job with back pay is sufficient when one person is fired. It is not sufficient when the executive has eliminated 50% of a statutorily-mandated department of the federal government with an eye to cut more.
I feel like you're unfamiliar with the Supreme Court rulings, which are almost unilaterally terrible.
On the law, the rulings are correct. Article II, Section 2, cl. 1: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." QED. The contrary "precedents" were ginned up to support Woodrow Wilson's racist fever-dream of an executive run by "expert" civil servants instead of the elected President: https://ballotpedia.org/%22The_Study_of_Administration%22_by.... I remember sitting in Con Law class and reading these cases thinking how obviously wrong they all were. I couldn't even dream that we would ever be able to clean out this horse stable!
preferring to instead punt the issue and allow the harm to continue, completely circumventing the merits of the cases.
That's because almost all of the rulings coming up to the Supreme Court were preliminary injunctions where the lower court made no determination of the merits.
making the bizarre claim that enjoining the Executive Branch from doing whatever it wants pending a full trial harms it in greater proportion than the harms being actually inflicted on ordinary people.
Read Marbury v. Madison and look at how much ink Justice Marshall spends trying to avoid enjoining the Secretary of State to do something as ministerial as delivering an already-signed letter. He literally invented judicial review in an effort to avoid that result. Think about how Marshall's lengthy analysis of how courts can't enjoin discretionary actions of the President would apply to the sweeping injunctions being handed out these days.
It should also be based on good faith
Setting the wishes aside, it isn't, the judges easily act in bad faith when it suits them, so this also doesn't explain much.
Neither is it "designed" to take bad faith at face value, again, to be specific - just read the Supreme Court case about this law. The flood/design explain nothing: it would've been just as easy to block the implementation of what the court itself says is an unconstitutional law (see, no "good faith" basis required) and then don't even review it fully because the court has no time (see, the flood can flow in either direction)...
It's become clear that the "shadow law" of simply passing unconstitutional statutes
What makes you think the statute is "unconstitutional?" The Supreme Court hasn't tackled the issue directly, but it upheld a law requiring libraries to install blocking software to restrict access to websites for children: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._American_Libr.... Remember that, prior to the reinterpretation of the First Amendment in the mid-20th century, the "obscenity" carve-out was broad enough to outright ban things like pornography, much less allowing access to children.
That said, I suspect that the law is probably unconstitutional, insofar as it's targets at a type of speech (social media) that doesn't fall within any of the traditional exceptions. I don't think the "under 18" rationale holds when you're talking about content that traditionally hasn't been prohibited to children.
Regardless, this isn't an instance of the state blatantly violating some clear Supreme Court precedent. (And even that's okay if you have a good-faith basis for challenging the precedent! That's how impact litigation often works.)
Launch a small website and commit a felony in 7 states and 13 countries.
I wouldn't have known about the Mississippi bill unless I'd read this. How are we have to know?
You don’t need to know all the laws of Mississippi to serve such customer, or any laws from anywhere else other than Italy.
And if you don't do business in the US there is only so much the US can do. Most importantly it can ask ISPs in the US to block your site. As they do for copyright infringement routinely.
We have all accepted that our countries block copyright violations originating from outside their jurisdiction.
But of course this is a disaster for the free internet. While copyright laws are relatively uniform world wide, so if you respect it locally you're probably mostly fine everywhere, incoming regulation like age verification and limits on social media use, or harassment stuff, is anything but uniform.
To some degree this is also maybe more shocking to people in the US, as the US norms have de facto been the internets norms so far. It is, in any case, not entirely new:
When Germany came after BME for "endangering the youth" and demanded that I make changes to the site to comply with German law, my response was to simply not visit Germany again (and I'm a German citizen). When the US started to pressure us, we moved all of our servers and presence out of the country and backed off on plans to live in the US. No changes were ever made to the site, and no images were ever removed — if anything, the pressure made me push those areas even more.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMEzine
How do we deal with the fact that we don't have a global mechanism for agreeing (socially and legally) on necessary regulations, whilemaintaining the social good that is a truly global internet?
And if you don't do business in the US there is only so much the US can do.
They can order overflights to land to arrest you, if they so desire. They can also block you from the more-or-less all legitimate commerce globally with sanctions. And if they really don't like you, they can kill you without due process.
All of which the US has done to undesirables over the years, and can do again without any controls or checks or balances, to anyone globally.
With the internet it's a lot less clear cut. The user is requesting data from Italy, maybe, but is located in another jurisdiction. Add Cloudflare and the data might even be served from the US by a US company you asked to serve your illegal data.
It's becoming a shit show and is breaking up the global internet.
The current legal reality is a shitshow but I don't think that's inherent to the situation itself. gTLDs and foreign hosting services certainly complicate things, but then so does choosing to (physically) import supplies from abroad. I'm not convinced there's a real issue there at least in theory.
I think that a single "common carrier" type treaty unambiguously placing all burden on the speaker and absolving any liability arising from jurisdictional differences would likely fix 90% of the current issues. If I visit a foreign run site and lie about my country of residence in order to access material that isn't legal where I reside the only liable party in that scenario should be me.
You don’t need to know all the laws of Mississippi to serve such customer, or any laws from anywhere else other than Italy.
Except that in this case it's more like applying state sales taxes to online purchases. That has been a thing for years at this point.
A blog is speech, but I wouldn't say that deciding to operate a social media site is speech.
______
* See UDHR articles 12, 18, 19, and 20. This is not an issue limited to the provincial laws of one small country.
† Unless the site operators also use of the site, in which case they too do suffer it; this is in my experience virtually always the case with the noncommercial sites that it is most important to protect.
If social media sites are shut down but I am free to post my opinions on my personal blog site, how is my freedom of speech affected?
Did I not have freedom of speech before social media existed?
Is there an implication in freedom of speech that any speech facilitating service that can be offered must be allowed to operate? That's at least not obvious to me.
I echo what others said: There are good reasons to oppose all this, but blanket cries of "free speech" without any substance don't exactly help.
I am not sure that I have ever encountered anyone confused in the way you describe either...
Shutting down a notebook factory for dodging sales tax is not a violation of the rights of would-be purchasers.
And if the police has reason to suspect that there is illegal gambling happening at your dinner party they can obtain a warrant to bust your party.
Hell even if your party is to loud and annoys the neighbours the police can and will shut it down.
Speech isn't just shouting into the void; it's dialogue back and forth between two or more different people.
In some cases this arises in US Constitutional law as the freedom of other people to seek and encounter the speech, though I'm not sure if there's a formal name for the idea. (e.g. "Freedom of Hearing".)
A social media site is speech (and/or press
I suppose this is what confused me then, as it seemed obvious that e.g. the Facebook reccomendation algorithm isn't speech, so if a social media site would be considered speech it would be due to the user content. Section 230 doesn't in any way supercede the constitution, but it does clarify which party is doing the speech and thus where the first ammendment would apply.
Section 230 doesn't in any way supercede the constitution, but it does clarify which party is doing the speech
No, it immunizes certain parties from being held automatically liable (without separate proof that they knew of the content, as applies to mere distributors[0]), the "publisher or speaker" standard being the standard for such liability (known as publisher liability.)
It doesn't "clarify" (or have any bearing on) where the First Amendment would apply. (In fact, its only relevant when the First Amendment protection doesn't apply, since otherwise there would be no liability to address.)
[0] subsequent case law has also held that Section 230 has the effect of also insulating the parties it covers against distributor liability where that would otherwise apply, as well, but the language of the law was deliberately targeted at the basis for publisher liability.
So they are not the speaker for the purposes of liability, but they are the speaker for the purposes of first ammendment protections?
People who are not “the speaker or publisher” for liability purposes have Constitutional first amendment free speech rights in their decision to interact with content, this includes distributors, consumers, people who otherwise have all the characteristics of a “speaker of publisher” but are statutorily relieved of liability as one so as to enable them to make certain editorial decisions over use generated content without instantly becoming fully liable for every bit of that content, etc., yeah.
And arguing the alternative is you making the exact inversion of statute and Constitution I predicted and which you denied, that is, thinking Section 230 could remove First Amendment coverage from something it would have covered without that enactment.
* The First Amendment generally prohibits the government from enacting any laws or regulations that limit speech based on its content (anything you might reasonably call "moderation" would definitely fall into this category!).
* Private companies are not the government. Social media networks are therefore not obligated to follow the First Amendment. (Although there is a decent argument that Trump's social media network is a state actor here and is therefore constitutionally unable to, say, ban anybody from the network.)
* Recommendation algorithms of social media networks are protected speech of those companies. The government cannot generally enact a law that regulate these algorithms, and several courts have already struck down laws that attempted to do so.
* §230 means that user-generated speech is not treated as speech of these companies. This prevents you from winning a suit against them for hosting speech you think injures you (think things like defamation).
* §230 also eliminates the liability of these companies for their moderation or lack thereof.
There remains the interesting question as to whether or not companies can be held liable via their own speech that occurs as a result of the recommendation algorithms of user-generated content. This is somewhat difficult to see litigated because it seems everybody who tries to do a challenge case here instead tries to argue that §230 in its entirety is somehow wrong, and the court rather bluntly telling them that they're only interested in the narrow question doesn't seem to be able to get them to change tactics. (See e.g. the recent SCOTUS case which was thrown out essentially for this reason rather than deciding the question).
But yeah, this definitely sounds like a business opportunity for services or hosts.
definitely sounds like a business opportunity for services or hosts.
Capitalism at its best. We have a definite problem with over-regulation and a judicial system that isn't coping nor keeping up. Capitalism, instead of fixing the problem, makes a business model out of it.
Capitalism: Why fix it when you can make money of it.
The US doesn’t have 50 different cultures with totally different values, but probably has like… 7.
States should come together with their neighboring states to start passing identical model legislation for this sort of stuff...
Yes! Make a union of states! How should we call that? States Union... Union of States... United States! Yeah, that should work.
I think it's going to happen one way or another and the most peaceful way to do it would be sooner rather than later.
You’ve come up with more reasons not to split up the country, by pointing out some ways the other parts of the country might have trouble.
I think (correct me if I’m wrong) you disagree with the partisan jab at the end, not the actual line of argument.
At some point it makes more sense to pass such a law at the federal level since we end up there eventually either way.
Expecting laws to instead propagate from neighbor to neighbor as I accidentally suggested—this wasn’t what I meant to suggest, but in defense of the idea:
At some point it makes more sense to pass such a law at the federal level since we end up there eventually either way.
I do think there still could be some value. Laws could propagate across states that are more receptive to them, and then people can see if they work or not. Porting Masshealth to the whole country at once seems to have been a little bumpy. If it has instead been rolled out to the rest of New England, NY, then down to Pennsylvania… might have gone a little smoother.
More like: look at the EU, extrapolate how it would look after a little more unification, and then take advantage of the fact that we’re made up of small states already that can group ourselves up as fits. Germany and France seem all-right, so we should organize ourselves into Germany and France size units.
Sounds more like a... Confederation? of states. Or maybe... a Confederacy?
Source: am from Kansas City.
The US doesn’t have 50 different cultures with totally different values...
Indeed. It has far more than that. The US is astonishingly diverse.
In your mind, are these all filled with people who look the same, sound the same, practice the same religion, immigrated from the same place?
If anything, communications between Mississippi and California would be interstate commerce and would thus fall under federal legal jurisdiction.
If I run a server in Utah primarily for myself, and you as a Californian happen to stumble upon it, should I have to abide by California privacy laws?
should I have to abide by California privacy laws?
It seems these are the conditions:
As of January 1, 2023, your business must comply with both the CCPA and the CPRA if you do business in California and meet any one of the following conditions:
* Earned $25 million in gross annual revenue as of January 1 from the previous calendar year
* Annually buys, sells, or shares the personal information of 100,000 or more California consumers or households
* Derived 50% or more of your gross annual revenue from the selling or sharing of personal information
Also lots of states have their own data privacy laws.
https://iapp.org/media/pdf/resource_center/State_Comp_Privac...
And yes, in this particular circumstance for this specific law as currently written a private blog doing it's own normal things probably wouldn't infringe or be subject to these rules.
But what about a Utah focused social media site that does have $25M in revenue? It's not trying to court California users. Why should they have to be liable to laws in a state they never intended to do business in? It's these Californians leaving California to interact with an org across state lines. Whatever happened to state sovereignty? Should an Oklahoman be required to buy only 3.2% beer in Texas as well or have some Texas beer and wine shop face the wrath of Oklahoma courts for serving an Okie some real beer?
Where did that web transaction actually happen? On the client or on the server? Where did the data actually get stored and processed?
IMO we're past the time of patchwork laws. The social experiment of figuring out what makes some sense is largely over at least for the basics. It's time for real federal privacy laws to make a real, enforceable nationwide policy.
It's not trying to court California users.
The point that is being made, is that even a site generally designed and expected to be used by Utah citizens can become liable to Californian law because a Californian created an account.
If you actually sell things to Californians that's different. At that point, yeah, I think you _should_ be subject to California law. You're doing the equivalent of mail order business with a resident after all.
If I operate a healthcare facility in New Mexico and a Texan comes in asking an addition, should I be liable to Texas abortion laws? Should they be held liable for an abortion that happened out of the state?
Between this and the UK Online Safety Bill, how are people meant to keep track?
At this point, I almost welcome all these laws. The more they restrict us, the more potential felons, but they can't fine and put us all in jail, no? Chronic over-legislation will crush from its own weight.
That said, like the saying of markets staying irrational longer than people can afford to, the realistic outcome is that bureaucracy will survive longer than a functioning society. Legislation will continue until morale improves.
Chronic over-legislation will crush from its own weight.
Ideally, yes. I think the reality however will be that most "perpetrators" will be ignored, and anything else will be easy wins and collateral damage to small site operators that these regulators to happen to notice.
It's just wrong and it breaks the internet. We had it so good for so little.
Same goes for other countries as well. It’s insane.
Regulatory capture in real time!
Regulatory capture in real time!
What would you have preferred? Of course you'd prefer if the law never existed in the first place, but I don't see having a third party auditor verify compliance is any worse than say, letting the government audit it. We don't think it's "regulatory capture" to let private firms audit companies' books, for instance.
how are people meant to keep track?
Individuals are not meant to keep track, they're meant to leave the ecosystem. These types of bills are the end product of the process of regulatory capture by the corpos.
Corpos create centralized watering holes that are magnets for social problems, offering low effort service and very little accountability for early users. Corpos then nurture these uses because they drive engagement, and at the early stage any usage is good usage. When the wider public catches on and starts complaining, corpos then cast it as outside meddling and reject addressing the problems they're facilitating, as curation at scale would cost too much. Corpos then become a straightforwardly legible target for politicians to assert control over, demanding some kind of regulation of the problem. Corpos then lobby to make sure such laws are compatible with their business - like simply having to hire more bureaucrats to do compliance (which is the sine-qua-non of a corpo, in the first place). The last few steps can repeat a few cycles as legislation fails to work. But however long it takes, independent individual hosters/users are always left out of those discussions - being shunned by the politicians (individuals are hard to regulate at scale) and the corpos (individuals turn into startups, ie competition). Rinse and repeat.
I.E. Are US ISPs, particularly big ones like Comcast, required to geolocate ISPs to the state where the person is actually in? What about mobile ones?
Where I live (not US), it is extremely common to get an IP that Maxmind geolocates to a region far from where you actually live.
The law in question requires "commercially reasonable efforts"
Remember that massive surveillance capitalism apparatus that has been created for years? Now everyone must pay for it to legally comply with whatever arbitrary bullshit
Calling geoip databases "surveillance capitalism" seems like a stretch. It might be used by "surveillance capitalism", but you don't really have to surveil people to build a geoip database, only scrape RIR allocation records (all public, btw) and BGP routes, do ping tests, and parse geofeeds provided by providers. None of that is "surveillance capitalism" in any meaningful sense.
Is there a single company out there making it's money selling access to an area code database?
So if someone is making money off of it it's suddenly "surveillance capitalism"? What makes it more or less "surveillance capitalism" compared to aws selling cloudfront to some ad company?
Moreover you can do better than area level code granularity. When landlines were more common and local number portability wasn't really a thing, can look at the CO number (second group) to figure out which town or neighborhood a phone number was from. Even if this was all information you could theoretically determine yourself, I'm sure there are companies that package up the data in a nice database for companies to use. In that case is that "surveillance capitalism"? Where's the "surveillance" aspect? It's not like you need to stalk anyone to figure out where a CO is located. That was just a property of the phone network.
GeoIP databases are much higher resolution and use active scanning methods like ping timing. If a company was spam calling me to estimate distance based on call connection lag, yes that would be surveillance capitalism.
Why is the fact it's "active" or not a relevant factor in determining whether it's "surveillance capitalism" or not? Moreover spam calling people might be bad for other reasons, but it's not exactly "surveillance".
Surveillance definition "Systematic observation of places and people by visual, aural, electronic, photographic or other means." If you are pinging someone's IP to determine their physical location, you are engaged in a form of surveillance.
Setting aside the problem with pinging home IPs (most home routers have ICMP echo requests disabled), your definition of "systematic observation" seems very flimsy. Is monitoring the global BGP routing table "systematic observation"? What about scraping RIR records? How is sending ICMP echo requests and observing the response times meaningfully similar to what google et al are doing? I doubt many people are upset about google "systematically observing"... the contents of books (for google books), or the layout of cities (for google maps, ignoring streetview). They're upset about google building dossiers on people. Observing the locations of groups of IP addresses (I'm not aware of any geoip products that can deanonymize specific IP addresses) seems very divorced from that, such that any attempts at equating the two because "systematic observation" is non-nonsensical.
They're upset about google building dossiers on people.
Their location being in that dossier is part of what upsets people.
but an IP addresses at any point in time is tied to either a specific person or place.
Except I'm not aware of any geoip databases that operate on a per-IP level. It's way too noisy, given that basically everyone uses dynamic IP addresses. At best you can figure out a given /24 is used by a given ISP to cover a certain neighborhood, not that 1.2.3.4 belongs is John Smith or 742 Evergreen Terrace.
At least in some cases, e.g. when multiple devices that are logged into their respective Google accounts are using that IP, and Google knows what location those usually reside at when together.
I've had Google pop up reliable location results for me, to the granularity of a small town, even if they had no information about me specifically to help them deduce this. It doesn't always happen though.
It's an uniquely American thing (Canada does it too, but access is regulated much more tightly).
This one[2] I could get reliable results from for free, but it seems to be "under maintenance" right now. Twillio just offers it as a service at 1 cent per number.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNAM [2] https://www.sent.dm/resources/phone-lookup
Is there a single company out there making it's money selling access to an area code database? GeoIP databases are much higher resolution and use active scanning methods like ping timing. If a company was spam calling me to estimate distance based on call connection lag, yes that would be surveillance capitalism.
Phone number assignments are mostly public, you don't really need to pay for this information, but there are certainly those who will sell it to you.
Of course, phone numbers don't really tie you to a rate center anymore, but a rate center is often much more geographically specific than an address for a large ISP. What I've seen near me, is a rate center often ties the number to a specific community. Larger cities often have several rate centers, smaller cities may have their own or several small cities may have one. Of course, phone company wiring tends to ignore municipal boundaries.
On the other hand, most large ISPs tend to use a single IP pool for a metro area. Not all large providers do it that way, of course, and larger metro areas may be subdivided. You can't really ping time your way to better data there either, most of the last mile technology adds enough latency that you can't tell if the customer is near the aggregation point or far.
Calling geoip databases "surveillance capitalism" seems like a stretch. It might be used by "surveillance capitalism", but you don't really have to surveil people to build a geoip database, only scrape RIR allocation records (all public, btw) and BGP routes, do ping tests, and parse geofeeds provided by providers. None of that is "surveillance capitalism" in any meaningful sense.
How is it not? Most "normal" surveillance works the same way - you look up public records for the person you're going after, cross-reference them against each other somehow, and eventually find enough dirt on them or give up. This is surveillance, and it's being done by and in the interests of capitalism.
The most popular GeoIP database has a free tier that would easily work for this
The free tier does have limits on the number of API calls can you can make. But the good news is you don't have to use their API. You can download the database[1] and do all the lookups locally without having to worry about going over their API limits.
It consists of 10 CSV files and is about 45 MB compressed, 380 MB uncompressed. For just identifying US states from IP address you just need 3 of the CSV files: a 207 MB file of IPv4 address information, a 120 MB file for IPv6, and a 6.7 MB file that lets you lookup by an ID that you find in one of the first two the information about the IP address location including state.
It's easy to write a script to turn this into an SQL database that just contains IP ranges and the corresponding state and then use that with sqlite or whatever network database you use internally from any of your stuff that needs this information.
If you don't actually need Geo IP in general and are only adding it in order to block specific states you can easily omit IPs that are not mapped to those states which would make it pretty small. The database has 3.4 million IPv4 address ranges, but only 5 359 of them are listed as being in Mississippi. There are 1.8 million address ranges in the IPv6 file, and 3 946 of them are listed as being in Mississippi.
Here's how to get the Mississippi ranges from the command line, although this is kind of slow--the 3rd line took 7.5 minutes on my M2 Mac Studio and the 4th took almost 4 minutes. A proper script or program would be a lot faster.
grep ,MS,Mississippi, GeoLite2-City-Locations-en.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > 1
sed -e s/^/,/ -e s/$/,/ < 1 > 2
grep -f 2 GeoLite2-City-Blocks-IPv4.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > MS-IP4.txt
grep -f 2 GeoLite2-City-Blocks-IPv6.csv | cut -d , -f 1 > MS-IP6.txt
[1] URL=https://download.maxmind.com/geoip/databases/GeoLite2-City/download?suffix=tar.gz
curl -L -u userid:license_key $URL > db.tar.gzAlso there is no need to spend time parsing it yourself, there are plenty of existing libraries you can simply point at the file.
My comment said "database" and not "API" :)
Sure, but it is quite common for companies offering database access to offer that via an API to query the database on their server rather than letting customers download the whole database for local use.
It thus seemed worthwhile to make it clear that MaxMind does let you download the whole database.
As far as libraries go sure that's a possibility. But for people who just need a simple IP to country or IP to US state lookup and need that from a variety of languages it may be overall less annoying to make your own DB from the CSV files that just handles what you need and nothing more.
I've already got libraries for sqlite, MySQL, or both for every language I use where I need to do these lookups, and almost all the applications that need these lookups are already connecting to our databases. Add an IPv4_to_Country table to that database (that they are already using) and then it just a matter of doing a "select country_code from IPv4_to_Country where ip_low <= ? and ? <= ip_high" with the two '?'s replaced with the IP address we want to lookup, probably using a DB handle they already have open.
Many would find that a lot easier than adding a dependency on a 3rd party GeoIP library. Beside it being one more thing on each machine that needs periodic updating (or rather N more if you are working in N different languages on that machine), I believe that most of these libraries require you to have a copy of the download database on the local machine, so that's another thing you have to keep up to date on every server.
With the "make your own simple SQL DB" approach you just have to keep an up to date download from MaxMind on the machine that builds your SQL DB. After building the SQL DB you then just have to upload it to your one network DB server (e.g., your MySQL server) and all your apps that query that DB are up to date no matter what server they are on or what language they are in.
If you are building an sqlite DB for some of your apps, you do have to copy that to all the servers that contain such apps, so you don't totally escape having to do updates on those machines.
If making the SQL DB were hard then maybe reducing dependencies and reducing the number of things that need updates might not be worth it, but the CSV files are organized very sensibly. The scripts to make the SQL DBs are close to trivial if you've got a decent CSV parser in the language you are writing them in.
Personally I'd say none at all, unless the government itself provides it as a free service, takes on all the liability, and makes it simple to use.
It also defines personally identifiable information as including "pseudonymous information when the information is used by a controller or processor in conjunction with additional information that reasonably links the information to an identified or identifiable individual." But it doesn't specify what it means by 'controller' or 'processor' either.
If a hobbyist just sets up a forum site, with no payment processor and no identified or identifiable information required, it would seem reasonable that the law should not apply. But I'm not a lawyer.
Clearly, however, attempting to comply with the law just in case, by requiring ID, would however then make it applicable, since that is personally identifiable information.
I wonder what is a "commercially reasonable effort" for a non-commercial website to collect, accurately verify, and securely store everyone's identity, location, and age?Personally I'd say none at all, unless the government itself provides it as a free service, takes on all the liability, and makes it simple to use.
1. There are many commercial services that do identity verification. There are many other commercial websites that have tools to do identity verification themselves. There are industry published best practices for these types of activities. All of these are evidence that you could use to demonstrate how you are making a commercially reasonable effort.
2. It's completely irrelevant whether you consider your website "commercial" or not. The law defines which websites it applies to, based on the activities they engage in.
https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-45/chapter-38...
3. Since when does the government have to give you compliance tools for free in order to require something of you? This isn't the standard for anything anywhere. Compliance with the law is often quite expensive. Honestly, buying an identity verification service is pretty cheap in the spectrum of compliance costs.
If a hobbyist just sets up a forum site, with no payment processor and no identified or identifiable information required, it would seem reasonable that the law should not apply. But I'm not a lawyer.
You don't have to guess whether or not this is reasonable or not. If you read the law, you'll see that it says it only applies to sites that collect personally identifiable information.
From the above link, again:
"Digital service" means a website, an application, a program, or software that collects or processes personal identifying information with Internet connectivity."Personal identifying information" means any information, including sensitive information, that is linked or reasonably linkable to an identified or identifiable individual. The term includes pseudonymous information when the information is used by a controller or processor in conjunction with additional information that reasonably links the information to an identified or identifiable individual. The term does not include deidentified information or publicly available information.
As you say, IP geolocation is unreliable. Unfortunately that's the only option. If it is technologically impossible to comply with the law, you just gotta do the best you can. If someone in MI gets a weird IP, there's absolutely nothing any third party can do. That's on the ISP for not allocating an appropriate IP or the legislators for being morons.
I run a geolocation service, and over the years we've seen more and more ISPs providing official geofeeds. The majority of medium-large ISPs in the US now provide a geofeed, for example. But there's still an ongoing problem in geofeeds being up-to-date, and users being assigned to a correct 'pool' etc.
Mobile IPs are similar but are still certainly the most difficult (relative lack of geofeeds or other accurate data across providers)
This is mostly because of how APNs / G-GNS / P-GW systems work. E.G. you may have an APN that puts you straight in a corporate network, and the mobile network needs you to keep using that APN when roaming. This is why your roaming IP is usually in the country you're from, not the one you're currently in.
I've heard of local breakout being possible, but never actually seen it in practice.
How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?
It's a good question. Maybe something with interstate commerce laws?
That loophole got closed once inter-state data sharing became possible and Oregon merchants were required to start collecting those out-of-state taxes at the point of sale.
people evading taxes
Avoiding taxes. It's different. It was always perfectly legal to travel to another state to buy something expensive and bring it back home. No crimes were committed.
It was a loophole that you could buy in Oregon specifically to avoid $1,000s in sales taxes.
It was always perfectly legal to travel to another state to buy something expensive and bring it back home.
It was legal to do that. If it was purchased out of state with the intent of bringing it back home, then (assuming the home state was California) California use taxes were always owed on it. Other states with sales taxes also tend to have similarly-structured use taxes with rates similar to the sales tax rates.
They were legally avoiding sales taxes, but also illegally evading use taxes, and, moreover, there is very little reason for the former if you aren't also doing the latter, unless you just have some moral objection to your taxes being taken at the point of sale and the paperwork and remittance to the government being done by the retailer instead of being a burden you deal with yourself.
AFAIK it's not that Oregon changed anything, either. It's that Washington passed additional laws that require out-of-state merchants to collect the tax when selling to customers in WA, and said out-of-state merchants complied.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/17-494_j4el.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Dakota_v._Wayfair,_Inc.
Prior to this ruling, if you were a merchant in state A and you mailed something to someone in State B, you were not considered to have an economic nexus in state B, and hence state B had no jurisdiction over you to enforce sales tax collection.
Previous definitions of economic nexus involved having physical buildings or employees operating within a jurisdiction's boundaries.
South Dakota v Wayfair said that mailing something to a customer established economic nexus in the customer's jurisdiction, hence the merchant now has to register as a business in the customer's jurisdiction and collect applicable sales taxes and follow all the laws of that jurisdiction.
The whole ruling is weird though, because the justification came down to it's messing up the order of things, and since Congress can't be bothered to fix it with legislation, the Courts have to make up stuff to prolong the status quo.
I’ve never understood people like you that say anything and everything to increase taxes.
How does it make any rational or logical sense that you should pay higher taxes for something?
So when you go to Delaware that has 0% sales taxes, you make sure to log everything and pay taxes to your home state upon return?
So when you go to Delaware that has 0% sales taxes, you make sure to log everything and pay taxes to your home state upon return?
If you don't, you are technically violating the law. All states with sales tax also have a use tax.
For example, if you are a resident of neighboring Maryland, this is the form you'd need to fill out for purchases you make in Delaware.
https://www.marylandcomptroller.gov/content/dam/mdcomp/tax/f...
It’s called a ‘use tax’. In practice, nobody pays (personal) use tax, myself included.
Washington has a use tax: https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/use-tax
California has a use tax: https://cdtfa.ca.gov/taxes-and-fees/use-tax/
Idaho has a use tax: https://tax.idaho.gov/taxes/sales-use/use-tax/online-guide/
So, all of those people going to Oregon to shop without sales tax and not paying use tax were technically breaking the law, not using a loophole. I’m not judging them, I don’t pay use tax either :)
I understand it used to be possible to show ID in store and have sales tax not be applied, but now you need to submit receipts and etc.
Now, buying a fancy computer or something... but a car?
How would that have ever worked for a car in OR as a CA resident? You don't need inter-state data sharing when you have to register the newly-purchased car with the CA DMV and fill out the form saying you bought it inside or outside of CA.
I haven't seen it as much in WA, but I used to see a lot of Oregon plates on new vehicles in Northern California where I had reason to believe the driver was a resident of CA. I do know someone who was pulled over for driving like a Californian while having out of state plates, so there's some enforcement that way anyhow. (Changed several lanes from the fast lane to the exiting lane in a continuous motion)
That loophole got closed once inter-state data sharing became possible and Oregon merchants were required to start collecting those out-of-state taxes at the point of sale.
Oregon merchants are not required to collect sales tax for any other jurisdictions outside of Oregon. And they don’t, any non Oregonian can go to any merchant in Oregon right now, and you will be charged the same as any other customer who lives in Oregon.
Also, it was never a loophole to buy things in Oregon to evade sales tax. All states with sales tax require their residents to remit use tax for any items brought into the state to make up the difference for any sales tax that would have been paid had it been purchased in their home state.
It would be pretty crazy if you could kill someone in Arizona and then just walk over the border to California and not be able to be prosecuted…
New York governor rejects Louisiana's extradition request for doctor in abortion pill case
cough
I mean it would be absurd if an anti-death-sentence state started trying to extradite the executioners working in pro-death-sentence states for murder, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)
The Zone of Death is the 50-square-mile (130 km2) area in the Idaho section of Yellowstone National Park in which, as a result of the Vicinage Clause in the Constitution of the United States, a person may be able to theoretically avoid conviction for any major crime, up to and including murder
To enforce all this, states can sue companies and they can take steps to ensure companies can't do business in their state (so like maybe force ISPs to block Dreamwidth?).
When I get the time, I'll be hosting a site from my closet that allows anything short of csam and I will reject states like MS and TX. My final act will be to die. But I don't much want to live.
Clueless human, but what stops a company from ignoring these laws from certain states?
The threat of lawsuits.
How is this enforceable if a company doesn't have any infrastructure within that state?
If you are intentionally doing business in a US state, and either you or your assets are within the reach of courts in the US, you can probably be sued under the state's laws, either in the state's courts or in federal courts, and there is a reasonable chance that if the law is valid at all, it will be applied to your provision of your service to people in that state. Likewise, you have a risk from criminal laws of the state if you are personally within reach of any US law enforcement, through intrastate extradition (which, while there is occasional high-profile resistance, is generally Constitutionally mandatory and can be compelled by the federal courts.)
That's why services taking reasonable steps to cut off customers accessing their service from the states whose laws they don't want to deal with is a common response.
That sounds a lot like regulating cross-state commerce, which is traditionally the purview of the federal government.
Except for very specific things that are forbidden to the states in Art. I Sec. 10, or where Congress has specifically closed off state action in its own actions under the Interstate Commerce Clause, states retain the ability to regulate commerce in manners that impact interstate commerce so long as they do not discriminate against interestate commerce compared to in-state commerce in such regulations.
There is a certain group in the USA that is working hard on undermining the rights of the people of America, the enemies, foreign and domestic, per se; and this is part of their plank to control speech through fear and total control and evisceration of anonymity.
I support controlling access to porn for children, especially since I know people who were harmed and groomed by it, but these types of laws are really just the typical liar’s wedge to get the poison pill of tracking and suppression in the door.
I hope some of the court cases can fix some of these treasonous and enemy acts by enemies within, but reality is that likely at the very least some aspects of these control mechanisms will remain intact.
If it really was about preventing harm against children, then they would have prevented children from accessing things, not adults. But that’s how you know it’s a perfidious lie.
This MS situation is just another step towards what they really want, total control over speech, thought, and what you are able to see and read.
This MS situation is just a kind of trial balloon, a probe of the American people and the Constitution and this thing we still call America even though enemies are within our walls dismantling everything.
As you may have read, in MS they are trying to require all social media companies to “…deanonymize and age-verify all users…” …… to protect the children, of course. So you, an adult, have to identify yourself online in the public square that is already censored and controlled and mapped, to the government so it can, e.g., see if you oppose or share information about the genocide it is supporting … to protect Mississippi children, of course.
(It is possible for state charges existing to make other actions federal crimes, though, e.g., there is a federal crime of interstate travel to avoid prosecution, service of process, or appearance as a witness. But state charges themselves can't get "bumped up" to the federal level.)
I appreciate that not all modern post 1776 democracies are the same, but in Australia, whose constitution was informed hugely by the US constitution, Federal communications law takes supremacy over states, and states laws cannot constrain trade between the states. There are exceptions, but you'd be in court. "trade" includes communications.
So ultimately, isn't this heading to the FCC, and a state-vs-federal law consideration?
-Not that it means a good outcome. With the current supreme court, who knows?
With the current supreme court, who knows?
In his concurring opinion, Justice Kavanaugh said it was likely unconstitutional (but apparently not obviously enough to enjoin it)[1]. So it's going into effect, then the lawsuit follows.
Similar laws in California, Arkansas and Ohio were all found unconstitutional, so I am hopeful. That said, these were all district court decisions, and all of them are being appealed. When they lose on appeal, they go to the Supreme Court for (hopefully) the final smack-down.
Interestingly, reading the summary MS HB1126[2], this law is doing two things. It regulates companies and defines crimes.
States are allowed to set their own criminal codes. If Mississippi drops the mandate part and passes a new law that simply defines certain things as crimes with corresponding penalties, that law would probably be constitutional.
[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a97_5h25.pdf
States are allowed to set their own criminal codes. If Mississippi drops the mandate part and passes a new law that simply defines certain things as crimes with corresponding penalties, that law would probably be constitutional.
States have limits to what things they define as crimes. Defining certain type of trade to be criminal is regulating trade. And regulating interstate trade is reserved for Congress. Yet, many state laws criminalize some commerce, and case law has expanded interstate commerce to often include sales where the buyer, seller, and manufacturer are all in the same state... consistency is not a strength of our system.
We've let states set their own "internet services" taxes, making selling anything online in the US a regulatory nightmare. A third-party vendor to manage (and keep up with) the tax laws to stay compliant is basically required for anyone selling online, or risk the wrath of various state tax bodies.
However, it doesn't apply to news sources, online games or the content that is be made is by the service itself or is an application website.
What is an "application website"? I can't seem to find how they're defining that.
My understanding is that this is similar to the law the UK passed recently except instead of verifying age of users for "adult" content, every platform needs to verify (and log) age of all users for all content?
It can't possibly be that ridiculous.
https://law.justia.com/codes/mississippi/title-45/chapter-38...
That's probably what the wikipedia author meant to say
does that also mean that all social media platforms will start a small jobs board?
Putting a small jobs board on instagram would not make instagram "primarily function" as a job application website. LinkedIn is primarily a professional networking website - it qualifies.
I’m not being glib. Honestly, why can’t I? There’s precedent for saying that’s unauthorized access, so the feds (not the state; “Interstate Commerce Clause” and all that) should prosecute the visitor for violating my ToS.
The laws are written in a way where the responsibility for enforcement falls on the operator of the business. In both cases, the business doesn't actually have to verify anything if they don't want to, but if it's found that they're allowing violations to happen, they will be held legally responsible.
Since some idiotic courts have ruled a website’s Terms of Service to be legally binding, why can’t I just say no one from Mississippi is allowed to access my site and be done with it?
That would allow you, perhaps, to sue people from MS that used your site for violating the ToS (though, "some idiotic courts have ruled" does not mean "the courts which actually create binding precedent over those that would adjudicate your case have ruled...", so, be careful even there.) But that doesn't actually mean that, if someone from MS used your site and you took no further steps to prevent it you would not be liable to the extent that you did not comply with the age verification law.
There’s precedent for saying that’s unauthorized access, so the feds (not the state; “Interstate Commerce Clause” and all that) should prosecute the visitor for violating my ToS.
Most things in interstate commerce, except where the feds have specifically excluded the states, are both federal and state jurisdiction, but neither the feds nor the state are obligated, even if applicable law exists which allows them to, to prosecute anyone for violating your ToS. You can (civilly) attempt to do so if you are bothered by it.
why can’t I just say no one from Mississippi is allowed to access my site and be done with it?
So, I'm genuinely curious about this. Does the US not require any kind of territorial nexus in order for a jurisdiction's laws to apply to an individual? Can Texas criminalise abortions in New York, by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers? This seems very unlikely to me.
Under private international law, very generally speaking, you tend to require a nexus of some kind (otherwise, we'd all be breaking Uzbekistani laws constantly). I assume there must exist some kind of nexus requirement in US federal constitutional law too.
Assuming you have no presence, staff, offices, or users in a state, and you expressly ban that state in your T&C, why would that state's laws apply to you at all? You're not providing any services from or to that state, and in as far they can open your landing page, that's sort of like saying they can call your phone number. And in the absence of that state's laws applying at all, would not any requirements about geoblocking etc that may exist in those laws be moot?
(Usual risk calculus would seem to apply re over-zealous state prosecutors, etc.)
Dreamwidth has been at the forefront of banning large swaths of the internet. They started doing it years before anyone else. Before the for-profit corporate spidering of HTTP/S content even began causing issues. This is well trod territory and entirely familiar for them and their upstream network provider they like to blame their inability to fix it on.
If you have a competitor, you can hire a bunch of Mississippians to access their website by VPN, collect evidence of them doing so, and then report them to have the shit fined out of them. It will pierce their corporate veil and leave them personally bankrupted, ending their website.
Pornhub and BlueSky have done similar in response to this legislation in Texas. Wikipedia and a few other sites blocked the UK to avoid being burdened by their Safety act. Pretty much every streaming platform implements regional geo blocking for licensing reasons.
I’ll be curious to see how things shake out in the long run given the current political climate.
How is this vaguely sufficient to meet the legal requirements of the law?
It may not be, if the law can be applied to them.
OTOH, may be sufficient to make it illegal to apply the law to them in the first place. US states do not have unlimited jurisdiction to regulate conduct occurring outside of their borders, but they do have more ability to regulate conduct of entities intentionally doing business within their borders.
Also, for the enforcement agency who is/will be tasked with checking things out here...do they know whether geo-blocking is valid method or not? Its a silly law, don't get me wrong...but if its enforcement validation mechanisms are not up to snuff, i wonder how things will play out - both here in dreamwidth's case and other folks in a similar boat?
This is just the start and the trial balloons. The enemy within is a bit nervous about this attack on the most fundamental freedom that the Constitution is protecting, free speech, but they’re also very confident in themselves.
If they make an honest attempt to comply and a small number of people using VPNs slip through the cracks, if they're ever reported, they'll likely be given a slap on the wrist at most. If they ignore the law or do some obvious half assed attempt to comply and thousands of Mississippi users are still using their site and they get reported, it's far less likely that a judge will be lenient.
The end game here is total control and awareness of who is saying what at any time, in order to allow those messages to be thwarted.
Most areas of governance usually give years of preparation ahead of anything actually being enforced. This is so short-sighted.
Surprising how quickly everyone is expected to comply with these laws - within a week you're supposed to block what could be a portion of your user base?
But the law was signed over a year ago[1]? The recent development was that the injunction blocking the bill from being implemented got struck down. I'm not sure what you'd expected here, that the courts delay lifting the injunction because of the sites that didn't bother complying with the law, because they thought they'd prevail in court?
For example, these days in Russia awareness and usage of VPN is well beyond any normal country. With Facebook and IG for example blocked for Meta being officially branded an "extremist organization" (by the way Taliban was taken off that list recently, so what do you guys in Menlo Park are cooking what is worse than Taliban? May be some freedom of speech? :) people in Russia of all strata is still using it, now through VPN, many from mobile devices. The thing of note from USSR/Russia here is that habitual violation of unreasonable laws breeds wide disrespect for the system of law as a whole, and it i very hard to reverse the flow.
It is possible some US States and maybe the UK will end up like China.
True, but the next thing, will VPNs be forced to age verify eventually ?
it is like age verifying current generic access to the Internet. Sure, we'll come to this too (the anti-utopias aren't fiction, it is future :), yet we still don't verify such a generic access because it isn't the time yet, the society isn't yet totalitarian enough.
As a preview - in Russia (i'm less familiar with China to comment on it) they do already attack VPN by making it illegal to advertise it, something like this.
Cut the ignoramuses from the US internet until they can learn to be decent people. Serves them right, and well, legally.
very incurious/very unhacker
Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat.
Reminds me of Silicon Valley. PiperChat has grossly violated COPPA as there was no parental consent form on the app leading to a 21 billion dollar fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3zU7sV4bJE
You can't have it both ways. Tech oligarchy is just another road to fascism city.
I leave my home computer network open to the public and now suddenly I'm liable to some random jurisdiction around the world because someone in that location decides to call my computer?
China's GFW seems benign in comparison
I was totally ready to consider blocking US IP ranges too, if there was a good reason. I run a small business and 0% of my customers are overseas.
And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with
Since you can't really block all state IPs, but also since prosecution isn't bound by honesty, this retaliatory risk doesn't decrease much (though hard to assess precisely).
Google have additional information about IP addresses that updates dynamically based on cell phone, wifi and other magic usage so maybe ask them if they have some javascript that queries their site for more specific city/state details. Also call Pornhub and ask how they were blocking specific states to meet legal requirements.
Tough for the neighbors, but nitpicking "resident" is not a good choice here.
https://www.wired.com/story/bluesky-goes-dark-in-mississippi...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44990886 ("Bluesky Goes Dark in Mississippi over Age Verification Law (wired.com)"—175 comments)