Re: Guest Post - 1st amendment issues?

1

I was wondering when the Hulk Hogan thing would come up. I'm still confused.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 7:58 AM
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Yes, that's the tape that the trial was about.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 7:58 AM
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I didn't watch it. My personal theory is that whenever somebody with the sobriquet "the Love Sponge" is involved, it's their fault.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:00 AM
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My thoughts on the Hogan/Gawker suit are too complicated to go into right now, but with regard to Spotify, as long as you use the service a lot the Discover Weekly playlist algorithm is surprisingly good. In terms of finding human-curated lists, what I do is find people/publications whose taste accords with mine and follow their playlists. It helps, though, that a) I know a bunch of music journalists, b) there's another prolific playlist creator I happen know through his games and comics writing whose tastes are eerily similar to mine - like, he wrote an entire comic based on references to the Pipettes, the Long Blondes and Kenickie.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:06 AM
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I've mostly been listening to Taylor Swift and that song where the guy says, "My name's blurry face and I care what you think."

I have horrible taste.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:09 AM
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Not personally involved with the Hulk Hogan thing but this is way too close to what I do for a living to talk about for free in public on the internet. You can pay my rate if you want. Maybe I'll just show up to call people stupid without any further elaboration.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:15 AM
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Is "you're a moron" legal advice? I guess the answer is "sometimes."


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:17 AM
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6: You have sex on videotape for a living?


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:19 AM
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7: Only if you say "There's a colourable argument that..." first.


Posted by: Ginger Yellow | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:20 AM
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For some definitions of sex, yes.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:21 AM
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How are people (OK, you kids) listening to music these days?

The last step of setting up my new computer was copying my iTunes library(ies) of about a thousand MP3s over, but I haven't listened to it in months. Music doesn't generally help me concentrate on something I have to think about. If I'm doing a mindless or creative task alone while on my computer or in the same room as it then I might put my library on shuffle, but if I'm trying to think about the details of something, I generally find music to be an unhelpful distraction.

The form in which I actually have listened to music recently is Pandora. Put a playlist on, leave it there until the guests leave.


Posted by: Cyrus | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 8:59 AM
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6. Could you comment briefly on the quality of the analysis in the linked article? I can't tell if it's slanted or misguided, since I do not know the field. It reads logically with apparently good sources, but maybe is somehow srewy.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:10 AM
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I'm a Spotify user, primarily because of the ability to store albums/playlists locally on my phone. I never even dig out the portable HD with all my ripped music anymore, unless it's to play an obscure local act from the 90s that hasn't made it onto Spotify. (Caroline Records needs to get on the stick, damnit.)

The only weak spot is discovering the occasional artist who just isn't on Spotify at all, presumably because of pitiful streaming payments. (I was happy to see that Rammstein has recently shown up.) I swear I would happily pay $10 extra a month if the money would go straight to the artists I stream, but the power of essentially having all of the world's music accessible for a flat fee is just too awesome to keep me away, even though I know artists are getting ripped off.


Posted by: Chopper | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:12 AM
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12 - I know the author well, like any journalist not perfect and I don't agree with all of it, but that's as good an analysis as you'll get in the media.


Posted by: RT | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:15 AM
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I won't read the analysis or anything, but my take on the Hulk Hogan/Gawker suit is that Gawker's original article giving a dry news-like play-by-play of the sex tape was funny as anything.


Posted by: Megan | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:19 AM
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I only listen to music on celebrity sex tapes.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:24 AM
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Is "you're a moron" legal advice? I guess the answer is "sometimes."

I assume you offered that at a discounted rate. Do you have a Paypal account, or can we just send a check?


Posted by: Jesus McQueen | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:41 AM
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The Hulk Hogan verdict is good news for people who participated in sex tapes, especially without their own knowledge,* and bad news for people who enjoy watching celebrity sex tapes on major media web sites. There may be some effect on those who enjoy watching sex tapes on places like reddit or pornhub, but probably much less. Although I'm more in category 2 than category 1 personally, I think it's a good result.

Obviously if it's reversed on appeal the "good news/bad news" reverses. My guess is the liability will not be reversed, but the amount of damages will be reduced to something that won't put Gawker out of business.

*There was some dispute about whether Hulk Hogan knew he was being taped. The jury decided that he didn't.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:51 AM
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Is there going to be a new thread for the Jian Ghomeshi verdict (he was found guilty of genocide or something), or should this be it?


Posted by: lurid keyaki | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 9:59 AM
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19: that sure is surprising (to me).


Posted by: nosflow | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:02 AM
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19 Yeah, better make one for Karadzic too. Combine them? Not sure how Big Ears Teddy would feel about that.


Posted by: Barry Freed | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:05 AM
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Do they not have trial by jury for crimes in Canada, or what? Glad we got free of the yoke of crown tyrrany.


Posted by: R Tigre | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:05 AM
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I'm kind of hoping the Hogan verdict drives Gawker out of business. They are nasty tabloid assholes. That they often go after people I despise doesn't change the fact that they publish stuff that's got nothing to do with journalism and everything to do with bullying and harassment. Good riddance to them.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:09 AM
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Gawker is horrible, celebrity culture is horrible.

Information that's involuntarily leaked (say a cache of internal email) but of public interest seems to me like the real issue, and this case sets a precedent for how publishing that will be treated. Pushing releases of this kind of information into the shadows is bad, since having someone say "here's the information we received, published without further tampering" is valuable. I don't have special insight into how best to balance privacy and this kind of publishing. But this is about more than a greedy gossip website.


Posted by: lw | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:32 AM
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the Jian Ghomeshi verdict

Oh wow. Not what I expected, and I haven't been following the trial. I expect there'll be a good long piece about that soon.


Posted by: ogged | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:42 AM
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If this is becoming the open thread, can somebody (Sifu?) explain to me how you stop this happening if you put machine learning software on the web?


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:48 AM
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I'm with Jennifer Lawrence on hacked celebrity tapes/pics: non-consumption is the only decent choice.

I didn't find the article particularly useful in discussing the legal arguments underlying the summary judgment rulings and jury instructions. We'll likely see much better press pieces after the Fl dist ct app rules.

There is, hypothetically, an amount of money I'd take to litigate in Florida state court, but it's at least twice my normal hourly rate. (That's after a couple of experiences . . .)


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 10:50 AM
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26: Really, not much. People will stop doing things like that once the lulz wears off.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 11:00 AM
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25: I hadn't been following it closely, but had picked up from somewhere that 3 of the accusers had written sexually-explicit, friendly emails or messages to him after the events complained of. Maybe my e-discovery focus made me alert to that news.

A fourth accuser's trial, which may not have those problems, isn't done yet


Posted by: idp | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 11:18 AM
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28: The problem is there's a new, lulz-less person born every minute.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 11:21 AM
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26: "if you put machine learning software on the web". Don't do that! Or, well, know in advance that this kind of thing will happen, and build in filters/blacklists/monitoring from the beginning.

I'm finding the coverage of it a little misleading - it would be one thing (bad, but interesting) if it had picked up these habits from the existing internet (by taking in all of Twitter as a firehose of training, or similar), and at least the headlines of articles like the one you link imply that.

But this was intentionally abused by trolls, and you have to expect and prepare for that when you put something out there. Microsoft deserves a lot of flack for not having done so.


Posted by: Nathan Williams | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 11:24 AM
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Speaking of technology and privacy, this is remarkable.


Posted by: NickS | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 1:23 PM
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33

Somebody broke Crooked Timber.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 1:25 PM
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34

Nevermind. Now it works.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 1:27 PM
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29: The thing is, it's not at all uncommon for victims of sexual assault by someone they know to contact the person afterwards to try to contextualize their experience and force-fit it into a framework that isn't as traumatic as what actually happened. The three in this case lied about it, which blew their credibility to hell with the judge.


Posted by: togolosh | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 1:58 PM
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I mainly make mix CDs from iTunes with lots of songs burned from YouTube to MP3 so I can play them in the car Or when I am On the computer I play albums off of YouTube or the old songza which is now a google thing


Posted by: Lenny caution | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 4:04 PM
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35: I'm just confused about why the prosecutor wouldn't have unearthed their lies as they were prepping the witnesses. Don't they comb through e-mails etc as if they were doing opposition research on their own witness?


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 5:12 PM
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Slate has an an article on the Ghomeshi trial...

...for what it's worth


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 5:25 PM
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A Twitter Feed with a lot more detail than the Slate article, including the judges written verdict, while still very pro-complainant


Posted by: bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 5:33 PM
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35: these emails were more than 10 years ago. It's plausible that the senders didn't have them any more, but the defendant did. In most US courts at least, the defendant would not have to provide them before trial.


Posted by: Unimaginative | Link to this comment | 03-24-16 5:55 PM
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I yell at Alexa (my Amazon Echo) to play whatever random song comes into my head at that moment. Drives my wife crazy.


Posted by: Spike | Link to this comment | 03-25-16 12:21 PM
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