Bonfire for the Vain

Since someone has both relevant precedent of incitement and stated intent of recidivism (illegally), a reminder from 419 years ago:

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 'twas his intent
To blow up the King and the Parliament
Three score barrels of powder below
Poor old England to overthrow
By God's providence he was catch'd
With a dark lantern and burning match…

I hope to be wrong, at least regarding "gunpowder [and] treason" (I'm already correct about "plot," I'm afraid). I am not optimistic.

Enemies

The best thing about Tuesday at 2000 PST will be that there will be no more election commercials (around here, anyway; Honolulu will have a few more hours of suffering). The worst thing about getting my hour stolen by Midwestern agricultural interests from this morning's end of Daylight Savings Time back is that it added an hour for more election commercials. Even the attack ads don't actually attack real vulnerabilities or manage to be even mildly entertaining.¹ So how about a story? I'm not promising much entertainment value, though…

Once upon a time, a US president had his list of enemies — which should not have been surprising, as two decades before he had been a HUAC member who repeatedly lamented its failure to go far enough. There was enough disdain for that… foul-mouthed bigot… that a position on that enemies list was for some a badge of honor.

Not today. Today, being on that enemies list has an undercurrent of fear, with a crescendo of historical echoes from across the world. It should not escape attention that the true echo of each of these suppressions has been economic disaster, both short and long-term. But it will.²

No matter. I volunteer (I don't have much left to lose). I volunteered in the 70s to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I don't see any reason to stop. Put me on the damned enemies list. <SARCASM> Admittedly, I'm nowhere near prominent enough to merit such individualized attention, but then that's true of about 2/3 of Nixon's list, too. Give me the ego boost of being an "enemy" of the despicable, of the deplorable. C'mon, man, you understand the importance of ego boosts with little or no relationship to actual achievements, to reality, right? There are exactly fifty-seven childless catladies in the Special Counsel's office at this time!³ </SARCASM>

Oh, wait, the "enemies list" will consist largely of people who can't, or won't, fight back — just like a third-grade playground bully. Go ahead. Try me. Just don't throw me in that courtroom, Brother Rat… and perhaps remember that those who would silence and demonize dissent and dissenters⁴ are the un-Americans lacking any sense of decency. We've been here before.

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1. For example, one initiative around here wants to eviscerate a small payroll tax, based on employees… but it's being sponsored by a hedge-fund manager and his cronies, almost all of whom get the majority — or even entirety — of their incomes from activity that isn't subject to a payroll tax, like "stock options" and "capital gains" and such. There has been not one word in counter-ads, or in the local media, regarding the disjuncture of interests — or actual motivation — of the sponsors. No speculation in non-mainstream outlets. Not even any obvious comedy routines.
2. It's also worth remembering that widespread economic disasters often leave the pre-disaster ultrarich and upper classes with an even firmer grip on power than they had before, but that's the sort of thing that requires actual scholarly concentration to pick out from the background noise.
3. As proof that I'm either a fellow traveler (despite my strong canine preference) or a bad influence on future generations, on the first trip to the grocery store after I showed him this movie, my son pointed out the "Commie Sauce" on the shelf as we passed…
4. For many, many senses of dissent, dissenters, and just plain Other. This is just a few examples that didn't even reach childless catladies and dogloving parents.

Indigestion

It's what's for election season.

• So Uncle Jeff thinks blocking his editorial staff from making an endorsement in this election cycle is appropriate, that what "presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias — a perception of non-independence" [punctuation from transcript corrected], does he? Really? Perhaps he might have had some ground to stand on if he had announced this as a "new policy" when he bought the paper over a decade ago. In the same interview, he admitted that the timing was wrong. The current-events moment to have made this announcement was in the days after Harris was selected as the Democratic nominee, at which time that itself (a major-party nominee who was a last-minute substitute) would have been appropriate cover. But noooooooo, he had to wait until his editorial board had already prepared the endorsement and was only hours from actually announcing it.

  Bluntly, media moguls are corrupt assholes with massive conflicts of interest. Virtually all of them — even those with whom I (occasionally or even largely) agree. At least Bezos isn't starting a war, right? Well, maybe lending credence to a potential civil war — because he's wrong. Some undecided voters will "go[] with Newspaper A's endorsement," and even those who don't will get further education because in this media environment, "source reliability and verification" really does matter. Once upon a time, the WaPo stood for being a civic fucking watchdog; I can't say that any more. (And get rid of the paywall on the front page — if you aspire to being "the paper of record," you've got to be of record.)

• Over the weekend, I snidely remarked on whether A Certain Candidate is a fascist, concluding that the evidence of significant personality disorders may indicate otherwise. That doesn't exclude anything regarding his "friends," however; some of them almost certainly are fascists (or at least fascist-adjacent), in a way that should inform your vote. Any rumors that Leni Riefenstahl was the program director for last weekend's Four Hours of Hate are only implausible because she's long dead.
• Phew. That bloated sausage sure requires a palate cleanser! How about arts stuff? Like my natural habitat: Libraries. Turning more to intellectual property, chair designs from outside the EU must be given full copyright protection, and it appears that at least in France there shall be no market for second-hand "licensed" computer games. A little closer to home, it looks like I was right but for the wrong reasons about the Copyright Claims Board: Right that it wouldn't prove helpful to "small" claimants, but because it's largely not being used (not, as I had predicted, because it was inundated by porn purveyors). But away from IP itself, consider toxic fandom as described by a leading object of mindless fanboy worship (and fandom for Alan Moore has a very distinctly male aspect). OK, OK, that still leaves a rather nasty aftertaste…
• … so let's try a different palate-cleanser. While driving to the pharmacy in Seattle rain after lunch today, I was listening to the local NPR station's broadcast of the BBC News Hour. The main story was about climate-change-caused drought/flood alternations. The announcer plugged BBC's new Life at 50 Degrees series — just as I passed a bank's time-and-temperature display flashing "Temp 50". They're both right: Neither of them designate units…

Interrupted Afternoon

Listen, you idiots: I got my ballot a week and a half ago; I took it, properly filled out, to a drop box almost immediately; I posted an "I Voted" sticker on the door. Don't waste your time sending FKAs (Future Karens of America) around to ring my doorbell to convince me to vote for a "tax cut" referendum sponsored by a hedge-fund trader who moved to this no-state-income-tax state from a high-state-income-tax state after his fortune became self-sustaining. Neither cool nor productive. And definitely annoying.

• There's a contamination outbreak at McDonald's in progress. I'm not going to bother trying to keep up with current status — it's not being hidden — but I will speculate on the cause: Untrained workers who know nothing of food hygeine.
• Recently, some assertions have been raised by people with better direct access to certain facts than I concerning a certain candidate's mental fitness for office. <SARCASM> I question whether there's been sufficient examination of the subject individual to distinguish between DSM-5 301.81 (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) overlaid with sociopathic behavior and DSM-5 301.7 (Sociopathic Personality Disorder) overlaid with narcissistic behavior. </SARCASM> Meanwhile, he's also been accused of being a fascist, which is not entirely consistent with that nonclinical diagnosis; "fascism" is both methodological and ideological, and a true narcissist (or sociopath) doesn't look far enough beyond personal self-interest/self-aggrandizement to have a coherent ideology, let alone be consistent with it.

  On the other hand, this is all too similar to disputing which serial killer is the most despicable with choices limited to Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and Gary Ridgway. Once "serial killer" fits, degree of despicability is largely irrelevant. Once "unfit for office" fits, the exact reason among competing explanations is largely irrelevant. Although since I already voted, maybe nobody cares what I think.

• As yet another demonstration that state bars cannot effectively regulate the profession, the Washington bar has refused to discipline disgrace-to-the-profession Matt Shea. Whether one agrees or disagrees with his views, it's fundamental to the profession to neither violate an oath of office nor advocate violence in support of those views (especially when the two occur together) — and the presence or absence of criminal charges is irrelevant except as it goes to the reliability of the evidence at issue and perhaps — albeit not in this instance, as the bar relied upon in refusing to implement a disciplinary action — interference with pending process. There are times that violence may be the only means available — but that's never true for lawyers. Except, perhaps, the violence the profession does to language (which does not require military-grade automatic weapons or advocating atrocities).
• Sadly, that appears more effective than regulation of insurers (especially when the insurers collude with each other). Profiting from others' pain is just so admirable.
• On the lighter side — not literally, indeed rather the opposite literally — the American invasion of Europe is progressing. The spearhead units are oversized pickup trucks (and suburban assault vehicles).

The Nicest Garbage I've Ever Seen

So, if you actually need proof that Teh Orange One doesn't listen to what he's saying, even as he's saying it, consider the US as "a garbage can for the rest of the world" and further consider

• …what the rest of the world must be like if the US is a "garbage can" and the disadvantaged in the rest of the world still want to come here
• …what that implies about Trump's father, who Teh Orange One has claimed was born in Germany…
• …but wasn't; instead, it was Grandpa who was born in Germany and came to the US as an undocumented, unaccompanied minor (and draft dodger)

That all being true, as Darryl Rostow once noted, the US must have "the nicest garbage I've ever seen".

Or, I suppose he could just read the inscription on that statue in the harbor where he grew up.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
 
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

(emphasis added) Oh, wait, I see the problem: That's more than 140 characters, so he didn't read it (and wouldn't want to). It rather asks for the garbage — including Grandpa (and, for that matter, his opponent's parents, who came here on merit to study in prestigious graduate programs, which is what really irritates him).

And that you've gotten this far into this rather short entry — but much more than 140 characters — is rather the point.

A Halloween Sculpture

This public sculpture is the thing that scares a group of people who would never read this blawg, because they can't control it: Theocrats (and their ilk). Trick or subpoena treat!

Yes, I already voted. Over half the races on my ballot included an individual unfit for (any) public office, which says something rather distressing about the contemporary political process in the US.

• I don't often link to TNR; its proclamation that it has "independent reporting" is… puffery at best, and closer to deceptive branding/advertising. Despite that skepticism, sometimes it prints outside (that is, not written by staff) book reviews worth pondering, even when they fall short. The difficulty with Professor Lanham's approach is that it doesn't even mention the two barriers — familiar to anyone who understands either the scientific method or the more obstinately-classical Aristotelian logic — that make all varieties of "originalism" untenable as an unsupplemented deterministic method.

  Originalism necessarily assumes that texts have single, identifiable authors — even if that single, identifiable author is "a momentary agreement among individuals," such as "the US Constitutional Convention of 1787." As to the US Constitution itself, the very existence of both The Federalist Papers and The Antifederalist Papers — with their strident, contemporaneous, and often utterly incompatible interpretations, not to mention that there were members of the Constitutional Convention on both "sides." Contract disputes present a more-familiar problem; remember that by definition, a contract is supposedly formed only by a "meeting of minds." Then, too, there's the assumption that that author was a competent writer in the first place, who actually meant exactly what was written (and teh converse). So that's a theory-based problem.

  There's a much more disturbing dataset problem, especially as one gets farther in place or in time from the document(s) at issue. It's epitomized by this newpaper headline from last century:

  Dewey Defeats Truman!

  Recall that the Trib reached that result through a telephone poll of those it considered likely voters — which, if the data set had reached Mississippi, wouldn't have included very many descendants of slaves; which, closer to home, wouldn't have included those who didn't have telephones at home, or who didn't answer during their dinner hour, or who worked odd shifts or were otherwise away from home; it definitely wouldn't have included anyone in the military. In short the "public" from which the Trib drew its "facts" was nonrepresentative. It's even worse stretching to two and a half centuries ago; one might well wonder what Crispus Attucks would have thought "free persons" meant, but that would require that his writings had (a) considered the matter, (b) survived to the present, and (c) existed in the first place. Much the same for marginally-literate farmers. Or teh wimmin, who didn't have the right to vote, who didn't have the right to independently make and enforce contracts, who may have been residents but were certainly not thought of by the Founders as "citizens" (when thought of at all).

• This year's set of Nobel economics laureates (admittedly, the prize in economics is not technically a Nobel) is a collection of advocates for democracy (and implicitly for equality of rights). It's worth pondering how this fits in with upper-class politicians, especially those beholden to business interests.

  And, of course, congratulations to them and their fellow laureates in other fields.

• Languages evolve, sometimes (with official sanction) toward idiocy. But then, if mugging other languages in dark alleys (or even broad daylight) and going through their pockets for loose grammar and vocabulary were a crime, English would have been locked up centuries ago as a habitual and repeat offender (and at any trial, would have proclaimed not innocence but justification).

  Any relationship of this sausage to the others on this platter is entirely intentional — and purposely ambiguous.

Follow the Money

Reminder: If you took the US income-tax extension in April this year, your returns are due today. Which is both a sad "follow the money" in itself and an indirect issue with the following sausages, none of which leave a rich sensation behind.

• At least in Germany, wallpaper isn't like a mural when considering the right to photograph it. This rather inverts the ordinary result when the same conduct and similar copyrighted work get considered under the Eurocentric "fair dealing" framework versus the First-Amendment-centric "fair use" framework. I suspect that the latter was distorted by the problem with "The Original" in a way not immediately apparent in the opinions, but that's a suspicion only.
• Unfortunately, the "The Original" problem is not limited to the so-called fine arts: It also relates to recorded music, as demonstrated by the "ownership" of performance rights (not copyrights… at least outside the Sixth Circuit) in musical recordings in the US. The "owner" of the reproduction right is the possessor and physical owner of the "master recordings," recently epitomized by the Scooter Braun/Taylor Swift/rerecording of Swift's earlier albums fiasco. It's worth remembering that US law is a distinct outlier here, thanks to judge-made law (with more than a whiff of corruption) from the early part of the twentieth century, actually originating with photography and the 1870 Copyright Act. It's also worth remembering that even the "biggest" performance acts may not get paid (admittedly, it's a bit too historical for Generation Z, but at least it's not the Rat Pack).

  The fundamental problem with the entire chain of reasoning is that it grievously misstates the relevant facts and even-more-grievously ignores the "process versus product" problem, then slaps lawyerly/judicial misunderstandings of "what it takes to create a musical performance onto a 'master'" both at the origin of recorded music and now — especially when founded on analogies drawn from nineteenth-century photography and lithography. There are no heroes here, only antiheroes — which should surprise precisely no one. Even thinking about this makes me a bigger nerd than you expected, right?

• The same commercial pressures are impairing the advancement of the useful art of long-form fiction. "Author" is apparently an unduly dangerous occupation, anyway.

  It's not just Over There, either. An enterprising PhD student looking for a dissertation topic in behavioral economics could do far worse than examining how the two-and-a-half-century slide from "encourage" to "necessary and sufficient" has distorted "authorship." (It wouldn't hurt to note the irony of such research being done in the unpaid context of a "PhD dissertation," either.)

• Whether it's real property or larger swaths of the economy, money-laundering of ill-gotten financial capital (I'm looking at you, too, exploiters of scientific and advertising fraud) seems to be a Problem. <SARCASM> But surely that's never been a problem in either "common" or "rarified" arts, has it? We don't even need to consider outright theft…. </SARCASM>
• But at least that's overt corruption. (Which doesn't really make it much better.) That new flatscreen TV is stealing your soul — or at least information that should damned well remain private. One wonders if those content recognition systems extend to material routed in from one's recorded video collection… as might the owners of Potomac Video.

Cultivating Schadenfreude as Electoral Method

After having sat through three football (all kinds!) weekends of election commercials now, it's pretty clear to me which of the two major parties is the lesser evil. This time, anyway.

• The underlying meme of Jackass-sponsored (or coordinated-but-not-really-no-that-would-violate-election-finance-law PAC-sponsored) commercials is either about how Joe Voter can/will directly benefit, or about how The Other Side will actively hurt Joe Voter. When not attack ads based on personalities and distortions, that is.
• The underlying meme of Heffalump-sponsored (or coordinated-but-not-really-no-that-would-violate-election-finance-law PAC-sponsored) commercials is to ignore the Heffalumps' own accomplishments and instead focus on the pain the Heffalumps will inflict on the Other. When not attack ads based on personalities and distortions, that is.

Political commercials of any kind are bad enough; if they were for commercial ventures, they're so far beyond mere "puffery" that they're outright false advertising and unfair trade practices. But that underlying Heffalump meme is nothing more, and nothing less, than cultivating schadenfreude as an electoral method. Joe Voter is (supposed to be) swayed by the pain to be inflicted on The Other, regardless of whether there are actually any objective benefits to Joe Voter. <SARCASM> Increased suffering of refugees and other immigrants? Great! Who cares that the vast majority of their jobs are those that Joe Voter doesn't want? Increased suffering of sexual deviants? Even better! That'll help keep Ward and June in charge. Increased suffering of women with unwanted pregnancies? Not just better, but demanded by the original public meaning of "citizen" (which excluded women)! Plus, they're all ne'er-do-wells improperly competing for good jobs with white christian nationalist men anyway, they need to stay in the damned kitchen and raise the damned kids. </SARCASM>

Now before you think I've gone all partisan on you, this is a judgment of the moment. And the Jackasses, however much lesser an evil they are at present, still have a heart of darkness epitomized by (in alphabetical order) Madigan, McClain (not that one), Menendez, and Myers… and that's just (part of) the letter M, (part of) the corruption, entirely ignoring the — well — thoroughly post hoc rationalized and institutionalized ignorance. But it's a lesser evil than a party led by a convicted felon and sex offender, whose backup can't tell the difference between a fact and a rumor, with its own cohort of corruption (and problems with cows).

One might say that America deserves better; but in a representative democracy, there's an undercurrent that the electorate deserves exactly what it elects (which has an aftertaste of schadenfreude in itself). True dilemmas do exist. It remains important after "resolving" them, though, to do two things:

• Take appropriate, effective steps to avoid being put in that position again; and
• Remember that when choosing the lesser evil, one is still choosing evil — and that requires continued vigilence thereafter.

— 30 —

Thirty days until election day. Or, rather, the first election day for the presidency, thanks to an electoral college that today withstands just as much scrutiny as the original text of Article I § 2 cl. 3 — especially in light of their common flaw: Restricting full voice to "the right kind of people" beyond the mere facts of "citizenship" and "adulthood."

• OpenAI is possibly poised to become a profit-making corporation — that is, provide a measureable financial return to investors, in addition to any purported social benefits. The more-subtle change would be allowing outsiders direct influence on what benefits "the board" can establish as objectives (not to mention their operational priority)… because as a for-profit corporation, outsiders can buy enough voting control to "own" one or more seats on that board. (They can arguably do so for a benefit corporation, too, but it's harder.) Given the historical track record of too-early shifts from "basic science" to "economic exploitation of technology arising from basic science," like data brokers, that should scare you.
• In a remarkably-but-not-surprisingly myopic article, James Hibbert asks whether Disney is bad at Star Wars without engaging with the more-fundamental precondition: Is Star Wars badly conceived? I'm shocked — shocked, I say — to find a purported analysis of missteps in exploitation of an artistic property that does not consider missteps in creation of that artistic property. As a slight riff on the recently-deceased central character: I find your lack of questions… disturbing.
• Speaking of forgetting fundamental questions, a German court recently ruled that a specific large-model-inference dataset could rely on a German copyright-law defense to a claim of infringement. The fundamental question that was not asked concerns a confusion generally sidestepped in German copyright law but implicit in American copyright law: What kind of transformative process gives rise to a defense of transformative [fair] use, let alone when the concept of fair dealing (and not fair use) is at issue? That this failed of consideration in its US origin, too, doesn't help… especially given rejection of other defenses in the LAION decision at the lower-level court.
• One might also ask cui bono Big Music, but that's likely to be just as disturbing as the shadowing figures behind the previous two items. Not to mention just as difficult to discern — and just as subject to deception.
• Cui bono indeed when bankruptcy proceedings intervene! A Florida district court recently reached the (clearly) correct conclusion that termination rights are not extinguished by the creator's bankruptcy discharge (PDF at 18–27) without reaching the really, really hard question. It's pathetically easy on these facts to focus on the bankruptcy process, precisely due to the structures of the recorded-music industry. This enabled the court to evade the much harder question — whether, absent availability of the first clause of the § 101 definition of "work made for hire" (employee within the scope of duties), the claim in a contract that it concerns a "work made for hire" that is not eligible under the second clause in § 101 (the nine eligible categories for freelance works made for hire) makes it a work made for hire. That would have been a different question here because due to cui bono-flavored shenanigans followed by a technical correction, there's a clear textual-history determination that "a phonorecording" is not one of the eligible categories. (tl;dr The recorded-music industrial interests got phonorecordings included as a tenth category in an amendment to the 1976 Act, but that was rapidly reversed in another amendment.)
• As noted previously on this blawg, Braxton Bragg was a multidimensional loser (who was so inept that he "resigned" as army commander — under not-well-publicized pressure — after one of his many defeats) unworthy of having a military base named after him, regardless of (misplaced) "sons of the Confederacy" pride in the local community where the base is located. Why doesn't it surprise me that The Orange Menace proposes elevating that pride even further over reality by reinstating that traitor's name on a military base? Might "surprise" require inferring some knowledge of American history, even some knowledge of military principles, on the part of that individual, contrary to all other indications?

With One Stone

<SATIRE>

I've had a brilliant idea on how the Heffalumps can cast one stone and kill a bunch of annoying issues. It'll deal with the future of the nation; it'll deal with annoying immigrants (and, in particular, refugeesillegal immigrants);^† it'll have yuuuuuuuge public health benefits, with all of the best words.

Childless catladies have no stake in America's future, and therefore are un-American (in the most McCarthyist sense possible, regardless of which McCarthy we're talking about with the possible exception of the ventriloquist's dummy). We should round up all un-Americans, childless catladies first.

But what do we do with them then? Well, we've rounded them up, so they need to be put somewhere. I suggest a new concentration camp vacant houses…

…in Springfield, Ohio. In the part of town where Haitian refugees illegal immigrants have gathered, with the strain they're putting on public services.

And if the executive-branch candidate who currently represents Springfield in the US Senate is right, he'll also be ensuring that the refugeesillegal immigrants in that town have an accessible protein source that actually costs the government nothing! Well, except for the cost of the guards (but he'll probably find a lot of volunteers, so maybe not even that). The only real danger is that fans of one of those catladies might overrun the town and distract the guards…

— A Dog-loving Veteran With Kids

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†      However, we will make no inquiries whatsoever into whether Friedrich Drumpf was an unaccompanied, undocumented immigrant when he arrived in the US in 1885.

He's Still a Bastard

At the moment, I'm not referring to American electoral politics, at any level. At the moment (it could change…).

• A gentle reminder when choosing allies: Even if he's "our bastard," at the next opportunity he'll prove pretty definitively that he's still a bastard. (Partisan allegiance and gender immaterial.) Exhibit A: Cozying up to Stalin during the Second Thirty Years' War. Exhibit B: The Pahlevis, at any time. Exhibit C: Manuel Noriega, the US ally against the commie menace in Central America (just ignore that little drugs-and-violence side issue). Exhibit D: Ngô Ðình Diệm, and, for that matter, his successors (another prop-up-the-illusory-dominoes-no-matter-what ally). Sometimes we get to see that in real time … Exhibit E (no longer pending): Benjamin Netanyahu. The means used constrict the ends that can/will be achieved — so don't look/act so surprised that the Middle East is acting like, well, the Middle East for the last few millennia ("one bad bottle of tequila from all-out war"). I'm afraid that in the region within 1500km or so of 31°57'N 35°56'E, the present and historical leaders are almost all bastards.

  When no longer in panic mode, it's much easier to see that the enemy (of the moment)-of-my-enemy (of the moment) is not necessarily a friend — especially after considering the body count and assessing collateral damage. The difficulty is the near-constant state of panic…

• It's not just in politics, either. Although I'm no fan of judging a work of art by the character of its creator(s) — purported or indisputable — it's also almost impossible to fully isolate one from the other, especially once transferees are involved. In literature, in musical performance, in recorded music, or in anything else, the character of the rightsholders and creators manages to slime in.
• Once upon a time, purported freedom of contract was the meme underlying capitalist economies. For a while, anyway, we put a small brake on that meme. (This isn't unique to the US.) Recent developments look more like backsliding.

  This problem would be bad enough if just limited to labor law; some of the links in the preceding paragraph more than hint at this. The meme that "business should be able to do anything on which it can make an immediate profit without 'interference' from noncompetitor do-gooders" ignores that Adam Smith's works — the foundation of "modern" capitalism, even when not acknowledged — were in the realm of moral philosophy. Some business models are inherently deceptive, when they (barely) avoid total moral bankruptcy. And whether "moral" or not, any pretense that properly deployed deception is merely good business reduces Smith's "invisible hand" to a single finger — and you can probably guess which one.

• At least in the abstract, property rights are important; even in a (hypothetical and never-achieved) "purely communist" society in which all "means of production" are owned in common, property rights just shift to other aspects. Sometimes those property rights conflict, especially when deployed for noneconomic reasons, on both side of the dispute.
• It's not all about the Benjamins in the arts, though. Even when the creative no longer feels a need to save the world, the arts need to be placed in context.

Nonendorsement From a Dog-Loving Parent

…that is, about as far from a childless catlady as one can get…

OK, I lied; I will make an endorsement here. I hereby endorse ensuring that your voter registration is up to date (non-US citizens, too, but the link is for 'murikans). Many jurisdictions (not just US, either) have thirty-days-prior-to-election restrictions, such as not being allowed to vote in non-Federal elections if registration is updated less than 30 days prior to the election. And that's even more common outside the US.

• Although I'm hesitant to give this self-righteous jerk a platform, the MIT Technology Review already did, so the marginal damage is minimal. Chris Lewis bloviates — on behalf of the organization of which he is President, and I'm burying the lede here — that the Second Circuit's decision declaring that the Internet Archive's piracy is not protected by fair use will lead to the downfall of western civilization, brutal whipping of puppies, and destruction of all libraries anywhere. I'll grant that the current "ecosystem" is unfair to libraries, but this sort of "self-help" solution has already been rejected rather thoroughly in the context of book availability.

  If Apple is suggesting that Amazon was engaging in illegal, monopolistic practices, and that Apple's combination with the Publisher Defendants to deprive a monopolist of some of its market power is pro-competitive and healthy for our economy, it is wrong. This trial has not been the occasion to decide whether Amazon's choice to sell NYT Bestsellers or other New Releases as loss leaders was an unfair trade practice or in any other way a violation of law. If it was, however, the remedy for illegal conduct is a complaint lodged with the proper law enforcement offices or a civil suit or both. Another company's alleged violation of antitrust laws is not an excuse for engaging in your own violations of law. Nor is suspicion that that may be occurring a defense to the claims litigated at this trial.

  US v. Apple, Inc., 952 F.Supp.2d 638, 708 (S.D.N.Y. 2013) (emphasis added), aff'd, 791 F.3d 290 (2d Cir. 2015). (Ironically, many of the publishers Lewis would attack regarding their e-book pricing policies "pleabargained down" in that matter.)

  The real problem here is that Lewis is conflating publisher misconduct — and a pattern and practice of imposing publishing contracts that facially violate the Rule Against Perpetuities is certainly a window onto misconduct — with the impact on the author community of the so-called "CDL" (far worse than musicians legitimately complaining about Spotify). Any claim that his organization and/or the Kahlebros are merely engaging in "civil disobedience" paints the wrong house with too broad a brush, because those who will be most harmed by involuntary "CDL" acquisitions are the authors who have no control over pricing policies… and, because "commercial publishing" is in the strange position of being both an oligopoly and monopsony, never reaches the actual interior-decoration misconduct.

  Then, too, the broad brush spatters all buildings (and appurtenances) as if they convey only mere "fact," without regard to originality of expression. But that's for another time… and, more to the point, careful examination of the "lending records" to discern both (a) how much is nearly-pure creative expression like "fiction" and "poetry" and (b) how much it's just an attempt to move Grokster's goalposts without ever admitting that's what they're trying to do.

• Speaking of Apple, schade. It's worth pondering how this relates to the conduct at issue in US v. Apple; whether a quick note of parallels, a deeper examination of repeat behavior of (unpunished) natural-person miscreants, or a broad-ranging consideration of how bullying relates to multinational corporations, that pondering will be disquieting.
• As Judge Côte implied in that quotation above, there just might be an antitrust problem in the part of publishing that is Lewis's legitimate concern: Scientific (and quasiscientific) journals. (Keep in mind that, because PW has more conflicts of interest in reporting on industry financials than the world-champion catlady has cats, the financial figures appearing in the article substantially understate the profitability of those journals.) All before citations themselves go rogue, which is at the opposite end of the problem and reflects the "academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so low" meme.
• Interestingly, we may learn more about Ozymandias and other portions of the classical "canon" for which we have only fragmentary third-hand descriptions. Advocates of "original public meaning originalism" should ponder the equivalent — discovery of a trove of documents from the 1770s and 1780s reflecting the thoughts of ex-slaves (manumissed or otherwise) and how they used and understood terms like "person."
• Offered without further comment, there are changes afoot for prepublication review.