GioCities - politicshttps://blog.giovanh.com/2024-03-04T00:00:00-06:00CDL: The AAP is Wrong About Everything2024-03-04T00:00:00-06:002024-03-04T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2024-03-04:/blog/2024/03/04/cdl-the-aap-is-wrong-about-everything/<aside class="cb qualified">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is a follow-on to <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">CDL: Publishers Against Books</a>. You probably want to read that first! This is specifically about the lawsuit and its hollow arguments.</p>
</aside>
<aside class="cb recap">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>On June 1, 2020, all four major publishing companies (Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) sued the Internet Archive on the basis of copyright infringement. The publishing cartel (the trust <a href="https://publishers.org/who-we-are/our-board/">which makes up the Association of American Publishers</a>) accuses Internet Archive’s Open Library and the entire concept of Controlled Digital Lending of being in violation of publishers’ copyright.</p>
</aside>
<!-- MISSPELLING: CDL Copy -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Author's Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Authors' Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: American Association of Publishers -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: TAG/APP -->
<p>In going through these arguments, I’ll also be drawing from a few other sources, in order to give a more comprehensive description of the arguments being made. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief -->
<p>The <a href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a> is a document submitted to the court by The Authors Guild in support of the plaintiff’s argument.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: Reflections -->
<p><a href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a> is a victory-lap publication from the AAP, published after the summary judgement in favor of the plaintiffs. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<p>And there’s also <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>, written by the EFF in support of the Internet Archive, and whose arguments overlap a lot with mine.</p>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#willful-mass-infringement">Willful Mass Infringement</a></li>
<li><a href="#controlled-digital-lending-isnt-controlled">Controlled Digital Lending Isn’t Controlled</a></li>
<li><a href="#drm-is-insufficient-protection">DRM is insufficient protection</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright-holders-retain-the-right-to-control-the-ecosystem">Copyright holders retain the right to control the ecosystem</a></li>
<li><a href="#digital-books-are-fundamentally-different-in-terms-of-portability-and-durability">Digital books are fundamentally different in terms of portability and durability</a><ul>
<li><a href="#durability">Durability?</a></li>
<li><a href="#portability">Portability</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#its-reproduction-not-format-shifting">It’s reproduction, not format-shifting</a><ul>
<li><a href="#format-shifting-refresher">Format shifting refresher</a></li>
<li><a href="#no-injected-copies">No injected copies</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright-holders-do-not-have-an-exclusive-right-to-control-shifts-in-medium">Copyright holders do not have an exclusive right to control shifts in medium</a></li>
<li><a href="#fair-use-exemptions">Fair use exemptions</a></li>
<li><a href="#applying-accessibility-format-shifting-rationale">Applying accessibility format shifting rationale</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#its-not-format-shifting-because-it-isnt-the-copy-thats-made-available-remotely">It’s not format shifting because it isn’t the copy that’s made available remotely</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-copyright-holder-controls-all-forms-in-circulation-including-modifications-of-sold-copies">The copyright holder controls all forms in circulation, including modifications of sold copies</a><ul>
<li><a href="#rebinding">Rebinding</a></li>
<li><a href="#restricting-this-is-wrong">Restricting this is wrong</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#this-is-like-renting-dvds-which-is-also-wrong">This is like renting DVDs, which is also wrong</a></li>
<li><a href="#new-uses-invalidate-standing-pricing-assumptions">New uses invalidate standing pricing assumptions</a></li>
<li><a href="#not-a-real-library">Not a real library</a></li>
<li><a href="#usurps-market-for-future-ebook-versions">Usurps market for future ebook versions</a></li>
<li><a href="#cdl-books-are-a-market-substitute">CDL books are a market substitute</a></li>
<li><a href="#ebooks-are-already-available-directly">Ebooks are already available directly</a></li>
<li><a href="#overdrive-is-sufficient-for-libraries">Overdrive is sufficient for libraries</a></li>
<li><a href="#cdl-is-a-waste-of-physical-books">CDL is a waste of physical books</a></li>
<li><a href="#ia-doesnt-buy-books-direct-from-publishers">IA doesn’t buy books direct from publishers</a></li>
<li><a href="#a-role-of-publishers-is-to-prevent-this-sort-of-thing">A role of publishers is to prevent this sort of thing</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-answer-should-just-be-whatever-makes-publishers-money">The answer should just be whatever makes publishers money</a><ul>
<li><a href="#copyright-fails-the-other-way">Copyright fails the other way</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Alright, there’s never anything more damning than their own words, so let’s just look at what it is they said here.</p>
<aside class="cb qualified">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is a follow-on to <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">CDL: Publishers Against Books</a>. You probably want to read that first! This is specifically about the lawsuit and its hollow arguments.</p>
</aside>
<aside class="cb recap">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>On June 1, 2020, all four major publishing companies (Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) sued the Internet Archive on the basis of copyright infringement. The publishing cartel (the trust <a href="https://publishers.org/who-we-are/our-board/">which makes up the Association of American Publishers</a>) accuses Internet Archive’s Open Library and the entire concept of Controlled Digital Lending of being in violation of publishers’ copyright.</p>
</aside>
<!-- MISSPELLING: CDL Copy -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Author's Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Authors' Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: American Association of Publishers -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: TAG/APP -->
<p>In going through these arguments, I’ll also be drawing from a few other sources, in order to give a more comprehensive description of the arguments being made. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief -->
<p>The <a href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a> is a document submitted to the court by The Authors Guild in support of the plaintiff’s argument.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: Reflections -->
<p><a href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a> is a victory-lap publication from the AAP, published after the summary judgement in favor of the plaintiffs. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<p>And there’s also <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>, written by the EFF in support of the Internet Archive, and whose arguments overlap a lot with mine.</p>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#willful-mass-infringement">Willful Mass Infringement</a></li>
<li><a href="#controlled-digital-lending-isnt-controlled">Controlled Digital Lending Isn’t Controlled</a></li>
<li><a href="#drm-is-insufficient-protection">DRM is insufficient protection</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright-holders-retain-the-right-to-control-the-ecosystem">Copyright holders retain the right to control the ecosystem</a></li>
<li><a href="#digital-books-are-fundamentally-different-in-terms-of-portability-and-durability">Digital books are fundamentally different in terms of portability and durability</a><ul>
<li><a href="#durability">Durability?</a></li>
<li><a href="#portability">Portability</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#its-reproduction-not-format-shifting">It’s reproduction, not format-shifting</a><ul>
<li><a href="#format-shifting-refresher">Format shifting refresher</a></li>
<li><a href="#no-injected-copies">No injected copies</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright-holders-do-not-have-an-exclusive-right-to-control-shifts-in-medium">Copyright holders do not have an exclusive right to control shifts in medium</a></li>
<li><a href="#fair-use-exemptions">Fair use exemptions</a></li>
<li><a href="#applying-accessibility-format-shifting-rationale">Applying accessibility format shifting rationale</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#its-not-format-shifting-because-it-isnt-the-copy-thats-made-available-remotely">It’s not format shifting because it isn’t the copy that’s made available remotely</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-copyright-holder-controls-all-forms-in-circulation-including-modifications-of-sold-copies">The copyright holder controls all forms in circulation, including modifications of sold copies</a><ul>
<li><a href="#rebinding">Rebinding</a></li>
<li><a href="#restricting-this-is-wrong">Restricting this is wrong</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#this-is-like-renting-dvds-which-is-also-wrong">This is like renting DVDs, which is also wrong</a></li>
<li><a href="#new-uses-invalidate-standing-pricing-assumptions">New uses invalidate standing pricing assumptions</a></li>
<li><a href="#not-a-real-library">Not a real library</a></li>
<li><a href="#usurps-market-for-future-ebook-versions">Usurps market for future ebook versions</a></li>
<li><a href="#cdl-books-are-a-market-substitute">CDL books are a market substitute</a></li>
<li><a href="#ebooks-are-already-available-directly">Ebooks are already available directly</a></li>
<li><a href="#overdrive-is-sufficient-for-libraries">Overdrive is sufficient for libraries</a></li>
<li><a href="#cdl-is-a-waste-of-physical-books">CDL is a waste of physical books</a></li>
<li><a href="#ia-doesnt-buy-books-direct-from-publishers">IA doesn’t buy books direct from publishers</a></li>
<li><a href="#a-role-of-publishers-is-to-prevent-this-sort-of-thing">A role of publishers is to prevent this sort of thing</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-answer-should-just-be-whatever-makes-publishers-money">The answer should just be whatever makes publishers money</a><ul>
<li><a href="#copyright-fails-the-other-way">Copyright fails the other way</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p>Alright, there’s never anything more damning than their own words, so let’s just look at what it is they said here.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="willful-mass-infringement">Willful Mass Infringement<a class="headerlink" href="#willful-mass-infringement" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Defendant IA is engaged in willful mass copyright infringement. Without any license or any payment to authors or publishers, IA scans print books, uploads these illegally scanned books to its servers, and distributes verbatim digital copies of the books in whole via public-facing websites.
With just a few clicks, any Internet-connected user can download complete digital copies of in-copyright books from Defendant.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, right off the bat, the core complaint is false. The books are lawfully purchased with payment made in full to authors and publishers, the scanning isn’t illegal, and the loaned files aren’t complete copies.
Publishers want CDL treated like an organized criminal enterprise not because they think it is one, but because they want simple-but-wrong rhetoric to attack it with.</p>
<p>Vitally, the Internet Archive certainly isn’t engaged in “willful mass copyright infringement”: their commitment to controlled digital lending shows that they’re doing everything they can to stay <em>within</em> the constraints of copyright.
Each lend is designed — at significant expense! — to be non-infringing.</p>
<p>Let’s give this the sniff test.
In the ebook space, “willful mass copyright infringement” looks like pirating the book files publishers sell as a vehicle to run sketchy ads on a download page. Nothing could be further from the behaviour we see from IA!
Moreover, the Internet Archive isn’t running some shadowy criminal enterprise through overseas proxy companies.
Not even <em>counting</em> <a href="https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper/">the whitepaper process</a>, the Internet Archive has been open and collaborative about its book archival work and <a href="https://blog.archive.org/category/books-archive/">has a whole blog category dedicated to documenting the work</a>.
The IA is a legitimate service provider with none of the hallmarks of criminality, and it’s been open and honest about its work.</p>
<p>But those optics — all of which are in IA’s favor — are irrelevant compared to the hard facts of the work.
Internet Archive’s work in CDL, library services and book scanning, enforcing the owned-to-loaned ratio shows them <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">willfully <em>respecting</em> copyright</a>, not violating it.
IA is only willfully engaged in behaviour publishers don’t like, and this lawsuit falsely demands that this is the same thing as criminality.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Also note the “structured like an argument, but isn’t” phenomenon with “just a few clicks” here. Is the fact that clicks are required relevant to whether or not it’s copyright infringement? Does the number of clicks matter? If there were more clicks, would that fix the problem? What about touchscreens? </p>
<p>This is just nonsense padding they don’t expect anyone to care about, but they hope subconsciously makes you feel like they have a case.
The complaint is <em>lousy</em> with these and I will be ignoring most of them. </p>
</aside>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="controlled-digital-lending-isnt-controlled">Controlled Digital Lending Isn’t Controlled<a class="headerlink" href="#controlled-digital-lending-isnt-controlled" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- USES: Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a>
If Open Library’s practices are found legal, any website calling itself a library could digitize
or copy any in-copyright creative works and “lend” out copies, including in a manner that actually
downloads the copies on users’ computers. This will gut copyright law and, as a result, will greatly
diminish our country’s literary and other creative output.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In this “argument”, the Authors Guild is just pretending that they don’t understand that controlled digital lending is controlled, because that’s the core fact that proves them wrong. </p>
<p>The idea that finding CDL acceptable would enable real piracy is just obviously untrue, to the point where it’s difficult for me to put into words.
Finding that Open Library’s copyright-respecting CDL lending is legal does not also somehow make book piracy websites legal by proxy.
Ruling that controlled digital lending is legal wouldn’t also rule that freely distributing copyrighted works without the protections of CDL is equally legal.
The argument here is “if you allow legal things, that’s literally the same as allowing crimes”. It’s absurd.</p>
<p>So why are the complainants making such fools of themselves here? Why ignore the controls in place? Why refuse to acknowledge the concrete, technical measures differentiating CDL from simple piracy?
They’re ignoring the controls because they’ve worked out that it defeats their entire argument. And, apparently, they’ve opted here to just close their eyes and pretend they can’t see it, like children.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="drm-is-insufficient-protection">DRM is insufficient protection<a class="headerlink" href="#drm-is-insufficient-protection" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Without protective measures, digital files can be copied perfectly, instantaneously and in practically infinite quantity at virtually no cost, and distributed all over the world in a split second.<br>
…<br>
IA’s business model for
the Website—which is essentially to freely disseminate scanned copies of every physical book it
can lay its hands on—is parasitic and illegal.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, this is just a lie. IA uses protective measures on CDL copies: measures with the same level of security publishers use for their own book rentals. CDL copies are <em>controlled</em>, and it’s lying to imply otherwise.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="copyright-holders-retain-the-right-to-control-the-ecosystem">Copyright holders retain the right to control the ecosystem<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-holders-retain-the-right-to-control-the-ecosystem" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
… Publishers have established independent and distinct distribution models for ebooks, including a market for lending ebooks through libraries, which are governed by different terms and expectations than print books. IA’s end-run around these differences and restrictions is aggressive and unlawful.<br>
…<br>
The creation, publication, and distribution of books is an ecosystem.
<strong>IA disaggregates itself from this ecosystem</strong>, ignores the law, and asserts that its goal of providing free copies of books somehow excuses it from any responsibility to those who have created the works and hold exclusive rights under the Copyright Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is it, exactly.
There only exists one “ecosystem”, established unilaterally by the choices of publishers.
CDL does free libraries from the existing, captured ecosystem, and this is exactly what the publishers are upset about. They know the existing ebook system is captured and their “established expectations” give them a vast, monopolistic advantage the legitimate book market doesn’t. </p>
<!-- (This makes sense: as the original suppliers, their choices set the precedent.) -->
<!-- DEFINES: Command economy -->
<p>But copyright does not grant publishers the right to impose and orchestrate a <strong>command economy</strong>.
Publishers are not tzars with complete top-down authority over the economy for all books.
It’s fine that they set an implicit norm, but there is no right for them to enforce their “established” distribution models by proclamation.
If people can use their own property to offer an alternative without infringing on any rights actually reserved to publishers, like reproduction, publishers have no right to prevent their little market norms from being challenged.</p>
<!-- > IA engages in this massive, industrialized scanning of print books to create digital
> files in large part to evade the Publishers’ commercial terms for ebooks and because DRM
> precludes the duplication of Plaintiffs’ ebooks. In other words, IA employs this end-run as a
> means to avoid both the Publishers’ ebook use restrictions and the dictates of the DMCA by
> creating its own bootleg electronic versions of the books through scanning. But that end-run is
> unlawful and equally harmful to the Publishers and their authors, who receive no compensation
> for IA’s reproduction and distribution of their works in digital form and whose paid offerings
> cannot readily compete with IA’s free but unlawful versions. -->
<p>But you’d never guess that listening to them!</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
In a related fashion, copyright law gives authors and publishers, as rightsholders, exclusive control over how to publish their content in order to allow book markets to develop and thrive.
This includes empowering publishers to tailor their means of distribution and terms of sale or license depending on the format or medium in which a particular title is released.
These <strong>carefully calibrated markets are precisely the markets that IA seeks to disrupt</strong> and destroy by arrogating to itself the right to engage in bulk digitization of the Publishers’ in-copyright books without a license … and by distributing the resulting illegal bootleg copies for free over the Internet to individuals worldwide.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><em>This</em> is the power grab. Publishers can tailor <em>their</em> means of distribution, sure, but this complaint is trying to transform that into power over <em>others</em>. The right publishers are trying to assert here is to “calibrate the market”, even when that means claiming power over their competitors or power to retroactively control books they’ve already sold. Here, publishers are ignoring the fundamental fact that IA is using the rights it has to engage in lawful book-lending in order to grab power over the entire market’s “calibration” — they’re demanding power over market <strong>outcomes</strong>.</p>
<p>And it’s too late to claim they’d be reasonable with this power; we’ve already seen that <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">they want used books destroyed just to juice new sales!</a> Such power <em>does not</em> exist under copyright, and even if such power could conscionably exist they’ve already proven themselves comically unfit to hold it.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="digital-books-are-fundamentally-different-in-terms-of-portability-and-durability">Digital books are fundamentally different in terms of portability and durability<a class="headerlink" href="#digital-books-are-fundamentally-different-in-terms-of-portability-and-durability" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
As a matter of markets, IA’s one-to-one
conflation of print and ebooks is fundamentally flawed.
Digital books are inherently different from physical books. They can fly around the world in a second; they do not degrade over time as physical books do; and they require devices to read them.
For these reasons, the Publishers have established independent and distinct distribution models for ebooks, including a market for lending ebooks through libraries, which are governed by different terms and expectations than print books. IA’s end-run around these differences and restrictions is aggressive and unlawful. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
… In rejecting both
the theory and operation of IA’s CDL defense, the Court recognized that digital books are
inherently different from physical books, including in the ease of distributing them worldwide in
an instant. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: Command economy -->
<p>This hits a lot of points <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">I’ve explained already</a>. </p>
<ul>
<li>CDL loaned books are not equivalent to publisher-controlled ebooks. One’s a <a href="#controlled-digital-lending">temporary format shift of a remote, physical, owned book</a>, and one is a high-quality, specially produced piece of licensed software that customers aren’t allowed to own. IA is <em>not</em> challenging “ebooks” with Controlled Digital Lending. </li>
<li>CDL <em>is</em> an end run around Overdrive, because <a href="#feudalism-on-overdrive">Overdrive is a problem to be avoided.</a></li>
<li>An end-run around a problem monopolists create is not unlawful in and of itself; if it doesn’t violate <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">a real, defined right</a>, that’s just a functional market.</li>
<li>Publishers are not tzars in charge of a command economy for all books, and don’t get to enforce their “established” distribution models if people can use their own property to offer an alternative without infringing on any rights actually reserved to publishers, like reproduction.</li>
</ul>
<p>But let’s investigate this argument about the distinction between print and ebooks a bit further.
Let’s also ignore the CDL/ebook false equivocation, and use “digital books” as an umbrella term that includes both “ebooks” and CDL copies, even if that does break my rule not to make other people’s arguments better for them.</p>
<!-- Durability and portability -->
<p>The complaint lists two<sup id="fnref:two-qualities"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:two-qualities">1</a></sup> qualities that make digital books distinct in a way they argue affects their distribution models: <strong>portability</strong> (“they can fly around the world in a second”) and <strong>durability</strong> (“they do not degrade over time as physical books do”). So: are digital books more durable and/or portable, and does that matter?</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="durability">Durability?<a class="headerlink" href="#durability" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- Rule out durability -->
<p>First, we can actually rule out durability as a concern altogether. </p>
<p>True digital master copies can be vastly more durable than hard copies, especially paperback books. Because they can be so easily copied, it’s possible to create redundant storage, so even if a copy is damaged, the book can be preserved.
The cost of preserving physical books can be seen in IA’s own physical book archive; each book needs an environment with safeguards, including fire protection, flood protection, and climate-control, just to slow down the process of degrading.
For digital copies, the space required to store masters is vastly reduced, and degradation can be prevented entirely by using redundant storage replicated across multiple locations.</p>
<p>But what publishers are concerned about is <em>economic</em> durability, not theoretical archival. How long does the copy retain value in the market?</p>
<p>Physical books are damaged over time, especially paperbacks, and so they eventually become unusable and worthless.
This puts a natural limiting factor in how many people can use a book before it deteriorates, and they need to purchase a new copy if one exists.
This is especially pertinent for libraries that see heavy (and sometimes irresponsible) use: books will be regularly damaged, and whenever that happens a library will either need to buy a copy to replace it or lose the book from their collection.</p>
<p>For digital books, both publisher-sold ebooks and CDL lending copies have no economic durability whatsoever, because both are locked to specific users, and in the CDL case, locked to a strictly specified window of time. There is, by design, absolutely no economic movement in either case.</p>
<p>But in the wider digital space, “market value” is kind of an incoherent concept, because the media cabals have generally succeeded in preventing individuals from independently owning or trading any sort of digital content. Digital files are <em>never</em> treated as legitimately economically durable this way, except in the case of physical media where the files are expected to be bound to a specific physical object. And since those can’t be copied, there’s no obvious advantage in that case. Physical digital media is still subject to deterioration, including new dangers in the form of magnetism and scratching. Neither a CD nor a book will survive a fire.</p>
<p>So in the case of mass-market digital media, libraries (and other users) really see no benefit in terms of durability, as they are denied the ability to use redundant storage to maintain the condition of the copy.
Given current restrictions and DRM there’s no obvious durability benefit from being “digital”.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="portability">Portability<a class="headerlink" href="#portability" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>So that’s a no for durability. What about portability?</p>
<p>Digital books are certainly more portable than physical books.
In fact, it’s arguably that portability which makes the Open Library practical in the first place: a hypothetical “Netflix-by-mail for books” that provided the same service but used the less-portable physical versions would be vastly more expensive due to labor and distribution costs, and would almost certainly be a cost-prohibitive service for a non-profit library to provide for free.</p>
<!-- ### Not differences in kind -->
<p>So digital books are definitely more portable, and libraries are positioned to use that portability to create new value for its patrons.
But does that increased portability say anything about the rights people actually have, or the rights they <em>should</em> have? No, because this is a <strong>difference in scale, not kind</strong>.</p>
<p>The technologies in use may push a practice over today’s waterline of <strong>practicality</strong>, but what practices are practical is constantly changing, and not something we can or should pin definitions on.
It still takes time to share files, even if it’s much faster.
It still costs space and power to store files, even if it’s much smaller.
There has been no paradigm shift that <em>removed</em> a cost, they’ve just been reduced and shuffled around, as should be expected by technological development.
(And as should be desired: despite possible impacts to a corporate bottom line, reduced costs to provide the same value is <em>objectively</em> good.)
What’s changed, again, is crossing that waterline of practicality. </p>
<p>And it’s that practicality — that it can happen at all — is what offends the publishers. Is this a fundamental difference, like the argument requires? No.
Digital books are different, sure, but not in any way that affects whether libraries should be permitted to lend them or not. </p>
<!-- This section where they just list ways digital files are different from hard copies cracks me up. Putting those words to paper doesn't enshrine the business model publishers have designed as sacrosanct and illegal -- and they're claiming it should be illegal! -- to work around. -->
<!-- It's not an *unlawful* attempt, and AAP doesn't even attempt to prove that it is other than this name-calling. -->
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="its-reproduction-not-format-shifting">It’s reproduction, not format-shifting<a class="headerlink" href="#its-reproduction-not-format-shifting" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So, credit where it’s due, this is the key issue this entire complaint hinges on.
Is digitally lending owned-to-loaned CDL copies a temporary format shift, or is it a reproduction that infringes on that exclusive right?
It makes sense that this would be the most important issue, as the “reproduction right” is meant to be the extent of <em>copy</em>right in the first place.</p>
<p>The complaint, of course, is that CDL involves making infringing reproductions:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
…the first sale doctrine is carefully confined as a limitation on only the distribution right.
It permits the owner of a copy to distribute the particular copy that has been lawfully acquired—for example, as in the secondary sale of a hardcover book or a painting—but it provides no exemption from the copyright holder’s exclusive right to reproduce a work. …</p>
</blockquote>
<p>— Note that describing the first sale doctrine as a “carefully confined limitation” is exactly opposite the truth: the enumerated limitation is copyright, not the exhaustion of rights. <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#exhaustion-of-rights">Discussed previously</a>, just note that they’re lying here. —</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
… The lynchpin of IA’s whole operation is that it scans a print book to create a digital file—a classic <strong>unauthorized reproduction of a work</strong> that puts the application of Section 109 clearly out of reach. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">Internet Archive Opinion & Order</a>
Although Section 109 entitles IA and its Partner Libraries to resell or lend their lawfully acquired print copies of the Works in Suit, <strong>“unauthorized reproduction,” which is at the heart of IA’s online library</strong>, “is not protected” by § 109(a). </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/">Statement on Flawed Theory of “Controlled Digital Lending” - AAP</a>
AAP finds it highly unlikely under current law that CDL-sanctioned practices would be shielded by either the first sale doctrine under 17 U.S.C. §109(a) or the fair use doctrine under §107, because such practices involve making and transmitting <strong>new digital copies of print books</strong>.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
The Court also rejected Internet Archive’s argument that the underlying values beneath the first sale doctrine should be imported into the fair use analysis, since that doctrine (codified by Congress) only permits a lawful owner of a print book to lend, sell, or otherwise redistribute it, <strong>not to reproduce it, including in a different medium</strong>.<br>
…<br>
As this holding reaffirms, injecting unauthorized digital copies of an author’s book into public circulation is not allowed. The public policy reasons for this conclusion are not new. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The argument here is that creating a digital file from a print book is <strong>necessarily</strong> an unauthorized reproduction of a work, regardless of context or purpose. There can be no consideration of whether the use is protected or lawful, because the creation of a digital version where there was not one before constitutes reproduction, in-and-of-itself.
The question is: is that true?</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="format-shifting-refresher">Format shifting refresher<a class="headerlink" href="#format-shifting-refresher" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p><a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/">As I discussed</a>, CDL works by using <em>format shifting.</em> Libraries take the books they own and use temporary digital formats to exercise their property in a way they’re already entitled to: book lending. </p>
<p>Format shifting is like ripping your own CDs to MP3s so you can listen to the same song you already own on another class of devices. You own the CD, you have the right to listen to those songs, but the player doesn’t have a CD drive. The files existing on your phone are the same songs you own; that alone isn’t “reproductive” behavior that infringes on the reproduction right.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="no-injected-copies">No injected copies<a class="headerlink" href="#no-injected-copies" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p><em>Reflections</em> argues that reproduction of the work is evidenced by “injecting unauthorized digital copies … into public circulation.” </p>
<p>This is a fair description of the reproduction right: the copyright holder has the right to print as many or as few copies as they choose, and “reproduction” entails manufacturing new copies that in turn changes that public circulation.
This is contrasted with simple <em>distribution.</em> The right of distribution — selling, lending, giving, or disposing — is inseparably coupled to ownership.
Note that the reserved reproduction right is not control of the <em>circulation</em>; though such a change could be caused by something else, a change in circulation is a natural consequence of reproduction.</p>
<p>But this point sabotages the argument against CDL.
CDL specifically refrains from “injecting” any works into circulation.
Remember, CDL requires a 1:1 owned-to-loaned ratio: for each one copy owned by the library, only one digital version can be loaned at a time.
CDL doesn’t inject any new copies into circulation: CDL copies are the same copies the library owns.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="copyright-holders-do-not-have-an-exclusive-right-to-control-shifts-in-medium">Copyright holders do not have an exclusive right to control shifts in medium<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-holders-do-not-have-an-exclusive-right-to-control-shifts-in-medium" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- DEFINES: text-to-speech -->
<p>By use of example, I can easily show that you <em>do</em> have the right to make incidental new digital copies in the process.
Let’s say you prefer audiobooks to ebooks, so you can listen to the book while you’re working.
But the book you’re currently reading isn’t available as an audiobook, so you’re using an ebook version.</p>
<p>You can still listen to the book while you work, though. Just have text-to-speech read the book out loud. Most phones and computers support this natively at a system level, so it would work with any text, and books are text.
With text-to-speech, you suddenly have an ephemeral artifact that has some of the same functions of first-class audiobooks sold by the publishers, but made yourself using a different format you had access to. </p>
<p>Does this sound familiar? It’s <em>exactly</em> equivalent to CDL’s ephemeral copies. </p>
<p>Is the quality on the ephemeral copy as good as the product sold by the publishers? No; professional typesetting and ebook features are superior to PDF scans, and professional voice-acting is superior to text-to-speech.</p>
<p>Does the existence of an alternate version of the book existing violate an exclusive right to control the existence of such formats? Obviously not; I’m allowed to read physical books I own aloud, and that doesn’t violate any “auditory right” even though it creates an auditory format floating in the air.
The same would be true with ebooks, whether it’s read aloud by a person or by a text-to-speech program.
And the same is true of CDL copies of digital books: publishers have a right to control reproduction, but have no such right over ephemeral format shifts.</p>
<p>Is the ephemeral form conversion a violation of publishers’ right to sell you a different product? No. You have the right to read the book, and it doesn’t matter if you shift it to a different format — even a format publishers sell themselves — as a step in doing this.</p>
<p>Is using an ephemeral form conversion to share the book with a second party an illegal reproduction? Again, no.
If I own a book, I have the right to read it aloud to someone else.
If I have the right to let someone else read my ebook, I can use a format conversion to do that if it’s needed for accessibility (i.e. the other person is blind.)
And if I have the right to loan my physical book to someone else, I have the right to use a temporary digital copy to do that so long as it remains ephemeral and isn’t a reproducible copy: this is how CDL works.</p>
<p>Again, publishers simply have a <em>business model</em> predicated on people being prohibited from format-shifting their property.
The right itself does not exist, and the idea that it should quickly breaks down upon inspection.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="fair-use-exemptions">Fair use exemptions<a class="headerlink" href="#fair-use-exemptions" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But even without format shifting, this whole train of thought is immediately proven faulty by looking at how fair use works.
Again, the argument here is that creating a digital file from a print book is <strong>necessarily</strong> an unauthorized reproduction of a work, regardless of context or purpose. Publishers are arguing there is no room for consideration of the use, because the digital “copy” itself constitutes a violation.</p>
<p>Copyright law itself strongly disagrees with this premise. The Fair Use doctrine specifically says even <em>reproductions</em> are legal and non-infringing if they pass a test regarding their context and purpose:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">17 U.S. Code § 107</em>
Notwithstanding the provisions of [copyright], the fair use of a copyrighted work… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So this desperation we see in the complaint to hastily judge CDL as illegal on the basis that a reproduction is involved is wrong, not only because a reproduction is <em>not</em> involved, but because even if it <em>were</em>, that wouldn’t be a sufficient criterion either!</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="applying-accessibility-format-shifting-rationale">Applying accessibility format shifting rationale<a class="headerlink" href="#applying-accessibility-format-shifting-rationale" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>So, about that “context and purpose”.</p>
<p>The fact that the Internet Archive is specifically format shifting physical books in order to make them more <em>accessible</em> — specifically, accessible quickly and over large distances — makes their case even stronger, because shifts for accessibility purposes are given <em>additional</em> legal protections.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/121">17 U.S. Code § 121 - Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction for blind or other people with disabilities</a>
… “authorized entity” means a nonprofit organization or a governmental agency that has a primary mission to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities;</p>
<p>…it is not an infringement of copyright for an authorized entity to reproduce or to distribute in the United States copies or [recordings] of a previously published literary work or of a previously published musical work that has been fixed in the form of text or notation if such copies or [recordings] are reproduced or distributed in accessible formats exclusively for use by eligible persons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This specific operation of transforming a work into a more accessible copy for library purposes isn’t new, and the standing principle is: yes, of <em>course</em> you have the right to do it.</p>
<p>Now, the text of the <em>law</em> here is unfortunately limited. Instead of explicitly creating a general principle, they describe the principle and then enumerated the carve-outs that applied. So I’m not claiming that <em>law</em> applies here, but I am saying there’s a specific philosophical and legal principle already in the law that we can apply elsewhere.</p>
<p>While the law does not directly enforce the principle, the courts can see the accessibility <strong>rationale</strong> and apply it as appropriate.
An example of this principle being done properly — where the same accessibility rationale was used in invalidating a copyright claim — is <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4571528653505160061&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr">Authors Guild v. HathiTrust</a>.</p>
<!-- > in *[Authors Guild v. HathiTrust](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4571528653505160061&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)*, the Second Circuit used the rationale for a specific exception—17 U.S.C. § 121, which permits the making of accessible format copies for people who have print disabilities—to support a finding of a valid purpose -->
<p>This is summarized elegantly by the EFF in their memorandum:</p>
<!-- USES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
In [Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust], for example, the court addressed a copyright claim against a nonprofit library book-digitization program that made books available to the visually impaired but did not fall within the specific copyright exception for visually impaired people (the Chafee Amendment).
As part of its fair use analysis, the court reasoned that “the Chafee Amendment illustrates Congress’s intent that copyright law make appropriate accommodations for the blind and print disabled.”
… That intent, the court concluded, supported a fair use finding.
… Likewise, here, the existence of Section 109 and its intent to secure libraries’ right to lend books they own favors a finding of fair use. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s precisely the same: publishers don’t make and refuse to sell an accessible product, so legally-purchased copies are made accessible in a way designed not to disrupt the market.</p>
<p>So, instead, CDL exists. Libraries make and distribute ephemeral digital versions of books they own in order to accomplish the goal of lending effectively while minimizing economic harm to publishers. It’s format shifting! Great stuff.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="its-not-format-shifting-because-it-isnt-the-copy-thats-made-available-remotely">It’s not format shifting because it isn’t the copy that’s made available remotely<a class="headerlink" href="#its-not-format-shifting-because-it-isnt-the-copy-thats-made-available-remotely" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>There’s an odd argument made in the Amici Curiae brief that CDL doesn’t represent format shifting at all, because the material being made available doesn’t correspond to the physical copy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a>
Open Library in fact
does nothing other than change the format in which a literary work is embodied, so that the work
(not the copy) can be made available to readers in a different location. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This tries to make a distinction between the <strong>work</strong> and the <strong>copy</strong>, saying that in the case of controlled digital lending, it is the work itself being made available to readers, not the specific copy in question. </p>
<p>If we accept that such a meaningful distinction exists, then what are CDL copies? Are they faithful reproductions of the original literary work in some platonic state, or are they simply different views on the discrete copies of the physical books they represent?</p>
<p>The methodology of the scanning process answers this very intuitively: CDL copies are simply formats of the original book, not pure copies of the work. Given the physical scanning process, this should be intuitively clear, but there are hard tests that show the same result. If there were a defect in the original work, or a page were damaged, or letters on the copy were rendered illegible by a stain, those exact defects would be equally present in the CDL version. </p>
<p>The Amici Curiae brief really shoots itself in the foot by trying to make this argument. What I’ve presented as a counter-argument here isn’t something I would usually make at all, because it’s predicated on such an unclear, almost philosophical point. But, given that they’ve granted the distinction matters, that argument resolves soundly <em>against</em> their case.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-copyright-holder-controls-all-forms-in-circulation-including-modifications-of-sold-copies">The copyright holder controls all forms in circulation, including modifications of sold copies<a class="headerlink" href="#the-copyright-holder-controls-all-forms-in-circulation-including-modifications-of-sold-copies" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
At the same time, it is a basic tenet of copyright law that the copyright holder
retains the exclusive right to decide whether or not to publish a copyrighted book in a digital
format<br>
…<br>
IA interferes with the author’s and publisher’s right to decide which works
will be distributed in which format and at which time.
For example, as noted above, some works
or authors are ill-served by the conversion of print editions into digital works, either for
commercial or artistic reasons. IA has appropriated to itself this right that belongs exclusively to
the rightsholder.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: exhaustion of rights -->
<p>The argument here, very simply, is that “the conversion of print editions into digital works” is a “right that belongs exclusively to the rightsholder.”</p>
<p>Seen again, in plainer language, in <em>Reflections</em>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
One of the most basic rules in the Copyright Act is that copyrights are divisible. The divisibility
empowers authors to license a plethora of rights, formats, markets, and derivative uses that
derive from their creative expression, and to strive to do so over the course of many years. The
CDL theory frontally devalues the potential of the copyright bundle by presuming that physical
and digital formats are systematically interchangeable.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is so tantalizingly close to being a real argument.
The right to produce new ebooks and right to produce new physical books are both owned, separately, by the publishers. This is true.
IA does not have the right to manufacture new copies of books, even if it owns them.</p>
<p>But the scans are not “new copies” of books, they are <em>conversions</em>, byproducts of the <em>act of lending</em>, which IA has the right to do!
And I don’t even have to be the one to make this “conversion” distinction, because the formal complaint actually grants this itself, in the excerpt above: they complain that “<strong>conversion</strong> of print editions into digital works” is a violation of an exclusive right they reserve.</p>
<p>Since they’re specifically making a claim about conversion here, this is another straightforward case where the short answer is a very straightforward “no, it isn’t.”
The copyright holder has the right to control what forms are <em>created</em> (reproduced), but not what forms those copies take, and therefore do not have absolute control over what kind of items are in market circulation.</p>
<p>The same argument, in the Amici Curiae:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a>
The copyright statute allows the owner of a lawfully-made physical copy to dispose of that copy as they wish, 17 U.S.C. §109;
IA’s logic would extend that rule to allow the recipient of that physical copy to make additional copies of the underlying work in different formats, meaning that a copyright owner would have no ability to license rights separably<br>
…<br>
The Copyright Act instead rejects any such mandatory bundling of print publication rights
and other economically significant rights. There is no compulsory license for digital derivatives
of literary, pictorial or other works of authorship, let alone one that is triggered simply by virtue
of print publication of such works. Those rights are separate, and as a practical matter they are
separately conveyed by authors.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is true that there is not — currently — any compulsory license for digital forms of books.
The sleight of hand here is the conflation of the right of original production and reproduction of works (a right copyright holders reserve) and the right for works to exist in such a form at all.</p>
<p>It’s not true that IA is advocating for owners of physical copies to be freely able to make additional <em>copies</em>.
However, they are advocating that owners be able to express the copies they own in different <em>formats</em>, in order to accomplish uses the rights of ownership already entitled them to perform.
Publishers are objecting to this on the basis that they should have the right to license right for the existence of copies — not only production of copies — for all formats individually.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.94.0.pdf">Declaration of Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Harper-Collins CDO</a>
In our view,
Internet Archive has no right to take the benefits of the digital medium for itself without
compensating the parties who own the rights and have created the works.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>IA has, of course, compensated authors for the books, because the books are legally purchased copies. So the “rights” in “parties who own the rights” here refers to the right of “ebookness” separated from both the content of the book and the method of creation. It should go without saying, but the “benefits of the digital medium” in the abstract are not something you have to pay publishers to use! They have no general right over format improvements!</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a>
…<br>
IA’s offering unauthorized derivative versions
of ebooks through Open Library will significantly interfere with authors’ abilities to grant
exclusive electronic text rights to publishers and other licensees. This material interference is not
without financial consequence, as it would severely diminish the value of these rights for authors
because authors will no longer have the ability to grant exclusive ebook rights to potential licensees
and fully exploit their rights in each separate format, which in turn will result in a loss of market
opportunity and revenue streams.
By engaging in massive and uncompensated “format-shifting” from print books to ebooks,
IA is robbing authors of their right to separately license the rights that Congress created for them. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most of these arguments are arguments against libraries in general: “if libraries can lend copies, that reduces sales for us, which means it’s wrong, because we’re entitled to as much money as we ask for.”</p>
<p>But this is once again conflating the exclusive right to <em>produce</em> new copies with an imagined right to <em>prevent</em> modified copies existing at all. The first is legitimate, the second is not. </p>
<p>The copyright holder chooses what they <em>create</em>, and they retain exclusivity to specific, enumerated rights over the copyrighted material.
But trying to exercise control over other rights, which are held exclusively by the purchaser, is strictly forbidden.
So long as reproduction is not involved, copyright holders specifically do <em>not</em> have authority over what forms specific items they sell take in the future: this is the very essence of rights exhaustion. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: Rebinding -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="rebinding">Rebinding<a class="headerlink" href="#rebinding" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- USES: text-to-speech -->
<p>I already gave an example of ephemeral form conversion with text-to-speech, which is also an excellent example here because of the desire of publishers to control the audiobook market.
But let’s do another.</p>
<p>Borrowing a metaphor from the complaint itself:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Over hundreds of years publishers have found ways to maintain viable markets
for books even as revolutions in publishing have driven changes in format, from leather-bound
hardcover books to paperbacks to the paperless ebooks we read on digital devices. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>To make the very same comparison the complainants do here, the transformation from physical to digital is like rebinding a paperback book you own with a hard cover. It’s taking a single work that you own, limited by its quantity, but improving its sturdiness and accessibility, making it safer and easier to lend and transport. </p>
<p>I did a rebinding in high school, actually. We had to bring a history textbook to class, but it was painfully heavy to carry around.
We were only reading out of the first half of the book that semester, so I chopped off the spine and had the two halves bound as loose-leaf in slim 3-ring binders.
It was a tremendous help for me, and it certainly didn’t infringe on some exclusive right to sell me a theoretical loose-leaf version of the textbook. What’s more, I owned all those pages, and could give away the binders if I wanted! </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="restricting-this-is-wrong">Restricting this is wrong<a class="headerlink" href="#restricting-this-is-wrong" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Of course you have every right to do this, both in the text-to-speech and rebinding examples and in the reality of CDL.
Publishers can’t argue that it’s illegal to put paperbacks in new covers, even if they want to keep books artificially fragile, prevent lending, or sell you a second, hardcover edition.
And — in my three-ring case — they couldn’t argue that <em>damaging</em> a book and selling it afterward is illegal either, or else <em>every</em> used copy of the book would have distinct wear and therefore be a “new product.”
Publishers’ desire to restrict this makes perfect sense from their point of view, of course: it’s a way to reserve more power and make more money.
But property rights and copyright itself tells us clearly that it’s unreasonable, so we have to shut down that harmful instinct, not humor it. </p>
<p>Admittedly, it is true that CDL copies existing doesn’t contribute directly to publishers’ immediate interests, and the possibility of “unauthorized” formats existing weakens publishers’ monopoly power, very slightly.
But that power came from maintaining control over already-sold works and price discrimination. It was never anything they were entitled to, it was simply part of their business model. </p>
<p>No, publishers aren’t trying to protect the copyright over their work.
They can’t content themselves with that.
If you modify your own copy, they want to own that modification too! They want to claim the right to repossess your own book and sell it back to you if you make it incidentally better. </p>
<!-- Importantly, the amount of power publishers do lose here is trivially small, because CDL can't freely scale.
Every CDL instance requires a physical copy of the book, which libraries must buy themselves.
The cost for any CDL instance to exist is, at minimum, the market cost of the book plus the time and labor to convert it for use, plus administrative overhead.
So, economically, the only way this affects publishers is a few select formats existing that they were paid for, but which didn't have the inflated profit margin they would prefer. -->
<!-- The fact that the process
began with a legitimate copy “in no way frees defendant to usurp a further market that directly
derives from reproduction of the Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.” VidAngel at 861 (quoting UMG
Recordings, Inc. v. MP3.com, Inc., 92 F.Supp.2d 349, 352 (S.D.N.Y. 2000)) -->
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>A much better argument than this right-to-modify conversion nonsense would have been to say that the CDL copies in questions are not <strong>conversions</strong>, but <strong>reproductions</strong>. That’d still be wrong, but it’s much less blatantly wrong than assertion over an exclusive right to modify is.
If they weren’t overstepping, they’d have a stronger case, but the whole case <em>is</em> overstepping.
Media companies just cannot resist the urge to twist the ratchet every time and try to claim a little bit more ground than they’re owed, and they have to be slapped down every time.</p>
</aside>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="this-is-like-renting-dvds-which-is-also-wrong">This is like renting DVDs, which is also wrong<a class="headerlink" href="#this-is-like-renting-dvds-which-is-also-wrong" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>OK, now let’s do a silly one. </p>
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
… CDL has no containable limiting principle. Under the theory, it
would also be okay to publicly stream and distribute copies of music and films if the CDs and
DVDs in possession (priced in the original markets as physical works) are held in a shipping
container.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although they use the very evocative phrase “no containable limiting principle” to describe their objection here, note that they immediately jump to describing specific limiting criteria — ownership of physical media — that would limit their hypothetical scenario. </p>
<p>And the scenario they lay out here as a catastrophic implication is perfectly fine. In fact, functionally, this is exactly equivalent to how Netflix originally worked. They purchased DVD copies of media, which they then owned outright. Then they held those in storage until they were rented out, one at a time, to customers who could view them without any involvement from the publishers. </p>
<p>Copyright holders hated this business model when Netflix did it<sup id="fnref:netflix"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:netflix">2</a></sup>, of course, for the same reason publishers are angry at the Internet Archive now: they wanted money from it. But not only did they have no right to turn it into new revenue for them, Netflix had every right to profit from the endeavour personally! Of course, unlike Netflix, the Internet archive is a charity, not a business. But in both cases, publishers’ objections were wrong. </p>
<p>The lack of publisher control over the transaction is what’s upsetting publishers; the technology is incidental to the complaint.
Adding CDL to this doesn’t change anything fundamental about the Netflix-style relationship, it just makes it more efficient. Only one customer could view a copy at a time, and lent versions would have protection that would prevent them from being copied and redistributed. The only practical difference is that transmitting controlled copies digitally would prevent the enormous waste of resources involved in shipping and distribution of physical copies.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="new-uses-invalidate-standing-pricing-assumptions">New uses invalidate standing pricing assumptions<a class="headerlink" href="#new-uses-invalidate-standing-pricing-assumptions" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">Authors Guild Amici Curiae Brief</a>
Determining how to separate and monetize their bundle of rights requires authors and their representatives to make careful decisions about how they want their work to be released and exploited (including when, in what territories, and in which formats).
In recent years, given the advent of technology that makes reading literary works on electronic devices possible, along with the growing popularity of ebooks, the <strong>decision of whether to grant licenses to ebooks</strong> and other electronic rights are key considerations for authors and other creators.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The mask slips here for a moment as publishers admit that they are <em>not</em> committing to better outcomes for consumers. They’re asserting a (false) right here to prevent certain works from being digitized <em>at all</em>, which they’d exercise, as they say, whenever they believed it increased their overall monetization.</p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.92.0.pdf">Declaration of Ben Sevier, SVP of a Hachette subsidiary</a>
Pricing is also distinct by formats, driven by different market forces, the different channels that works are distributed in, and different characteristics of the formats and works.<br>
…<br>
The pricing of physical books takes into account the expected, rather limited extent of distribution. Ebooks are distributed under an entirely different model <strong>in order to account for the fact that they have superior distribution capabilities</strong>.
Internet Archive’s belief that book formats are freely interchangeable threatens Hachette’s business by breaking down the walls between print and ebook formats that make it possible to sell print books in a profitable manner according to their current carefully calculated prices.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Note the callback to regional pricing here, lumped in with the way electronic licenses allow them to squeeze people for more money.</p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.94.0.pdf">Declaration of Chantal Restivo-Alessi, Harper-Collins CDO</a>
We do not price print books with the expectation that they will serve as both print books and ebooks readily capable of free worldwide distribution.
Moreover, print books and ebooks have very different characteristics.
<strong>Ebooks can be reproduced and distributed instantaneously and at minimal cost.</strong> For that reason, we set different terms and conditions and pricing structures for commercial ebooks and library ebooks than for print books. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">John G. Koeltl, Opinion & Order</a>
It is also irrelevant to assessing market harm in this case
that IA and its Partner Libraries once purchased print copies of
all the Works in Suit. The Publishers do not price print books
with the expectation that they will be distributed in both print
and digital formats, … and “[a]ny allegedly
positive impact of [a] defendant’s activities on [the]
plaintiffs’ prior market in no way frees [the] defendant to usurp
a further market that derives from the reproduction of the
plaintiffs’ copyrighted works.” …
The Publishers are
entitled to revenue from all formats of the Works in Suit,
regardless whether IA lawfully acquired the Works in print first.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I shouldn’t need to explain how perverse the idea that publishers are “entitled to revenue” as an outcome is. They’re entitled to <em>the</em> revenue from specific works they sell, of course, but to declare that they’re entitled to have money coming in regardless of market conditions, regardless of the qualities of the works sold, regardless of what competition exists, regardless of <em>any factor</em> is sheer absurdity.</p>
<p>And yes, that’s the position being advocated for. This is without reasonable qualifiers; publishers are being granted a copyright-predicated entitlement to revenue, for instance, from not only secondhand sales, but also formats that do not and will not ever exist. </p>
<p>For a judge to demand the line <em>always</em> has to go up and the purpose of the government is to ensure it never goes down is to reject every premise that the idea of corporate profit under capitalism is predicated on. It is the brazen notion of privatizing profits and socializing losses, held up not as an argument against capitalism, but as a serious judicial position.</p>
<p>But there <em>is</em> actually a genuinely interesting thread of argument running through all these excerpts, seen in “the pricing of physical books takes into account the expected, rather limited extent of distribution” and “the Publishers do not price print books with the expectation that they will be distributed in both print and digital formats.” </p>
<p>The idea here is that, because publishers did not price physical books with the expectation that they might be used in the future in this specific way, that use “wasn’t covered” by the purchase price of the book.
In essence, they’re arguing two things: that the physical rights the customer has over purchased media should be enumerated, and that those limited rights don’t even need to be explicitly laid out, but can be implicit based on the technology that exists at the time of sale.</p>
<p>But interesting isn’t the same as right.
<a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#exhaustion-of-rights">Remember how the exhaustion of rights works</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The exhaustion of rights is not an exception to copyright, it is a foundational part of it. Copyright, very specifically, does <em>not</em> create a perpetual, feudalistic monopoly. Copyright’s monopoly grants are discrete and limited, and the “first sale” is one of many extents that define the shape of the right. As the extent of the monopoly right granted to copyright holders, it defines the right itself. The limited monopoly cannot exist at all without extents.</p>
<p>Monopolists predictably argue that they’re entitled to an unlimited, unbounded monopoly by default, and the <em>consumers</em> only have the rights explicitly granted to them in law. This argument — that “first sale rights” need to be enumerated — gets it exactly backwards. Copyright does <em>not</em> confer an unlimited, unbounded monopoly right; the <em>monopoly</em> rights are the artificial privileges that are specifically defined and enumerated in law in exchange for specific concessions. Aside from these special carve-outs, the actual owners of the property — the people who bought the products — own everything else, every imaginable right not explicitly reserved from them.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The argument presented by the publishers here understands the enumeration of rights backwards.
The rights the <em>customer</em> has over the media they purchase aren’t enumerated, it’s the <em>copyright holder</em> that reserves a few specific rights, which they’re only allowed by a special legal grant. </p>
<p>But that isn’t the case. And, even if it were, that wouldn’t justify the additional leap of saying that it’s the <em>publisher</em> who gets to decide what those rights are. No, the rights belong to the person who purchases the media. They belong to that person so strongly that the few rights that are reserved to the publisher require the copyright act to do it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">Internet Archive Opinion & Order</a>
IA exploits the Works in Suit without paying the customary price.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But what about this issue of paying the “customary price” for a lending copy of the book? Forget rights, is there even a norm the Internet Archive is violating?</p>
<p>No! Of course not. There is no customary price, nor is there a market at all, for book scans or ebooks libraries can own and loan.
What there <em>is</em> a customary price for is the physical books libraries lend out regularly, which is… the price of the book. Exactly what libraries are paying for CDL already!</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
Libraries in the United States have never needed a license to lend books they own to their
patrons. The “customary price” a library pays for the right to lend a book is already included in
the price the library paid to buy the book. Here, it is undisputed that Internet Archive owns
lawfully made copies of each of the Works.... The publishers have
received the price they demanded when they sold the copies that Internet Archive owns and, in
return for that price, Internet Archive gained full ownership of those copies. And ownership of a
copy by a library includes the right to lend that book to one patron at a time. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So no, there’s not even a publisher-created norm being violated here. It is, very intentionally, business as usual for lending libraries.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/">Statement on Flawed Theory of “Controlled Digital Lending” - AAP</a>
CDL not only rationalizes what would amount to systematic infringement, it denigrates the incentives that copyright law provides to authors and publishers to document, write, invest in, and disseminate literary works for the benefit of the public ecosystem.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
As Judge Koeltl explicitly recognized, the publishers “did not price print books with the expectation
that they will be distributed in both print and digital formats” and they “are entitled to revenue
from all formats”.
This fundamental principle provides an incentive to publishing houses
and other media companies to invest in the development of new formats, from ebooks to
streaming platforms, all for the benefit and enjoyment of the public. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Invoking the idea of incentives here leads into another error. It’s wrong that CDL copies are equivalent to digital formats, of course, but there’s a more fundamental error here: the idea that violating the assumptions behind <strong>incentives to create</strong> is intrinsically a copyright offense.</p>
<p>The purpose of copyright is to incentivize creation. At the time of creation of older books, the only rights that <em>existed</em> were to make physical sales, which included reuse and resale of those physical copies.
These are sales the IA is giving them by purchasing books! In fact, even when the IA purchases used books, the assumption that the copy could be resold was baked into the original sale price of the book, and is part of the value that justified the original sale price.
The understanding of lending is baked into the production of media, and it’s disingenuous to pretend it isn’t or that lending is violating some expectation.</p>
<p>This is yet more evidence that the “CDL” aspect of the complaint is a misdirection, and the true target is the conceit of property and the individual right to lend and trade media.
The only rights IA used were rights it was given with the copy of the book. The books <em>were</em> priced with the expectation of being tangible objects that could be lent out, and the lending is what’s being objected to.</p>
<p>So the creation was fully incentivized at the time. But is the purpose of copyright truly to incentivize creation, or — as this argument implies — to act as an <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">unlimited money machine</a> to reward companies for “owning IP”?</p>
<p>Well, if we listen to the TAG/AAP coalition, it turns out they <em>readily agree</em> the sole purpose of copyright is to incentivize creation… when they’re trying to deny someone else money.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2020/01/Authors-GuIld-Responses-to-USPTO-AI-NOI1.pdf">Comments of the Authors Guild, Inc. in the matter of Impact of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) Technologies on Copyright</a>
The purpose of copyright is to incentivize the creation of new works—including
literary works, which contribute so greatly to our nation’s store of knowledge and culture.<br>
…<br>
One must inquire whether these outputs [(referring to new works)] in fact need the
impetus of exclusive rights, or if sufficient incentives already exist, for example higher up the chain </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So why the sudden reversal? Well, obviously, the difference is that in this case, instead of demanding money for itself, TAG is trying to deny someone copyrights.
It’s just another reminder that there’s no principle at play; for these people, there’s no consistent model of how copyright should work or how rights must be respected.
For them, it’s just argument for the sake of profit, with irrelevant details in the way.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: real library -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="not-a-real-library">Not a real library<a class="headerlink" href="#not-a-real-library" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Opponents of the Internet Archive keep making this argument that IA and Open Library somehow aren’t “real” or “legitimate” libraries.
This isn’t an argument, it’s just ugly name-calling. But, apparently it’s impossible for anyone to criticize the Internet Archive without trying to get in some insult about how it’s a fake book fan, so let’s deal with that. </p>
<p>Of course, it’s all wrong from the get-go.
IA is a library by every definition, including its <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/17/librarians-should-stand-internet-archive-opinion">function</a> but also its <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070626155540/http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07175/796164-96.stm">legal status</a> — IA is fully registered as a library <a href="https://blog.archive.org/2007/06/25/internet-archive-officially-a-library/">with the state and federal government</a>. IA is a fully accredited library with all the rights and responsibilities due, objectively.</p>
<p>But that hasn’t stopped anyone from lying about it.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Despite the “Open Library” moniker, IA’s actions grossly exceed legitimate library services, do violence to the
Copyright Act, and constitute willful digital piracy on an industrial scale. Consistent with the
deplorable nature of piracy, IA’s infringement is intentional and systematic: it produces mirrorimage [sic] copies of millions of unaltered in-copyright works for which it has no rights and
distributes them in their entirety for reading purposes to the public for free, including
voluminous numbers of books that are currently commercially available.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I want to call special attention to that accusation that IA’s CDL efforts “exceed legitimate library services”, because this claim is so backwards as to show complete disdain for the underlying issues, as is obvious if you think through it.
The core, fundamental, inarguable “legitimate library service” is the temporary lending of copies of books the library owns to the public. This is <em>exactly</em> what the Internet Archive is using Controlled Digital Lending to accomplish, and it’s something the publishers suing IA don’t want it to be able to do <em>at all</em>.
To say that book lending is an act that exceeds “legitimate library services” is to hold libraries in contempt, and to pretend otherwise (as they do here) is another layer of deceit.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
IA’s activities are nothing like those of public libraries, but rather the kind of quintessential infringement that the Copyright Act directly prohibits. </p>
</blockquote>
<!--
> Moreover, while Defendant promotes its non-profit status, it is in fact a highly commercial enterprise with millions of dollars of annual revenues, including financial schemes that provide funding for IA’s infringing activities.
> By branding itself with the name “Open Library,” it thus badly misleads the public and boldly misappropriates the goodwill that libraries enjoy and have legitimately earned.
This is false. -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
There is a vibrant market for selling and licensing ebooks to libraries to provide their patrons with lawful copies of ebooks. But that market cannot be sustained if, rather than patronize their local library, individuals can freely download unauthorized scanned copies of Plaintiffs’ books from IA’s Website. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, it’s not true that there’s a vibrant market for selling ebooks to libraries — publishers’ refusal to do this is why the CDL exists in the first place — but pay special attention to how the complaint tries to “pull out” the Internet Archive from the category of “real library”.
The distinguishing factor? Their unwillingness to pay publishers for mere licenses and insistence on instead doing the job of a library.
In an attempt to make it look like they’re not also offended at being unable to extract revenue from traditional lending libraries, the suit tries to create this false distinction.</p>
<p>This is a textbook divide-and-conquer fractionalization play, and it’s deeply ugly.
“Othering” the IA serves to create the subconscious impression that, since IA is somehow set apart from other libraries, that must make it bad.</p>
<p>But publishers don’t actually <em>care</em> about what fully qualifies something as a “library”.
The Authors Guild has no interest in set theory or making sure that the sacred word “library” is being used accurately.
Their interest in this side of the conflict is, of course, exploiting public sentiment for profit.</p>
<p>The “not a library” rhetoric serves to trick the book community into attacking each other, so publishers can benefit.
It creates a rhetorical tool that lets publishers appeal to library patrons by making it appear that the publishers are somehow defending <em>libraries</em> against an invasive threat.
Publishers aren’t suing a <em>library</em>, they’re suing <em>the Internet Archive</em>.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SsnkXH2mQY">Theirs are poisonous, ours are toasted.</a></p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8SsnkXH2mQY?start=260&autoplay=1" title="Theirs are poisonous, ours are toasted." frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/8SsnkXH2mQY/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>Now well-meaning library supporters are tricked into joining a coalition that’s opposed to libraries in general, and by the time people realize what’s happened the damage will have been done.
Because the attack is motivated by profit, not principles, no group is excluded from the violence. Siding with publishers today won’t keep them off the backs of traditional libraries tomorrow. Turning on your own people to satiate predators never spares you from being their next target.</p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
IA exploits the invaluable work that authors and publishers do without investing in any of the effort or paying any of the costs associated with the creation and publication of the books. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, IA does, in fact, invest in all the effort of acquiring books for its library, indexing and identifying copies, scanning them by hand, and hosting the web infrastructure for the Open Library.</p>
<p>The library itself has significant upkeep costs. The web infrastructure for the Open Library represents significant costs in computing power and bandwidth. There are also storage costs, both in redundant data storage for the digital scans and climate-controlled, archival-level storage for every physical book in use by the library.
Physical books which, again, are hand-scanned by librarians using machines the Internet Archive spends its resources constructing and maintaining.</p>
<p>Also, because CDL copies are DRM protected, the Internet Archive has additional server costs just for upkeep of lent copies.
Specifically, CDL copies use <em>Adobe Digital Edition</em> PDFs, which use ADEPT DRM. ADEPT is a hosted content management service, which means the Internet Archive has to maintain and scale a deployment of <a href="https://www.adobe.com/solutions/ebook/content-server.html">Adobe Content Server</a>, software IA has to purchase and license from Adobe which actively tracks and verifies every copy that’s checked out with CDL.
This represents an entirely <em>new</em> set of costs that traditional libraries don’t have to bear at all.</p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
It’s important to note that Internet Archive plays no role in the hard work of researching,
writing or publishing books, or for that matter, in creating or sustaining the overall publishing
ecosystem, as bookstores and libraries do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the same “doesn’t pay the cost” line, except <em>way worse,</em> because they’ve started making false claims about its value as a research institution. And, in invoking this idea, they’ve opened the door to a whole <em>torrent</em> of reasons why they’re wrong.</p>
<p>What could be more important to the overall publishing ecosystem than the availability of information?
What is more important to a researcher than a library institution that provides data?
What could a private institution do that <em>more</em> sustains the publishing ecosystem than to restore and rejuvenate its knowledge?</p>
<p>This is <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#the-cycle">The Cycle</a>. Information, built on the foundations of information, private enough to compensate authors but ultimately public enough that more information can be built on it, and so on, forever.
<em>This</em> is the publishing ecosystem, not cooking up ways to make more knowledge lost with self-destructing books.</p>
<!-- Even in the order where he rules in favor of publishers, John Koeltl declares
> [Internet Archive Opinion & Order](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf){: .cite}
> IA also works
> with libraries, museums, universities, and the public to preserve
> and offer free online access to texts, audio, moving images,
> software, and other cultural artifacts.
Even when ruling in their favor, he's chiding the publishers for this ugliness. -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
In the context of the lawsuit, Internet Archive worked hard to describe its mission in the
language of multiple institutions (libraries, museums, and archives), but it seems obvious that
IA is first and foremost a private archive, as its primary mission is to collect and preserve
material, including at-risk works that might otherwise disappear. This is what an archive should
do. What archives do not routinely do is loan or transmit their collections indiscriminately to
members of the public in contravention of the digital rights of the copyright holder<br>
…<br>
Lending to the public has more traditionally been the domain of public libraries, which are
community institutions devoted to their respective locales, and which make numerous and
unique contributions to society. It therefore seems potentially hurtful to public lending libraries
to be lumped into the same category as an international Internet platform that is acting as a
global collector, hub, and distribution platform for literary works, and one potentially siphoning
off their patrons.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There’s a lot wrong here.
First and most obviously, this discounts the archival and preservation functions of libraries. Libraries are not simply terminals people use to connect to capitalism. Both public and private libraries are library institutions. This often (but not always) includes lending, but it also includes archival and research functions.
Lenders and archives are not somehow two disconnected roles; there is no <em>impropriety</em> in one entity doing both things. The opposite is true: whatever your focus, you cannot do one without the other, and these functions all work together to create what we think of as a “library.”</p>
<p>Then there’s more “not a real library” whining I’ve already talked about. It even tries to imagine a petty conflict between IA and other libraries with the language “siphoning off their patrons”, as if charitable institutions don’t <em>want</em> to coordinate with their peers in order to share the load.</p>
<p>But <em>Reflections</em> makes a further misstep: it tries to assert that the Internet Archive “not being a real library” somehow <em>matters.</em></p>
<p>The Internet Archive is not relying on any special provisions that only apply to libraries. Controlled Digital Lending uses the ownership right to <em>enable</em> the traditional lending practice of libraries, but there’s nothing that <em>requires</em> one to be a traditional library in order to lend. Libraries do that, but so can a research institution or anyone else.</p>
<p>But <em>Reflections</em> asserts this idea that, if IA is an archive, it becomes <em>improper</em> for it to lend books. This is trivially false, and they make no real argument to the contrary after their simple assertion that it’s somehow wrong behavior. It isn’t.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="usurps-market-for-future-ebook-versions">Usurps market for future ebook versions<a class="headerlink" href="#usurps-market-for-future-ebook-versions" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
While the quality of the digital
format scans that IA provides are inferior to the quality of Publishers’ ebooks, these bootleg
versions act as a substitute for the authorized versions, since readers select titles for their content.
No one reads a James Patterson thriller after downloading a scan of the book from Open Library
and then declares, “I liked it so much, I am going to read an authorized ebook again on my
Kindle for a different experience.” </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/open-library/">The Authors Guild’s “advocacy” regarding CDL</a>
CDL’s threat to author incomes and the ebook market [is because]… unauthorized scanning and e-lending of books that were previously published only in physical formats would usurp the market for creating new ebook versions;
… Needless to say, if Internet Archive’s plans to expand Open Library broadly to all libraries are realized, it would eventually … usurp authors’ rights to bring their older works back into the market.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A simple enough argument. If the Internet Archive has already digitized a book, and is already lending it out, why would publishers invest resources in creating an ebook to sell as a paid product? After all, “you can’t compete with free”, so isn’t it a waste to create new ebooks that won’t sell?</p>
<p>But this is easily answered;
as previously established, CDL copies <em>do not</em> serve the same functions as first-class ebooks: the quality is lower, the scanned images are missing searching and rich text features, and the lending nature makes them unsuitable for any use requiring book ownership. </p>
<p>This is actually a point the suit against IA makes itself, by way of insult:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
One who makes and distributes reproductions of that physical
copy—such as IA’s <strong>low quality scans</strong>—is well outside the bounds of the law. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.92.0.pdf">Declaration of Ben Sevier, SVP of a Hachette subsidiary</a>
Internet Archive also harms Hachette in less obvious ways. Hachette has very high
standards for its ebook products and the Internet Archive’s scans, while entirely legible, fall short
of these high standards. Authors and consumers have come to expect our works to be distributed
in high-quality formats and the availability of these works in a scanned format could reflect poorly
on Hachette in their eyes…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is a foolish insult to make, because it undercuts their claim that CDL copies are ebooks that compete with their other ebook offerings.
They aren’t, and publishers being unable to resist getting a dig in here is them admitting it.</p>
<p>So first-class ebooks can definitely compete with CDL copies, because the use cases for both are very different. It’s just a shame the Open Library harms the ebook market. Right?</p>
<!-- See also: Warhol v Goldsmith:
https://authorsguild.org/news/agf-announces-10m-capacity-building-campaign/
> Our amicus brief was quoted in the Supreme Court’s Warhol v. Goldsmith fair use ruling, a win for writers. After years of advocacy, the Guild secured definitive rulings establishing copyright infringement by the notorious piracy site Z-Library Project and the Internet Archive’s Open Library.
the Warhol case from last year seems to say you can look at the use to which the copies are being put, and that that can itself distinguish between infringing and noninfringing copies. ... reading a book out loud to yourself could be construed as “copying” it. But it’s not infringing
a secondary work was not necessarily transformative of the original just because it was aesthetically different; it must also serve a distinguishably different artistic purpose -->
<p>Here’s a little trick. When you know someone is lying to you, and they make a point of implying something without saying it directly — like “the Open Library harms the ebook market” — check to see if the exact opposite of that is true.
Because, wouldn’t you know it, it turns out book digitization projects like the Open Library actually <em>strengthen</em> the ebook market.</p>
<p>Quoting James Somers in an investigation of the similar Google Books project:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/">James Somers, “Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria”</a>
Out-of-print books, almost by definition, were commercial dead weight.
If Google, through mass digitization, could make a new market for them, that would be a real victory for authors and publishers.
“We realized there was an opportunity to do something extraordinary for readers and academics in this country,” Richard Sarnoff, who was then Chairman of the American Association of Publishers[sic], said at the time. <!-- IGNORE: Misspelling -->
“We realized that we could light up the out-of-print backlist of this industry for two things: discovery and consumption.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, even before the Open Library, publishers themselves expected that using a digital library to shine attention on out-of-print and backlist books could be a huge opportunity to create demand for both backlist physical books and new ebooks. </p>
<p>But is that what happened with the Open Library? Also yes.
Despite all publishers’ implications to the contrary, not only was no harm was done to them by their books’ presence in the library, but library listing of in-print books actually <em>increased</em> their sales. </p>
<p>The EFF hits the nail on the head in the supporting memorandum:</p>
<!-- USES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
In fact, [publishers’] overall profits have grown substantially, and sales of
the works at issue in this case appear to have increased. </p>
<p>There is no evidence that CDL has harmed the market for the Works in Suit. In fact, the
available data shows that people don’t buy fewer copies of a book when that book is available
for borrowing via CDL. Expert analysis of print sales for each of the Works in
Suit shows that there was no noticeable dip in unit sales of print formats of the Works in Suit
when those works became available for CDL borrowing via the Internet Archive.
… In fact, when the
Works in Suit were removed from the Internet Archive after this case was filed, their sales
<em>worsened</em> slightly.</p>
<p>…Nor does CDL depress revenues for ebooks from the library channel in particular. Over
the last five years, while the Internet Archive has been actively lending digitized books to its
patrons, demand for ebooks from libraries has only increased.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
Analysis by two separate economists shows that the Internet Archive’s lending practices
have no negative effect on the market for the Works in Suit. Statement When editions of
the Works in Suit were first made available for borrowing from the Internet Archive via CDL,
their corresponding print sales at retail did not decline relative to other books. Indeed, when the
Works in Suit were removed from the Internet Archive after this lawsuit was filed, their print
sales slightly worsened relative to other books. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, for the books available in the Open Library (most of which were not available in ebook format at all), not only did the Open Library not harm publishers’ growing ebook sales, they actually <em>measurably increased</em> sales of physical books for publishers.
That’s a service publishing companies <em>pay other people to do for them</em>, and here it’s being provided for free as a side effect of library work!</p>
<p>And what’s really absurd is that publishers were <em>keenly</em> aware of this. They knew the anti-library case didn’t make sense, but they bullshitted their way through anyway. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
…Plaintiffs’ own witnesses admitted that their theory of harm is “speculative” and simply an “inference one could make.”
And tellingly, Plaintiffs specifically instructed their expert not to try to measure any economic harm.<br>
…<br>
In a copyright lawsuit against a practice that has continued for years, one would expect the copyright holder to be able to point to some metric showing that the defendant’s conduct has harmed them.
Yet Plaintiffs have failed to quantify any market harm from CDL. And there’s a good reason: because the lending, licensing, and sales data demonstrate that no such harm has occurred or is likely to occur.<br>
… Expert analysis of print sales for each of the Works in Suit shows that there was no noticeable dip in unit sales of print formats of the Works in Suit when those works became available for CDL borrowing via the Internet Archive.
(Defendant requested in discovery, but Plaintiffs refused to produce, the data needed to do the same analysis with respect to sales to consumers in ebook format.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Not only was none of this objective evidence refuted in the suit, but the plaintiffs actually <em>refused</em> to provide any evidence of any actual harms, despite most of their arguments depending on them having already been damaged and harm already having been done.
What’s more, they actually <em>withheld</em> the data needed to verify the claim one way or the other!</p>
<p>So no, controlled digital lending doesn’t usurp the market. In fact, it actively builds up that market for the benefit of the publishers, a fact the publishers are trying to bury as part of a larger power grab.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="cdl-books-are-a-market-substitute">CDL books are a market substitute<a class="headerlink" href="#cdl-books-are-a-market-substitute" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>I’ve talked about this before under “<a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/#cdl-as-alternative">CDL as Alternative</a>”, but now that we’ve been fully introduced to the depravity at play we can dive even deeper.</p>
<p>From that section, you already know that CDL books aren’t a true alternative to either physical or digital books, and the few ways they <em>are</em> able to meet peoples’ needs are good, not bad. </p>
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
<p>In its <a href="https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/">Statement on Flawed Theory of “Controlled Digital Lending”</a>, the Association of American Publishers argues</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…As proposed, CDL would be equally applicable to current, in-print works for which digital lending licenses are available to libraries. </p>
<p>Because publishers generally make e-book lending licenses available to libraries for both frontlist and backlist works, and CDL is expressly designed to allow libraries to create their own substitute e-book editions for such works, it is clear that CDL copying would create direct market substitutes for publishers’ extensive licensed offerings, not only for digital copies but also for hard copies. <!-- IGNORE: Misspelling --></p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s so important that this is so offensive to them.
The real reason they’re attacking the practice is they perceive right-to-lend as a threat to their already-dubious “ebook licensing” racket.
Remember: it’s not true that libraries license hard copies!</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
Internet Archive sought to justify its “Open Library” under a legal theory called “controlled
digital lending” (CDL), but the Court firmly rejected that assertion, holding instead that it offers
up a <strong>competing market substitute</strong> for authorized versions of the works in violation of authors’
and publishers’ rights.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is flatly wrong. We don’t even have to get into whether offering a market substitute should be allowable or not, because we already know CDL books don’t substitute for anything. Old ground.</p>
<p>But it gets so much worse.
In the arguments against CDL, the simple existence of an alternative to a mandatory licensing system is presented as objectionable, in and of itself. From <a href="https://authorsguild.org/advocacy/open-library/">The Authors Guild’s “advocacy” regarding CDL</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>CDL’s threat to author incomes and the ebook market comes [because] … instead of purchasing library ebook licenses (which are more expensive than consumer editions for good reason), libraries would simply digitize the print book from their collection, depriving authors and publishers of important licensing income.
Needless to say, if Internet Archive’s plans to expand Open Library broadly to all libraries are realized, it would eventually decimate the market for library ebooks</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So yes, if you listen to these people, using a book you already have instead of having to purchase a license is a threat to the very existence of books themselves, because they deny publishers the revenue from forcing you to buy the same thing twice.
They’re such irredeemable monopolists that they object to the books <em>you already purchased from them</em>, on the basis that the book you own “competes” with their ability to sell it to you again!</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="ebooks-are-already-available-directly">Ebooks are already available directly<a class="headerlink" href="#ebooks-are-already-available-directly" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Since the early 2000s, Plaintiffs and other publishers have offered readers digital versions of
their books, which can be read on portable electronic devices such as the Kindle, Nook, iPad, and
other smart devices. … Plaintiffs have collectively made thousands of the
books in their catalogs available in ebook form, including the Works identified in this suit and
hundreds of thousands of other works, backlist titles included. Virtually all of the trade books
being offered for sale by Plaintiffs, including backlist books, are available in both print and
ebook form. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, this attempt to pose ebooks as relevant to CDL simply isn’t true on the facts.
Crucially, the “digital versions” publishers distribute aren’t being sold as permanent property. They’re simply not comparable to either scanned books or hard copies because of their ephemerality. With the exception of their hardcover originals, CDL book copies have no comparable item on the market, and certainly can’t be replaced by the ebooks publishers currently offer.</p>
<!-- Also, look at them just listing out examples of smart devices like a middle-schooler trying to pad a paper. Someone was paid to write this! -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="overdrive-is-sufficient-for-libraries">Overdrive is sufficient for libraries<a class="headerlink" href="#overdrive-is-sufficient-for-libraries" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Plaintiffs have worked with libraries and library aggregators such as OverDrive to pioneer an innovative and highly successful service that enables library patrons to easily and lawfully obtain digital copies of books.
Under negotiated terms, publishers provide their ebooks to library aggregators, who, in turn, work with libraries and their patrons to host a platform that permits and tracks the lending of ebooks.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: Libraries hate overdrive -->
<p>Except libraries <em>hate</em> Overdrive, <a href="/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/#feudalism-on-overdrive">as I’ve recounted</a>. That’s the only reason why they’re willing to invest in a whole new thing; if Overdrive were serviceable for libraries, no one would be investing time, funding, and man-hours just for the <em>possibility</em> of replacing it!</p>
<p>(Also note the sinister wording in that quote. In publishers’ eyes, it’s <em>them</em> who “permit” the lending of books, and they insist that they reserve the right to simply suspend property rights as they please.)</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="cdl-is-a-waste-of-physical-books">CDL is a waste of physical books<a class="headerlink" href="#cdl-is-a-waste-of-physical-books" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Once locked away, upon information and belief, IA will
make no effort to make the print books available to be read, like books in actual library collections</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I almost folded this point into the “not a real library” whining, but it’s just stupid enough that I have to talk about it.
They’re acknowledging that the Internet Archive is honoring copyright by only loaning out a single usable copy at a time for each book they own, and they’re <em>complaining</em> about it.
This isn’t a real complaint, this is just padding the document.</p>
<p>But this is an especially weird complaint to make of an archival library because it seems to think that indexing, storing, and preserving physical books isn’t of any value.
This is classic spreadsheet-brain disease.
The archival, indexing, and preservation work the IA does for the open library is quite clearly of value; if not in use by CDL, those are still real books that can be retrieved and read by people. A CDL-dedicated copy could easily turn out to be the last physical copy of a book, in which case it could be retrieved and even re-copied by the publisher if needed. </p>
<p><img alt="Brewster Kahle with containers" src="https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/06/01/books/01INTERNETARCHIVE/merlin_54435804_f5559acb-df79-4a0f-8b0d-c86f9a332e55-jumbo.jpg?quality=75&auto=webp"></p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://blog.archive.org/2011/06/06/why-preserve-books-the-new-physical-archive-of-the-internet-archive/">Jeff Kaplan, “Why Preserve Books? The New Physical Archive of the Internet Archive”</a>
Books are being thrown away, or sometimes packed away, as digitized versions become more available. This is an important time to plan carefully for there is much at stake.<br>
…<br>
A reason to preserve the physical book that has been digitized is that it is the authentic and original version that can be used as a reference in the future. If there is ever a controversy about the digital version, the original can be examined.
A seed bank such as the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is seen as an authoritative and safe version of crops we are growing.
Saving physical copies of digitized books might at least be seen in a similar light as an authoritative and safe copy that may be called upon in the future.<br>
…<br>
Internet Archive is building a physical archive for the long term preservation of one copy of every book, record, and movie we are able to attract or acquire.
Because we expect day-to-day access to these materials to occur through digital means, the our physical archive is designed for long-term preservation of materials with only occasional, collection-scale retrieval.
Because of this, we can create optimized environments for physical preservation and organizational structures that facilitate appropriate access.
A seed bank might be conceptually closest to what we have in mind: storing important objects in safe ways to be used for redundancy, authority, and in case of catastrophe.<br>
…If we are successful, then this set of cultural materials will last for centuries and could be beneficial in ways that we cannot predict.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>What the Internet Archive is creating with their physical book archive is a remarkable accomplishment.
It’s not unlike a microfilm library, except that unlike microfilm, the unmodified original books are still available for examination without any loss of portability or accessibility for libraries using the resource. </p>
<p>This is why the Internet Archive, at great expense, scans books by hand, without damaging their bindings!
Corporations that bind books usually saw off the bindings in the process, but the Internet Archive’s physical book archive is designed from the ground up to be a true archive.
It’s something publishers don’t have any incentive to value, and they clearly don’t. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="ia-doesnt-buy-books-direct-from-publishers">IA doesn’t buy books direct from publishers<a class="headerlink" href="#ia-doesnt-buy-books-direct-from-publishers" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Remarkably, every one of the systems for acquiring books described above is designed so that IA avoids paying authors or publishers anything</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here, publishers are specifically complaining that purchasing used books doesn’t directly pay publishing companies, which I’ve already well established is how it should be.</p>
<p>But this hits on another important point: IA couldn’t buy books directly from publishing companies if they wanted to, because the publishing companies <em>refuse</em> to sell IA the books they need. </p>
<!-- USES: REDACTED MEMORANDUM -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
Plaintiffs refuse to sell copies of
ebooks to libraries outright. Internet Archive purchases ebooks from other publishers
who are willing to sell them outright and would purchase ebooks from Plaintiffs if they were
willing to sell them. However, Plaintiffs have declined each time Internet Archive has asked
over the years.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>If the books were available to purchase at a reasonable price, the Internet Archive would surely use the direct, efficient channels instead of sourcing used books and hand-producing each CDL version with archive labor.
The only reason it has to do all that is the hostility of the publishing companies and their refusal to sell loanable ebooks.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="a-role-of-publishers-is-to-prevent-this-sort-of-thing">A role of publishers is to prevent this sort of thing<a class="headerlink" href="#a-role-of-publishers-is-to-prevent-this-sort-of-thing" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
Authors expect their publishers to be guardians, ensuring the high-quality of their works as delivered to
the marketplace. Websites like Open Library, thus, hurt Plaintiffs’ relations with authors. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is just deeply goofy. The publishers are trying to get around the fact that they don’t have the rights to do what they want by claiming that an author might <em>expect</em> them to have those rights.
And moreover, that said violation of expectations is not a function of their dishonesty toward writers, but rather a harm inflicted on them by a third party conducting its own business, whose offense here is that publishers didn’t sufficiently hurt them.</p>
<p>That’s like saying if someone asked me to rob a bank, my not being able to do that legally would be a harm the bank was doing to me.
I still can’t believe someone got paid money to write that argument.</p>
<p>If I didn’t already have a wealth of evidence for my side already, I’d use the fact that they’re clearly grasping at straws to show they don’t have a legitimate case anywhere underneath all their rhetoric.</p>
<!-- #### Everyone should have to license books anyway and ownership was a mistake
If there isn't more, skip this section
We're finally starting to hit argument bedrock here.
> [Statement on Flawed Theory of “Controlled Digital Lending” - AAP](https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/){: .cite}
> Inexplicably, the White Paper proposes that CDL be universally applicable to any book, of any genre, made available to any patron for any purpose. The only condition is that the physical copy must have been acquired lawfully, and that it be owned, not merely licensed, by the library.
Of course, the rights to own and lend *are* universally applicable, not subject on details like genre of book or the demographics of the patron.
The inverse of the position they're reacting so hard against here is that CDL only be usable selectively, subject to someone's judgement -- their judgement.
Reading this seriously, publishers want to give themselves a veto over property rights that they could adjust based on things like "genre" or "purpose" or even the demographics of the patron!
> [internet-archive-emergency-library-coronavirus.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/books/internet-archive-emergency-library-coronavirus.html){: .cite}
> “There is nothing innovative or transformative about making complete copies of books to which you have no rights and giving them away for free,” said Maria A. Pallante, president of the Association of American Publishers, which is helping to coordinate the industry’s response.
accused the internet archive of having "no rights" over physical books they owned! not even property rights! she just claimed them back! -->
<!-- [libraries-digital-publishing-ebooks](https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/libraries-digital-publishing-ebooks/)
> Corporate publishing wants to turn all readers into renters. We’re trying to stop them.
>
> Maybe you’ve noticed how things keep disappearing—or stop working—when you “buy” them online from big platforms like Netflix and Amazon, Microsoft and Apple. You can watch their movies and use their software and read their books—but only until they decide to pull the plug. You don’t actually own these things—you can only rent them. But the titanic amount of cultural information available at any given moment makes it very easy to let that detail slide. We just move on to the next thing, and the next, without realizing that we don’t—and, increasingly, can’t—own our media for keeps.
>
> Unfortunately, today’s mega-publishers and book distributors have glommed on to the notion of “expiring” media, and they would like to normalize that temporary, YouTube-style notion of a “library.” That’s why, last summer, [four of the world’s largest publishers sued the Internet Archive](https://www.thenation.com/article/society/publishers-are-taking-the-internet-to-court/) over its National Emergency Library, a temporary program of the Internet Archive’s [Open Library](https://openlibrary.org/) intended to make books available to the millions of students in quarantine during the pandemic.
>
> what their lawsuit really seeks is the closing of the whole Open Library, and the destruction of its contents. (The suit is ongoing and is expected to resume later this year.) A close reading of the lawsuit indicates that what these publishers are looking to achieve is an end to the private ownership of books—not only for the Internet Archive but for everyone.
this is directly connecting the desire for ephemerality to the lawsuit -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-answer-should-just-be-whatever-makes-publishers-money">The answer should just be whatever makes publishers money<a class="headerlink" href="#the-answer-should-just-be-whatever-makes-publishers-money" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>And here it is, argument bedrock. Everything else has just been window dressing for this anyway. </p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>
[Running Open Library] interferes with Plaintiffs’ relationships with customers and distributors, including libraries, who had already paid full value for them.
<strong>The willingness of those distributors and customers to acquire digital formats in the future is diminished</strong> by the free distribution of Plaintiffs’ books, including the Works, on the Website.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.92.0.pdf">Declaration of Ben Sevier, SVP of a Hachette subsidiary</a>
Moreover, the increasing availability of free ebooks on Internet Archive is likely to put <strong>downward pressure on library ebook prices</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Reflections from the Association of American Publishers on Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive: An Affirmation of Publishing</a>
Judge Koeltl also addressed the ongoing nature of the threat, noting that IA could expand its Open Library project far beyond the current scope, and that new organizations might emerge to perform similar functions, which in the Court’s view would plainly <strong>risk future displacement of the publishers’ potential revenues.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">Internet Archive Opinion & Order</a>
IA argues that its digital lending makes it easier for patrons who live far from physical libraries to access books and that it supports research, scholarship, and cultural participation by making books widely accessible on the Internet. <strong>But these alleged benefits cannot outweigh the market harm to the Publishers.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the “quiet part out loud” time, where the publishers stop bullshitting about protecting authors and just honestly advocate their belief that the government must grant them more money and control as a special prize.
This argument — the winning argument — is that court should protect <strong>publisher revenue, not people’s rights.</strong></p>
<!-- This is the argument that the law exists not to protect rights, but to protect *revenues.* -->
<p>Just listen to what they’re saying;
Loaning books digitally isn’t wrong because it actually violates copyright, it’s wrong because it “diminishes willingness” to purchase from publishers.
Increased ebook availability isn’t wrong because they’re reproductions, it’s wrong because they put “downward pressure on library ebook prices.”
Even if the Open Library isn’t doing anything wrong today, they have to be stopped because someday they might expand, not in a way that’s in any way illegal, but in a way that “<strong>risks future displacement of the publishers’ potential revenues.</strong>” </p>
<p>This is <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">the whole problem with modern IP</a> spelled out.
What IP companies — like these publishers — are doing is replacing a carefully balanced system of incentives for creating new work to enrich society with a system that forces money from the public into the hands of a few companies, in exchange for creating nothing of value. </p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>“Reduced profits” could be part of a valid argument, in the form of “reduced profits are an indicator of X, which is illegal.” However, that’s not what’s being done here: the idea of reduced profit from a market affected by a practice is being treated as a direct offense in and of itself, which is entirely unacceptable logic.</p>
</aside>
<p>As Stephen Prager wrote for Current Affairs,</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/book-publishers-are-trying-to-destroy-public-e-book-access-in-order-to-increase-profits">Stephen Prager, “Book Publishers Are Trying to Destroy Public E-Book Access in Order to Increase Profits”</a>
This is stunningly candid. Judge Koeltl is asking us to accept that a website that provides an unequivocal benefit to humanity be shut down so that these corporations can continue to profit handsomely without having to provide us with anything new to justify that profit.</p>
<p>This contradicts everything we are supposed to believe about the virtues of free-market capitalism as a system. The competition between private commercial interests is supposed to spur innovations that lead to human flourishing.
But what we have here is a nonprofit organization that is providing a better service than the for-profit ones. Instead of competing in the market by improving their product and reducing their prices, the publishing profiteers fight like cowards, using the legal system to destroy a valuable public service to protect their own profits.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The truly frustrating thing is, ultimately, the truth doesn’t matter.
It doesn’t matter that CDL strictly obeys copyright.
It doesn’t matter that the Open Library uses legally-acquired books to provide a valuable service to people.
It doesn’t matter that CDL’s an efficient use of resources.
It doesn’t matter that the publishers are wrong, completely, along every avenue of discussion.
It doesn’t matter that every weight on the scale that should matter is on the Internet Archive’s side.
Every legal factor in support of CDL is irrelevant in the face of the one true argument: that the established players might make less money.</p>
<p>This is the mentality of financiers so obsessed and fixated on the money itself that they’ve entirely forgotten about creating new value and selling products customers want to buy. All of that is thrown out entirely in favor of the money printing machine that is entrapping people and extorting economic rent.</p>
<p>This is how we get the “copyright ship of Theseus” argument:
“If you replace all the parts of the boat individually, the boat that remains, metaphysically, is whichever answer makes us the most money.”</p>
<p>Consider the “risk” that widespread adoption of CDL could put “downward pressure on library ebook prices.”
Does that downward pressure represent market equilibrium?
Are prices currently inflated by extortionist practices?
Would a slight downward adjustment in prices be an expected market result after an artificially inflated bubble?
No one is allowed to even consider that question. The line must go up and that is where the thought process ends.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="copyright-fails-the-other-way">Copyright fails the other way<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-fails-the-other-way" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But the “copyright law should encourage whatever makes publishers the most money” argument is even <em>worse</em> than that.
Copyright <em>is</em> actually supposed to be weighted, but in the <em>opposite</em> direction.</p>
<p>While I prefer working in the concrete space of rights and obligations, copyright <em>does</em> require consideration of some “fuzzy factors”.
Specifically, because it’s a system “to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”, <strong>the public benefits provided by a practice are an argument for its legality.</strong>
This was eloquently summed up in <em>Blanch v. Koons</em>: “The ultimate test of fair use … is whether the copyright law’s goal of ‘promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts’ would be better served by allowing the use than by preventing it.” The Open Library is exactly such a case.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive’s Motion for Summary Judgment</a>
…digital lending serves the public interest by increasing access to
and dissemination of knowledge, without harming the commercial interests of the publisher.
That is the ultimate purpose of copyright: to encourage “the intellectual enrichment of the
public.”<br>
…<br>
The purpose and character of the use strongly favors a finding of
fair use because the use is wholly noncommercial; is transformative under the Second Circuit’s
fair use precedents; and furthers the ends of copyright’s exhaustion doctrine.<br>
…<br>
For all of these reasons, CDL satisfies the “ultimate test of fair use,” which asks “whether
the copyright law’s goal of ‘promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts’ would be better
served by allowing the use than by preventing it.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The clear public benefit of an accessible library tips the scales even further in the Internet Archive’s favor, because copyright is built to serve the public.
There is no provision for scale-tipping consideration in favor of decisions that serve private interests and support the revenue streams of corporations at the expense of a public benefit. The exact opposite is true.</p>
<p>This new right publishing corporations are pursuing, the feudal right, is not only evil prima facie, but it’s fundamentally at odds with the core purpose of copyright, which is the authority under which it’s trying to claim it!</p>
<!-- But this *always* happens. Corporations lose interest in value creation *immediately* any time feudal lordship is on the table.
Every benefit is fodder to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profit. -->
<!-- ## Specific errors
Between the various complaints and PR campaigns, there are a few common erroneous arguments that keep coming back up.
I've pulled them out here.
# Format Shifting
## CDL is a reproduction and violates the right to control distribution -->
<!-- USES: Reflections -->
</section>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:two-qualities">
<p>In the same sentence, they also mention that “devices are required to read them”, but that isn’t really anything. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:two-qualities" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:netflix">
<p>There’s <em>so</em> much more to this story, but that’s another topic for another day. In fact, that’s such a huge topic that I <a href="hhttps://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/">already cut it from the Netflix essay.</a> Maybe someday! <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:netflix" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>CDL: Publishers Against Books2024-03-03T00:00:00-06:002024-03-03T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2024-03-03:/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/<!-- Latest: On the Internet Archive (good), Controlled Digital Lending (good), the ebook market (not good), and book publishing companies (really bad!!!) -->
<!-- DEFINES: CDL -->
<!-- DEFINES: Controlled Digital Lending -->
<!-- DEFINES: Internet Archive -->
<p>Combining lending with digital technology is tricky to do within the constraints of copyright.
But it’s important to still be able to lend, especially for libraries.
With a system called Controlled Digital Lending, libraries like the Internet Archive (IA) made digital booklending work within the constraints of copyright, but publishers still want to shut it down.
It’s a particularly ghoulish example of companies rejecting copyright and instead pursuing their endless appetite for profit at the expense of everything worthwhile about the industry.</p>
<!-- Latest: On the Internet Archive (good), Controlled Digital Lending (good), the ebook market (not good), and book publishing companies (really bad!!!) -->
<!-- DEFINES: CDL -->
<!-- DEFINES: Controlled Digital Lending -->
<!-- DEFINES: Internet Archive -->
<p>Combining lending with digital technology is tricky to do within the constraints of copyright.
But it’s important to still be able to lend, especially for libraries.
With a system called Controlled Digital Lending, libraries like the Internet Archive (IA) made digital booklending work within the constraints of copyright, but publishers still want to shut it down.
It’s a particularly ghoulish example of companies rejecting copyright and instead pursuing their endless appetite for profit at the expense of everything worthwhile about the industry.</p>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#controlled-digital-lending">Controlled Digital Lending</a><ul>
<li><a href="#preventing-reproduction-to-enable-lending">Preventing Reproduction to Enable Lending</a></li>
<li><a href="#format-shifting">Format Shifting</a></li>
<li><a href="#copyright-friendly">Copyright Friendly</a></li>
<li><a href="#great-for-libraries">Great for Libraries</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#ebooks-are-broken">Ebooks are broken</a><ul>
<li><a href="#media-ownership">Media Ownership</a></li>
<li><a href="#feudalism-on-overdrive">Feudalism on Overdrive</a></li>
<li><a href="#abusive-licensing-terms">Abusive Licensing Terms</a></li>
<li><a href="#ebook-defense-bills">Ebook Defense Bills</a></li>
<li><a href="#why-does-overdrive-exist-at-all">Why Does Overdrive Exist at All?</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#cdl-as-alternative">CDL as Alternative</a></li>
<li><a href="#anti-cdl-propaganda">Anti-CDL Propaganda</a><ul>
<li><a href="#famine">Famine</a></li>
<li><a href="#discord-the-authors-guild-against-authors">Discord: The Authors Guild Against Authors</a></li>
<li><a href="#discord-authors-against-cdl">Discord: Authors Against CDL?</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#reinforced-error-in-public-discourse">Reinforced Error in Public Discourse</a></li>
<li><a href="#library-permanence-and-archival">Library Permanence and Archival</a><ul>
<li><a href="#preservation-and-archival-is-a-core-function-of-libraries">Preservation and Archival is a Core Function of Libraries</a></li>
<li><a href="#precarity">Precarity</a></li>
<li><a href="#publishers-cannot-be-trusted">Publishers Cannot be Trusted</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#national-emergency-library">National Emergency Library</a></li>
<li><a href="#lawsuit">Lawsuit</a><ul>
<li><a href="#target-is-lending-not-digital-formats">Target is Lending, not Digital Formats</a></li>
<li><a href="#not-nel">Not NEL</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-complaint">The Complaint</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#ruling">Ruling</a><ul>
<li><a href="#the-specter-of-redigi">The Specter of ReDigi</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#fallout">Fallout</a></li>
<li><a href="#conclusion">Conclusion</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a><ul>
<li><a href="#library-rights">Library Rights</a></li>
<li><a href="#book-feudalization">Book Feudalization</a></li>
<li><a href="#internet-archive">Internet Archive</a></li>
<li><a href="#privacy">Privacy</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<!-- DEFINES: Open Library -->
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="controlled-digital-lending">Controlled Digital Lending<a class="headerlink" href="#controlled-digital-lending" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- MISSPELLING: CDL Copy -->
<p>“Controlled Digital Lending” is a system that enables libraries to lend their texts digitally.
It is <strong>exceedingly</strong> careful to stay within the legal and philosophical confines of copyright law, while still allowing libraries to serve their primary purpose and lend their books.
CDL is in active use by many major libraries, including the Internet Archive’s Open Library.
With CDL, libraries lend DRM-protected, temporarily-provisioned digital scans of real, physical books the library owns, which are taken out of circulation for as long as the corresponding digital copy is still usable. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: Whitepaper -->
<p>So how does it work?
Quoting from the 2018 <a href="https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper/">Controlled Digital Lending whitepaper</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://controlleddigitallending.org/whitepaper/">David R. Hansen & Kyle K. Courtney, <em>A White Paper On Controlled Digital Lending Of Library Books</em></a>
This paper is about how libraries can legally lend digital copies of books.</p>
<p>CDL enables a library to circulate a digitized title in place of a physical one in a controlled manner. Under this approach, a library may only loan simultaneously the number of copies that it has legitimately acquired, usually through purchase or donation.</p>
<p>Circulation in any format is controlled so that only one user can use any given copy at a time, for a limited time. Further, CDL systems generally employ appropriate technical measures to prevent users from retaining a permanent copy or distributing additional copies.<br>
…<br>
The system we propose maintains the market balance long-recognized by the courts and Congress as between rightsholders and libraries, and makes it possible for libraries to fulfill their “vital function in society” by enabling the lending of books to benefit the general learning, research, and intellectual enrichment of readers by allowing them limited and controlled digital access to materials online.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>According to the whitepaper, for a book to be usable for CDL it must be owned outright by the library, not simply licensed or borrowed.
This is a strict standard (even stricter than physical books, which you can sub-lend), but a fair one, especially given the desire for CDL to cleanly fall outside any right copyright reserves to the publisher. </p>
<p>The Internet Archive (IA) was a pioneer of CDL, but after the framework was published libraries everywhere were eager to adopt it.
More than that, libraries want CDL to be a standard practice worldwide:</p>
<!-- DEFINES: COSLA -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20200130182532/https://www.cosla.org/News/ArtMID/473/ArticleID/40/Position-Statement-on-Controlled-Digital-Lending-by-Libraries-endorsed-by-COSLA">Position Statement on Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries endorsed by COSLA</a>
The Board of the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) recently <strong>endorsed the <a href="https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement">Position Statement</a> on Controlled Digital Lending</strong> by Libraries as a thoughtful analysis that presents a unique model for leveraging print collections in the digital world. Originating conceptually from the copyright community and pioneered by the Internet Archive through their Open Libraries program, Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) allows libraries to digitize older in-copyright print books.<br>
…
A broad library-based community of practice is emerging around controlled digital lending. To date, 37<sup id="fnref:37-libraries"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:37-libraries">1</a></sup> libraries have implemented CDL. COSLA’s endorsement of the CDL practice serves as encouragement to libraries throughout the United States to explore Open Libraries as a service partner. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) <a href="https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/is-cdl">is currently in the process of developing technical standards for implementing the whitepaper</a>, although libraries are already using the techniques it lays out.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="preventing-reproduction-to-enable-lending">Preventing Reproduction to Enable Lending<a class="headerlink" href="#preventing-reproduction-to-enable-lending" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- Explain nuance: digital copies -->
<p>Normally the reason owners don’t have a simple right to “lend” things digitally is it infringes on the reproduction right.
In the real world, the “natural”, default operation is movement — denying the lender use of the item — while with digital media the default operation is copying.
Since data is infinitely copyable and digital storage is read/write, you can’t “move” a file without making two equally-usable copies of it, both of which are themselves copy-factories for unlimited more copies.
While you can <em>effectively</em> move a file, you can’t “do it in one”, you have to compose the “move” operation out of copy and delete operations.</p>
<!--
http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_executive.html
The first sale doctrine is primarily a limitation on the copyright owner's exclusive right of distribution. It does not limit the exclusive right of reproduction. While disposition of a work downloaded to a floppy disk would only implicate the distribution right, the transmission of a work from one person to another over the Internet results in a reproduction on the recipient's computer, even if the sender subsequently deletes the original copy of the work. This activity therefore entails an exercise of an exclusive right that is not covered by section 109. -->
<!-- Owners of individual copies don't get that! -->
<p>This is the essence of the core “reproduction” right of copyright: while a work is under copyright, only the owner of the monopoly can reproduce and publish new copies.
Real-world items can easily be transferred without violating the reproduction right, but this isn’t so for digital media, as files aren’t actually “moved” between devices as an atomic operation, only read and copied.
Unlike analog distribution, digital distribution typically necessitates a “reproduction”, which — in the absence of special corrective measures — infringes on the reproduction right. </p>
<p>This means as soon as something is digitized, it becomes impossible to share without a “license” from the copyright holder because doing <em>anything</em> involves reproducing the work.
So with digital files, traditional property rights are suddenly very, very limited.
Most incidental reproductions are covered under personal use exemptions, but providing media to another party is not.
This is why, by default, you can’t just “lend” a file as a natural extension of your rights over it.
Without a system in place to ensure the data is only available one place at a time, copying a file to lend it is duplicating the media for non-personal use, which is not allowed.</p>
<!-- Essential step defense
https://www.vondranlegal.com/what-is-the-essential-steps-defense-in-copyright-law
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/117
https://www.ricksanderslaw.com/redigi-redux-essentials-of-the-essential-step-defense-part-16-of-our-online-music-services-series/ -->
<p>But, <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/tag/drm/">as much as I despise it in general</a>, <strong>DRM fixes this problem</strong> and is ultimately the glue that makes current implementations of CDL work.
The DRM-enforced scans<sup id="fnref:ia-drm"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:ia-drm">2</a></sup> patrons borrow with CDL are <em>not</em> reproducible digital copies.
Because CDL copies are only usable within the library’s lending period, they’re also not substitutions for owning a book. They’re not even substitutions for owning a <em>scan</em> of the book, let alone a copy of the book itself.
They are — as enforced by the law, code, and cryptography — ephemeral, non-reproducible, unsharable images to allow temporary remote use of a physical book.
Copyright grants the rightsholder (temporary) control over the number of copies in circulation, and CDL is carefully designed to preserve that right, and enable remote lending of physical books without infringing on the reproduction right.</p>
<!-- Perhaps, given other technologies or legal precedents, this could be substituted in the future. -->
<!-- DEFINES: format shifting -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="format-shifting">Format Shifting<a class="headerlink" href="#format-shifting" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The process CDL describes in their whitepaper is a kind of “format shifting”: converting existing property to a new form or temporarily expressing one thing in a different format, as with “ephemeral copies”.
The digital version of the book is an intermediate artifact: that form only temporarily exists as a necessary step to facilitate the lawful (and necessary!) behavior of lending an owned book. </p>
<p>Fundamentally, the scans the Internet Archive loans aren’t ebooks, but are instead representations of physical books in a temporary digital form.
Loaned scans have some of the benefits of ebooks (more on this in a moment), but ultimately what patrons “get” are only shadows of the physical books themselves.
So it’s important not to confuse CDL with “ebook lending”, as lending officially published made-for-digital publications is its own separate industry (more on this in a moment also).
CDL lends scans of physical books, so other than both just “using computers”, they’re not directly related.</p>
<p>Some of the books available via CDL do have separately published ebook releases which CDL is unconcerned with.
CDL does not describe any way to lend purchased digital ebook files — while the right to lend digital property is an important problem, that’s not part of <em>this</em> conversation at all. CDL only facilitates digital lending of <em>physical</em> texts.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="copyright-friendly">Copyright Friendly<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-friendly" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>CDL has a deeply ingrained dedication to working within the law, in both letter and spirit, both in its purpose and throughout its inner workings.
This is <em>not</em> describing a system of mass piracy, but rather <strong>solving the challenge of how to reasonably express owners’ right-to-lend using digital means</strong>. </p>
<p>Any book used in CDL must be bought and paid for by the library already, meaning authors and publishers are fully compensated.
Publishers, in the act of selling the copy, authorized that particular copy to be in circulation. (That’s what “sale” is.)
Hypothetically, the Internet Archive could instead be mailing the books to each patron, like Netflix used to do.
CDL lets libraries provide this same functional service without violating anyone’s rights by simply improving delivery to people already entitled to receive the content.</p>
<p>In fact, in addition to all the other limits, the Internet Archive has a specific policy for their Open Library to not scan or lend books within the <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">first five years of their publication</a> — the first year of which, statistically, contains the bulk of sales — as a way of ensuring authors are compensated, and its library doesn’t impact book revenue.
This olive branch gesture means IA is actually giving even more deference to publishers than brick-and-mortar libraries do.</p>
<p>All this ensures the process of CDL is functionally identical to the existing conventions of book lending. The only thing getting updated is the use of modern technologies to make the practice of remote lending fast, practical, and efficient for both libraries and their patrons.
CDL is game-changing not because it represents a new paradigm, but because it’s a practical, resource-efficient mechanism to make the established lending process viable for a non-profit. <!-- to run --></p>
<!--
haha it turns out they had all these ideas too
> [EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive's Motion for Summary Judgment](https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf){: .cite}
> But digital lending, too, is transformative. Like the video recording technology at issue
> in Sony, CDL “utilizes technology to achieve the transformative purpose of improving the
> efficiency of delivering content without unreasonably encroaching on the commercial
> entitlements of the rights holder.” Fox News Network, LLC v. TVEyes, Inc., 883 F.3d 169, 177
> (2d Cir. 2018) (describing the Sony court’s “apparent reasoning”); see Capitol Recs., LLC v.
> ReDigi Inc., 910 F.3d 649, 661 (2d Cir. 2018)
>
> By delivering library books to one patron at a time over the Internet, CDL makes the
> delivery more efficient than physically handing or mailing that same print book, as would be
> necessary without that technology
>
> And as Judge Pierre Leval later explained, the use in Sony was achieved “‘without
> unreasonably encroaching on the commercial entitlements of the rights holder’ because the
> improved delivery was to one entitled to receive the content.” ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 661 (quoting
> TVEyes, 883 F.3d at 177). In Sony, the copying at issue “merely enable[d] a viewer to see such a
> work which he had been invited to witness in its entirety free of charge” at the time of its original
> over-the-air broadcast. 464 U.S. at 449.
>
> Here, the patron who digitally borrows a library book via CDL has an even more specific
> entitlement to receive that content: that patron is the one person in the world who is then
> borrowing that particular, bought-and-paid-for library book. Just as a patron who borrows a
> library book physically is entitled to read it, so is a patron who borrows that same library book
> by a more efficient, digital method. -->
<!-- ### Still less useful to patrons than owning books -->
<p>Ironically, the Internet Archive’s Open Library isn’t actually all that useful for any of my personal needs.
The stress of having limited time to read a book and having to orchestrate the logistics of pickup and return means I exclusively purchase-to-own ebooks and physical media.
The library use case is a very specific one. </p>
<p>Because CDL intentionally applies the limitations of physical lending to its digital copies, IA’s lent copies are equally undesirable to me because <strong>they have all the same limits</strong>.
I didn’t like CDL because the DRM was very restrictive.
I like collecting books and saving them for later reference, and when it comes to its scans of commercial books, IA doesn’t let you do that.
CDL is very clearly not a substitute for the commercial product because it failed to substitute for the commercial product!</p>
<!-- I can imagine no clearer demonstration than this: CDL actively fails to substitute in the real world, so I buy books instead. -->
<!-- ### More useful than inaccessible libraries -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="great-for-libraries">Great for Libraries<a class="headerlink" href="#great-for-libraries" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But when it comes to what CDL is <em>for</em> — lending-library access to knowledge for the public, not book piracy (or enabling a hoarder) — it does its job beautifully, and everyone who matters loves it.</p>
<!-- USES: COSLA -->
<p>I’ve already talked about the powerful testimonials from COSLA, but there are many more.</p>
<p>The Board of Supervisors of San Francisco (the Internet Archive’s hometown) passed an incredibly strong resolution in support of controlled digital lending, the Internet Archive, and general power for libraries to operate independently of publishing companies:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11893345&GUID=990E482D-3EAE-4A80-ABE9-5836644B34E3">FILE NO. 230418</a>
Resolution recognizing the irreplaceable public value of libraries, including online libraries like the Internet Archive, and the essential rights of all libraries to own, preserve, and lend both digital and print books to the residents of San Francisco and the wider public; supporting the Internet Archive and its public service mission; and urging the California State Legislature and the United States Congress to support digital rights for libraries, including controlled digital lending and the option for libraries to own their digital collections.<br>
…<br>
WHEREAS, The Internet Archive provides digital books through its controlled digital lending program where a library owns a book, scans it digitally, and loans the digital copy one user at a time; and<br>
WHEREAS, Authors, researchers, journalists, and other creators benefit from digital access to library collections, including the Internet Archive’s books, because libraries keep books available beyond their commercial life and provide access to older, difficult to find materials that provide the building blocks for new creative works; and<br>
WHEREAS, The Internet Archive provides access to and preserves books that the public might not otherwise be able to access, either due to book bans, physical obstacles, or geographic or licensing unavailability; and<br>
WHEREAS, The Internet Archive contains many books that have been banned from libraries across the country, and attempts to ban books has nearly doubled across the nation, reaching the highest point ever recorded in 2022; and<br>
WHEREAS, Digital libraries are necessary to protect democratized access to information, knowledge, and truth; and<br>
WHEREAS, The Internet Archive has a critical role in providing open, nondiscriminatory access to books, music, videos, and the history of the web; now, therefore, be it<br>
RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco recognizes the irreplaceable public value of libraries, including online libraries like the Internet Archive, and the essential rights of all libraries to own, preserve, and lend both digital and print books to the residents of San Francisco and the wider public; and, be it<br>
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors commits to supporting the Internet Archive and its public service mission; and, be it<br>
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Board of Supervisors calls on the Legislature of the State of California and the United States Congress to support digital rights for libraries, including controlled digital lending and the option for libraries to own their digital collections; and, be it<br>
FURTHER RESOLVED, That the Clerk of the Board send a copy of this Resolution to Senator Scott Wiener, Assembly Member Matt Haney, Assembly Member Phil Ting, Senator Alex Padilla, Senator Diane Feinstein and Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(I’m sure Feinstein got right on that.)</p>
<p><img alt="Brewster Kahle and supporters at SF city hall" src="https://blog.archive.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Apr18_FullCrowd-scaled.jpg">
<em>Brewster Kahle and supporters at SF city hall</em></p>
<!-- >
> As Stacey Aldrich, the State Librarian for Hawaii and COSLA President noted, “State libraries and the libraries they serve have an obligation to maximize the return on the information assets they have purchased with taxpayer funds. Controlled digital lending could be a way for us to deliver that information to our citizens wherever they are and give our older collections new life in the digital lives of our patrons.” -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-federal-lawsuit-filed-publishing-companies">EFF Press Release, “Internet Archive Seeks Summary Judgment in Federal Lawsuit Filed By Publishing Companies”</a>
“Should we stop libraries from owning and lending books? No,” said Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian. “We need libraries to be independent and strong, now more than ever, in a time of misinformation and challenges to democracy. That’s why we are defending the rights of libraries to serve our patrons where they are, online.”</p>
</blockquote>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="ebooks-are-broken">Ebooks are broken<a class="headerlink" href="#ebooks-are-broken" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But here’s a question: what’s the point?</p>
<p>We live in a world where, for most books still under copyright, specially designed ebooks already exist.
Public domain books can be scanned and shared freely, without the logistical headache of controlling lent copies.
And for copyrighted books, libraries should be buying ebooks from publishers and lending out their collection to patrons.</p>
<p>To a librarian, digitizing existing books might sound like a way to make them more useful, but the scanning process is an enormous time commitment, and they’d have to keep the book off the shelves whenever it was checked out online. </p>
<p>So what could possibly make investing so much time and resources into this system worth it to so many libraries?
Why are so many resources being thrown at a problem that looks like it’s been solved?
<strong>What’s broken?</strong></p>
<p>Well, it’s ebooks. The sensible practice — buying ebooks and lending them out just like you do with regular books — isn’t an option.
And it’s not a technical issue, it’s because publishers have decided to be <em>bastards</em>.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: Feudal -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="media-ownership">Media Ownership<a class="headerlink" href="#media-ownership" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>In the US, libraries don’t have to “license” the physical books they loan out, and they never have.
When it comes to library loaning, a book is a book is a book. A library can buy a book from a publisher, or a bookstore, or a used book shop, or they can even get a used book as a donation.
It doesn’t matter; if it’s their book they own outright, they can loan it out one-patron-at-a-time, just like any book owner can do with any book.
There’s no special permission needed from the publisher or author or printer or paper company or the maker of the font; the only rights you need to loan a book come with — and are inseparable from — owning the book.
That’s what it means to own something.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: exhaustion of rights -->
<!-- DEFINES: first sale -->
<p>People have a right to resell, trade, give away, or lend their own property — regardless of the wishes of the copyright holder — as per the principle of the <strong>exhaustion of rights</strong>, aka the first sale doctrine.
<a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#exhaustion-of-rights">I’ve already discussed first sale in this series</a>, but to summarize: once a copy has first been sold, that item is like any other piece of physical property.
The copyright holder’s right to control distribution is exhausted after the first sale.
As I’ve described and as §109 makes clear, if you own a copy of media, the copyright holder is irrelevant to future distribution.
You still can’t make new reproductions — that specific right is retained by the copyright holder — but if you own it, you can lend it.</p>
<p>In the words of the law, quoting directly from <em>17 U.S. Code § 109 - Limitations on exclusive rights</em>, “the <strong><em>owner</em></strong> of a particular [copy] lawfully made under this title, or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, <strong>without the authority of the copyright owner</strong>, to sell or otherwise dispose of the possession of that [copy].”
So in order to lend books without needing any special license from the copyright owner, libraries need to own the books outright, not simply have access to licensed copies.
The trade-off for this is well worth it: once one owns a copy, they <strong>do not need special license</strong> to sell, donate, or lend it. Under these special conditions, the copyright holder is made irrelevant to the transaction; in fact, it’s inappropriate for them to be involved at all.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>It’s easy to mistakenly contextualize the first sale limitation as a cornerstone principle that the very idea of libraries “depends on”, but that’s not right. Specifically, it’s an anachronism; libraries long predate both first sale as a legal doctrine and copyright itself.</p>
<!-- It isn't true that the first sale doctrine "enables the existence of libraries." The first sale doctrine is a description of the fundamental property right, and libraries are just a demonstration out of many as to why that is the case. -->
<p>In fact, though I quote §109 here, the first sale doctrine itself far predates §109. The law only had to be made in the first place as an explicit response to ghastly overstepping on the part of book publishers. More on that later.</p>
</aside>
<!-- IGNORE: NotYetDefinedInline -->
<!-- ALLUDES: 1908 -->
<p>The first sale doctrine — the notion that you own the things you buy — is utterly foundational to virtually everything in a capitalist society, in a way that’s difficult to overstate.
It’s foundational to <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">the good kind of copyright</a>: remember, the exhaustion of rights is not an exception to copyright, it is a foundational part of it.</p>
<p>But first sale is also foundational to the good parts of capitalism: people can own capital and have meaningful rights over their own property, instead of being subject to the discretionary authority of a tyrannical government or a feudal lord.
Feudalism is, quite literally, the thing that makes capitalism look good in comparison, and to advocate against the exhaustion of rights is to advocate for feudalism. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: Brewster Khale -->
<p>Owning a book means you have rights to use that book by right of ownership, and which aren’t reserved by the corporation that manufactured it.
Corporations automatically object to this because it’s theoretical control they could keep and use to squeeze more money out of people.
To use Internet Archive founder Brewster Khale’s phrase, what publishers want is ultimate control over <strong>every reading event</strong>: who’s allowed to read, when they’re allowed to read, and if they’re allowed to read. This is a level of control they don’t, can’t, mustn’t have. But it’s what they want and why they do what they do.</p>
<!-- But corporations don't get a new monopoly right just because they can imagine it, even in the US. -->
<p>That sounds like a bold claim, but it’s not hard to spot. Audaciously, publishers have tried to force through legislation to sabotage libraries by charging fees on books they already own.
Like <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/93rd-congress/house-bill/4850">H.R.4850</a>, to “compensate authors for uses of their books by public libraries, college and university libraries, and similar institutions” and <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/99th-congress/senate-bill/658">S.658</a> to establish “a compensation system of payments… to authors for the lending of their works” were both such attempts, and both were summarily rejected. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: 1908 -->
<p>In fact, the codification of the first sale doctrine itself in law was prompted by <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/210/339/">Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus</a>, in 1908, when a book publisher tried this same kind of power grab.
The Bobbs-Merrill company (now Simon & Schuster LLC) attempted to abuse copyright to sabotage the used book market by printing this demand on their books:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The price of this book at retail is $1 net. No dealer is licensed to sell it at a less price, and a sale at a less price will be treated as an infringement of the copyright.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Supreme Court found that, indeed, “one who has sold a copyrighted article, without restriction, has parted with all right to control the sale of it. The purchaser of a book … may sell it again…”.
There’s nothing novel or thought-provoking about attempts to sabotage the secondary market; it’s a tale as old as greed.</p>
<p>While not novel, all such attempts by publishers to attack the concept of consumer-owned property are <strong>wrong</strong>, and have (mostly) been successfully struck down by the adults in the room.
Anyone, including libraries, has the right to gift, lend, or dispose of books they own, even if publishers wish they could charge them for the privilege. Greedy publishers lost that battle and must always lose that battle. </p>
<!-- USES: 1908 -->
<p>But digital media has introduced myriad ways for corporations to withhold ownership rights from customers, not because the law entitles them to do so, but through technical measures they impose themselves.
This is through the insidious rot of the DMCA “anti-tamper” provision, which makes it illegal for customers to modify their property to remove a restriction, even if they’re being restrained from doing something they have a legal right to do.
This lets “DRM” create automatically policed business models out of whole cloth by corporations simply imagining how customers should have to behave, and makes “contempt of business model” a felony offense in the digital world.
In effect, we’ve regressed all the way back to 1908, except without the sound court decision; the adults in the room are gone, the systems are compromised, and any absurd, arbitrary demand made about a digital work is automatically legally binding.</p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>In the book market, we do see something akin to the “system of mass piracy” publishers accuse controlled digital lending of being. But the theft on a massive scale isn’t in CDL, it’s in the retail ebook market. The lack of lending mechanisms in commercial ebook marketplaces represent <em>theft</em> on a massive scale: book owners are systematically deprived of their right to lend their own property, reducing its practical value and depriving owners the full use of their belongings.</p>
</aside>
<!-- DMCA report (two draft paragraphs, more in more) -->
<p>This was a well-known problem with the text of the DMCA.
In fact, its passing was conditional on a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20111109203731/http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/sec-104-report-vol-1.pdf">follow-up report</a> to study the effects on property rights and adjust the law as necessary. The report showed significant issues, specifically with how libraries depend on first sale, but publishers fought so hard against the necessary policy changes that congress ultimately neglected their duty — the very condition the DMCA was predicated on — and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20120106050916/http://www.copyright.gov/reports/studies/dmca/dmca_executive.html">did nothing about it</a>.</p>
<!-- [DMCA Section 104 Report on First Sale | American Library Association (firstsale)](https://web.archive.org/web/20120120124329/http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/dmca/section104/firstsale)
Although the Copyright Office acknowledged that the library community had raised "potentially valid concerns," such as the ability to make interlibrary loans and to offer off-site accessibility that "may require further consideration at some point in the future," the Office recommended no change to the copyright law at that time. -->
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This touches on a topic I’m definitely going to dedicate a full article to: <strong>enforcement</strong>.
When it comes to questions of preventative enforcement of licensing policy, as seen in DRM, media companies routinely make arguments like:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Association of American Publishers</a>
Publishers are entitled to create the contractual and technical controls that they deem necessary to protect their intellectual property and to have oversight of digital distributions.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is <strong>wrong</strong>. Except in extraordinary circumstances, having a “right”, including copyright’s reproduction right, means a <strong>right to remedy</strong>, not a <strong>right to prevent</strong>.
If the right is violated, you have the right to have a court adjudicate the issue and force the offender to remedy the damage done.
Having a right does <em>not</em> grant unlimited authority to create whatever system you “deem necessary” to <em>prevent</em> the behaviour.
<!-- You do not have the right to cripple people as a preventative measure to keep them from copying books, no matter how hard you deem it necessary. --></p>
</aside>
<!-- DEFINES: regional pricing -->
<p>A surprisingly relevant example of this is region coding.
Due to [out-of-scope economics involving how much people can afford to pay for entertainment], media companies can make marginally more money by selling physical media (games, blu-rays, etc.) at different prices in different regions.
For example, <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/1716740/Starfield/">Starfield on Steam</a> is $69.99 in the US, but ~$59 if you live in Brazil.<sup id="fnref:starfield"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:starfield">5</a></sup>
Even though the product — a digital game — is exactly the same, and digital distribution means there is no associated discrepancy in costs for manufacturing or distribution.
This is a business practice known as <strong>regional pricing</strong> or <strong>price discrimination</strong>, with the ultimate goal being to skip “market pricing” and instead charge everyone the maximum price they would personally be willing to pay, like a hell auction<sup id="fnref:price-discrimination"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:price-discrimination">4</a></sup>.</p>
<p>In a “free market”, regional pricing <em>should</em> be a non-starter because the first sale doctrine gives a secondary used media market influence over the maximum sale price of a work.
For example, if companies sold DVDs for significantly less in Brazil than the US, a company could purchase copies there and re-sell them in the US in bulk, undercutting the US MSRP but still making a profit.
This is <em>categorically</em> legal: you’re selling individual, purchased copies of the media, items you own outright.
What the corporations use to prevent this practice isn’t the law, but <em>region-coding</em>: DRM baked into the discs and players that prevent people from playing imported media.</p>
<p>Anti-tamper laws let corporations squeeze more money out of people by unilaterally creating trade embargoes and artificially segregating the market.
Digital dissemination, whether through transmission-streaming or DRM-locked copies, dramatically empowers a copyright holder to price discriminate by obliterating the property quality of the media.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/tag/feudalism/">I’ve talked about this subject extensively</a>, so I’ll try not to repeat myself too much here. For this essay, let’s focus on books.</p>
<p>When it comes to books, publishers can’t put DRM between paper and eyes — as much as they’d like to — but they sure can DRM themselves up some ebooks!</p>
<!-- IGNORE: NotYetDefinedInline -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="feudalism-on-overdrive">Feudalism on Overdrive<a class="headerlink" href="#feudalism-on-overdrive" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Given the enormous potential of exploitative profit, it should not be a surprise to anyone that publishers are eager to shift to a rentier system, given an opportunity to do so.</p>
<p>For publishers, the value of ebooks is not in the incredible, automatic benefits digital formats give them to distribution, accessibility, and preservation.
For them, the value comes from the excuse to shift to an unjust economic model that enriches themselves at the expense of the public, using the technological difference as a justification.</p>
<p>Publishers have built technical restrictions into ebooks that prevent broad categories of “unauthorized uses”.
The use of DRM and technical protection measures lets publishers circumvent property law and the due process of evaluating contract enforceability, and instead, jump directly to having arbitrary, discretionary power.
This has allowed them to invent their long-coveted “lending right”, which they can reserve to themselves and refuse to sell to consumers, or charge libraries (read: taxpayers) astronomical prices for. </p>
<p>
<video alt="Drop in a token, look at a duck." controls="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/duck2.webm" type="video/webm"></video>
<em>Drop in a token, look at a book.</em></p>
<!-- DEFINES: Overdrive -->
<p>Right now, the single, monopolist provider of library ebooks is Overdrive<sup id="fnref:libby"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:libby">6</a></sup>. Library patrons make an account using the library credentials and can check out ebooks to temporarily borrow through the Overdrive app. </p>
<!-- The experience for users is generally fine, except for having a very limited selection of books and having to wait for virtual copies to be "available" to borrow. -->
<!-- For libraries though, -->
<p>For users it can be alright, but for libraries it’s a nightmare.
Unlike with physical books, libraries <em>cannot</em> purchase ebooks to own outright and lend out — like they do physical books and media — because the publishers won’t allow it. They refuse to sell books to libraries outright, and they’ve completely prevented the existence of a secondary market.
So instead, libraries are forced to go through Overdrive and “license” virtual copies — which the library never even handles! — for their constituents to have access to. </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="abusive-licensing-terms">Abusive Licensing Terms<a class="headerlink" href="#abusive-licensing-terms" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Ebook licensing for libraries is a predatory model designed to siphon public funding away from library services and force scarcity of books and knowledge, directly contrary to the purpose of libraries.</p>
<p>The licensing strategies vary, but reliably set prices so exorbitantly high libraries can only afford to license a very limited selection.
To use the example from <a href="https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/mediapresscenter/CompetitionDigitalMarkets.pdf">American Library Association’s congressional brief</a> (and note that this is in the context of commercial ebooks as lent by Overdrive):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/mediapresscenter/CompetitionDigitalMarkets.pdf">Competition in Digital Markets</a>
Abusive pricing for libraries also is typical from the Big 5 publishers. For example, <em>The Codebreakers</em> by David Kahn and published by Simon & Schuster was quoted for $59.99 as an eBook for a consumer purchase — which means lifetime access. By contrast, the price to libraries for the very same eBook is $239.99 — and this is for one copy (i.e., it can be loaned out to one person at a time, simulating the print loan model) and lasts for only two years. If a library wanted access for four years, it would pay $479.98. If the library wanted access for 20 years, it would pay a staggering $2,399.90—for one copy, lending that eBook to one person at a time. </p>
<p>As another example, All the Light We Cannot See: A Novel by Anthony Doerr, is priced as an eBook for $12.99 to consumers. The library price is $51.99—for two years or $519.90 for 20 years—for one copy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Similar evidence can be found in Readers First’s Position Paper (although they’re being far more charitable to publishers than I am):</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.readersfirst.org/elending-position-paper">eLending Position Paper — Readers First</a>
To understand exactly how the various models developed, I pulled a set of purchase order detail reports spanning the last ten years from OverDrive Insights. I included at least one purchase order from each month in the time period and the final set totaled 11,357 purchases of titles.<br>
…<br>
In brief, the average price per copy has tripled in nine years at the same time that license models have become much more restrictive. In 2011, the average price per copy from the major publishers was $13.37, offered with a perpetual license from most publishers. In 2020, no major publishers offer a perpetual license, and the average cost per copy is $39.96.</p>
<p>Roughly the timeline is as follows:</p>
<ul>
<li>2011: Most major publishers were offering eBooks to libraries for sale at approximately retail prices on a perpetual license (although some did not make their full catalog available at that time). …</li>
<li>2013: Prices rose to a multiple of the retail price, which aligns with the proposed model that a perpetual use license should cost approximately 4 times retail. …</li>
<li>2018: Publishers switched license models from perpetual use to metered access but did not lower their prices. A combination of metered access at prices at 2–3 times the price of retail is unfair to libraries.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>It doesn’t come as surprise to anyone familiar with monopolized markets. Although the issue of price hikes has already hit us, people have been warning against this danger for decades. </p>
<p>Quoting from <em>The First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks</em>, published over two full decades ago in 2003:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.463620">Reese, R. A. (2003). The First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks</a>
…for consumers who want to acquire their own copies of a copyrighted work, a shift to digital transmission might result in generally higher prices than are charged today in markets in which works are distributed in copies and the first sale doctrine allows those copies to circulate freely.
Consumers may have good reasons for wanting to own a copy rather than to acquire only limited access to copyrighted works. If a consumer is certain to access a work repeatedly, it may be cheaper to pay once for a copy of the work and obtain the right and ability to use the work as much as desired, rather than to pay a per-use charge or an ongoing monthly subscription fee. Buying a copy also offers certainty as to price and availability. A consumer who buys a copy knows up front the price she must pay for unlimited access. A consumer who pays for each use of the same work, or who pays on a monthly basis, must take the risk that the copyright owner will raise the price of access, or reduce the availability of the work.<br>
…<br>
A library might, for example, contract with the provider of an online encyclopedia or dictionary, such that anyone with borrowing privileges from that library would be able, from any computer, to access the work.
It is unclear as a general matter whether the cost to a library of providing such online access would be higher or lower than the cost of purchasing copies to lend to its patrons. The cost per patron use of online access might easily exceed the cost of a copy of the work, spread across the number of patron uses of that copy.
On the other hand, the cost per use might be no more expensive than the cost of buying a copy, or might actually be cheaper.
Much would depend on the prices charged, how those prices compare with the price of copies, whether the price is charged as a periodic subscription or on a per-use basis, what restrictions are placed on the use of the work by the library and its patrons, and how heavily a work is used.
In addition, <strong>libraries that provide access in this manner, rather than buying copies to lend, could remain vulnerable to a copyright owner’s pricing decisions</strong>, particularly if libraries contract with copyright owners for relatively short terms.
Whenever such a contract is up for renewal, a copyright owner might raise the price to the library to a level that the library cannot afford.
If the library therefore chooses not to renew, access to the works could become entirely unavailable to the library’s patrons.
Had the library bought copies of the works instead of paying a recurring fee for mere access, it would, of course, be able to circulate those copies regardless of price hikes by the owner for more copies or for new works. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- DEFINES: Refusing to sell -->
<p>The publishers figured this out too.
But they ran with it, to the point of refusing to sell books outright at all.
They consciously rejected the traditional model of libraries purchasing and lending media in favor of a new rentier system that empowered them to siphon money from libraries indefinitely, just for access to their “intellectual property”.
That’s why they intentionally denied libraries the ability to purchase copies of works, to cut off the one relief. The only option left is leasing, the option by which publishers can extort the most economic rent.</p>
<p>With Overdrive, libraries are forced to become renters, mere tenants of publishers instead of individual actors in their own right.
Often ebooks are priced yearly as above, but many publishers <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/">double-dip</a>, like HarperCollins’s “you lose your ebooks after one year or <a href="https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/harpercollins-puts-26-loan-cap-on-ebook-circulations">26 checkouts</a>, whichever comes first” model.
“Perpetual licenses” that allow a library to pay once for a book often aren’t even offered at all, and when they are the prices are prohibitively expensive.
In order to continue effectively performing their mission at all, they’re forced to sacrifice the fundamental concept of owning a collection of books, and instead subject themselves to the moment-to-moment whims of publishers eager to maximize revenue generation.</p>
<!--
> [EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive's Motion for Summary Judgment](https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf){: .cite}
> When it comes to digital lending of books a library owns to one patron at a time, there is
> no evidence of any licensing market whatsoever. American libraries have never paid a publisher
> for a license to digitally lend a book the library owns to one patron at a time. And this has
> remained true even as digital lending of purchased print books has become a more widespread
> library practice. -->
<!-- ### Public Funds to Private Equity
Overdrive, the monopolist provider of library ebooks, is owned by K.K.R., a private equity firm famous for being the "barbarians" in [Barbarians at the Gate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbarians_at_the_Gate).
Like many private equity firms, K.K.R. has a reputation for [buying vital services and boosting profit not by adding value, but by lowering standards and more aggressively exploiting their customers.](https://www.afr.com/companies/healthcare-and-fitness/kkr-barbarians-at-the-gate-or-global-experts-at-work-20220428-p5ah07) Overdrive's direct customers, remember, are not individuals in a market, but rather libraries and schools forced to license services.
So Overdrive's purely extractive profit -- which comes from markup it charges on ebooks -- is funded *directly* by tax dollars.
What's worse, these are tax dollars that are *already* earmarked for ebooks and are *already* all going to Overdrive.
This means Overdrive's markup only generates revenue by making library collections artificially smaller in order to pressure the government to allocate them more ebook money, a ratcheting cycle they can continue indefinitely.
Currently, local governments have generally already implicitly chosen not to give into publishers' demands by not scaling up library budgets proportionately to Overdrive's price hikes.
But the consequences for this skip over the corporations responsible and the legal system and land squarely on the individuals who suddenly have access to a far smaller range of books. -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="ebook-defense-bills">Ebook Defense Bills<a class="headerlink" href="#ebook-defense-bills" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The state of ebook pricing is so bad that state governments are already trying to pass defensive laws to protect libraries from further exploitation.
A highlight of these is Maryland’s H.B.518, which codifies library exploitation under the definition of “<code>UNFAIR, ABUSIVE, OR DECEPTIVE TRADE PRACTICES</code>”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://legiscan.com/MD/text/HB518/2021">H.B.518</a>
requiring a publisher who offers to license an electronic literary product to the public to also offer to license the electronic literary product to public libraries in the State <strong>on reasonable terms</strong> that would enable public libraries to provide library users with access to the electronic literary product</p>
</blockquote>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This actually isn’t <em>just</em> a reaction against pricing. The reason the law is tying library copies to copies available to the public is the book embargo fiasco.</p>
<p>Summarized extremely quickly, <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/77777-librarians-question-tor-s-e-book-embargo.html">Macmillan publishers unilaterally announced</a> that they would stop allowing libraries to loan ebook versions of new titles for four months after publication. <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/87458-wyden-eshoo-question-big-five-publishers-over-their-library-e-book-practices.html">Everybody hated that.</a></p>
<p>If you’re keeping score, five months is a much more modest embargo than the <em>five year</em> embargo Internet Archive enforces voluntarily, but that’s not enough for publishers. With companies, there’s no such thing as enough.</p>
</aside>
<p>An overwhelmingly popular bill, HB518 passed unanimously in both the house (<a href="https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2021RS/votes/house/1029.pdf">130 to 0</a>) and the senate (<a href="https://mgaleg.maryland.gov/2021RS/votes/senate/0881.pdf">47-0</a>).</p>
<!-- DEFINES: Publishers hate libraries -->
<p>You’ll never guess the one faction who isn’t happy about it.
<a href="https://www.infodocket.com/2021/12/09/the-association-of-american-publishers-files-suit-against-the-state-of-maryland-over-unprecedented-encroachment-into-federally-protected-copyrights/">Publishers sued the state of Maryland over this bill</a>, taking offense at the requirement to be, quoting the bill, “reasonable.”
So, if you’re ever tempted to think publishers <em>don’t</em> view libraries as their enemy, that’s the kicker.</p>
<p>(Specifically, they claimed that regulating trade practices infringed on their <em>copyright</em>, which is ludicrous, but also an example of the <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">problems with the intellectual property mentality</a>. These laws are about commerce, not copyright.)</p>
<!-- They argue that's too much to require of them. -->
<p>Note that this bill doesn’t represent the state trying to renegotiate any of its existing contracts, but is rather a defensive measure against projected abuse. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.libraryjournal.com/?detailStory=maryland-passes-law-requiring-publishers-to-license-ebooks-to-libraries-under-reasonable-terms">Matt Enis, AAP Sues Maryland Over Law Requiring Publishers to License Ebooks to Libraries Under “Reasonable Terms”</a>
[Michael Blackwell, director of the St. Mary’s County Public Library, MD, and an organizer of the ReadersFirst coalition] said that, in his opinion, publishers that currently license ebooks to libraries are already compliant with the “reasonable terms” standard, even though many librarians may be unhappy with pricing, circulation caps, or other aspects of ebook licensing.</p>
<p>“This doesn’t really go as far as a lot of people in the library community would like,” he said. “I think it’s fairly modest. The state has a legitimate interest in guaranteeing that its citizens can read ebooks that are otherwise [for sale] to the public.”</p>
<p>Blackwell added: “We in libraries look forward to working with any publisher on mutually beneficial agreements for the good of all readers and learners. Our bill is not anti-publisher…. It is reasonable. Existing licenses under which we have been working will not need revisions.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Maryland isn’t alone in trying to defend its libraries against abusive publishers though. I recommend reading the excellent summary at <a href="https://www.everylibraryinstitute.org/evolution_ebook_bills">EveryLibrary Institute</a> for more on this.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="why-does-overdrive-exist-at-all">Why Does Overdrive Exist at All?<a class="headerlink" href="#why-does-overdrive-exist-at-all" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- USES: Publishers hate libraries -->
<p>If publishers think that libraries are diametrically opposed to their revenue-generation goals, why offer them ebooks at all?
Why pour so much time and energy into an ecosystem while they simultaneously insist that their “<a href="https://www.ualibrary.org/mediasrvc/blog/statement-release-regarding-tor-digital-books">current analysis on eLending indicates it is having a direct and adverse impact on retail eBook sales</a>”?
I think the answer is fairly obvious: it’s an opportunity to lock libraries into a new, extractive system.</p>
<p>The ways in which publishing companies have refused to cooperate with lending libraries can be understood fully as part of the much larger political war on individual ownership of property.
We’re currently in an age where companies are leveraging new technology in order to recreate a feudalist system where rent is extracted perpetually from users who own nothing themselves, while corporations retain the real control.
Corporations want everyone to be forced to <em>license</em> their property from corporate owners, who can revoke those licenses or set conditions (locked to a specific brand of devices, etc.), and even <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/02/27/lies-damned-lies-and-subscriptions/">demand recurring fees on products that don’t need them</a>. </p>
<!-- Factually, publishers know libraries -- including IA -- don't actually cut into their profit. But publishers hate the very *idea* of libraries, and are eager to chip away at them given any excuse.
This is why I say the library issue can only be understood as part of the larger war on ownership and push toward corporate feudalism. -->
<p>To publishers, the great value of normalizing the Overdrive model is not just in sapping revenue from libraries, it’s in eroding the concept of consumer ownership, which in the era of digital technology is a barrier to corporate profit.
They’re already mad they can’t put a chokepoint on physical media, and they see an opportunity to chokepointify books.
We know they’re against lending because the ebooks they sell through Amazon and similar <em>already</em> have technical controls preventing it.
Tradable property has only ever been something they’ve tolerated, and now that they have the tools they’re finally working on eliminating it.</p>
<!-- USES: Publishers hate libraries -->
<p>So with publishers already publicly professing they’re unwilling to commit to “reasonable” licensing terms, why would we trust them with monopoly power to define licensing terms for library books?
They’re already actively trying to punish libraries, which they resent as competitors.</p>
<p>Monopolists always insist they can manage the entire market single-handedly, like tzars of a command economy.
They insist they’re managing in a way that benefits everyone involved, not just themselves.
It’s never true, but they always say it. But for books we already know we’re not getting that behavior.
The harms aren’t projected; they’re already inflicted, and the attacks are only ramping up in scale.</p>
<!-- Overdrive conclusion -->
<p>Overdrive’s book licensing monopoly is yet another case of a business model being elevated to the position of a law.
Corporations use their copyright-granted production monopoly right to force libraries into a constructed, extralegal exploitation system where rental is the only option available. But they don’t have a <em>right</em> to that system, and if libraries can find a legal way <em>out</em>, publishers should have to go pound sand. </p>
<p>This is why controlled digital lending is such a desperately needed relief for libraries.
CDL threatens to give libraries a defense against this exploitation by creating a new option for libraries, but instead of calling feudalism a loss and trying to find a way to create value, publishers leapt at their throats like wild dogs.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="cdl-as-alternative">CDL as Alternative<a class="headerlink" href="#cdl-as-alternative" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But what is the nature of the “relief” controlled digital lending provides libraries. Moreover, what does Overdrive have to do with CDL?
I’ve kept saying that CDL is concerned with print books, not first-class ebooks, and that’s still true.
But is CDL an escape valve for the predatory practices seen in Overdrive? Are CDL copies an “alternative to” ebooks?
The answer is yes and no.</p>
<p>CDL loans are an “alternative” to ebooks in some cases because they fill some of the same needs, not because they have all the same features.
It’s like calling water an “alternative” to soda: they both hydrate you, but the only way water offers something soda <em>doesn’t</em> is if there’s a terrible problem with your supply chain and your basic needs aren’t being met.
CDL books “scratch the same itch” as ebooks but only because there was a giant gaping hole where the remedy for “no, I don’t need the luxury product, I just need the information for research” was supposed to be.</p>
<p>Of course, lots of things are “alternatives” to licensing an ebook from a publisher, depending on your needs. You could borrow a physical copy from a local library or purchase a physical copy outright.
Or you might just make up the information and go ignorant.
Yes, ultimately using a book you already purchased and own is an “alternative” to buying a new ebook copy.
But then, that’s an argument that recurses forever, isn’t it? Never use, only pay.</p>
<p>But a general defensiveness against alternatives is unwarranted.
While a sufficiently self-agitated corporation might muster up the energy to take offense at alternatives to their product existing, they do not have a general right to “not be competed with”, even if they hold a copyright.
<a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">There are only specific rights over specific works</a>, all of which are being honored. Publishers take offense at the threat to their <em>money</em> and backfill that emotion with post-hoc justification.</p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>In fact, ask an economist and they’ll tell you <em>providing alternatives to a product is a good thing</em>. If there’s an alternate form factor that can provide a better value, that’s called <em>efficiency</em>, and it’s the entire promise of the market system! See: disruption.</p>
</aside>
<p>So, yes, CDL threatens to disrupt this system by providing book access to people who just need a temporary copy of a book they can read digitally without the library having to negotiate with Overdrive. </p>
<p>Normally the library doesn’t have to “negotiate” with anyone: a status quo Overdrive disrupted but CDL restores.
The Overdrive system is this outlier that’s held up by restrictions that shouldn’t exist in the first place: of <em>course</em> libraries’ response to a burdensome, exploitative trap is to work around it, as it should be!
Abusive monopolies are <em>made</em> to be disrupted; it takes violence to <em>prevent</em> that.</p>
<p>But CDL isn’t just a cludgy workaround to avoid paying for a service, it’s a genuinely valuable solution, leveraging new technologies and existing rights to create a new, useful option. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="anti-cdl-propaganda">Anti-CDL Propaganda<a class="headerlink" href="#anti-cdl-propaganda" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So why am I having to be so defensive about the need for CDL and its legitimacy as a practice?
Because publishing corporations <em>hate</em> lending with a venom, and need you to too.
Not just <em>controlled digital</em> lending specifically, but lending and individual ownership of property as a general practice. </p>
<p>As is very often the case with these issues, there’s a small population of people who are against CDL for their own personal gain and another much larger population that’s been hornswoggled by the first. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: The Authors Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Author's Guild -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: The Authors' Guild -->
<p>In order to understand how publishing companies go about orchestrating an outrage campaign against libraries, we have to start with The Authors Guild<sup id="fnref:the-authors-guild"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:the-authors-guild">7</a></sup>. </p>
<p>“The Authors Guild”, is a political advocacy organization for published authors and journalists focused on strengthening the IP rights of authors through lobbying and legal action.
It has been a power player behind a number of copyright lawsuits, including major cases against <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild_v._Google">Google Books</a> and the Internet Archive.</p>
<!-- DEFINES: Association of American Publishers -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: American Association of Publishers -->
<p>The theory is that a “strong” copyright regime increases the value of the work of authors.
In practice though, all the copyrights created by authors get vacuumed up by the publishing companies<sup id="fnref:chokepoint"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:chokepoint">8</a></sup>, namely the Association of American Publishers (AAP).
So in its fights to strengthen copyright protections, TAG ultimately works for them first, even when that means putting authors second. </p>
<!-- MISSPELLING: the AG -->
<!-- DEFINES: TAG/AAP -->
<!-- MISSPELLING: TAG/APP -->
<!-- The complaint of The Authors Guild -->
<p>And so, because CDL cuts off a source of enrichment for publishing companies, of course The Authors Guild is blue in the face with rage over it. But they’re wrong to be, and so their complaints turn out wrong too.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://authorsguild.org/app/uploads/2022/10/2022.08.12-Exhibit-A-Proposed-Amici-Curaie-Brief.pdf">describing its complaint with</a> the Internet Archive, The Authors Guild starts things out by calling Open Library <em>larger</em> than “the most flagrantly illegal pirate websites.”
This is an obvious lie: not only is Open Library’s 1.4 m book catalog smaller than Libgen’s 6 m + 84 m, or Z-library’s 22 m, but The Authors Guild <em>knows</em> they’re lying here, because they make the Z-library comparison themselves later <em>in the same brief</em>.
This outburst is not only objectively false, it’s a schoolchild-tantrum-level “you’re worse than Hitler!” outburst that, right out of the gate, utterly delegitimizes TAG as a serious participant in the conversation.
But so does everything else they do, so let’s keep going.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230403135256/https://www.authorsline.org/industry-advocacy/authors-guild-affirms-support-for-copyright-infringement-lawsuit-against-internet-archive-brought-by-four-leading-book-publishers/#:~:text=New%20York%20%28June%201%2C%202020%29%3A%20The%20Authors%20Guild%2C,Hachette%2C%20Penguin%20Random%20House%2C%20HarperCollins%2C%20and%20John%20Wiley.">The Authors Guild Newspost</a>
“Internet Archive’s wholesale scanning and posting of copyrighted books without the consent of authors, and without paying a dime, is piracy hidden behind a sanctimonious veil of progressivism,” said Douglas Preston, author and President of the Authors Guild. “The Internet Archive hopes to fool the public by calling its piracy website a ‘library’; but there’s a more accurate term for taking what you don’t own: ‘stealing.’”</p>
<p>Preston continued, “What Internet Archive is doing is no different than heaving a brick through a grocery store window and handing out the food—and then congratulating itself for providing a public service. It’s not a public service to violate the rights of thousands of hard-working authors, most of whom desperately need the income. We authors want everyone to have access to books, but there are already thousands of excellent public libraries in the United States devoted to providing free access to e-books. Legitimate libraries pay for those e-books, and a portion of that flows back to authors as royalties, helping ensure they can continue to write.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>First off, the only source they have to quote to support their idea is themselves, which is very funny.
And they’re not framing it as repeating themselves, they’re framing it as an appeal to authority, except the authority is Douglas Preston, both the president of the organization and also responsible for this post, citing himself.</p>
<p>Second, everything else is wrong. IA is a library by every definition, including its <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/17/librarians-should-stand-internet-archive-opinion">function</a> but also its <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070626155540/http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07175/796164-96.stm">legal status</a>: IA is fully accredited as a library <a href="https://blog.archive.org/2007/06/25/internet-archive-officially-a-library/">with the state and federal government</a> (which, you might remember, <a href="https://sfgov.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11893345&GUID=990E482D-3EAE-4A80-ABE9-5836644B34E3">love it</a>.)
Douglas Preston saying IA isn’t a library here is just lying.
And it’s the same with every other word that comes out of his mouth:
IA isn’t stealing books, it bought them with money it paid to publishers.
Authors’ rights aren’t being violated, their books are being purchased.
Existing public library access to ebooks isn’t sufficient, it’s in terrible peril.</p>
<!-- The only part of this spiel that isn't obviously false is the very end, where Preston equates the current system of licensed, perpetual payment with legitimacy. -->
<!-- This reveals that denying libraries the right to own and loan books without a special licensing agreement is his end goal. -->
<!-- DEFINES: broken window fallacy -->
<p>Possibly the most backwards thing here though is the “heaving a brick through a grocery store window and handing out the food—and then congratulating itself for providing a public service” metaphor because it doesn’t describe the internet archive (or even what they’re accusing them of, it’s a very ill-fitting metaphor), <strong>it describes what publishers are doing</strong>. </p>
<!-- USES: Refusing to sell -->
<p>Dougie is accusing the Internet Archive of committing the <em>broken window fallacy</em>: claiming that causing damage is a net benefit to society because of some virtues found in recovering from it.
This is not what IA is doing, but it is a reasonable metaphor for what publishers are doing: refusing to sell libraries books outright, thus causing a shortage, and then calling your willingness to rent them ebook access economically valuable.
I’d have gone with developing a cure for a disease but refusing to sell it so you can continue to sell pain relief, but the broken window metaphor fits nicely too.
It doesn’t fit IA, of course, just the publishers.
But, as metaphors go, the broken window fallacy is actually a much better fit for… well, we’ll get to that.</p>
<!-- But that's not the last we'll see of the broken window fallacy, no sir. Just you wait. -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="famine">Famine<a class="headerlink" href="#famine" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>So why is the TAG/AAP coalition trying to manufacture this us-vs-them tribal conflict of authors versus libraries, anyway? It doesn’t reflect reality: <a href="https://booklaunchers.com/ultimate-guide-get-book-libraries/">authors <em>want</em> their books in libraries</a>. So why are publishers so eager to have “libraries” around as a subject to blame?
Well, according to TAG’s own research, authors’ livelihoods <em>are</em><sup id="fnref:credulity"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:credulity">9</a></sup> indeed under dire threat: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-drastic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/">The Authors Guild Survey Shows Drastic 42 Percent Decline in Authors Earnings in Last Decade</a>
The Authors Guild’s 2018 Author Income Survey, the largest survey of writing-related earnings by American authors ever conducted finds incomes falling to historic lows to a median of $6,080 in 2017, down 42 percent from 2009.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- [78972-the-week-in-libraries-january-11-2019.html](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/78972-the-week-in-libraries-january-11-2019.html)
> The Authors Guild this week said [its most recent survey of writing-related earnings reveals “a crisis of epic proportions” for American authors](https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/financial-reporting/article/78944-new-guild-report-finds-more-declines-in-author-earnings.html). According to the survey, “writing-related” incomes in the U.S. declined 42% since 2009, with the median author income now at a lowly $6,080 per year. And, it seems guild leaders think libraries bear at least a little responsibility. -->
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>I’d quote something better than a summary here, except that in this article there’s only a link marked “Access the full results and data, HERE”, which links to “Six Takeaways from the Authors Guild 2018 Author Income Survey”, which links circularly back to “Authors Guild Survey Shows Drastic 42 Percent Decline in Authors Earnings in Last Decade” with no real results or data anywhere. </p>
<!-- The Authors Guild's kind of a shitshow, huh! -->
<!-- I attribute this to The Authors Guild being generally unwilling to conduct business legitimately, even in such basic areas. -->
</aside>
<p>The Authors Guild calls this a “crisis of epic proportions for American authors” that threatens their ability to make even a living wage.
And, frankly, yes: a 42% cut in wages is a catastrophe.
By my estimate, though, The Authors Guild has actually severely <em>under-counted</em> the damage suffered by authors by not properly adjusting for inflation.
Adjusted for inflation<sup id="fnref:writer-inflation"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:writer-inflation">10</a></sup>, that survey means authors are making just <em>under</em> <strong><em>51%</em></strong> of what they did in 2009.
For the authors affected, this is nightmarish!</p>
<p>The Authors Guild’s explanation for this can be found under “<a href="https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-drastic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/">The Causes</a>”.
It’s shockingly bad, but before I get into what it says, it’s probably more important to look at the one factor this “analysis” conspicuously glosses over entirely: publishing companies.
Yes, really: this “study” refuses to even consider the possibility that the reason authors aren’t paid enough anymore is that the publishers aren’t paying them enough anymore. </p>
<p>There are several lines blaming Amazon, saying it’s able to “lock publishers into a vise, relentlessly demanding increasing discounts and narrowing margins” which forces “publishers to pass on [their] losses to authors”.
But other than this implication that publishing companies are the ones being bullied by big tech, there’s really no mention of the overall health of publishing companies and their role in aggregate price-setting here.
And book sales aren’t declining, as <a href="https://authorsguild.org/news/despite-pandemic-2020-u-s-book-sales-on-par-with-past-five-years/">The Authors Guild points out itself</a> — in fact, they’re far exceeding expectations<sup id="fnref:book-sales"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:book-sales">11</a></sup>.
With these conclusions, you’d have to assume the publishing companies are barely solvent, or else they wouldn’t have stopped paying their authors. So what’s behind that curtain? </p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong>Estimated net revenue of the book publishing industry in the United States from 2008 to 2022</strong><br>
(in billion U.S. dollars)</p>
<p><img alt="Estimated net revenue of the book publishing industry in the United States from 2008 to 2022" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2024/03/03/cdl-publishers-against-books/statista.png">
<em><a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/271931/revenue-of-the-us-book-publishing-industry/">Statista</a></em></p>
</blockquote>
<p>…Ah.</p>
<p>In stark contrast to the hardships they’re supposedly “passing on” to authors, there is no 42%<sup id="fnref:42preinflation"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:42preinflation">12</a></sup> chunk missing from publishing company revenues.
With regard to costs, the popularity of ebooks means less material costs, so except for a brief trough during pandemic shortages, <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/185246/estimated-expenses-of-us-book-publishers-since-2005/">costs have dipped down, not spiked</a>.
So, with the exception of a slight dip 2016-2020, publishers’ revenue has held steady, and 2021-2022 is back up to record profits of 28-29 billion dollars: higher than anything previous in all recorded data.
More on this later.
Publishing companies haven’t had their revenue slashed in half, they’ve just slashed the pay of their authors and pocketed it. </p>
<!-- Curious! -->
<!-- And, in an analysis more directly focused on CDL's impacts, the EFF found that "[\[publishers'\] overall profits have grown substantially](https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf)."
> [EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive's Motion for Summary Judgment](https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf){: .cite}
> The Plaintiffs are among the largest and most profitable book publishers in the United
> States, and they have enjoyed increasing profits in recent years. Statement ¶¶ 97–98. In 2020
> and 2021, the publishing industry as a whole enjoyed record profits for electronic and physical
> formats of books.
-->
<!-- And, though they complain about the rise in popularity of self-publishing with Amazon instead of a traditional AAP publishing company, TAG/AAP doesn't even make any argument otherwise. -->
<p>And it’s too late to argue that it’s okay for the publishing industry to be strong while authors suffer, because the whole survey argues the opposite!
Publishing companies could make all sorts of arguments that this is fine — there are whole <em>categories</em> of rhetoric available to this effect — except it’s too late for them to do that because they already published a report about what a disaster it is.</p>
<p>So if authors are going broke because the publishers are paying them a pittance, and the publishers aren’t losing any money at all (in fact, they’re making record profits), where’d the missing money go?
…Well, according to TAG, greedy book-owners and libraries!</p>
<p>Yes, in one of the most shameless acts in this whole saga, on the end of <em>this very study</em>, right after they slap “Amazon sells used books” under <a href="https://authorsguild.org/news/authors-guild-survey-shows-drastic-42-percent-decline-in-authors-earnings-in-last-decade/">Causes</a>, The Authors Guild recommends</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Royalties should be paid by resellers to authors for resellers’ sales of new books.</li>
<li>U.S. should establish a federally funded equivalent of a public lending right<sup id="fnref:public-lending-right"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:public-lending-right">13</a></sup> to provide authors a benefit from the public use of books; and libraries should be better funded.</li>
<li>Publishers should pay higher royalties on ebooks and deeply discounted books; and they should <strong>destroy all bookstore returns to prevent them from getting into the secondary market.</strong></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: broken window fallacy -->
<p><strong>Hey.</strong><br>
<strong>Remember the broken window fallacy?</strong></p>
<p>Just a few paragraphs ago, Douglas “my source is Douglas Preston” Preston accused the Internet Archive of “heaving a brick through a grocery store window and handing out the food.”
Meanwhile, their actual, take-us-seriously-please policy proposal is to <em>burn all the food so they can sell more.</em></p>
<p>Their honest-to-god policy proposal, that they wrote up and published as if they were respectable people, is to require used books to be destroyed, brazen broken window fallacy and all.
They really won’t pay authors a living wage, and their answer to that problem is “we should do a <em>Fahrenheit 451</em> on it”, expecting you to believe that their accumulating more money will make them change their mind and want to pay authors again!</p>
<p><strong><em>This</em></strong> is the instinct the attack on controlled digital lending comes from, and it is <em>perverse</em>.
Attacks on CDL are born from this very same outrageous eagerness to destroy private property in order to create demand for more sales.
As shameless, as outrageous as it is, publishers have embraced the <em>ghoulish</em> notion that destroying private property people purchased from them in order to destroy value and create demand is an effective business strategy.
Attacking CDL diminishes the value of private property by preventing forms of lending: you bought it, but now it’s not usable for as much by simple fiat. </p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1756040101522493551" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>A hard truth that no one seems willing to grapple with is that media companies see destroying peoples property and purchases as a profitable, viable business strategy</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1756040101522493551" target="_blank">Fri Feb 09 19:39:20 +0000 2024</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1756107404331081972" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1756040101522493551"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>i really cannot stress strongly enough how bad things are </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1756107404331081972/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GF7yX9TXQAA60js.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1756107404331081972" target="_blank">Sat Feb 10 00:06:46 +0000 2024</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>When publishers demand libraries destroy their CDL collections, it’s for the same reason they want bookstores to destroy their stock. It’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window">window-breaking</a>.
Publishers aren’t simply content to leverage their gatekeeper position to extract ever-increasing profits from customers without providing additional value: they’re so dedicated to that model that they have to actively seek out value that exists — even in the form of books they’ve already sold people — and destroy it!
The penchant for wanton destruction is not a drive to protect the rights of authors, but a willingness to cause any amount of destruction, even to their own industry, if it seems like there’s money in it for them.
<a href="https://www.noemamag.com/the-other-invisible-hand/">It’s cancerous.</a></p>
<p>In writing this essay, I’m trying to avoid painting a cartoonish caricature of a conflict between noble, archivist librarians and book-burning robber baron publishers. But, as the facts stand, one of the sides <em>is</em> that absurd extreme, and so I’m forced to call it honestly, even if it means superlative language.
If you just sit down and look at what the anti-library faction is actually saying, they’re climbing over each other like pigs in mud to make arguments about why private book collections should be illegal and how we need to be destroying whatever books aren’t generating them new profits! Every argument is just “this might make me some money”!</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="discord-the-authors-guild-against-authors">Discord: The Authors Guild Against Authors<a class="headerlink" href="#discord-the-authors-guild-against-authors" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- USES: TAG/AAP Alignment -->
<p>Unsurprisingly, The Authors Guild finds that their primary opponent in pushing their anti-book, anti-bookowner, anti-library policies are the very authors they’re supposed to represent. I talked earlier about how The Authors Guild aligning themselves with publishers means they’re no longer representing their own members, and here’s the balance due.</p>
<p>The best summary of the vast support authors themselves have shown for CDL is likely Fight For The Future’s “<a href="https://www.fightforthefuture.org/Authors-For-Libraries">Authors For Libraries</a>” open letter, signed by more than 1000 authors.
I’ll include the full body because it’s <strong>excellent</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We urge all who are engaged in the work of getting books into the hands of readers to act in the interests of all authors, including the long-marginalized, midlist, and emerging authors whom librarians have championed for decades. We write to ask that all publishers, distributors, and trade associations: </p>
<ol>
<li>
<p><strong>Enshrine the right of libraries to permanently own and preserve books, and to purchase these permanent copies on reasonable terms, regardless of format.</strong> Many libraries would prefer to own and <a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/amazon-recalls-and-embodies-orwells-1984/">preserve</a> digital editions, as they have always done with print books, but these days publishers <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books">rarely</a> offer them the option. Instead, when libraries have <a href="https://ebooksforall.org/">access to ebooks at all</a>, the <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/160649/book-companies-follett-overcharge-public-schools">prices</a> libraries <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books">pay to rent ebooks</a> are often likened to <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/publishers-are-using-e-books-to-extort-schools-and-libraries">extortion</a>. </p>
<p>Digital editions are more <a href="https://www.janefriedman.com/book-pl/">affordable to produce</a> and often more <a href="http://whocangetyourbook.com/">accessible</a>, but libraries are already <a href="http://www.inkfreenews.com/2022/05/10/warsaw-library-using-arpa-money-for-ebooks/">relying on emergency funds</a> and may only be able to license a small selection of mainstream works in the future. In turn, readers will have fewer opportunities to discover the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/11/opinion/culture/diversity-publishing-industry.html">more diverse</a> potential bestsellers of tomorrow. </p>
<p>It is past time to determine a path forward that is fair to both libraries and authors—including a <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53765f6fe4b060b2a3d3586b/t/5fc7f727c9a2f57d7d153d82/1606940458621/eLending+position+paper_v2.pdf">perpetual model</a> for digital ownership based on the cost to maintain a print edition.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>End lawsuits aimed at intimidating libraries and</strong> <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/3499633-if-publishers-have-their-way-libraries-digital-options-will-see-major-cuts/"><strong>diminishing their role</strong></a> <strong>in society.</strong> The interests of libraries are the interests of the public, and of any author concerned with equity and longevity for themselves and their fellow writers. We are all on the same side. Yet a <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/copyright/article/88308-maryland-defends-its-library-e-book-law-seeks-dismissal-of-aap-lawsuit.html">unanimously passed Maryland state law</a> ensuring libraries pay “reasonable fees” for digital editions died after the AAP sued. And after a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_University_Press_v._Patton">previous suit</a> failed, several publishers are currently <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/publishers-are-taking-the-internet-to-court/">suing the Internet Archive Library</a> in an attempt to prohibit all libraries from <a href="https://archive.org/details/controlled-digital-lending-explained">lending out scanned copies of books they own</a>. While undermining libraries may financially benefit the <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90773185/a-major-publishing-lawsuit-would-cement-surveillance-into-the-future-of-libraries">wealthiest and most privileged</a> authors and <a href="https://publishers.org/news/%ef%bf%bcaap-december-2021-statshot-report-publishing-industry-up-2-8-for-month-and-12-2-calendar-2021/">corporations</a> in the short term, this behavior is utterly opposed to the interests of authors as a whole. </p>
</li>
<li>
<p><strong>End smear campaigns against librarians.</strong> Recent comments likening library advocates to “<a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89253-aap-annual-meeting-spotlights-copyright-first-amendment-concerns.html">mouthpieces</a>” for Big Tech are as tasteless as they are inaccurate. Also concerning are the <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/89253-aap-annual-meeting-spotlights-copyright-first-amendment-concerns.html">awards</a> recently given to legislators who have advocated in favor of the <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/03/new-filter-mandate-bill-unmitigated-disaster">dangerous surveillance</a> of <a href="https://www.libraryfutures.net/post/library-futures-joins-opposition-against-the-smart-copyright-act">library patrons</a>, and of laws that <a href="https://www.libraryfutures.net/post/protect-library-workers-from-the-case-act">criminalize librarians</a>. As a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/26/us/brooklyn-library-banned-books-access/index.html">last bastion of truth, privacy, and access to diverse voices</a>, libraries’ digital operations grow ever more essential to our society—and their work should be celebrated, not censured.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<p>We fear a future where libraries are reduced to a sort of <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/libraries-digital-publishing-ebooks/">Netflix</a> or <a href="https://popula.com/2022/08/11/own-music-own-books/">Spotify</a> for books, from which publishers demand <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/160649/book-companies-follett-overcharge-public-schools">exorbitant</a> <a href="https://archive.org/details/ssrn-id-3573549">licensing fees</a> in perpetuity while unaccountable vendors <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/93b7je/ebook-services-are-bringing-unhinged-conspiracy-books-into-public-libraries">force the spread of disinformation and hate</a> for profit. Publishers must balance profits for the most prominent authors and shareholders with the right of the public to free, <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90773185/a-major-publishing-lawsuit-would-cement-surveillance-into-the-future-of-libraries">unsurveilled</a> access to knowledge and information—as well as the right of emerging authors to be collected, preserved, and discovered.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>“Anyone who tells you libraries and authors are on the opposite side of any issue has grossly misunderstood the nature of libraries, or authors or both,” Cory Doctorow, co-author of Chokepoint Capitalism, which explores the harms of big content creators, and signatory of the Fight for the Future letter, wrote in a statement accompanying the letter. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Traditional librarians love CDL too. Quoting from <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2023/03/17/librarians-should-stand-internet-archive-opinion">The Internet Archive Is a Library by Dave Hansen, Deborah Jakubs, Chris Bourg, Thomas Leonard, Jeff MacKie-Mason, Joseph A. Salem Jr., MacKenzie Smith and Winston Tabb</a> (can you tell from that citation we’ve entered academia yet):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Internet Archive, a nonprofit library in San Francisco, has grown into one of the most important cultural institutions of the modern age. …</p>
<p>Right now, we are at a pivotal stage in a copyright infringement lawsuit against the Internet Archive, still pending, brought by four of the biggest for-profit publishers in the world, who have been trying to shut down core programs of the archive since the start of the pandemic. For the sake of libraries and library users everywhere, let’s hope they don’t succeed.<br>
…<br>
The Internet Archive … is a one-of-a-kind independent research library, with its holdings fully available in digital form. Its substantial physical and digital collections are unique. It employs librarians and other information professionals. It is open to all interested readers. It cooperates with peer libraries in support of archiving the information and contemporary discourse as manifested in the World Wide Web. It has an active community of researchers who depend on its collections.
And it is an engaged, responsive, resource-sharing partner to hundreds of peer libraries. It is also now an integral part of the interlibrary loan system, sharing its holdings with other libraries worldwide. It shares the keystone values of all libraries: preservation, access, privacy, intellectual freedom, diversity, lifelong learning and the public good. And it does all this without commercial motive as a mission-driven not-for-profit organization.</p>
<p>Those of us who have worked with the Internet Archive or drawn on its many offerings have long seen the organization as a peer. The Internet Archive fulfills the mission of a library in ways we could only dream of a few decades ago.</p>
<p>We cannot defend against the publishers’ lawsuit. We can, however, stand with Internet Archive as it fights for the right to buy, preserve and lend books, which is what libraries do.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, that’s what authors think, but it’s clear that publishers don’t care.
The publishers are actively working against authors’ interests, and TAG is blatantly disregarding its own mandate to help them. So we can definitely discount publishers’ claim to be generally acting on behalf of writers’ interests; we know the opposite is true. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: TAG/AAP Alignment -->
<p>The Authors Guild being so entwined with the Association of American Publishers is a serious red flag of a dysfunctional system.
In the real world, authors’ and publishers’ goals aren’t aligned; they’re actively antagonistic. There is tension between authors (who want the money from book sales) and publishers (who want the money from book sales) that’s resolved with negotiation. </p>
<p>But the TAG/AAP partnership does not reflect this dynamic at all.
For instance, in their literature, <a href="https://authorsguild.org/news/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/#:~:text=Amazon%E2%80%99s%20dominance%20pressures,their%20P%26L%E2%80%99s.">TAG complains about the rise of self-publishing with Amazon</a>: something <em>good</em> for publishing authors, but bad for the entrenched publishing monopoly, who The Authors Guild sides with over, y’know, <em>authors</em>.
It’s evidence of institutional corruption, where the guild is working for the enrichment of the guild itself rather than its members.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="discord-authors-against-cdl">Discord: Authors Against CDL?<a class="headerlink" href="#discord-authors-against-cdl" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But, admittedly, authors don’t <em>uniformly</em> show this overwhelming support for the Internet Archive.
So what about the authors who <em>do</em> support TAG/AAP?
When we look at the actual writers TAG/AAP drags out to support their positions, their stances are, in a word, <em>telling</em>.
Categorically, their authors don’t have a grasp on any of these concepts, and are instead just whipped up into an emotional haze:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/news/%EF%BF%BCpublishers-seek-summary-judgment-against-internet-archive-for-blatant-scanning-and-distribution-of-literary-works-on-industrial-scale/">Sandra Cisneros</a>
When I went on the Internet Archive’s website and saw that scans of my books were being distributed to anybody who wanted them for free — without my permission or any payment — I was appalled. I found the experience so viscerally upsetting that I could not stay on the website for long. It was like I had gone to a pawn shop and seen my stolen possessions on sale.</p>
<p>To this day, I am angry that Internet Archive tells the world that it is a library and that, by bootlegging my books, it is simply doing what libraries have always done. Real libraries do not do what Internet Archive does. The libraries that raised me paid for their books, they never stole them.
The libraries that raised me paid for their books, they never stole them. Any libraries that want to provide eBook versions of my books to the public for free can do so because I have authorized Penguin Random House to license my work to any library that is willing to pay for the authorized digital formats.
I consider Internet Archive’s distribution of my books to be a terrible violation of the control I have worked so hard to establish over my work.<br>
…<br>
There is also no doubt in my mind that I lost money because Internet Archive has posted my work online. It is common sense that if someone is willing to download one of my books for free from the internet, they are not going to pay for it later.
…
I have lost money because Internet Archive has not paid me any of the fees that actual libraries pay to license my work and lend it to the public. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>For the most part, this is just using emotional language to lampshade Sandra saying she’d like more stuff but doesn’t really care who it comes from.
Sandra is wrong on the facts in ways I’ve already explained: the books weren’t stolen, she was paid for them, Internet Archive is a real library, the books can’t be downloaded, traditional libraries don’t pay licensing fees to lend books, etc. She’s even fundamentally wrong about libraries being able to loan ebooks, as I discussed already when describing Overdrive. It’s all wrong. </p>
<p>That’s why, in order to use this wrong-but-emotionally-compelling story in court, someone had to <a href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/gov.uscourts.nysd_.537900.89.0.pdf">side-channel it through a testimonial declaration by a non-expert</a> rather than pose it as a direct legal argument that would be subject to factual scrutiny.
That’s how you get away with having someone just <em>guess</em> that they think something probably cost them money and submit that to the court as if someone being ignorant is in-and-of-itself evidence that they’re right. </p>
<p>But I don’t just find it interesting that she’s wrong, I find it interesting the <em>emotional way</em> she’s wrong, as shown by the language she uses here.
This is language of trauma. Assuming these aren’t crocodile tears and Sandra isn’t putting on an affect in her language, Sandra has been lead to believe that the IA scans are a personal violation.
Of course, IA didn’t steal the books; they bought them just like the other libraries did.
But that doesn’t change that fact that she <em>feels</em> like she’s been violated.
So why is that?</p>
<p>TAG/AAP is <em>actively cultivating</em> this trauma by flooding authors with misinformation and reinforcing error when it serves their financial interests.
And now that the damage is done, TAG/AAP’s campaign against CDL is actively preventing any healing and is instead stoking that trauma like a flame so they can use it for profit.
Sandra doesn’t understand what’s going on because she’s not here to understand what’s going on; she’s here to look hurt because publishers want it to look like CDL hurt somebody.</p>
<p>And of course this is spewed all across social media.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1545859731901890560" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryMonahan/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Hillary Monahan</span><span class="at">@HillaryMonahan</span></div></a></div><div><p>If the model of book lending does not account for compensation to the author at all, it's actively fucking the author.</p><p>Many authors live below the poverty line on their art.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/HillaryMonahan/status/1545859731901890560" target="_blank">Jul 9 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>This thread grossly misrepresents the lawsuit against the Internet Archive and I am disappointed to see people amplifying it. </p><p>It implies throughout that “not compensating authors” is one of the sides in conflict when that’s simply false.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1546371981058232321" target="_blank">Jul 11, 2022 · 5:53 AM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547251309551800321" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1546371981058232321"><a href="https://twitter.com/ebplais/" title="trans rights are human rights | pronouns in bayou 🐊"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1695943657835147264/ihD3AX4N_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">unaired pilot peter griffin</span><span class="at">@ebplais</span></div></a></div><div><p>@giovan_h this is pound for pound exactly the same justification game publishers used for selling online passes and doing other things to hurt second hand markets, the architect does not get paid every time the house sells</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ebplais/status/1547251309551800321" target="_blank">Wed Jul 13 16:07:13 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546922838686240768" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/" title="leftist about town. story guy at a big games studio. personal profile. no fun allowed. games at https://t.co/5DWyWfCdtJ. avi by @lexiecon_. not white."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1346622585673420800/w5pYBseQ_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">cohost.org/dante 🌹</span><span class="at">@videodante</span></div></a></div><div><p>frankly, impossible for me not to see the ideological connections between the corporate/astroturfed backlash against the Internet Archive and the general corporate/astroturfed rise in conservatism/fascism worldwide these days</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/status/1546922838686240768" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 18:21:59 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546923652171501568" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="videodante/1546923185710309376"><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/" title="leftist about town. story guy at a big games studio. personal profile. no fun allowed. games at https://t.co/5DWyWfCdtJ. avi by @lexiecon_. not white."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1346622585673420800/w5pYBseQ_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">cohost.org/dante 🌹</span><span class="at">@videodante</span></div></a></div><div><p>if you have been hoodwinked into believing that the goals of "supporting author welfare" and "supporting a massive, free, publically-available database of internet information" are somehow at odds... you are being played.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/status/1546923652171501568" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 18:25:13 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546924619369631745" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="videodante/1546924085371760640"><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/" title="leftist about town. story guy at a big games studio. personal profile. no fun allowed. games at https://t.co/5DWyWfCdtJ. avi by @lexiecon_. not white."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1346622585673420800/w5pYBseQ_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">cohost.org/dante 🌹</span><span class="at">@videodante</span></div></a></div><div><p>it is advantageous to the profiteers of endless copyright that the masses learn to hate and fear public repositories of data. it's not altogether dissimilar to how the modern right-wing seeks to demonize any other public goods - schooling, housing, etc. same overall motive.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/videodante/status/1546924619369631745" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 18:29:04 +0000 2022</a>
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</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546935092022374401" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/remembrancermx/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Yonah (they/them/elle)</span><span class="at">@remembrancermx</span></div></a></div><div><p>You are not entitled to unlimited digital distribution of a product just b/c you bought a single physical copy, I cannot believe this needs explaining, jfc y'all are dense.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/remembrancermx/status/1546935092022374401" target="_blank">Jul 12, 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>And then there’s stuff like this, which between the seemingly genuine outrage and clear misunderstanding of the issue shows me that the astroturfing is working better than it has any right to.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1546938103763451917" target="_blank">Jul 12, 2022 · 7:22 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546709342388363264" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1546707578859790337"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>I don't know if the people pushing it know it or not, but these are all talking points from two years ago, written up by lawyers hired by publishing giants, to further seize rights to digital ownership. I'm shocked that it's fooling people.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1546709342388363264" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 04:13:38 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>And that’s just a tiny sample; I think most of those conversations took place within the same week. There’s just been <em>so</em> much of it. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: reinforced error -->
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="reinforced-error-in-public-discourse">Reinforced Error in Public Discourse<a class="headerlink" href="#reinforced-error-in-public-discourse" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>This is another side of the conflict that has a nuance that interests me: what we’re seeing isn’t <em>quite</em> astroturfing.
For now I’m calling it <strong>reinforced error</strong>.
It’s a technique where the propagandist can exploit an existing fallacy instead of having to manufacture consent from whole cloth.</p>
<p>It starts with a reasonable first-glance understanding. (In this case, it looks like “a site is distributing a commercial book for free, which is bad”).
That conclusion is wrong, but it’s wrong for complex, nuanced reasons, and it’s certainly not an <em>unreasonable</em> idea. It just isn’t correct.
But because the baseline conclusion can arise naturally, the misinformation campaign doesn’t require propagandists to manufacturer an entirely artificial narrative, it just requires them to stimulate a natural fallacy and discourage people who have reached the naïve conclusion from thinking through the problem further.</p>
<p>It’s the geocentrist fallacy. “The sun goes ‘round the earth.”
How hard is it to convince a population that their first inclination was right when you know it wasn’t?</p>
<p>Naïve writers are being worked up into a frenzy against a manufactured enemy that intuitively seems to be harmful but isn’t, while the publishers who fan the flames of outrage against an innocent opponent scoop up all the money.
It’s not a new strategy.
It’s astroturfing, except the soil is already fertile and primed by the fact that, if you squint hard enough, libraries <em>seem</em> to be an opponent, even without the propaganda campaign.</p>
<p>The insidious thing is how <em>close</em> it gets. If you made all the assumptions publishers want you to, and didn’t know all the books had been purchased and lending was controlled, outrage <em>would</em> be justified.
It’s just that it isn’t.</p>
<!-- Defines: Emergency Library -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="library-permanence-and-archival">Library Permanence and Archival<a class="headerlink" href="#library-permanence-and-archival" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Libraries are counterexamples to the neofeudalist no-one-needs-to-own-anything narrative.
While I would argue that it’s important for individuals to own books too, libraries are institutions that <em>must</em> own their materials outright.
So as publishers try to force such a model on the book market, it makes complete sense that libraries would be one of the early cases that jams the gears and demonstrates that private ownership — not corporate control — is not just preferable but necessary. </p>
<!-- Libraries are a clear example of a party that needs to own their media outright -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="preservation-and-archival-is-a-core-function-of-libraries">Preservation and Archival is a Core Function of Libraries<a class="headerlink" href="#preservation-and-archival-is-a-core-function-of-libraries" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>As part of their mission to provide educational resources to the public, an important part of libraries’ work is preservation and archival.
The Internet Archive is a specialized research library that focuses on archival and preservation in particular, but ensuring materials remain accessible to the public is a main function of every library.
This comes in many forms: libraries make it possible to access more information than you could purchase outright, but also ensures accessibility in other key ways, like distributing out-of-print books. </p>
<p>It seems trite to point out “accessibility” as a good to maximize with public policy, as if the only priority should be public distribution of work at the expense of the people who make it.
But we can’t think about the question of copyright <em>without</em> considering value judgements because the value judgement to encourage the arts and sciences is baked into the foundations of copyright already!
Copyright, as a doctrine, is exclusively designed to promote science and the creation and ultimate accessibility of information.</p>
<!-- We must acknowledge the existence of these core values and then either decide whether and how to support or oppose them. -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books?utm_campaign=falcon&utm_social-type=owned&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_twitter&utm_brand=tny&utm_source=twitter">The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books | The New Yorker</a>
Books, like music and movies and TV shows, are increasingly something that libraries and readers do not own but, rather, access temporarily, from corporations that do.<br>
…<br>
The high prices of e-book rights could become untenable for libraries in the long run, according to several librarians and advocates I spoke to—libraries, venders, and publishers will probably need to negotiate a new way forward.
“It’s not a good system,” Inouye said. “There needs to be some kind of change in the law, to reinstate public rights that we have for analog materials.”
Maria Bustillos, a founding editor of the publishing coöperative Brick House, argued recently in The Nation that libraries should pay just once for each copy of an e-book. “<strong>The point of a library is to preserve, and in order to preserve, a library must own</strong>,” Bustillos wrote.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- USES: exhaustion of rights -->
<p>Again, this isn’t unique to libraries, but libraries are a prominent example of it.
It is ownership of books — specifically, the kind of ownership of copyrighted media allowed by the <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#exhaustion-of-rights">exhaustion of rights</a> — that generally contributes to preservation of knowledge by removing the publisher as a single-point-of-failure for literary culture at large.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="precarity">Precarity<a class="headerlink" href="#precarity" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Corporate ebook markets are insidiously precarious, designed so that publishers — who sometimes <em>want</em> what consumers consider disastrous failure — have access to kill switches.</p>
<!-- #### Distributed Media -->
<p>True sales of media, like with physical books, create a naturally <strong>distributed</strong> system.
Since every copy of the work is independently available, the accessibility of a work scales with how many copies exist in usable condition.
And if any one copy is damaged, another can replace it.
Simple enough.</p>
<p>Each copy of a book is also self-sufficient and doesn’t have any special dependencies it requires to work.
If a book is out of print — because it isn’t as profitable to sell as other options available to the publishing company at the time, or because the rightsholder is no longer solvent at all — books in a library’s collection remain available as a research resource or simply for general consumption.
These are all qualities that give ownership of a book genuine utility in its own right. </p>
<!-- DEFINES: fail-closed -->
<!-- #### Fail-closed security -->
<p>Streaming and DRM-based media ecosystems are the opposite: the systems are intentionally architected to maximize profit, which means they prioritize preventing piracy and unauthorized access at the cost of making the system intentionally fragile.
For example, streaming-only books (like many textbooks) require an active connection to a web server that actively verifies the reader’s entitlements before letting them read their books. </p>
<!-- Points of failure -->
<p>This creates a series of tightly-chained architectural components that depend on each other: if at any point there’s a failure in the payment processor, the entitlement database, the user’s network connection, the app store, or the reader application, the book will be unavailable. </p>
<p>This is called a <strong>fail-closed system</strong>: if anything in the verification process fails, access is prohibited by default.
The purpose of DRM is to limit the use of digital works, so any competent DRM must fail closed, or else it would be impotent.
Since companies want to “verify ownership” with digital content above and beyond possession, anything that prevents that first-party verification intentionally locks the content.
(More on this dynamic in a future essay.)</p>
<p>This kind of fail-closed system is good for strong security, but it’s completely antithetical to preserving availability and access.
A true owner of an item — for instance, a library that owns its collection of books — cannot have their access to that item dependent on a third party.
A library’s collection must not depend on the active consent of outside publishing companies, because, as an obvious example, it must be able to outlast the <em>existence</em> of that company.
A book that cannot function without getting authorization from the server of a company that went defunct years ago is utterly worthless in an archive, except as a monument to the failures of capitalism. </p>
<!-- #### Fragility for Profit -->
<p>This creates a perverse system where the economic incentive for publishers is to create a significantly worse product.
Publishers believe that this DRM and artificial fragility is necessary in order to maximize profit, and so ebooks are designed to be <strong>intentionally fragile</strong>, even though that <em>costs more to maintain</em> than a simple, portable piece of media.</p>
<!-- No right of first sale -->
<p>Even though mainstream ebooks are transmitted to the public and read by millions of consumers, since the law doesn’t acknowledge that those consumers were ever in possession of a copy of the book, they have no right to keep and read their own books, no matter how much they paid for it.
Only the right of first sale does that, and with online-only or DRM-locked ebooks on the Kindle storefront or the like, licensing conditions explicitly deny customers that crucial right. </p>
<p>As far as preservation is concerned, this means all the power — and responsibility — is completely concentrated in a few entities, each of which represents a single point of failure.
With DRM’d ebooks, “out-of-print” is just a switch in a database that removes books from the storefront but also removes your “license” to read them on your own device.
Publishing companies, you’ll remember, don’t want out-of-print books to be available at all: they’re against libraries providing this function, but they’re also waging legal campaigns against used book stores.
In their minds, if they’re not selling a book directly, it’s stealing their customers.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="publishers-cannot-be-trusted">Publishers Cannot be Trusted<a class="headerlink" href="#publishers-cannot-be-trusted" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>One of the contingencies decentralization and the first sale doctrine addresses is the case where the copyright holder — for whatever reason — ceases to make work available themselves.
It’s good to distribute the ability to preserve media among all the individual media owners, because consolidating it in one party — like the copyright holder — is a critical mistake. </p>
<!-- #### Duty is to profit -->
<p>The full duty and responsibility for preservation must not be held by a few corporations alone, because it’s a duty they’ve abdicated and a responsibility they can’t hold.
I don’t mean this as an insult, I mean that they’ve very clearly chosen not to take on the responsibility, and they are, definitionally, unable to be responsible in the event of their own failure. A publishing company’s first responsibility is to its own profitability: this is the nature of the beast.</p>
<p>Publishers let works go out of print regularly. No news there.
This is generally an “economically rational” decision: the publisher believes spending those same resources elsewhere, like new books, will make a greater profit.
Importantly, the water level for “not economically rational to print” is not zero.
There can still be <em>significant</em> demand for the work, but external factors alone can make publishers choose to discontinue it.</p>
<p>Likewise, there is <em>no</em> incentive for a corporation to take precautions for the event of its own failure.
Not only is there no contingency plan for preserving works after a firm folds, a corporation actively <em>loses</em> value by having such a plan.
Not only would executing such a plan not deliver any profit, tying your existence to the usability of your products actually incentivizes consumers and the government to keep you afloat, for the public good.</p>
<p>Like most IP rights, the enormous responsibility of ownership over single points of failure in the ebook ecosystem comes with no <strong>obligation of care</strong>.
In the eyes of the law, you have the right to neglect or destroy your own property, even if other people want or need it.
As copyright is <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">erroneously</a> treated like property, this mentality begins to apply to things like books.
Corporations argue that they have every right to destroy media if they judge it profitable to do so, even though <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">the purpose of copyright is to encourage publication</a>.</p>
<!-- #### Publishers Lose Interest -->
<!-- DEFINES: 1978 renewal -->
<!--
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=463620
Many works of authorship may, at some point during their long term of copyright protection, cease to be commercially valuable enough to their copyright owners to justify the costs of preservation— a point strongly suggested by the historical experience with renewal. For works copyrighted before 1978, U.S. copyright law divided copyright protection into two terms and required an affirmative act of renewal to secure the second term. Throughout the twentieth century, only a small proportion of copyrighted works were in fact renewed at the end of their initial twenty-eight-year term of protection, even though the fee for renewal was generally relatively low.184 This suggests that for many works, copyright owners will be unlikely to expend much money on preservation over the now much-longer term of copyright protection. -->
<p>We can’t expect publishers to preserve their own work, even if that work could actively be making them money, and we have remarkably good data demonstrating this.
Works copyrighted before 1978 had their period of copyright protection divided into two terms, the second of which required an active renewal filed with the copyright office. Even though the renewal fee was nominal, only a small proportion of copyrighted works were renewed such that the protection period lasted the full two terms. Empirical analysis from <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=319321">Landes, William M. and Posner, Richard A., Indefinitely Renewable Copyright (August 1, 2002)</a> shows the proportion of eligible works that were renewed was as low as 11% and only reaching as high as 22%.</p>
<p>Rightsholders were so uninterested in the sustainability of these works after the peak of their commercial value that they didn’t bother retaining the rights at all.
What we see here is a rejection of the “long tail” model: publishers decided it wasn’t worth preserving these works, even in a form that could actively make them a profit, when they could instead invest time and energy into new hits. </p>
<!-- ### Publishers Cannot be Trusted -->
<p>Here’s what really kills me, though.
Read these excerpts from <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.463620">Reese, R. A. (2003). The First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks</a>:</p>
<!-- USES: Reese -->
<blockquote>
<p>…the potential impact of digital distribution on the preservation effects of the first sale doctrine is very significant. In the world of copy distribution, a copyright owner’s economic decision not to expend resources to preserve a work might have had a relatively limited <strong>effect on the work’s survival</strong>, because many other people owned copies that they might choose to preserve (particularly if those other owners were libraries or archives). But if the digital-transmission copyright owner forgoes expenditures that help preserve the work, it is not clear that anyone else will be in a position to engage in such preservation. </p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>A shift to digital dissemination also seems likely to threaten the first sale doctrine’s contributions to preservation. If a work is distributed only by transmission, then the only copies of the work will generally be copies stored on the copyright owner’s computer server, which transmits the work to the public over the network (as well as any other copies, such as printouts, kept by the copyright owner). Even if the work is seen or heard by millions of consumers, those consumers generally will not have a copy, just as radio listeners and TV viewers today do not generally have copies of the works they hear and see.
This lack of widely distributed copies means that the copies maintained by the copyright owner must bear all of the risk of damage, loss, disappearance, or destruction.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>In the past, preserving copyrighted material has generally involved mostly properly storing and conserving copies owned by the preserver—acts that, thanks to the first sale doctrine, did not generally run afoul of copyright owners’ rights.
Preserving digital works will often require migrating those works to a more contemporary format, which will involve acts of reproduction (and perhaps adaptation) generally reserved to copyright owners.<br>
…<br>
Even libraries will not necessarily be able to exercise their reproduction privilege for preservation purposes effectively. Technological protection measures used by copyright owners will often prevent effective library copying for preservation purposes.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p>Courts might be especially cautious in characterizing a copyright owner’s transaction with a consumer as a license rather than a sale, giving careful scrutiny to the actual reality of the transaction rather then[sic] to any labels used by the copyright owner.
If the consumer essentially obtains permanent dominion over the physical object that is the copy, the transaction should probably, absent compelling reasons to the contrary, be characterized as a sale, thus conferring on the consumer the rights of a copy “owner” under section 109(a)—the rights to lend, resell, or rent her copy.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is from <em>Reese</em>: a study published by <em>U of Texas Law</em> in <strong>2003</strong>. Credit where credit is due, it correctly identified the problem, but <strong>we’ve predicted this problem for two decades.</strong></p>
<p>Publishers cannot be trusted to preserve their works. I don’t mean this as a petty insult: factually, they have made no commitment and have no responsibility to preserve their works, so there’s nothing <em>to</em> trust.
Trusting someone to do something they don’t do now and haven’t committed to do in the future isn’t trust, it’s negligence.</p>
<p>But publishers’ entire argument for giving them this incredible, unprecedented power over virtually all of civilization’s knowledge <em>is</em> just “dude, trust me.”
They don’t make any commitments.
They don’t promise to do anything specific.
They demand you trust their judgement — which we already know is very bad — with some of the most important power in society.</p>
<p>If you follow up and ask “trust you to preserve works, you mean?” the answer is “well, no, sometimes we decide it’s better not to do that.”
If you’re trusting publishers, you need to be ready to respond to them saying “no, it’s fine we did that” after every disastrous mistake. What are you going to do?
Society is just hosed.</p>
<p>And so, instead of companies that sell people books they then own, we’ve constructed this ridiculous mousetrap.
In order to read books at all, people have to accept the sword of Damocles: your access to what <em>should</em> be your own property is contingent on dozens of new factors that should be entirely irrelevant to the process, like the solvency of the company you bought it from, your account’s online moderation status, or even censorship prompted by reactionary cultural movements.
Meanwhile, publishers have their fingers hovering over the killswitch, just waiting for the moment when they project they can make more money by revoking licenses from people who purchased them.</p>
<!-- ## IA is advancing Copyright, publishers are against it
dispersed section
> [EFF Press Release, "Internet Archive Seeks Summary Judgment in Federal Lawsuit Filed By Publishing Companies"](https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-federal-lawsuit-filed-publishing-companies){: .cite}
> Internet Archive is advancing the purposes of copyright law by furthering public access to knowledge and facilitating the creation of new creative and scholarly works. The Internet Archive’s digital lending hasn’t cost the publishers one penny in revenues; in fact, concrete evidence shows that the Archive’s digital lending does not and will not harm the market for books. -->
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="national-emergency-library">National Emergency Library<a class="headerlink" href="#national-emergency-library" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- before I get any further, -->
<p>Unfortunately, I need to talk about the Internet Archive’s one misplay: the National Emergency Library.</p>
<!-- USES: reinforced error -->
<p>I resent having to talk about the NEL at all, not only because it was a flub made by the heroes of this story, but because it is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant: no policy issue hinges on the event itself.
Too many people make the mistake of granting that the question of CDL or the associated conflict hinges on the NEL: they don’t, and any implication that they do is either a blundering concession or an intentional misdirect.
When it counts, even the attacking publishers claim the NEL is irrelevant, so on paper everyone is technically in agreement.
But the optics effectively feed back into the reinforced error propaganda engine, and it’s been used — quite effectively — to unjustly cast blame on the blameless aspects of CDL.</p>
<p>The “National Emergency Library” was a temporary program launched March 24, 2020, during the height of COVID, when access to physical libraries was indefinitely shut down by isolation orders. The program ran for only twelve of the scheduled fourteen weeks, due to other book options emerging quickly. </p>
<p>CDL itself, as I’ve already mentioned, was developed well before the pandemic.
The whitepaper was published in 2018, although the idea had been in construction for longer. </p>
<p>So, what did NEL actually do? It was a policy change.
During the NEL period, the Internet Archive suspended the strict owned-to-loaned requirement, and loaned out DRM-protected CDL books, even if all the copies it owned were already virtually checked-out. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html">The Case of the Internet Archive vs. Book Publishers</a>
The archive had been lending book scans for years. Publishers did not like it but did not sue. What made the pandemic emergency library different was that the brakes were removed. If 10 people, or 100 people, wanted to read a particular book, they could all do so at once.<br>
…<br>
The emergency library “was as limited as a small city library’s circulation level,” Mr. Kahle insisted. “This was always under control.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">Here’s</a> how the EFF describes the events:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In response to urgent
pleas from teachers and librarians, and in consultation with the library community, the Internet
Archive temporarily suspended technical enforcement of the one-to-one owned-to-loaned policy.
The Internet Archive called this temporary program the “National Emergency Library.” Twelve
weeks later, other options had emerged to fill the gap, and the Internet Archive was able to return
to the traditional CDL approach.<br>
…<br>
School districts and university libraries reached out to the Internet Archive concerned that
students and teachers could no longer physically access books — including assigned books that
schools had already purchased. … the closure of libraries took 650 million books out of circulation.<br>
…<br>
Since all of the libraries were closed, the Internet
Archive reasoned, there were surely more non-circulating copies locked up in shuttered libraries
than would be borrowed via the Internet Archive even without those technical controls in place.
The Internet Archive was uniquely positioned to be able to address this problem
quickly and efficiently. (Indeed, Plaintiffs testified that negotiating workarounds for access
issues caused by the pandemic took weeks and sometimes months.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In my view, the National Emergency Library, even by controlled digital lending’s standards, constituted copyright infringement. And, because the CDL prevents such infringement, this also means it violated the strict requirements of CDL.
It seems to me that each copy loaned in excess of the Internet Archive’s stock of physical books backing the digital copies constituted an infringement of copyright.
Securing rights to the “non-circulating copies locked up in shuttered libraries” could have mitigated this problem, but in its haste to open and provide emergency access as soon as possible, the Internet Archive did not explicitly secure the necessary rights to those copies. </p>
<p>Even though this infringement did not constitute any meaningful market harm (see <a href="https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf">Case 1:20-cv-04160-JGK-OTW Document 106</a>), in my opinion, the Internet Archive does owe publishers damages on those excess loans, few though they may be. </p>
<!--
> [EFF, Redacted Memorandum of Law In Support of Defendant Internet Archive's Motion for Summary Judgment](https://www.eff.org/files/2022/07/07/hachette_v._internet_archive_-_internet_archives_memorandum_for_summary_judgment_.pdf){: .cite}
If an effectively unlimited number of patrons could borrow a
digitized book at the same time, in the manner in which Internet Archive digitally lends books,
would that have an effect on the market?
Examining the question from different angles, two experts came to the same answer: No.
Additional borrowing of digitized books, including the Works in Suit, had no statistically
significant effect on the book marketplace.
-->
<!-- USES: reinforced error -->
<p>But, as I described earlier, instead of addressing the specific violation, publishers exploited this incident to defame the whole CDL concept. But, again, this was mostly done by proxy using reinforced error.
In cases like this, where instead of having to tell lies yourselves people will be wrong <em>for</em> you for free, social media is an unimaginable boon.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546301164181852160" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ldragoon/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chaos Bee ✡️ 🌈 🌾👩🌾 ☮️</span><span class="at">@ldragoon</span></div></a></div><div><p>Just so everyone knows, actual libraries do a TON of archival collecting & preservation.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ldragoon/status/1546301164181852160" target="_blank">2022-07-12</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546706130407153665" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1546371981058232321"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>“IA isn’t a REAL library because it doesn’t do preservation!” good lord <a href='https://twitter.com/ldragoon/status/1546696650080432128?s=21' target='_blank'>twitter.com/ldragoon/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1546706130407153665" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 04:00:52 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546696650080432128" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ldragoon/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chaos Bee ✡️ 🌈 🌾👩🌾 ☮️</span><span class="at">@ldragoon</span></div></a></div><div><p>This guy COULD HAVE raised awareness of ACTUAL LIBRARY’S ebook programs, which are plentiful and ACTUALLY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR WORK, but they wanted to be the big SAVIORS OF THE PANDEMIC so fuck actual working authors, right???</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ldragoon/status/1546696650080432128" target="_blank">2022-07-12</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546707578859790337" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1546706130407153665"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>Every time I see someone retweet one of these bilous threads from someone with "Harper Collins!" in their bio repeating debunked talking points and directly lying about the facts of the case masked in hand-wringing about anecdotal writers, it makes me sick <a href='https://twitter.com/ldragoon/status/1546301164181852160?s=20&t=YsRv9Ze_u188KQg_ks327g' target='_blank'>twitter.com/ldragoon/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1546707578859790337" target="_blank">Tue Jul 12 04:06:37 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<!-- DEFINES: lawsuit -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="lawsuit">Lawsuit<a class="headerlink" href="#lawsuit" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- USES: Association of American Publishers -->
<p>On June 1, 2020, all four major publishing companies (Hachette, HarperCollins, Wiley, and Penguin Random House) sued the Internet Archive on the basis of copyright infringement. The publishing cartel (the trust <a href="https://publishers.org/who-we-are/our-board/">which makes up the Association of American Publishers</a>) accuses Internet Archive’s Open Library and the entire concept of controlled digital lending of being in violation of publishers’ copyright.</p>
<p>The IA case represents an inflection point in the attack on property rights, shifting from passively eroding rights opportunistically through control over how technology is deployed to demanding that they’re actively entitled to the ground they’ve encroached on.</p>
<p>At the time of writing, there is a judgement in favor of the plaintiffs (the publishers), although this is being challenged.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="target-is-lending-not-digital-formats">Target is Lending, not Digital Formats<a class="headerlink" href="#target-is-lending-not-digital-formats" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The lawsuit’s existence implies a number of falsehoods, like the background idea that the appetites of publishers for profit would be sated if not for this. </p>
<p>One vital thing to note is that, though the complaint <em>seems</em> to be about the Digital in controlled digital lending, meaning the digital formats used, it’s really more concerned with the Lending aspect.
Book lending is something people do without paying publishers, so they’re against it on that principle.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-federal-lawsuit-filed-publishing-companies">EFF Press Release, “Internet Archive Seeks Summary Judgment in Federal Lawsuit Filed By Publishing Companies”</a>
“The publishers are not seeking protection from harm to their existing rights. They are seeking a new right foreign to American copyright law: the right to control how libraries may lend the books they own,” said EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry.
“They should not succeed. The Internet Archive and the hundreds of libraries and archives that support it are not pirates or thieves. They are librarians, striving to serve their patrons online just as they have done for centuries in the brick-and-mortar world. Copyright law does not stand in the way of a library’s right to lend its books to its patrons, one at a time.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With measures like DRM-controlled copies and IA’s five-year embargo, controlled digital lending is actually far <em>less</em> objectionable to traditional book lending. The lawsuit is not driven by an ideological objection to digital lending, it’s an opportunistic attack.
Their argument has to be that it’s not analogous to lending physical media, but they don’t really think that. The ways in which it’s analogous to lending one’s own property are the aspects they take offense at. What they are attacking with this is the notion of books-as-property itself.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://eev.ee/blog/2015/10/23/copyright-is-broken/">Eevee, “Copyright is broken”</a>
You could fabricate a philosophical reason for this, but here’s my much simpler one: they make more money this way, and they can get away with it. Why sell only one of a thing, when you can sell several of it, possibly even to the same customer?</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- > (How many times have you bought Super Mario Bros.? It’s just one game, the same every time. They didn’t do anything new to do it; they just put it in a different box. It was only a quirk of technology — or, now, entirely deliberate — that you couldn’t play the old game on newer systems.)
>
> Who does this benefit? You could argue that a creator deserves to own their own for their entire lifetime, but then why the 70 years? Does a great-grandchild really deserve exclusive ownership of a work that they didn’t create?
>
> This really only benefits corporations, who incidentally, don’t actually make anything. They aren’t people. They have no imagination. They can fund things, and then buy the copyright, but that’s about it.
>
> The theme I’m going for here is that big players get to do whatever they want ([even](https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-corruption-scandal-surrounds-anti-piracy-campaign-111201/) [violate](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/27/1360245/-When-politicians-use-music-without-asking-permission) [copyright](http://listverse.com/2012/12/08/top-10-shameless-hypocrites-of-copyright-law/) with little fear of punishment), while small players are largely left to the mercy of middlemen. -->
<!-- The digital format is incidental to the complaint. The objection is to lending.
This completely invalidates the argument, changes on lending being acceptable but digital formats being an exception -->
<p>The technical question of whether an infringing reproduction is involved is a technicality they are not actually interested in or care about.
They know perfectly well it isn’t a real reproduction.
That’s just a stepping stone to them.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="not-nel">Not NEL<a class="headerlink" href="#not-nel" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another implication is that this is somehow a reaction to the National Emergency Library or is only objecting to parts of CDL as a practice. Not so!</p>
<p>Despite publishers’ Olympian gymnastics to cast the National Emergency Library as the inciting incident in the public eye, this was not the case. That was always the implication trickled down to the public discourse, but it was never what they actually argued. As far as the actual policy and lawsuit were concerned, the NEL was a complete red herring, and they knew it.</p>
<p>What’s more, we know they knew it. This lawsuit was <em>not</em> provoked by the emergency library, so much so that the publishers go out of their way to make that point themselves:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Pallante-Reflections-on-Hachette-v-IA-March-31-2023.pdf">Maria A. Pallante, AAP CEO</a>
As a point of clarity, we sued Internet Archive on June 1, 2020, for its entire practice of
“controlled digital lending,” not only the extra-extreme version that it rolled out in March 2020
with its hyperbolic “National Emergency Library” (NEL) and shut down on June 16, 2020, shortly
after the U.S. Copyright Office suggested it was likely outside the bounds of fair use. We
previewed a suit in February 2019 with <a href="https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/">this public statement</a>, which regrettably was ignored.
When the pandemic hit, the underlying suit was already being prepared.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, this suit attacked the entire concept of controlled digital lending.
The national emergency library is a very effective red herring, but it’s a red herring nonetheless, and having thoroughly proved that, I’m not falling for that trap. Let’s look at what’s actually at stake, not just the PR.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-complaint">The Complaint<a class="headerlink" href="#the-complaint" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But enough about what the complaint <em>isn’t</em>, what is the actual complaint? What’s in <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.1.0_1.pdf">Hachette Book Group v. Internet Archive</a>? Well, some really incredible stuff.
This whole document is a vile, hateful screed, which further takes that hate as a point of pride rather than the grave embarrassment it is. </p>
<p>Originally I went over the entire complaint and every argument it made, systematically debunking all of them. And I had all of that inline here. But, in a futile attempt to keep this essay <em>somewhat</em> constrained and readable, I’ve moved that deep-dive to a separate article.</p>
<p>If you want to see all the points the publishers made, and why each of them are wrong, flip over to</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2024/03/04/cdl-the-aap-is-wrong-about-everything/"><strong>CDL: The AAP is Wrong About Everything / GioCities</strong></a></p>
<!-- https://github.com/vokimon/markdown-customblocks/issues/10 -->
<!-- ::: linkcard nowideimage https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2024/03/04/cdl-the-aap-is-wrong-about-everything/ -->
<p>If I haven’t exhausted your interest already, do read it. There’s a lot wrong here. </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="ruling">Ruling<a class="headerlink" href="#ruling" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>The initial <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">Internet Archive Opinion & Order</a> ruling in favor of the publishers against the Internet Archive came just four days after the hearing. </p>
<p>The publishing cabal found a sympathetic audience in the 77-year-old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_G._Koeltl">John G. Koeltl</a>, a man who got his law degree before the conception of ARPANET and took office before the release of Netscape Navigator.
This is exactly who publishers needed: someone who cared more about the stability of industry than unimportant things like what must seem to him like an unimportant edge case compared to “real” books.</p>
<!-- TODO: too pejorative? -->
<!-- As one-sided as this issue seems -- and frankly, it is -- I do get how a traditional copyright maximalist judge makes this ruling. I do. I do. But that definitely doesn’t make him right. -->
<p>The order itself mostly consists of uncritically parroting the same arguments from the publishers which I’ve already debunked. So much so, in fact, that I’ve just been including snippets from the ruling as examples of wrong arguments in favor of the publishers, so there’s really nothing new to go over.
It’s just wrong for <a href="/blog/2024/03/04/cdl-the-aap-is-wrong-about-everything/">all the reasons we know about already</a>.</p>
<!-- > [Internet Archive Opinion & Order](https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf){: .cite}
> IA does not make its ebook copies of copyright-protected
> works available for mass download. Instead, it professes to
> perform the traditional function of a library by lending only
> limited numbers of these works at a time through “Controlled
> Digital Lending,” or “CDL.” Def.’s 56.1 ¶ 11. CDL’s central
> tenet, according to a September 2018 Statement and White Paper by
> a group of librarians, is that an entity that owns a physical
> book can scan that book and “circulate \[the] digitized title in
> place of \[the] physical one in a controlled manner.” -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-specter-of-redigi">The Specter of ReDigi<a class="headerlink" href="#the-specter-of-redigi" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>One of the great problems of the common law system is that all previous decisions are expected to be correct, and extreme weight is put on upholding <em>precedent</em>.
Past precedent is assumed to be correct and is therefore, in effect, elevated to a sacrosanct position; not only can it not be effectively <em>overturned</em>, it has to be taken as axiomatically true by subsequent cases.
Every overturning of past precedent comes at the expense of the legitimacy of the entire judicial system, and so such overturnings are dramatic and rare.
But precedent is also treated as universally applicable, even though the ruling is based on specific details pertinent only to the situation in question.</p>
<p>So, if a legal topic’s history includes a <em>really bad ruling</em>, that cripples you going forward. As for digital first sale, this is precisely what <em>Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc.</em> is: poison in the water.</p>
<p>I talked about the enumeration of rights back under <a href="#new-uses-invalidate-standing-pricing-assumptions">New uses invalidate standing pricing assumptions</a>, and also back in <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#exhaustion-of-rights">You Haven’t Seen Copyright</a></p>
<p>This monopolist argument is precisely the error ReDigi makes. What makes the ReDigi decision a <em>disastrously bad</em> interpretation is that it inverts the enumerated rights of copyright, saying that copyright is the rule, not the exception, and any rights <em>owners’</em> might have over their own property must be enumerated in law to exist.
This explicitly includes rights that <em>did not exist</em> when the law was written, meaning the exclusive right for new use created for a piece of media belongs, automatically, to the copyright holder, not the person. It locks first sale rights to the mediums that existed when the law was written, and demands Congress amend copyright law for every new technology, or have the power fall to corporations by default.</p>
<p>Ultimately it fundamentally misunderstands copyright as a system of enumerated rights reserved to creators, and instead sees an individual’s right to property as a bizarre outlier to be kept rare and controlled for the sake of continued corporate control.</p>
<!-- redigi locks first sale rights to the mediums that existed when the law was written, which is wrong -->
<!-- Redigi ruling ignored an amacus brief from Library Copyright Alliance (“LCA”) filed an [amicus brief](https://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/storage/documents/ReDigiFairUse_2017feb14-rs.pdf) and did not address its concerns or arguments
redigi & IA ignored hathitrust
hathitrust: [scholar_case](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4571528653505160061&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr)
IA did not use the format shifting argument, likely because they realized they were hamstrung by existing bad precedent.-->
<p>This is a monstrously bad legal doctrine. It’s totally wrong, including procedurally: the case ignored both prior decisions (hathitrust) and an <a href="https://www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/storage/documents/ReDigiFairUse_2017feb14-rs.pdf">amicus brief</a> from the <em>American Library Association</em> that predicted the problems the ruling caused.
IA tried to avoid ReDigi by avoiding the format shifting argument, because they realized they were hamstrung, but I’m not going to pretend that there’s any virtue in trying to work around it when the entire conceit desperately needs to be overturned.</p>
<p>Having this poison on the books cripples the Internet Archive, as Judge Koeltl continually discards the law itself in favor of ReDigi’s incorrect interpretation of it. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://publishers.org/news/statement-on-flawed-theory-of-controlled-digital-lending/">Statement on Flawed Theory of “Controlled Digital Lending”</a>
The White Paper further asserts that CDL should be favored on public benefit grounds because it is “aligned with the principles” of first sale limitations under §109(a), even if it does not actually qualify for application of the first sale defense by statutory definition.
In December 2018, the Second Circuit in ReDigi expressly rejected the notion that §109(a) is a statement of broad “principles,” as the White Paper asserts, instead holding that it is a provision “for which Congress has taken control, dictating both policy and the means of its execution.” …
In short, ReDigi makes clear that there is no broad “principle” underlying §109(a) as enacted, and therefore fair use cannot be used as a way of implementing such a “principle” without doing violence to the Copyright Act as Congress has written it.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900/gov.uscourts.nysd.537900.188.0.pdf">Internet Archive Opinion & Order</a>
Section 109(a) does not excuse IA’s unauthorized reproduction of the Works in Suit.
The first sale doctrine limits a copyright owner’s distribution right under § 106(3), but Section 109(a) “says nothing about the rights holder’s control under § 106(1) over reproduction of a copy or phonorecord.” <em>ReDigi, 910 F.3d at 656.</em><br>
…<br>
In ReDigi, the Court of Appeals plainly held that the first sale doctrine has now been codified in Section 109(a), that it does not include a right of reproduction, and that any broader scope of the first sale doctrine should be sought from Congress, not the courts.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This “Congress, not the Courts” line is <em>especially</em> shameless, because the rights are <em>already</em> correctly written in the law. It’s the courts — ReDigi — who got it wrong, and all you need to do is read the law congress wrote to fix that.
Taking this incorrect interpretation and applying it to CDL, even when the law says otherwise, is not some neutral decision, it’s a deeply political decision.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="fallout">Fallout<a class="headerlink" href="#fallout" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>The Internet Archive has <a href="https://archive.org/details/2023-09-11-notice-of-appeal/">appealed the ruling</a>, but at time of writing it’s still haunting us.</p>
<p>Currently, all books produced by any of these major publishers and distributed through standard channels, including ebook forms, cannot be owned in digital form <em>at all</em>. The IA ruling re-enforces this, saying that it is a violation of federal law to consider any digital form of a book — including one you create yourself using property you purchased and rights you have — to be property you own.</p>
<!-- > [Jennifer Jenkins, "Last sale?: Libraries’ rights in the digital age"](https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9068/9924)
> We have grown up assuming that people owned their books and their music. With ownership came rights that allowed us to share, to lend, to resell, all without being monitored. By contrast, imagine having a library of books whose shelves might be bare one morning due to licensing problems. -->
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/business/media/internet-archive-emergency-lending-library.html">David Streitfeld, “The Dream Was Universal Access to Knowledge. The Result Was a Fiasco.”</a>
…the Archive <a href="https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-the-hachette-v-internet-archive-decision-means-for-our-library/">announced</a> that as a result of the <a href="https://archive.org/details/consent-judgment-in-hachette-v-internet-archive/mode/2up">ruling,</a> “the Publisher Plaintiffs will notify us of their commercially available books, and the Internet Archive will expeditiously remove them from lending,” if those publishers have an ebook version available. And as part of a separate agreement with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_of_American_Publishers">Association of American Publishers,</a> the trade group which helped to bring the lawsuit, they will also have to honor takedown requests from any of <em>their</em> member publishing houses—which includes most major publishing houses in the U.S., and potentially puts <a href="https://time.com/6266147/internet-archive-copyright-infringement-books-lawsuit/">millions of books in jeopardy.</a></p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/11/our-fight-is-far-from-over/">Our Fight is Far From Over | Internet Archive Blogs</a>
We remain steadfast in our belief that libraries should be able to own, preserve, and lend digital books outside of the confines of temporary licensed access. We believe that the judge made errors of law and fact in the decision, and we will appeal.</p>
<p>Statement from Internet Archive founder, Brewster Kahle:
“Libraries are under attack at unprecedented scale today, from book bans to defunding to overzealous lawsuits like the one brought against our library. These efforts are cutting off the public’s access to truth at a key time in our democracy. We must have strong libraries, which is why we are appealing this decision.”</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://blog.archive.org/2023/08/17/what-the-hachette-v-internet-archive-decision-means-for-our-library/">What the Hachette v. Internet Archive Decision Means for Our Library | Internet Archive Blogs</a>
Separately, we have come to agreement with the Association of American Publishers (AAP), the trade organization that coordinated the original lawsuit with the four publishers, that the AAP will not support further legal action against the Internet Archive for controlled digital lending if we follow the same takedown procedures for any AAP-member publisher. </p>
<p>So what is the impact of these final orders on our library? Broadly, this injunction will result in a significant loss of access to valuable knowledge for the public. It means that people who are not part of an elite institution or who do not live near a well-funded public library will lose access to books they cannot read otherwise. It is a sad day for the Internet Archive, our patrons, and for all libraries.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- ![Historycourses: The Internet Archive is no longer lending books. - It's over. - The harm this does to me, personally, is incalculable. But we soldier on.](https://twitter.com/Historycourses/status/1692216421613252928)
![StephenPrager2: Very sad day. As I wrote a few months ago, @internetarchive is one of our most valuable sources of free knowledge and works effectively the same as any library, just on a larger scale. It was a critical alternative to a predatory lending model that drains libraries’ finances.](https://twitter.com/StephenPrager2/status/1692737378274730065)
An incredibly basic function of a library is the ability to make scanned copies of book excerpts to keep for personal use without monopolizing that copy of the book.
That's why libraries have copiers!
The rights clearly derive from first-sale.
This ruling accuses that practice of being illegal.
> “The permanence of library collections may become a thing of the past,” said Jason Schultz, director of New York University’s [Technology Law & Policy Clinic](https://www.law.nyu.edu/academics/clinics/semester/technologylawandpolicy). “If the platforms decide not to offer the e-books or publishers decide to pull them off the shelves, the reader loses out. This is similar to when songs you look for on Spotify are blanked out because the record company ended the license or when movies or television shows cycle off Netflix or Amazon.” -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion<a class="headerlink" href="#conclusion" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Ultimately, publishers are trying to control things that copyright not only gives them no right to touch, but actively demands they leave alone.
Their only acceptable response is to keep their grubby mitts off.
But instead we have this attempt at an enormous, unprecedented, all-too-predictable power grab.</p>
<p>The proliferation of digitally licensed-only media — as seen in ebooks, but also other forms of media — increases the <em>immediate</em> accessibility and affordability of <em>select</em> works, selected at the discretion of publishers and media companies.
But the license-only model and the eradication of the individual property right means this convenience comes at the cost of destroying the very foundations of the system.
Accepting media ecosystems — like the ebook market — in which items cannot be owned is to trade an infinite future of culture in exchange for the chance to consume transient experiences more conveniently.
And those transient media experiences are becoming lesser and lesser, according to the whims of their publishers — in fact, in some cases the window’s shut entirely, and we’re losing works before they’ve been released at all.</p>
<!-- Digital works could maintain all the property qualities of physical works, but that's being specifically, intentionally prevented. -->
<p>What’s truly immiserating about this is that the supposed trade-off between the permanence of physical copies and the accessibility of digital leasing is entirely manufactured.
Digital formats can retain all of the permanence of physical media and more.
In fact, a consistent complaint of companies demanding the right to lock media behind DRM is that digital formats are <em>too</em> resilient and preservable and aren’t subject to the same kinds of natural decay physical media is. </p>
<p>Exactly contrary to the permanence/accessibility trade-off we see in the physical ownership/digital leasing dichotomy, digital formats are actually the best option we have for maximizing <em>both</em> of these goods.
The only reason ebooks aren’t permanent, aren’t archivable, aren’t as valuable to (would-be) owners is that the handful of companies who control the supply go to extraordinary lengths to take naturally-resilient media and intentionally cripple their usefulness. </p>
<p>Colluded, conspired, or just independently crooked, it makes no difference: a carefully calculated, enormously expensive enterprise ensures the supply of ebooks is tainted at the source.
In fact, there <em>is no</em> supply of ebooks because there is no <em>property</em> supplied to use or consume — only licenses.
Responsible suppliers can prevent all the problems of fragility and permeability we see in DRM-locked ebooks and ensure accessibility beyond anything we’ve ever seen.
Instead, that future is being burned for corporate profit today.</p>
<p>When companies attack people who are going out of their way to do things legally and buy by the rules, they’re not playing by the rules, they’re gunning for a specific outcome and breaking the system to do it. What was offensive to them was not the morality or legality or equity, but that they didn’t like the outcome. But if they’re going to (very publicly) reject legality and morality and equity as standards, we can’t pretend those frameworks are still “in play” when it comes to their work. </p>
<p>This is why being a good faith actor is an important distinction. It <strong>matters</strong> if the other person is trying to play a fair game or not. That informs <em>everything</em>. And media companies aren’t.</p>
<p>Which way is it for them?
It’s not a way at all.
In this universe is no standard, no principle, no concrete reality. It’s just whatever benefits the people in power the most at any given second with no regard for something like consistency. Consistency means they would have to treat you as anything other than barriers between them and your money.</p>
<div class="container related-reading">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<h3 id="library-rights">Library Rights<a class="headerlink" href="#library-rights" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://controlleddigitallending.org/statement/">Position Statement – Controlled Digital Lending (statement)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://libguides.ala.org/copyright/firstsale">First Sale Doctrine - Copyright for Libraries - LibGuides at American Library Association</a></li>
<li><a href="http://battleforlibraries.com/congress">Fight for the Future, Battle for Libraries campaign</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.ala.org/news/sites/ala.org.news/files/content/mediapresscenter/CompetitionDigitalMarkets.pdf">American Library Association, “Competition in Digital Markets”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9068/9924">Jennifer Jenkins, “Last sale?: Libraries’ rights in the digital age”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/libraries-digital-publishing-ebooks/">Maria Bustillos, “Sell This Book!”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/87458-wyden-eshoo-question-big-five-publishers-over-their-library-e-book-practices.html">Andrew Albanese, “Wyden, Eshoo Question Big Five Publishers Over Their Library E-book Practices”</a></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="book-feudalization">Book Feudalization<a class="headerlink" href="#book-feudalization" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-communications/an-app-called-libby-and-the-surprisingly-big-business-of-library-e-books">Daniel A. Gross, “The Surprisingly Big Business of Library E-books”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2021cv00351/552226">Fremgen et al v. Amazon.com, Inc. (2021)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://academicebookinvestigation.org/2021/11/25/outrage-as-pearson-increase-ebook-prices-by-500-in-one-week/">Yoyohanna, “Outrage as Pearson increase ebook prices by 500% in one week”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-universities-2022-january-e-book-campaigners-rally-against-pearson-price-increases/">Sophie Inge, “Ebook campaigners rally against Pearson price increases”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/10/copyright-collective-free-format-time-shifting-never-ok/">Nate Anderson, “Copyright collective: free format and time-shifting never OK”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://readsludge.com/2022/03/17/publishing-giants-are-fighting-libraries-on-e-books">David Moore, “Publishing Giants Are Fighting Libraries on E-Books”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/6/18252322/college-textbooks-cost-expensive-pearson-cengage-mcgraw-hill">Gaby Del Valle, “Why are textbooks so expensive?”</a></li>
</ul>
<h3 id="internet-archive">Internet Archive<a class="headerlink" href="#internet-archive" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>music-labels-sue-internet-archive-over-digitized-record-collection-2023-08-12/)
+ <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/05/book-publishers-are-trying-to-destroy-public-e-book-access-in-order-to-increase-profits"><strong>Stephen Prager, Book Publishers Are Trying to Destroy Public E-Book Access in Order to Increase Profits</strong></a>
+ <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.463620">Reese, R. A. (2003). The First Sale Doctrine in the Era of Digital Networks.</a>
+ <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/the-tragedy-of-google-books/523320/">Torching the Modern-Day Library of Alexandria - The Atlantic (523320)</a>
+ <a href="https://www.eff.org/press/releases/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-federal-lawsuit-filed-publishing-companies">EFF Press Release, “Internet Archive Seeks Summary Judgment in Federal Lawsuit Filed By Publishing Companies”</a>
+ [Blake Brittain, “Music labels sue Internet Archive over digitized record collection”](https://www.reuters.com/legal/</p>
<h3 id="privacy">Privacy<a class="headerlink" href="#privacy" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90996547/e-books-are-fast-becoming-tools-of-corporate-surveillance">Lia Holland and Jade Pfaefflin Bounds, “E-books are fast becoming tools of corporate surveillance”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://sparcopen.org/news/2023/sparc-report-urges-action-to-address-concerns-with-sciencedirect-data-privacy-practices/">SPARC Report Urges Action to Address Concerns with ScienceDirect Data Privacy Practices</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:37-libraries">
<p>In 2020 at time of writing. In 2022, that number had risen to <a href="https://archive.org/details/openlibraries">more than 80</a>, and is 96 today. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:37-libraries" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:ia-drm">
<p>In the Internet Archive’s implementation, when patrons download offline copies of DRM-protected loaned books (usually loaned books are read in-browser), those files are PDFs secured with the same Adobe-developed PDF DRM that publishers and other DRM-maximalists use. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:ia-drm" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:lendtech">
<p>With publisher cooperation, perpetual ebook licenses are easy to issue, and loaned-copy management is a solved problem. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:lendtech" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:price-discrimination">
<p>In economic terms, “perfect price discrimination allows a monopolist to absorb all consumer surplus.” In Gio terms, this is “bad”. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:price-discrimination" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:starfield">
<p>Or, at least it was when I wrote this line in October 2023.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/im.giovanh.com/"><img src="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/avatar/plain/did:plc:kjx6y3groxh3sy5tkfyji6sy/bafkreigs5mkysqn4iubd3voaxtgqadpt4cavc2s7hryswketva6i3vxwly@jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gio</span><span class="at">@im.giovanh.com</span></div></a></div><div><p>this is so embarrassing</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kjx6y3groxh3sy5tkfyji6sy/bafkreifr3kyv7tmaxvuqwjek4e5brcnsf5e5yfcmkg6gl2kgcxfo52kfsy@jpeg" target="_blank"><img class="img count{media_count}" src="https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:kjx6y3groxh3sy5tkfyji6sy/bafkreifr3kyv7tmaxvuqwjek4e5brcnsf5e5yfcmkg6gl2kgcxfo52kfsy@jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;})();"></img></a></div><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/im.giovanh.com/post/3kg66cnx4dt2d" target="_blank">2023-12-10T05:26:58.704Z</a>
</blockquote> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:starfield" title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:libby">
<p>The Overdrive company may also use the brand name “Libby” depending on the library. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:libby" title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:the-authors-guild">
<p><!-- IGNORE: Misspelling -->
And yes, it’s <code>The Authors Guild</code> and not <code>The Authors' Guild</code>, even though that throws me every time I type it.
But it’s funny: both grammatically and pragmatically, it’s a guild that contains authors, not one authors possess or control. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:the-authors-guild" title="Jump back to footnote 7 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:chokepoint">
<p>See <a href="https://chokepointcapitalism.com"><strong>Chokepoint Capitalism</strong> by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow</a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:chokepoint" title="Jump back to footnote 8 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:credulity">
<p>Arguably, I’m being overly credulous with some of these examples. But I’m not overly worried about that in this case because if they’re lying that makes me more right, not less. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:credulity" title="Jump back to footnote 9 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:writer-inflation">
<p>$6,080 (2017 US dollars in 2009) = $5321.41 (<em>2009 US dollars</em>)<br>
5321.41 <em>2009 US dollars</em> ÷ 10,500 <em>2009 US dollars</em> = 0.506<br>
≅ 51% <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:writer-inflation" title="Jump back to footnote 10 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:book-sales">
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://authorsguild.org/news/despite-pandemic-2020-u-s-book-sales-on-par-with-past-five-years/">Despite Pandemic, 2020 U.S. Book Sales on Par with Past Five Years</a>
Given the huge impact of the pandemic on the publishing industry, including publication delays; canceled in-person book tours, signings, and readings; and the closure of brick-and-mortar bookstores during the enforced lockdowns in 45 states, many had expected last year’s overall book sales to drop significantly.<br>
…<br>
“The Authors Guild is delighted by the news that the book industry continues to thrive and the renewed interest in reading as entertainment,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild. “This bodes well for the future of the writing profession. The Authors Guild is here to ensure that authors, and not just publishers and retail platforms, also benefit from the health of the industry, and to reverse the downward trends of author incomes.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:book-sales" title="Jump back to footnote 11 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:42preinflation">
<p>Note that this graph and the original 42% chunk are both pre-inflation, so they are <em>directly</em> comparable. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:42preinflation" title="Jump back to footnote 12 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:public-lending-right">
<p>A federal subsidy to publishers whose books are lent in public libraries <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:public-lending-right" title="Jump back to footnote 13 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>How Nintendo Misuses Copyright2023-11-21T00:00:00-06:002023-11-21T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2023-11-21:/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/<!--
redirect: blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright -->
<!-- ad: i cannot overstate how little Nintendo cares about creative rights -->
<aside class="cb qualified">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>As part of the <em>IP Abuse ???</em> series, this analysis focuses on corporations violating the original intent of copyright in favor of personal power and profit instead of taking a well-rounded analysis of all the relevant factors, like enclosure in general.</p>
</aside>
<!-- Revokes your Rights -->
<p>When I’m looking for an example of copyright abuse, I find myself <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2020/11/19/nintendo-its-about-control-not-piracy/">returning</a> <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/02/27/lies-damned-lies-and-subscriptions/">to Nintendo</a> <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/">a lot</a> on this blog.
Nintendo is a combination hardware/software/media franchise company, so they fit a lot of niches.
They’re a particularly useful when talking about IP because the “big N” is both very familiar to people and also egregiously bad offenders, especially given their “friendly” reputation. </p>
<p>Nintendo has constructed a reputation for itself as a “good” games company that still makes genuinely fun games with “heart”.
Yet it’s also infamously aggressive in executing “takedowns”: asserting property ownership of creative works other people own and which Nintendo did not make.</p>
<!-- for the purpose of destroying them. -->
<p>You’d think a company like Nintendo — an art creation studio in the business of making and selling creative works — would be proponents of real, strong, immutable creative rights. That, as creators, they’d want the sturdiest copyright system possible, not one compromised (or that could be compromised) to serve the interests of any one particular party. This should be especially true for Nintendo even compared to other studios, given Nintendo’s own fight-for-its-life against Universal, its youth, and its relatively small position<sup id="fnref:relative-position"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:relative-position">1</a></sup> in the market compared to its entertainment competitors Disney, Sony, and Microsoft.</p>
<p>But no, Nintendo takes the opposite position. When it comes to copyright, they pretty much exclusively try to compromise it in the hopes that a broken, askew system will end up unfairly favoring them. And so they attack the principles of copyright, viciously, again and again, convinced that the more broken the system is, the more they stand to profit.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="introducing-nintendo">Introducing Nintendo<a class="headerlink" href="#introducing-nintendo" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Nintendo, even compared to its corporate contemporaries, has a distinctly hostile philosophy around art: if they can’t control something themselves, they tend to try to eliminate it entirely.
What Nintendo uses creative rights to protect is not the copyright of their real creative works, it’s their control over everything they perceive to be their “share” of the gaming industry.</p>
<p>Let me start with a quick history, in case you’re not familiar with the foundation Nintendo is standing on. </p>
<!-- , just so you know not to go into this with an assumption of good faith. -->
<p><a href="https://niwanetwork.org/wiki/Early_stigmatisation_of_Nintendo_and_ties_to_the_Yakuza">Nintendo got its start in Japan making playing cards for the mob to commit crimes with</a>. It only pivoted to “video games” after manufacturing playing cards for the Yakuza to use for illegal gambling dens. (I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s literally what happened.)</p>
<p>Nintendo got its footing overseas by looking to see what video game was making the most money in America, seeing it was Space Invaders, and copying that verbatim with a clone game they called “Radar Scope”:</p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick='this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8_bhYS2kcBo?autoplay=1" title="Radar Scope" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`' style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/8_bhYS2kcBo/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>Then, when that was a commercial failure, <a href="https://www.aroged.com/2023/01/21/popeye-instead-of-donkey-kong-lets-see-the-project-of-the-original-nintendo-prototype/">they wrote “conversion kit” code to turn those cabinets into a Popeye game, failed to get the Popeye rights they needed, and released it anyway</a>. They kept the gameplay and even the character archetypes the same, they just reskinned it with King Kong. They didn’t even name the protagonist after they swapped out the Popeye idea, so he was just called Jumpman.</p>
<p><img alt="Popeye/Donkey Kong comparison" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/popeye.jpg"/></p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Mario’s plumber role is well-known as being a working-class archetype to substitute for the everyman sailor archetype of Popeye. But, in researching this, I found out that there’s also some evidence that even the basic design of a plumber in overalls came from, of all things, <a href="https://twitter.com/katewillaert/status/1308889567379021825">subconscious word association with an unrelated magazine, also named Popeye</a>. Their heads were <em>really</em> in that space!</p>
</aside>
<p>But then Nintendo was almost itself the <em>victim</em> of an abuse of IP law. “Donkey Kong” derived from King Kong, and even though the character was in the public domain, Universal Studios still sued Nintendo over the use.
Ultimately the judge agreed with the Nintendo team and threw out the lawsuit, in an example of a giant corporation trying to steamroll what was at the time a small business with over-aggressive and illegitimate IP enforcement. </p>
<p>This was such an impactful moment for Nintendo that they took the name of their lawyer in the Universal Studios case — Kirby — and used it for the mascot of one of their biggest franchises. It was a significant move that demonstrates Nintendo’s extreme gratefulness — or even idolization — of the man who defended them against abuse of IP law.</p>
<p>You would hope the lesson Nintendo learned here would be from the perspective of the underdog, seeing as <em>they</em> were almost the victim of the kinds of tactics they would later become famous for using themselves. But no, it seems they were impressed by the ruthlessness of the abusers instead, and so copied their playbook.</p>
</section><!--
redirect: blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright -->
<!-- ad: i cannot overstate how little Nintendo cares about creative rights -->
<aside class="cb qualified">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>As part of the <em>IP Abuse ???</em> series, this analysis focuses on corporations violating the original intent of copyright in favor of personal power and profit instead of taking a well-rounded analysis of all the relevant factors, like enclosure in general.</p>
</aside>
<!-- Revokes your Rights -->
<p>When I’m looking for an example of copyright abuse, I find myself <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2020/11/19/nintendo-its-about-control-not-piracy/">returning</a> <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/02/27/lies-damned-lies-and-subscriptions/">to Nintendo</a> <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/">a lot</a> on this blog.
Nintendo is a combination hardware/software/media franchise company, so they fit a lot of niches.
They’re a particularly useful when talking about IP because the “big N” is both very familiar to people and also egregiously bad offenders, especially given their “friendly” reputation. </p>
<p>Nintendo has constructed a reputation for itself as a “good” games company that still makes genuinely fun games with “heart”.
Yet it’s also infamously aggressive in executing “takedowns”: asserting property ownership of creative works other people own and which Nintendo did not make.</p>
<!-- for the purpose of destroying them. -->
<p>You’d think a company like Nintendo — an art creation studio in the business of making and selling creative works — would be proponents of real, strong, immutable creative rights. That, as creators, they’d want the sturdiest copyright system possible, not one compromised (or that could be compromised) to serve the interests of any one particular party. This should be especially true for Nintendo even compared to other studios, given Nintendo’s own fight-for-its-life against Universal, its youth, and its relatively small position<sup id="fnref:relative-position"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:relative-position">1</a></sup> in the market compared to its entertainment competitors Disney, Sony, and Microsoft.</p>
<p>But no, Nintendo takes the opposite position. When it comes to copyright, they pretty much exclusively try to compromise it in the hopes that a broken, askew system will end up unfairly favoring them. And so they attack the principles of copyright, viciously, again and again, convinced that the more broken the system is, the more they stand to profit.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="introducing-nintendo">Introducing Nintendo<a class="headerlink" href="#introducing-nintendo" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Nintendo, even compared to its corporate contemporaries, has a distinctly hostile philosophy around art: if they can’t control something themselves, they tend to try to eliminate it entirely.
What Nintendo uses creative rights to protect is not the copyright of their real creative works, it’s their control over everything they perceive to be their “share” of the gaming industry.</p>
<p>Let me start with a quick history, in case you’re not familiar with the foundation Nintendo is standing on. </p>
<!-- , just so you know not to go into this with an assumption of good faith. -->
<p><a href="https://niwanetwork.org/wiki/Early_stigmatisation_of_Nintendo_and_ties_to_the_Yakuza">Nintendo got its start in Japan making playing cards for the mob to commit crimes with</a>. It only pivoted to “video games” after manufacturing playing cards for the Yakuza to use for illegal gambling dens. (I know it sounds ridiculous, but that’s literally what happened.)</p>
<p>Nintendo got its footing overseas by looking to see what video game was making the most money in America, seeing it was Space Invaders, and copying that verbatim with a clone game they called “Radar Scope”:</p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8_bhYS2kcBo?autoplay=1" title="Radar Scope" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/8_bhYS2kcBo/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>Then, when that was a commercial failure, <a href="https://www.aroged.com/2023/01/21/popeye-instead-of-donkey-kong-lets-see-the-project-of-the-original-nintendo-prototype/">they wrote “conversion kit” code to turn those cabinets into a Popeye game, failed to get the Popeye rights they needed, and released it anyway</a>. They kept the gameplay and even the character archetypes the same, they just reskinned it with King Kong. They didn’t even name the protagonist after they swapped out the Popeye idea, so he was just called Jumpman.</p>
<p><img alt="Popeye/Donkey Kong comparison" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/popeye.jpg"></p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Mario’s plumber role is well-known as being a working-class archetype to substitute for the everyman sailor archetype of Popeye. But, in researching this, I found out that there’s also some evidence that even the basic design of a plumber in overalls came from, of all things, <a href="https://twitter.com/katewillaert/status/1308889567379021825">subconscious word association with an unrelated magazine, also named Popeye</a>. Their heads were <em>really</em> in that space!</p>
</aside>
<p>But then Nintendo was almost itself the <em>victim</em> of an abuse of IP law. “Donkey Kong” derived from King Kong, and even though the character was in the public domain, Universal Studios still sued Nintendo over the use.
Ultimately the judge agreed with the Nintendo team and threw out the lawsuit, in an example of a giant corporation trying to steamroll what was at the time a small business with over-aggressive and illegitimate IP enforcement. </p>
<p>This was such an impactful moment for Nintendo that they took the name of their lawyer in the Universal Studios case — Kirby — and used it for the mascot of one of their biggest franchises. It was a significant move that demonstrates Nintendo’s extreme gratefulness — or even idolization — of the man who defended them against abuse of IP law.</p>
<p>You would hope the lesson Nintendo learned here would be from the perspective of the underdog, seeing as <em>they</em> were almost the victim of the kinds of tactics they would later become famous for using themselves. But no, it seems they were impressed by the ruthlessness of the abusers instead, and so copied their playbook.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="philosophy">Philosophy<a class="headerlink" href="#philosophy" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>I sometimes feel awkward talking about Nintendo’s attitude, or their corporate ethos, because I feel like calling out “traditional” aspects of their culture comes dangerously close to orientalism.
But at the same time, Nintendo is a company that <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshi_Yamauchi">lets their president order all their relatives to be fired so his clan couldn’t question his right to the throne</a>. And that wasn’t ancient feudal history, that was the Mario guy! Nintendo really does have a distinctly “personal” mentality that maps well to “traditional”, and they act on it in ways that have serious negative repercussions. </p>
<p>I gave another example back in <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/09/03/events-in-games-bother-me/">Events in games bother me</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nintendo has this very hostile relationship with its users in general.
They have a strong culture that they craft an experience and you engage with it like they imagine you should or you don’t at all. In <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180125041200/https://www.rollingstone.com/glixel/features/splatoon-2-hideo-kojima-nintendo-japanese-games-w501322">2017, western developer Jordan Amaro described Nintendo’s “Japanese” approach to design</a>, actually describing Splatoon’s stage rotation system in particular:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In Japan, everything is tailored. You’ve probably heard Sheena Iyengar’s TED talk, in which she went to a restaurant in Japan and tried to order sugar in her green tea. The people at the cafe said, “One does not put sugar in green tea,” and then, “We don’t have sugar.” But when she ordered coffee instead, it did come with sugar! In Japan, there’s a sense of, “We’re making this thing for you, and this is how we think this thing is better enjoyed.” …</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>For Nintendo, the creator/consumer relationship is an absolute binary. Creators create, consumers consume.
Consumers aren’t to interact with the concepts beyond what’s required, they aren’t to understand the mechanics, they aren’t to create for themselves. They eat exactly what they’re served because the experts know what’s best and the consumers don’t, and if they ever step out of line they’re punished for it.</p>
<p>Of course, this has less to do with what’s actually best for the customer and more to do with the owner maintaining control over their experience.
What the customer actually wants and needs is ignored entirely in favor of maintaining a rigid power structure.</p>
<p>I’m not qualified to define what does and doesn’t qualify as “Japanese approach to design”, but Nintendo’s mentality is one that values extreme control, and takes personal offense at even slight infringements against what it considers its honor or territory.
While all media companies are extremely careful when it comes to controlling their product, Nintendo’s attitute puts it at an extreme end of the spectrum.</p>
<p>Nintendo is wrong about all of this, of course. In reality, individual agency doesn’t somehow “compromise the art”. No, it’s Nintendo themselves who toxify something beautiful and meaningful — the genuinely excellent work of real artists who make their games — in the name of defending the vast swaths of territory they’ve claimed.</p>
<!-- TODO I never follow up on this thread of the artists at nintendo doing good work and having it corrupted in execution. Cut/extend/leave? -->
<p>The best way to explain it is probably a whirlwind tour of a few stories, so I’ll jump right in. </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="mario-royale">Mario Royale<a class="headerlink" href="#mario-royale" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- Mario royale, Mario 35, and "theft": Who denied who access to their work? -->
<p>Mario Royale, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgmNQ5zPuSQ">released June 15, 2019 by InfernoPlus</a>, is a free, not-for-profit “battle royale” remix of the original Super Mario Bros. where 75 players simultaneously race through a level and interact with each other indirectly through power-ups. It takes the “battle royale” game format and (like Tetris 99, released earlier in 2019) uses indirect gameplay effects to “attack” other players. </p>
<p>The concept, code, and design are all InfernoPlus’s original work. The gameplay <em>mechanics</em> — which cannot be copyrighted or patented, remember — are inspired by Super Mario Bros., which in turn was inspired by Pitfall and Space Panic, and Tetris 99, which in turn was inspired by Tetris and Fortnite, which in turn was inspired by PUBG, and so on, forever.</p>
<p>The game itself is a slam-dunk transformative work.
Mario Royale, as a video game, is an entirely new experience that didn’t substitute for Super Mario Bros. or even any other Nintendo product.
The only assets in the game that weren’t wholly original were the 8-bit music and sprites<sup id="fnref:8bit"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:8bit">2</a></sup> from the 1985 NES game Super Mario Bros., an <em>infinitesimally</em> small amount of information used as a reference to the cultural touchpoint rather than something designed to somehow steal sales from a discontinued game that runs on discontinued hardware. </p>
<!-- [^free]:
Of course, one can publish a work as free-to-view without granting an open license to use the content. Not everything is open, public domain, or even creative commons just because it's posted on the internet.
But freely-published work is still distinctly more public than art *not* given away online for free, which includes almost all media. Super Mario Bros stands out as being distributed particularly prolifically, including for free, by Nintendo themselves.
-->
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>In fact, here’s how confident I am that the NES graphics used aren’t a copyright issue: Here is the graphical data for the game, in its entirety:</p>
<p class="side-by-side"><img alt="Page 0" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/chr000.bmp">
<img alt="Page 1" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/chr001.bmp"></p>
<p>The sprites ain’t nothin’. They’re not what make the game. It’s the game that makes the game that makes the game, and those game mechanics that are what add all the value are explicitly not protected by copyright. </p>
</aside>
<p>But Nintendo is infamous for attacking fan work no matter how legitimate and transformative, and InfernoPlus was well aware of this. In an interview, InferoPlus said regarding legal threats, “<a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzmykz/the-creator-of-mario-royale-wants-you-to-play-his-game-before-it-gets-banned">I just expect it. I anticipate it to happen. If it doesn’t, it’s great. But it’s more likely to happen.</a>” When you played the game, the loading screen had the message “Please don’t sue me. Please.”</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Now, in my opinion, even the theoretical DMCA on <em>Mario Royale</em> is iffy. For a copyright violation like this to be considered harmful to Nintendo, it would need to deprive them, but free fangames like this don’t deprive Nintendo of any revenue and only appeal to people who are already paying customers anyway. </p>
<p>Further, the very idea of owning copyright over a fictional character is suspect.
Even ignoring the incredibly thorny epistemological question of whether two fictional characters can objectively “be” each other, the idea that copyright includes a total right over all future interpretations of a character shoots straight past “copying work” and falls squarely in the “mineral rights/idea landlord” bucket, which <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">we already know is strictly forbidden</a>. </p>
<!-- In fact, back when they first named the character, the name "Mario" just came from a guy they knew. Was that theft? Is he paid royalties? Should he have the right to seize the Mario franchise if he wants? No, of course not. -->
<p>Hell, people could make fanwork about <em>me</em> — a real person, not just some character in a media franchise — and I wouldn’t own <em>copyright</em> over it. I might have avenues to challenge it in various capacities, but none of them involve copyright or intellectual property. It wasn’t my work!</p>
</aside>
<p>So, when the anticipated cease and desist arrived (Nintendo’s very first move a fault from the get-go), InfernoPlus reacted quickly to appropriately address the complaint as stated. </p>
<!-- DMCA response -->
<p>After getting the demand, InfernoPlus went through and replaced every single copyrighted asset in the game with original art, even re-titling the game “DMCA Royale” with a new playable character jokingly named “Infringio”. </p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/" title=""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/920145378170638336/eHJMeLI4_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🔥➕</span><span class="at">@Inferbro</span></div></a></div><div><p>K so uh. Anyone up to do music/sfx like... right now</p><p>I got an hour-ish</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1142137478771617794" target="_blank">Jun 21, 2019 · 6:29 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1142163384726675456" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/" title="Programmer, youtuber, streamer, slowpoke."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/920145378170638336/eHJMeLI4_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🔥➕</span><span class="at">@Inferbro</span></div></a></div><div><p>Infringio Royale V2.0.0 ALPHA is up. Uhhhh.... It's not pretty but hopefully it won't get me sued. </p><p>So yeah. Give it a few days and we should have it looking a lot better.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1142163384726675456" target="_blank">Fri Jun 21 20:12:25 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🔥➕</span><span class="at">@Inferbro</span></div></a></div><div><p>Version 2.0.1 of DMCA Royale is live!</p><p>No more single color tileset that I made in 8 minutes.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FD9rdO5yWkAAozlQ.png" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://nitter.net/pic/orig/media%2FD9rdO5yWkAAozlQ.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1142468883594567680" target="_blank">Jun 22, 2019 · 4:26 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- \<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1143552947307069441" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/" title="Programmer, youtuber, streamer, slowpoke."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/920145378170638336/eHJMeLI4_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🔥➕</span><span class="at">@Inferbro</span></div></a></div><div><p>DMCA Royale Patch 2.1.0 is out!</p><p>Aside from some bugfixes and asset changes I also made the SDK available.</p><p>If you are feeling like a moddy boy then maybe check it out! </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1143552947307069441/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D963V3MW4AMmTCI.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1143552947307069441" target="_blank">Tue Jun 25 16:14:03 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote> --></p>
</div>
<p>This is a solid response that keeps the game alive while making itself completely unobjectionable, even to Nintendo.
This is actually a very cool story we often see, even without takedown demands: a work starts by building on another franchise and later, in order to stand on its own, backfills the material it was originally sharing. The same thing happened with Fifty Shades and Twilight, and Skyrim and the Forgotten City, and Half Life 2 and the Stanley parable.
Mario Royale was so strong in its own right that the author was able to remove the source material entirely to leave only his indisputably original work.</p>
<p>It’s like the ship of Theseus, except instead of replacing parts with identical ones, they used different designs and put them all in different places so at the end they’re left with none of the original parts and a ship with an entirely different design. No one could reasonably argue that result would be the same ship, or even a copy of anything.
Except, apparently, if you’re lawyers whose brains have been rotted by IP law.</p>
<p>You might think here “Well, Nintendo can’t copyright game rules, but Mario Royale did “copy” their art the first time ‘round, so they did technically have standing to challenge its use.” I know InfernoPlus thought that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/kzmykz/the-creator-of-mario-royale-wants-you-to-play-his-game-before-it-gets-banned">Dexter Thomas, <em>The Creator of “Mario Royale” Wants You to Play His Game Before It Gets Banned</em></a>
<strong>Dexter Thomas:</strong> …you’ve made a game that is using a Nintendo character. What’s the best case scenario for you here?</p>
<p><strong>InfernoPlus:</strong> Best case? If Nintendo wants me to make a version for the Switch [laughs]. I mean, honestly, the best case for me is that they leave it alone, as they have with some fan projects.</p>
<p><strong>DT: So are you worried about getting a letter from Nintendo?</strong></p>
<p><strong>IP:</strong> I just expect it. I anticipate it to happen. If it doesn’t, it’s great. But it’s more likely to happen. I’d say it’s 50/50, maybe more, because it got so big all of a sudden. If it does, I can just re-skin it.</p>
<p><strong>DT: You’ll redo the artwork?</strong></p>
<p><strong>IP:</strong> Yeah. Everything except the sprite [art] work and the music is mine. I’m free to make it into something else and put it up.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Ah, you poor sweet child, no. If we lived in that world, I’d have nothing to write about. </p>
<p>No, it’s here in the story, when you’re still holding on to ideas of creators having rights over their work and equity under the law, that Nintendo themselves interrupt you here to shout “no”! Their problem wasn’t that they objected to the art — the one thing they had a claim over — being used. What Nintendo objects to is just <em>any art they don’t own.</em></p>
<p>See, Nintendo responded to <em>Infringio</em> by saying the new game — which doesn’t contain any of their copyrighted material, just art Nintendo didn’t make, code they didn’t write, and game rules they don’t own — still infringes on their rights, although they refused to explain why or how:</p>
<!-- ![Inferbro: 1 like = 1 prayer for Infringio - He was too copyrighted for this world~ https://t.co/apHd573pUv](https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1143645428157689856) -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190627025140/http://www.infernoplus.com/royale#main">DMCA Royale Takedown Notice, 2019-06-27</a>
<strong>Sorry, your battle royale is in another castle.</strong><br>
Unfortunately, Uncle Nintindie’s lawyers have informed me that, despite my best efforts, the game still infringes their copyright.<br>
They refused to give me specifics (I asked multiple times) but it would seem that either the level design or general mechanics are still too close to the original game.<br>
As a result I can’t just blindly change the game and leave it up. Doing so would put me at risk of further legal action.<br>
I’ll likely talk in detail about the game and it’s short lifespan on my youtube channel in the coming weeks.<br>
I’m sorry about this guys. It was fun while it lasted.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJGcDU4esUY">InfernoPlus, “I made Super Mario Bros into a DMCA Takedown”</a>
Around lunchtime on Tuesday. I got another call for mr. lawboy
and was told that despite all the work I had done, I was still infringing on their copyrights.
Now, I asked for more details, like, multiple times and was just given some really, none answers more or less
but I’ve kind of guessed that it’s either the level design or general gameplay mechanics, but
It’s hard to say either way.</p>
<p>And the reality is the fact that they contacted me a second time, the fact that they actually bothered to do so
means that they are out for blood. They don’t want this game to exist because simply put - It’s competition for Mario Maker 2
That’s the reason it had to die.</p>
<p>Rest in Peace Infringio.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s right. Even when Mario Royale replaced all their copyrightable assets entirely, Nintendo will <em>still</em> claim it as infringing on their copyright if they think they can get away with it.</p>
<p>They’re claiming that a game “sort of feeling like” one of their games constitutes infringement.
But remember, this is the same company who cloned Space Invaders, slapped on a coat of foreshortening and called it original IP!
Their standard for what they think an infringing derivative work is is non-existent. They don’t care about copyright enough to respect it, they fundamentally only care about themselves.</p>
<p>The message Nintendo sent to InfernoPlus was unambiguous: “it doesn’t matter anymore what the game actually is, take it down or we’ll keep hounding you until you’re bankrupt, jailed, or both.” </p>
<p>InfernoPlus asked all the right questions. “What are you objecting to?” “What do I need to change?” “What is the line you want me to stand behind?” The answer was simple: there is no line. The offense isn’t in the material.
It didn’t matter that it was non-infringing. Nintendo saw a “Mario game”, decided it had to be destroyed, marked InfernoPlus as the enemy, and wasn’t going to stop until his work was obliterated.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🔥➕</span><span class="at">@Inferbro</span></div></a></div><div><p>I can't afford to fight it. The game is free and I'm not making any money from it. It's a lose lose for me.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Inferbro/status/1143647275929018368" target="_blank">Jun 25, 2019 · 10:28 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<p>This “spray-and-pray” tactic, where games are threatened indiscriminately, demonstrates that the system is deeply compromised.
You can’t just “spray and pray” in a courtroom. You can’t just frivolously object to every statement the other party makes (even if you know they’re right), hoping to score what points you can and shrug all your misses off as irrelevant.
You’d lose the case, and hopefully be held in contempt of court (the system itself!) and be disbarred.</p>
<p>The only way the “spray and pray” model works is if you’ve already completely compromised the system so your abuse still works out in your favor. Regulatory capture.
But meanwhile — because in real life, that foundational damage has already happened, and the system is broken beyond repair — Nintendo’s willing to issue legal threats against anything that even looks like a platformer. </p>
<p>Nintendo doesn’t have the right to platformer games any more than the first sport to use one has a monopoly right over using inflated balls. It’s ludicrous, and grossly offensive.</p>
<p>It would be very easy to get caught up in the details of what you can and can’t assert copyright over (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_City_Studios,_Inc._v._Nintendo_Co.,_Ltd.">I’d love to take Nintendo to task on whether you can copyright a character, for instance</a>), but DMCA Royale proves that’s a red herring. <strong>Nintendo doesn’t care what they actually have rights over.</strong> That wasn’t ever the game they were really playing.</p>
<p>What right does “DMCA Royale” infringe on? What offense has Nintendo taken, here? Well, because we can rule out everything else, it’s that Nintendo demands the right to have an unlimited money fountain.
A preemptive, exclusive right over theoretical future games that no one has made yet.
They demand a right to whatever control they can convince the law to give them, and to never have to compete with anything else, ever. Anything that violates that imagined right, Nintendo takes as an attack to defend itself against, when in reality it’s clearly the sole aggressor. </p>
<p>Despite all the rhetoric of “copyright” and “intellectual property”, <strong>none of Nintendo’s objections were ever based on copyright</strong>.
Their coming back and threatening legal action over a game they had nothing to do with, as revenge for a prior imagined slight, is them laughing in your face for thinking this was <em>ever</em> about copyright for them.
Nintendo only ever cared about control over their brand and killing whatever competition they could get away with killing, and for superpredators like Nintendo, fan games are easy prey.</p>
<p>Attacking DMCA Royale even though it didn’t use any ideas Nintendo had exclusivity rights over wasn’t an outlier.
It’s not that Nintendo’s many other takedown claims were entirely legitimate but this one was a mistake.
No, Nintendo <em>never</em> cared about the legitimacy of its claims. The legitimate and illegitimate claims were all the same to it: moves in their campaign for power, not for order. Their goal is the same as it’s always been, and it’s always been wrong. They’ve just hidden it under the rotting corpse of copyright. </p>
<!-- Mario 35 -->
<p>And somehow — <em>somehow</em> — this still isn’t where Nintendo’s brigandry ends. No, next they went and <strong><em>stole his damn game</em></strong>.</p>
<p>Super Mario Bros. 35, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8DJpeCy8CQ">released October 1, 2020 by Nintendo</a>, was a promotional “battle royale” remix of Super Mario Bros. where 35 players simultaneously race through a level and interact with each other indirectly through power-ups. It takes the “battle royale” game format and (like Tetris 99, released earlier in 2019) uses indirect gameplay effects to “attack” other players. </p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/a8DJpeCy8CQ?autoplay=1" title="Super Mario Bros 35 Announcement Trailer" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/a8DJpeCy8CQ/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>It’s the same game, but closed-source, unmodifiable, subject to Nintendo’s terms of service, and entirely dependent on Nintendo’s continued support, which it dropped just six months later.</p>
<!-- "[Nintendo will continue to aggressively protect its intellectual property rights](https://web.archive.org/web/20020708093403/http://ap.nintendo.com/)" all right, holy shit. -->
<!--
[Mario battle royale creator reacts to Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. 35 reveal - Polygon (super-mario-bros-35-battle-royale-fan-game-nintendo-switch-shutdown)](https://www.polygon.com/2020/9/8/21427205/super-mario-bros-35-battle-royale-fan-game-nintendo-switch-shutdown)
> According to InfernoPlus, who spoke to Polygon via email, Nintendo did not consult him before making Super Mario Bros. 35. So the announcement came as a surprise to him.
>
> “My first reaction was ‘Oh wow, should have seen that coming,’” he said.
> Super Mario Maker uses many ideas that were initially pioneered by ROM hackers who built and distributed their own “kaizo” levels, at least before Nintendo started going after them. Mario Royale is just the latest free and accessible fan game that got taken down in favor of an official paid product, and it likely won’t be the last. -->
<p>It’s really hard to “steal a game”. You can’t copyright or patent game rules, so there’s no way to violate either of those. The only thing you could do that would constitute “stealing” a reproducible, non-rivalrous digital game would be to find some way to deny your victim the utility of <em>their</em> property and then directly benefit from that harm by redirecting people to a substitutionary product you control.
InfernoPlus certainly didn’t “steal” Super Mario Bros. — he didn’t even copy or compete with it.
But, despite the almost tautological impossibility of it, the bastards at Nintendo still ticked all the boxes when it came to stealing <em>his</em> work.</p>
<p>This is something I touched on in <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/#a-note-on-derivative-work">You’ve Never Seen Copyright</a>, but <strong>copyright obligates you to let other people publish their own work</strong>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Because copyright’s purpose is to incentivize the creation of new work, the function of copyright is not just restrictive, but also expressly permissive. In “the exclusive right to make copies”, the “exclusive” part restricts others from doing so, but the “right to make copies” is a positive right that guarantees the copyright rightsholder — technology and circumstance permitting — to reproduce, distribute, perform, and otherwise publish their works. Therefore, in addition to violations of exclusivity, illegitimate attacks on authors’ ability to publish their own work are also violations of copyright.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Copyright itself demands Nintendo leave the original work of other people alone, unless it specifically infringes on a discrete right. That includes all the new code and design and gameplay in Mario Royale, and all the art and music in the later Infringio version. But instead Nintendo killed it. It’s not just an unjust attack against one creator, it’s spitting in the face of the whole copyright system Nintendo depends on.</p>
<!-- AM2R -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="am2r">AM2R<a class="headerlink" href="#am2r" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But even the astonishingly, cartoonishly malicious takedown-and-replace maneuver is regular operating procedure for Nintendo. </p>
<p><em>Another Metroid 2 Remake</em>, or <em>AM2R</em>, was a free, not-for-profit game released by fan Milton Guasti (DoctorM64) in 2016 after <strong>ten years of development</strong>, with <a href="https://www.siliconera.com/am2r-metroid-2-fan-remake-gets-its-first-proper-demo/">a demo released as early as 2011</a>.
It took the abandoned 1991 Game Boy game <em>Metroid II: Return of Samus</em>, left in obscurity by Nintendo’s failure to remake or modernize it and its only release being on a woefully outdated console, and remade it with a new engine, original artwork, and reworked level design.</p>
<p class="side-by-side align-top"><img alt="Metroid II" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Metroid_II_Return_of_Samus_gameplay.PNG">
<img alt="AM2R" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f0/Another_Metroid_2_Remake_gameplay.png"></p>
<p><em class="image-caption">Left: Metroid II. Right: AM2R.</em></p>
<p>Nintendo, of course, nuked it. AM2R’s copyright, all the protections afforded to its creators, were thrown into the thresher of Nintendo’s unlimited corporate appetite. Same old story.</p>
<p>AM2R received <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/4whj2v/project_am2r_another_metroid_2_remake_am2r_10/">overwhelmingly positive feedback on release</a>. It was even nominated for The Game Awards 2016, until Nintendo’s legal representation sent legal demands to websites hosting the game demanding they cease and desist, at which time its nomination was revoked. </p>
<p>Then, only a year later, Nintendo released <em>Metroid: Samus Returns</em>, their own remake of the same game on the Nintendo 3DS console. It proceeded to win an award at The Game Awards 2017: the same show Nintendo had made sure AM2R wasn’t eligible to compete in. As a 3DS release, <em>Samus Returns</em> is now discontinued abandonware, with no copies being manufactured and way to purchase even digital copies given the shutdown of the eShop. </p>
<p>Even so, Nintendo’s <em>Samus Returns</em> is not a “rip-off” of AM2R that violated some right AM2R had.
<em>Samus Returns</em> was made by a different team with different design philosophies, and it looks and plays like a distinct game.
In a decent world, all three of these games would coexist happily, with many Metroid fans probably playing both remakes. But Nintendo <em>refused</em> to let anyone else’s art exist, refused to let the real world “weaken its brand”, refused to let anyone else create art that it could get away with killing, and so it killed something it saw as possible competition just because it could. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="super-mario-maker">Super Mario Maker<a class="headerlink" href="#super-mario-maker" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Boy, Mario Maker. I remember the lump in my stomach when Mario Maker was first announced. Sure, it looked fun, but my first thought was how gross it was that Nintendo was releasing a “make a mario fangame simulator” game after they had spent decades ensuring that a core part of the “make a mario fangame” experience was Nintendo trying to ruin you.</p>
<p>Super Mario Maker is an enclosure of the long-standing culture of romhacks and level editors. So much so, in fact, that <a href="https://youtu.be/GLex_FBoQLo?si=vRzmkwbGXxBCT29D&t=623">people still call</a> Mario Maker levels “romhacks” even though both “rom” and “hack” are concepts Nintendo thinks you should be jailed for engaging with. Nintendo saw what people were making for themselves and created something specifically designed to replace the creative work that already existed, even as they actively attacked it whenever they could. </p>
<p>For this one though, instead of going through the rich history of Mario fangames and Nintendo’s vicious persecution thereof, I’m just going to amplify Andi McClure’s experience, which I recognized from personal experience as being representative of Nintendo’s treatment of the fan scene in general:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201541149888004101" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1201541077376913408"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/xh5zx4LDdw — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201541077376913408">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Mario Maker was, in a lot of real ways, Nintendo privatizing the public sphere of romhacks. Mario Maker's UGC is driven by the tradition of hell hacks. Speedrunners who used to speedrun hell hacks now make Nintendo money by streaming themselves playing hell Mario Maker levels.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201541149888004101" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 16:38:28 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201539076983263237" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1201538192849166342"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/xh5zx4LDdw — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201538192849166342">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Now, I'm not angry Nintendo is using an idea similar to one I had first.</p><p>What *does* make me angry, actually really angry, is they copyright-takedown the video showing I had the idea first, and THEN they use the idea. IN THE SAME GAME (mario maker) THEY TOOK DOWN MY VIDEO OVER. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201539076983263237/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EKy4r2mW4AACVZo.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201539076983263237" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 16:30:14 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201538192849166342" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/xh5zx4LDdw — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><p>OK so</p><p>In 2008 I hacked SNES9X to let me do speedruns over and over & show all the attempts at once, and made a popular-at-the-time Kaizo Mario video showing it off <a href='https://msm.runhello.com/p/20' target='_blank'>msm.runhello.com/p/20</a></p><p>The week Mario Maker 1 came out, Nintendo got my video deleted</p><p><a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2OytHzZ72Y' target='_blank'>youtube.com/watch?v=T2OytH…</a></p><p>Now: <a href='https://twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/status/1201420313885429761' target='_blank'>twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201538192849166342" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 16:26:43 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201420313885429761" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="BlazeHedgehog/1201417609775706112"><a href="https://twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/" title="Founded @Sagexpo in 2000 (retired). Got my Mario fangame on TV with 1m+ downloads. Been streaming before Twitch existed. Writes a lot. Explore my Linktree!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/471884450091921409/Qivhqufb_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ryan Bloom</span><span class="at">@BlazeHedgehog</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/status/1201417609775706112">BlazeHedgehog</a>:</span><p>@mcclure111 🤔 </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1201420131932368896/pu/vid/640x360/cjtF8vMEQdnHd9c4.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/BlazeHedgehog/status/1201420313885429761" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 08:38:18 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201542618003525633" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1201541149888004101"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/xh5zx4LDdw — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201541149888004101">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Nintendo profits from that, but profiting wasn't enough for them. They also did the wave of video takedowns when Mario Maker came out, basically erasing the old romhack sphere as they introduced their new one. It wasn't enough for them to have their cake. They ate ours too.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201542618003525633" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 16:44:18 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1201543693771190275" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1201542618003525633"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/xh5zx4LDdw — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201542618003525633">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>All our relationships with the big knowledge-work corps are like this. It seems like it would be cool if there were a give and take between fans making works building on corporate IP and corps reinterpreting public domain ideas. But it's only take. The public domain only shrinks.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1201543693771190275" target="_blank">Mon Dec 02 16:48:34 +0000 2019</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>(See Andi McClure’s original writeup at msm.runhello.com, <a href="https://msm.runhello.com/p/20">“Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics”</a> from February 2008.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/43kjk9/what-a-youtube-copyright-strike-from-2015-has-to-do-with-mario-maker-2-in-2019">Patrick Klepek, “What a YouTube Copyright Strike From 2015 Has to do With 'Mario Maker 2' in 2019”</a>
McClure wasn’t the only person hit with a copyright strike when <em>Mario Maker</em> launched, either. <a href="https://kotaku.com/creator-of-hardest-super-mario-world-level-ever-says-co-1729624158">It was actually an epidemic at the time</a>.
Nintendo seemed to be specifically targeting ROM hack videos, including those by Alex “PangaeaPanga,” one of the most popular kaizo level makers and someone who, these days, is a very popular creator within Mario Maker.
The company was reportedly telling creators these videos was an “unauthorized use of [Nintendo] assets” and to not “post any videos using unauthorized software.” But kaizo was only possible by hacking digital copies of games ripped from Nintendo cartridges.</p>
<p>Part of video game design has been, for better and worse, taking ideas from other games and building on them, legally and illegally. It’s not hard to see the leap from McClure to <em>Meat Boy</em> to <em>Mario Maker</em>, and it’s also hard to imagine <em>Mario Maker</em> existing without kaizo hacks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Skipping right over some absolute bullshit that’s only legal-<em>sounding</em> at a cursory level — Nintendo has absolutely no right to demand you use “authorized” recording software or video filters, for instance — there’s that “Nintendo assets” lie again.
But your eyes are open now: you’ve seen DMCA Royale now, so now you know better than to buy <em>that</em> one, ever again. That favourite lie — that this is about something that was <em>copied</em> — is disproven, forever. “Protecting assets” isn’t the offense, it’s the euphemism. </p>
<p>What Nintendo cares about is control: over their brand, over the industry, over fans, over the possibility space of ideas other people might have. Nintendo doesn’t actually feel like it’s “owed” anything, it simply desires more, forever. It has a limitless, voracious appetite — utterly opposed to the strict limits of copyright — that only uses the excuse of “copyright” to get away with it.</p>
<!-- Even the staunch free-market economist would look at this setup, shake their head, and say "Sorry, Nintendo, looks like you were beaten to the market by a better product. Produce more value, and faster, and you'll be on top, but you slacked off here and lost out." -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="smash">Smash<a class="headerlink" href="#smash" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Nintendo is so neurotic about needing absolute control over its brand and eliminating all possible competition that it seems actively enraged that its latest releases have to compete against its own games that it’s already sold for people’s attention.</p>
<p>Because Nintendo is such a shameless serial offender,
I’ve already talked about this previously in <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2020/11/19/nintendo-its-about-control-not-piracy/">Nintendo: It’s about control, not piracy</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The idea that this is a conversation about piracy at all is a lie. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329565268453027846" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1329564911920422914"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329564911920422914">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>"what's legally defined as piracy can be morally justifiable" is a correct argument but it grants the idea that this is a conflict over piracy, which is a lie</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329565268453027846" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:20:36 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>If you read Nintendo’s statement a few times, you’ll notice the word “piracy” is thrown in there at the end, but there are no actual complaints about software piracy to be seen. Games piracy (where game studios invest in, develop, and publish a game, and then people download free copies of the games instead of buying them) is a serious and complicated issue — just not one this story is relevant to.</p>
<p>The mod runs on the Dolphin emulator, which reads the game. This requires an “ephemeral copy”, just like all computers including actual Nintendo products do, but it certainly doesn’t somehow require you to pirate the game. It’s entirely possible for a tournament to purchase four melee discs and run melee on three machines. You can’t just send a cease and desist because you think somebody <em>might</em> play a pirated game.</p>
<p>… This matter of absolute control over the client is the only <em>actual</em> objection left, but Nintendo knows it’s in the wrong, so it shouts “piracy”. The hope is that the fact that a “mod” is involved at all is enough for you to shut down your brain and assume software piracy is the issue at hand here. </p>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329563791877677059" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>"but it's actually about PIRACY" if the question of whether or not each running copy of the game maps to an owned, purchased copy of the media isn't even part of the DISCUSSION, it's not about piracy, it's about control.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329563791877677059" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:14:44 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329564162939359235" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1329563791877677059"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329563791877677059">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>I own a physical copy of melee on an original gamecube disc printed by Nintendo. They don't care. That's not what it's about for them. Piracy is an interesting topic but in this case it's clearly just a distraction (or, in some circles, a convenient legal justification)</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329564162939359235" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:16:13 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>They pulled this same move, the same lie, countless times. It’s the same with all of their anti-temper arguments. Smash is just a good example, because I’ve already talked about it in depth.</p>
<p>The idea that any modification is equivalent to any other — specifically, modifications that allow piracy are equivalent to modifications that do not — is absurd. You obviously can’t treat an inoffensive change you know to be inoffensive as if it were a different, offensive one that you imagined up. The difference between “real” and “imagined” isn’t a minor distinction-without-a-difference, and treating one as the other is just fraud.</p>
<p>But in a perverse way, Nintendo’s lie here gets at a deeper understanding of the ugly truth behind it. Nintendo fears if the user has agency, if they can make choices on their own, if they have rights over their own property, that gives them power to act in ways Nintendo doesn’t like. </p>
<p>In fact, as I was in the middle of writing this article, Nintendo got aggressively <em>worse</em> about Smash tournaments in particular, with newly-published <a href="https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63433">“Community Tournament Guidelines”</a>.
To make a long story short, Nintendo is literally trying to force people to negotiate a special license with them in order to play games they own.
But it gets worse and worse the more you look; they even have the gall to demand control over what brands of accessories you can use in public.
To Nintendo, “selling games people can play” is completely eclipsed by their new goal to “ensure that fans who are doing so are engaging with our games, characters, and worlds in a way that positively supports … Nintendo.” </p>
<!-- Because if you do anything, at any point, that negatively impacts them — or they even fear *might* negatively impact them — they demand that that has to be illegal. -->
<p>Running a game tournament involves doing a lot of things with what Nintendo would argue is their intellectual property:</p>
<ul>
<li>Talking about a company and their products</li>
<li>Advertising and/or criticising the products and services of various companies</li>
<li>Using products you already own and paid for a license for</li>
<li>Showing specific performances from event-relevant people that involve using a copyrighted product</li>
</ul>
<p>So a Smash tournament clearly “involves” Nintendo. They have an obvious interest in all these points. But that doesn’t give them any right to assert <em>control</em> over them. Things are allowed to happen that affect Nintendo without requiring Nintendo’s special approval first! <strong>The interest in the outcome does not confer a right to control it!</strong>
None of that requires special, at-the-moment consent from the company! That’s like saying the sporting goods store you bought the ball from has to individually authorize each game, and can demand you meet any conditions they specify in return. That’s madness!
It’s so plainly wrong that it could never be justified through words, it could only be normalized by people in power simply bullying it into practice. Which is exactly what they did!</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1716998417333850493" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1664895715875627009/pI80PrNx_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>sorry, basketball's cancelled. I couldn't get anyone on the line from Spalding to license the game. yeah, the basketballs we bought from Dick's in 2001. yes, cancelled forever.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1716998417333850493" target="_blank">Wed Oct 25 02:01:37 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>I can’t believe I have to say this, but people are supposed to have the ability to act in ways corporations don’t like.
That’s a fundamental part of the system, that’s what competition is. So Nintendo is “right” to dislike customer autonomy as far as their own interests go, but they have absolutely no standing to challenge it.
Users being able to make choices about what they buy and how they use their property — not including otherwise illegal uses, of course — is just the ground rule for the game. Nintendo’s job, as a corporation, is to work within those rules. Instead, they bulldoze them.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="patents">Patents<a class="headerlink" href="#patents" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So far, I’ve been talking specifically about abuses of copyright. There’s another kind of creative monopoly Nintendo ritualistically abuses too: patents.</p>
<!-- TODO: If including trademarks, reword this -->
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="handheld-emulation-patent">Handheld Emulation Patent<a class="headerlink" href="#handheld-emulation-patent" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The “retro” example of this is <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US6672963B1/en">Nintendo’s US6672963B1, “Software implementation of a handheld video game hardware platform.”</a>.
This patent, granted in 2004, asserts ownership over “A software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY®, GAME BOY COLOR® and/or GAME BOY ADVANCE® on a low-capability target platform”.
It’s a ludicrous patent because — just to scratch the surface of the problem — it describes a product Nintendo not only never <em>invented</em>, but also did not build and never intended to release.
Instead, in unabashed defiance to the entire concept of patented invention, Nintendo filed this patent in order to <em>prevent</em> that product from ever existing. </p>
<!-- Fractal wrongness split -->
<p>But there’s a lot to tackle even before Nintendo’s goal of making the world worse by preventing a useful product from existing.
This patent is an example of <em>fractal wrongness</em>: not only is the whole maneuver wrong irrespective of its component parts, but each component part — no matter how generously you divide it up — is so wrong as to be invalidating on its own!</p>
<p><img alt="Fig 1D, palm emulator" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/palm_emulator.png">
<em>pokemon</em></p>
<!-- systematic procedural failure -->
<p>The patent itself is full of general, hypothetical ideas of technology that might exist (a patent fraud technique known as “unsupported functional claiming”), which obviously fail the basic eligibility requirements for a patent.
Taken out of context, the fundamental problem with this patent is the same as the problem with most bad patents: no enablement.
No valuable information is being disclosed here in exchange for patent protection, meaning it fails a baseline requirement for eligibility. There’s no invention here you could reproduce, it’s just Nintendo asserting automatic ownership on a whole category of software other people might invent in the future.</p>
<p>Remember with patents, unlike copyright, the Doctrine of Equivalents means patents don’t just cover the design in the patent, but have a wide <em>radius</em> of what all is considered an infringement.
You don’t have to copy this design — or even be aware of it — for Nintendo to stamp out similar emulators as “infringing.” That’s what makes this really nefarious.
Once a patent is granted, the holder is granted a monopoly over not just that <em>specific</em> design, but also <em>similar</em> designs. And, with functional claims, this includes inventions that accomplish the same <em>goals</em>, meaning the patent monopoly shuts down virtually all competition.
This is the mechanism that lets Nintendo attempt to snuff out the entire <em>ecosystem</em> of emulators with just one, hypothetical implementation. </p>
<!-- If Nintendo wants to attack you for violating this patent, they don't have to accuse you of using *any* of the actual designs in the patent.
-->
<p>And that’s the whole game: Nintendo’s very purpose in filing this patent is to abuse the doctrine of equivalents to manufacture ammunition to use against their political opponents.</p>
<p>I would say Nintendo is trying to “stake a claim” on a category it imagined but didn’t invent. Except Nintendo didn’t imagine the category: everything being claimed here long since existed already when the patent was filed.
Yes, chipset emulation in general had long since been a field of study, which Nintendo was well aware of as evidenced by <a href="https://www.theregister.com/1999/02/03/n64_emulator_vanishes_after_lawsuit/">their own attack on UltraHLE years before in 1999</a>, where they robbed developers Epsilon and RealityMan of their original invention — and set the entire industry back years by depriving it of valuable research time — simply because third-party software emulation threatened Nintendo’s profitability. </p>
<p>Let’s continue on this path of comparing Nintendo’s patent to emulation research from five years prior.
Taking an existing technology and being the first person to apply it to a new subject matter isn’t patentable either. You can’t buy a can opener at the store, use it on a <em>blue</em> can, and patent a new blue-can opener just because you were the first person to use somebody else’s technology on a blue subject.
The reason is very simple: doing that doesn’t invent anything or create any value! With no new value created, the only thing the patent does is give a free monopoly to the first person to stake a claim on an idea in the commons, which is strictly forbidden. </p>
<p>Would taking an existing category of software and putting it on a smaller computer be a patentable claim? Is “smallness” different enough to be an “invention”? No, obviously not. While it might take some basic proficiency in the art to optimize for specific hardware, that kind of extension is <strong>incidental improvement</strong> via an application of existing technology, not a new invention worth “the embarrassment of an exclusive patent.”</p>
<p>But even though we’ve failed all those supporting checks — each of which <em>on their own</em> make the patent illegitimate — it doesn’t matter, because even the <em>core idea being patented already exists</em>. Yes, not just emulation, not just miniature emulation, but <a href="http://www.gambitstudios.com/liberty.asp">the very Game Boy emulator Nintendo described, for the same hardware they targeted, in the very way Nintendo was claiming to have just invented</a>! Nintendo just lied their way through the whole process and got away with it!</p>
<p>Nintendo wasn’t even the first party to execute the idea of emulation <em>on their own device</em>, which they had an unlimited opportunity to do because not only did they not have to reverse-engineer anything to do it, they had access before the market! </p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Nintendo is so thoroughly contemptible in this regard that this hardly bears mentioning, but Nintendo lied “The only purpose of video game emulators are to play illegal copied games from the Internet” while simultaneously filing this patent for a rom-driven<sup id="fnref:roms"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:roms">3</a></sup> video game emulator. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/07/11/liberty.games.idg/">When they lied that lie</a>, that was a lie, as evidenced not just by any old evidence, but by their own authenticated, legal patent filing. They notarized their own confession. </p>
<p>But all this isn’t surprising, because they’re known mass liars and can’t be afforded any good faith in the matter. They have long since lost their credibility, and it’s absurd people still parrot their press releases like authoritative information. They’re disgraced, and <strong>you don’t get to treat them credulously anymore.</strong></p>
</aside>
<p>Nintendo has one tiny, tiny sliver of hope for redemption here, and that’s if — even having this patent — they stayed in their lane. Instead of stretching the Doctrine of Equivalents as far as it will bare, they could use the patent honestly and use it to defend <em>the actual technology described therein.</em> But they didn’t do that, because they never <em>wanted</em> to do that. What they wanted was power to shut down an industry they didn’t like — they could not care <em>less</em> about patents.</p>
<p>And of course Nintendo proved my point for me with the most damning evidence imaginable. Immediately after being awarded the patent in question, Nintendo turned around and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20060104215110/http://www.crimsonfire.com:80/community/showthread.php?s=2300fd6df9f7bc3b6997ce564be42b7d&threadid=2410">used it to threaten</a> the in-development commercial emulator <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20040311113320/http://www.crimsonfire.com/firestorm/">Firestorm</a>, not because it violated the patent, but because Nintendo didn’t want the product on the market. </p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>What really ties the bow on this one for me is that the Firestorm emulator Nintendo shut down using the patent was developed <em>before</em> 2004.</p>
<p>I’m putting this in an aside, because it is <em>technically</em> speculation, but Nintendo’s patent was granted January 2004, and Crimson Fire Entertainment demonstrated a beta version of Firestorm less than two months later in March 2004.</p>
<p>I don’t think the entire software package was written in those <em>two months</em>. I believe Firestorm was instead worked on during the much more reasonable two-year timeframe between their last major game in 2002.</p>
<p>This means Nintendo is accusing work that already existed <em>before</em> they were awarded the patent as <em>retroactively</em> in violation. Of course, in reality, this is demonstration of prior art that should invalidate the patent: <em>prima facie</em> proof Nintendo was lying about having invented something new. </p>
</aside>
<p>It’s yet <em>another</em> entry plopped on the large-and-growing “even <em>one</em> of these invalidates your entire foundation” pile.
<a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">The patent standard</a> weighs your faults against a feather, but Nintendo could weigh themselves against a pile of Bluto’s iconic red steel girders and the scale would <em>still</em> tip against them.</p>
<p>Now let’s bring the context back. This is a thoroughly illegitimate patent used for thoroughly illegitimate means. This whole patent-to-snuff scheme is — very obviously — an attempt to create legal ammunition against otherwise-legal emulator developers, a demographic Nintendo was-and-continues-to-be famously at war with.
And this is just an old one; they’re <em>all</em> like this. </p>
<p>This abuse of the patent system is not to “encourage creativity” or to ensure the “health of the market”, and it doesn’t respect the inventive work that already happened. The entire scheme is designed to get you over a barrel and nothing else.</p>
<p>Fractal wrongness.</p>
<!-- This used to be much earlier, move it up?
Do you see it?
They've intentionally rejected the model of creative rights here. -->
<p>But it’s not just “wrong”, it’s a clear, intentional rejection of copyright and creative rights as a doctrine.
Nintendo isn’t just committing fraud for profit, it’s contorting the idea of patent invention and using it to attack the rights of others to create new work.
Nintendo violated the contractual arrangement of the patent system and is instead using the language of intellectual property not to participate in science, but to play an entirely different game. And it’s the same game as always: seizing power, control, and leverage. </p>
<p>And remember, this doesn’t just affect their commercial competitors. They’re not just attacking the right for others to <em>profit</em> from their own new development, but actively attacking their right to create new work <em>at all</em> when they perceive that work — that development of science and the arts — to be in competition with their immediate profit. </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="zelda-gameplay-patents">Zelda Gameplay Patents<a class="headerlink" href="#zelda-gameplay-patents" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But at least an emulator is <em>software</em>. That’s almost like hardware! You can actually do science and create new, patentable, valuable inventions in software form. That’s all at least <em>arguably</em> in scope for patents.
Poggers.</p>
<!-- So far, so fair. -->
<!-- todo Poggers. -->
<p>But let’s talk about another category of ideas: games. Specifically, “games” as a general concept defined by their <em>rules and mechanics.</em></p>
<p>Game mechanics are a category that falls cleanly outside the scope of patent protection. </p>
<p><a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">As I’ve already discussed</a>, patent protection only applies to a specific, enumerated list of categories. <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html">If an idea doesn’t fall squarely into a slot, it’s not eligible for a monopoly.</a> And game rules don’t fit.
Game mechanics are abstract ideas, specifically “systems for organizing human activity”.</p>
<p>There’s even specific case-law calling out “game mechanics” as ineligible material, to further cement what the law-law already said.
In <em>re smith</em>, the Smiths tried to patent a card game, but the patent office correctly rejected the application. They appealed in court, and the court upheld the law and the decision of the USPTO: “a method of conducting a … game” was an abstract idea — regardless of the means used, i.e. physical cards — and not patentable. The same applies for video games: doing a non-patentable procedure “with a computer” doesn’t make it patentable.</p>
<p>Why? <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">I’ve discussed this at length: patents are explicitly anathema to abstract ideas; patents can only ever protect specific, genuine inventive contributions to science.</a></p>
<p>Patents protect invention, but not all design is invention! Some design is creative expression, but some good design is just proficient execution of technical skill. It’s just what it means to make a product. You get full credit, but it doesn’t automatically entitle you to extra protections meant to handle unrelated incentive gaps.</p>
<p>Game rules are ideas — valuable ones, since they make you money — but they’re not something you get special bonus monopoly protection for.
But that’s fine.
If you have a great game idea, you don’t get patent protection and you don’t need it; you already get to be the first person to make, brand, develop, polish, and sell the game. </p>
<p>But patents are just <em>too</em> valuable <em>not</em> to abuse, and so companies regularly patent games and game mechanics fraudulently, relying on an exploitable patent system that approves illegitimate patents. </p>
<p>Right now, Nintendo is trying to patent <em>dozens</em> of individual game mechanics from Breath of The Wild. This includes such winners as:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023117416A/en">Moving flying objects in space</a> (yes, just the physics calculations)</li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023102296A/en">Terminal velocity in a physics engine</a> (<code>speed = min(speed, MAX_SPEED)</code>)</li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023103281A/en?">Collision detection</a> (trivial prior art)</li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023103273A/en">The ability to stack physics objects</a> (trivial prior art)</li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023114457A/en?">Explosions applying force to physics objects</a></li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023098723A/en">Dynamic 3D models</a></li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023098722A/en?">String concatenation in a crafting system</a></li>
<li><a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2023098720A/en">Putting a map on a loading screen</a></li>
</ul>
<p>All of these existed already, and have been staples of game engines for decades.
Literally, decades: the example that jumps to mind for most people is Garry’s mod, which didn’t invent them, but instead already does all these things because the <em>source engine</em> already did these things in 2007. And they didn’t need a patent! Making games that worked good was considered — rightfully — basic practice of the art. </p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/MyNintendoNews/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">My Nintendo News</span><span class="at">@MyNintendoNews</span></div></a></div><div><p>Nintendo files numerous patents for Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom mechanics mynintendonews.com/2023/08/0…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MyNintendoNews/status/1688958532329123853" target="_blank">Aug 8, 2023 · 5:01 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/garrynewman/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">garry</span><span class="at">@garrynewman</span></div></a></div><div><p>Time to start building the war-chest</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/garrynewman/status/1689259387854921728" target="_blank">Aug 9, 2023 · 12:56 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Hey, remember that “inventions which would not be disclosed or devised <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">but for the inducement of a patent</a>” test? Well, guess what: Breath of the Wild <em>already released, five years prior</em> in 2017.
Every one of these patents is already bullshit at every level. </p>
<p>But it’s never <em>not</em> been about bullshit for them. The game they’re playing isn’t “invent something good and patent it for a temporary monopoly”, it’s “say whatever lies it takes to get us leverage over our competitors”. None of this is allowed, and they’re doing it anyway.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1641799650825912321" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/b0tster/" title="Everyones favorite psx yeag girl 😈 Gay as heck game dev ☠ 30 🩸Coded the award winning BloodbornePSX: https://t.co/GITqMr8AMh 😏 Priv @b1tster"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1630728714467016707/Iq251y6M_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">🪄💫 PSX Bunlith 🐰🏳️⚧️ BLM ACAB</span><span class="at">@b0tster</span></div></a></div><div><p>lmao nintendo patented all those new super cool genre pushing zelda mechanics 🤪 </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/b0tster/status/1641799650825912321/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FsjYFRZXsAA6Sl9.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/b0tster/status/1641799650825912321" target="_blank">Fri Mar 31 13:48:34 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1641807435764563969" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="b0tster/1641799650825912321"><a href="https://twitter.com/RPMRosie/" title="Hi, I'm Rosie (she/her)! PFP is by @theartyoshi | I play games kinda sorta fast sometimes | simping for yer mom | BLM | TRANS RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1589677933169414150/SdRNZrok_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">RPMRosie🌹🏳️⚧️🪑</span><span class="at">@RPMRosie</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/b0tster/status/1641799650825912321">b0tster</a>:</span><p>@b0tster Just call me condition B cuz this is a slippery slope and I am Unsatisfied.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/RPMRosie/status/1641807435764563969" target="_blank">Fri Mar 31 14:19:30 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1358128145547730946" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/maxnichols/" title="Leftist game designer. I make worlds that you intrinsically want to explore. Sr. Activity Designer @ Bungie. He/him. My views: my own. I run @HyruleInterview"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1296879839551483905/iq4NRKkE_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Max Nichols</span><span class="at">@maxnichols</span></div></a></div><div><p>Patenting game design patterns is like if we allowed authors to patent storytelling tropes or painters to patent brush strokes. </p><p>It's a basic building block of an artistic medium. It's clearly absurd.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/maxnichols/status/1358128145547730946" target="_blank">Sat Feb 06 18:59:17 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1358250342169776128" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ArloStuff/" title="YouTuber, streamer, monster, armchair analyst, fanboy/hater hybrid, uncultured foodie, ADHD/OCD. https://t.co/Dj65jvmobY Business: fuzzaboom@gmail.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1113223537118957569/KPMn7CMX_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Arlo 🐀</span><span class="at">@ArloStuff</span></div></a></div><div><p>I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the worst things to ever happen to gaming. If game mechanics are patentable, you bet the big publishers are going to start getting really really aggressive trying to hoard anything they can.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ArloStuff/status/1358250342169776128" target="_blank">Sun Feb 07 03:04:51 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="homebrew">Homebrew<a class="headerlink" href="#homebrew" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>And finally, for the Nintendo coup-de-grâce, let’s talk about Homebrew.
Nintendo has an absolutely <em>tattered</em> reputation when it comes to their anti-piracy action. Like when people installed Wii homebrew by using an exploit firmware that couldn’t be safely updated, but Nintendo disregarded safety and <a href="https://wiibrew.org/wiki/4.2">force-updated that firmware anyway</a>, <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2009-10-01-wii-system-update-4-2-bricking-unmodded-consoles.html">bricking many completely unmodified Wiis as collateral damage in Nintendo’s forever war.</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://hackmii.com/2009/09/wii-menu-4-2-a-lack-of-imagination/">Ben “bushing” Byer, Wii Menu 4.2: a lack of imagination</a>
I’m surprised that [Nintendo] took the bold move of pushing an updated boot2 — I guess <a href="http://www.pagetable.com/?p=278">all of the cool kids are doing it</a> these days. Their boot2-updating code (ES_ImportBoot) is not well-tested; they’ve never updated boot2 on retail consoles before, and in our testing we discovered that it often fails to write out ECC data for the new version of boot2 that it writes. We should expect to see some number of bricked Wiis from this; the code is so buggy that we decided to write our own for the HackMii installer.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But “Nintendo knowingly, indiscriminately broke its own consoles in order to Hurt The Enemy” is pretty pedestrian, and by now that story is generations-old. Let’s talk about something more recent: the 3DS.
I really wanted to just link something for this, but apparently no one has done any decent reporting on this story, so it falls on me.</p>
<!-- TODO add boot2 story -->
<!-- Neimod hax -->
<p>Neimod was one of the first researchers to look into 3DS reverse-engineering, and wrote the <a href="https://github.com/neimod/ctr/tree/master/ctrtool">ctrtool</a> general purpose utility for manipulating file formats used by the 3DS. Neimod was specifically against piracy (“warez”) and — as far as we know — only ever worked on these general-purpose homebrew tools.</p>
<!-- Smea here??? -->
<p>Homebrew like that written by Smealum: <a href="https://github.com/smealum/portal3DS">portal3DS</a> and <a href="https://github.com/smealum/3dscraft">3dscraft</a> being the famous examples.
Smealum, though, is better known for his work in 3DS console security research and exploitation with the Ninjihax exploit and the 3DS Homebrew Launcher. </p>
<p>“Homebrew” is a weird category. The word “homebrew” is used to box off normal software that isn’t provided by the manufacturer themselves into its own special category, instead of treating it as the default state that it is. It’s like if “cooking” only ever meant restaurant meals, and “home cooking” was treated as a frowned-upon edge case. </p>
<!-- ![Running half-life on the 3ds](https://youtu.be/42XKPcRzXN4?si=knAWj3nNkP5vwA0s) -->
<!-- "Homebrew" would include Chrome on Windows. -->
<p>The only reason someone who wanted to develop homebrew games for a computer they own would care about console <em>security</em> is if something had gone very wrong already.
Which, of course, it had: Nintendo wants to lock developers into partnering with them contractually in order to be able to develop (crippling the hobby development scene), and locks down all the general-purpose computing functionality of their consoles so they only run Nintendo-approved code.</p>
<p>Using the “homebrew” metaphor, being unable to run “homebrew” without authorization from the manufacturer is like being mandated to buy bottled tea and being physically prevented from taking tea leaves and brewing your own tea at home.
It’s letting manufacturers wield an <em>unconscionable</em> level of control, especially for a category of tech that’s not just an entertainment product, but the means of production for an entire entertainment economy.</p>
<p>Like Neimod, and like most in the Homebrew scene, Smealum specifically <em>did not</em> want to encourage piracy or violations of real creative rights:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.eurogamer.net/student-homebrew-nintendo-3ds">Tom Phillips, “"I don't want to be a part of piracy"“</a>
Piracy-enabling “flashcards” are now outlawed in many countries but remain easy to find online. … But this wasn’t what [Smealum] wanted to enable - and NINJHAX currently doesn’t.</p>
<p>“It’s very dangerous,” he says. “If you release an exploit that’s too powerful you might let people do whatever they want with their console - which can be great - but you also have the possibility of piracy… which isn’t so great.</p>
<p>“I don’t care if people pirate in their private lives, but I don’t want to be a part of it,” he continues. “I don’t want to release something others can use to steal someone else’s intellectual property. That’s not what I want. I wouldn’t release something that could be used for piracy… it’s just not something I want to do.</p>
<p>“Right now I’m hoping the loader attracts more developers and people start building more homebrew games. I’m working on the 3DS version of Minecraft and a bunch of people are working on emulators. I’d really like to see how far we can push the 3DS.”<br>
…<br>
“I just think it’s pretty cool that we’re going to be able to use our 3DSes for a lot more stuff,” he adds.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://tinycartridge.com/post/103176583732/3ds-homebrew-is-here-if-you-have-a-nintendo">TinyCartrige, “3DS homebrew is here!”</a>
Probably the biggest concern amongst homebrew opponents is that any advancements toward running unauthorized programs on a console will inevitably lead to piracy. Smealum has said that Ninjhax, as it stands now, does not allow users to run commercial or pirated software, but many are still convinced that this the 3DS is on the verge of suffering the same piracy problems as the DS.</p>
<p>“It’s a legitimate concern for sure,” says Smealum. “However, I’m going to reiterate what I’ve been saying for the past few months now: what I’m releasing just isn’t capable of running pirated 3DS software. It’s not a limitation I or anyone else put in place; it’s just technically the state of the matter, and that’s the entire reason why I feel comfortable releasing this at all.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Nothing about Homebrew loading is a copyright issue (you’re running new software, not copying any), or a patent issue, or a matter of any other legitimate creative rights.
Nintendo locks down their hardware in order to enforce their <em>business model</em>, not prevent theft of creative work. In fact, their business model is designed to <em>prevent</em> new creative work, which goes expressly <em>against</em> copyright.</p>
<p>So, since Nintendo was purposely shipping gimped hardware, in order to write Homebrew Smealum needed a way to unlock the console. <a href="https://media.defcon.org/DEF%20CON%2026/DEF%20CON%2026%20presentations/smea/DEFCON-26-smea-Jailbreaking-the-3DS-Demo-Videos/">So he developed one</a>. Smealum — working on the shoulders of a <a href="https://smealum.github.io/3ds/">list of other talented hackers</a> wrote enough console exploits to set up The Homebrew Launcher, which let people run their own programs on their consoles. In his words:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Homebrew is what we call unofficial software made by amateur developers for closed systems such as the 3DS. This includes both games and applications, and in practice getting homebrew on your 3DS means you’ll be able to :</p>
<ul>
<li>Play Aperture Science 3D, a free adaptation of Portal for the 3DS.</li>
<li>Play out-of-region games you own.</li>
<li>Make your own themes to use in home menu. </li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>Behold, the face of Eris:</p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/JlWr-uv5-as?si=0HoSjl6HZkxm3pyq&start=3&autoplay=1" title="FNF camcorder" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/JlWr-uv5-as/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>There’s only been one violation of property rights here so far, and that’s been Nintendo’s attempt to keep people from writing new 3DS software.
Homebrew might frustrate Nintendo for business reasons, but it isn’t a violation of any creative rights, and nowhere in any of this has anyone even <em>allowed</em> for piracy, let alone encouraged or participated in it. </p>
<p>The clear focus of the project is <em>Homebrew</em> — letting people make and distribute their own work without <em>necessarily</em> being locked into Nintendo’s monopoly over all potential software for an entire platform. That monopoly is something Nintendo wanted to have, but copyright never offered them. </p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="razor-and-blades">Razor-and-blades<a class="headerlink" href="#razor-and-blades" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- TODO: I don't love how this falls in the article. move??? -->
<p>Let’s talk for a moment about the razor-and-blades model: selling a base for cheap (razor handles, printers, game consoles, every amazon device) and making a profit on future sales (blades, ink, games, lock-in). Companies like this, because it shifts the “profit” towards happening repeatedly, instead of at the one-time purchase. And actually? I’m okay with it.</p>
<p>The razor-and-blades model is fine as a business model until you start trying to ban people from making compatible parts or homebrew alternatives. Trying to police that is the hard line between a good business and a racket. As long as you’re using conventions you don’t own, like “sticks” and “razors” or “computers” and “files” (which you can’t own, because no one does, they’re conventions) you have no right to prevent people from fastening their own razor to your handle and using it!</p>
<p>The great thing — for first-party razor-and-blade folks, anyway — is that making a third-party part is <em>naturally</em> inconvenient. You have a huge margin for profit: as long as the markup you’re charging is less than the expense of constructing alternate parts, it’s smooth sailing.</p>
<p>You don’t have to criminalize third party parts! Third-parties competing with first-parties is naturally harder and less-profitable, and first-party manufacturers get to eat the difference as pure profit before any competition can exist <em>at all</em>:</p>
<p><img alt="home field chart" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/home-field.png"></p>
<p>But if you get greedy and try to charge more than that, people are going to find it worthwhile to work around you. That’s the edge of the profit margins.
Companies hate it that profit margins have edges, so instead of “providing value”, they’ve just taken the last-resort measure that only ever kicks in if a company is extorting its customers instead of trading with them… and decided to criminalize it.</p>
<p>Nintendo’s approach to 3DS Homebrew is an example of the failure of the razor-and-blades model, although Nintendo trades in control rather than “profit” in dollars.
It took an enormous amount of time and effort from the community to get the 3DS into an open state. It was a cost so high that, if Nintendo had been permissive in what people could do with their hardware from the start, no one would have ever had to pay. Free power for Nintendo! </p>
<!-- We know this for a fact. There are known Nintendo piracy groups who develop pirate tech like flashcards and modchips. They're not the ones who cracked the 3DS! It was modders and the generally anti-piracy homebrew scene that did the work. If Nintendo hadn't taken such a hard stance against modding and homebrew, and shipped permissive hardware instead, the research needed to pirate wouldn't exist!
Except maybe it wouldn't have been needed, because open hardware is open already. -->
<p>But instead, Nintendo was so greedy and overbearing that the vast, vast cost of opening the 3DS ecosystem was worth it. They only have a console security battle to fight at all because they “charged” so much more in power than was justified by the value they delivered. Instead, Nintendo is fighting a forever-war, because it demands more power than it can conscionably be given.</p>
<!-- Nintendo docs -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="nintendo-homebrew-response">Nintendo Homebrew Response<a class="headerlink" href="#nintendo-homebrew-response" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>And what was Nintendo’s response to that?
Well, we finally know after <a href="https://archive.org/download/Knock_And_Talk_directcontact/Knock_And_Talk_directcnotact/">internal documents leaked in 2020</a><sup id="fnref:censor"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:censor">4</a></sup> about Neimod: Nintendo hunted him down like a dog.
Like an international drug cartel, Nintendo tracked him down and sent goons to confront him in-person to make him an offer he couldn’t refuse: unless he turned in his friends and gave Nintendo all his work and his research so Nintendo can make their products more hostile to their users, they’d have him thrown in jail for behaving in a way <a href="https://archive.org/download/Knock_And_Talk_directcontact/Knock_And_Talk_directcnotact/#:~:text=91.3K-,Criminal%20Complaint%20(draft)%205,Sep-2023%2001%3A14,-4.0M">“not authorized by Nintendo”</a>. </p>
<!-- ::: aside furthermore -->
<p>The documents that show us what happened were not leaked due to their severity, they were just part of an unorganized data dump. That tells us this level of aggression is likely <em>typical</em>, not an anomaly: nobody blew the whistle on anything, this was just part of them doing business.
In fact, a presentation indicates the operation was considered a success, and the proposed next steps are to expand the program by iterating over “Propose next target”, “Develop profiles for each target”, and “Confirm real identity and physical location.”</p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Also included in this leak are copies Nintendo made of <em>tons</em> of research materials and proof-of-concept code made from the Homebrew community that was <em>not</em> licensed to them, either explicitly or under a permissive license. </p>
<p>Nintendo took other people’s IP — which their authors had reserved all rights to by default, with the exception of public viewing — and republished it internally <em>specifically</em> to benefit Nintendo commercially. Not only does copyright not allow for any of that, it’s one of the main things copyright specifically prohibits you from doing!</p>
</aside>
<p>Nintendo cornered Neimod at his home, which they had located, after his work, which they had identified too, because they stalked this down to every inch of his personal life.
In the unfilled draft criminal complaint they used to blackmail Neimod, Nintendo brags about using “a combination of online research, publicly available resources and finally though[sic] physical investigations in various locations in Belgium”.</p>
<p>In internal documents, they describe the exact conditions of his name, age, living status, weekly routine, and employment as evidenced by extensive surveillance of his life and acquaintances. They even lamented the fact that his place of business was “secured” and thus not suitable for their thuggery.</p>
<!-- TODO placement too dense -->
<p class="side-by-side">
<video alt="I'm gonna need me some privacy for this!" autoplay="true" loop="true" muted="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/hl2_privacy.webm?gifmode=1" type="video/webm"></video></p>
<p>Later they describe a carefully rehearsed scene (involving both “on-location physical surveillance” and involving his family!) based on his “psychological profile”, with operational parameters for adjusting the level of intimidation based on how cooperative agents felt he was being.</p>
<p><img alt="Neimod knock-and-talk flowchart" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/neimod_knock_and_talk_flowchart.png"></p>
<p>Here’s something really interesting, though.
The language of the drafted “negative outcome” criminal complaint evidences Nintendo’s strategy of forcing lawful, creative activity it doesn’t like, like homebrew, to <em>necessitate</em> “hacking” by artificially walling-up all the legitimate pathways.
This completely rigs the game for Nintendo, because they’ve planted the implication of nefarious intent and forced developers into the position of using language like “we hacked it!”, when what’s actually being talked about is having a fun time in Lego Star Wars. (Yes, really.) </p>
<!-- ![forestillusion: "The Smealum hack and what to do about it" https://t.co/L5l1W48eCX](https://twitter.com/forestillusion/status/1341211680601034752) -->
<p>Also note — because this is really important — that these documents make it clear Nintendo is well-aware that Smea and Neimod are <em>not</em> participating in piracy or any other violation of Nintendo’s creative rights. Nintendo doesn’t even believe there’s been any copyright infringement, they’re just attacking a target.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>PROPOSAL: TEAM, TIMELINE (EXAMPLE), POTENTIAL OUTCOMES<br>
… </p>
<ul>
<li>Engage Neimod in conversation. Acknowledge his engineering/programming aptitude; cite his stated intention of not facilitating piracy, and relate Nintendo’s concerns that his release of a hack could do exactly that. </li>
<li>Nintendo states its sincere interest in coming to some sort of mutually acceptable agreement with Neimod to discontinue hacking of Nintendo systems/products as opposed to pursuing a criminal referral. Draft complaint may or may not be shown to Neimod at this point (to demonstrate severity and seriousness of the matter) depending on his demeanor, reaction, and perceived interest in engaging in discussion. </li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/download/Knock_And_Talk_directcontact/Knock_And_Talk_directcnotact/SSSPWN/#:~:text=127.1K-,ssspwn%E3%81%A8%E5%AF%BE%E7%AD%96nup.pptx,-17-Sep-2023"><img alt="SSSPWN Smea Relationship Slide" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/ppt_smea_connection.png"></a>
<em class="image-caption">translator’s note: 関係 means “Relationship”</em></p>
<p>The one silver lining in this story is that, as far as we know, Nintendo hasn’t scaled out this program like they wanted to (yet). Of course, all this really means is they haven’t been caught again.</p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/smealum/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">smea</span><span class="at">@smealum</span></div></a></div><div><p>rumors of my arrest have been greatly exaggerated</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/smealum/status/803384606028341248" target="_blank">Nov 28, 2016 · 11:46 PM UTC</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/smealum/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">smea</span><span class="at">@smealum</span></div></a></div><div><p>telling people at the gay bar about being stalked by a Nintendo hired private investigator has been very therapeutic</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/smealum/status/1642420595945246720" target="_blank">Apr 2, 2023 · 6:55 AM UTC</a>
</blockquote></p>
<p>Earlier, I said Nintendo is acting like a drug cartel here, or perhaps the mob. (An ironic return to their roots.) But with internal names like “Operation Belgian Waffle” (seriously!) they’re clearly desperate to liken their organized violence to that of law enforcement, to hide that they’re threatening people whose lawful activity interferes with the various rackets they’re running themselves.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>It’s utterly surreal going through the “carrot and stick” and “hearts and minds” sections of these documents, as Nintendo discusses how to enforce a better public image and keep hackers happy. They discuss leveraging “fan” status and sharing prototypes and carefully handing out “bragging rights”, when the obvious and only answer is <strong>open your hardware and stop doing all this mafia shit</strong>.</p>
<p>All Nintendo needs to do to be infinitely popular is do its job. Make good games. Sell its games. Make good hardware. Sell its hardware. Spend all your time and energy doing those things, and spend <em>none</em> waging war against the user base! That’s all it takes for them to print money!</p>
</aside>
<!-- User control -->
<p>And the offense <em>is</em> interfering with Nintendo’s rackets. It’s got nothing to do with copyright. Neimod’s unforgivable transgression was, in Nintendo’s own words, achieving “full control of 3DS in kernel mode (ARM9 and ARM11)”: the worst-case scenario for Nintendo is that users have control over their own property! </p>
<p>That’s fucked up!</p>
<p>It’s hard explaining this to non-hacker folks, but it’s impossible to overemphasize how utterly baseline, how completely fundamental it is to have access to a device’s underlying filesystem. I could (and will) write about this for hours and hours more, but the takeaway is this: that’s the difference between a computer being yours and not.</p>
<p>Monopolist companies like Nintendo and Apple want you to think enabling users’ control over their own devices is like giving the gun to a terrorist: sure, you’re not pulling the trigger, but it’s being complicit in the act.
But “control over your own property” isn’t anything like that: it’s not the equivalent of having a gun, it’s the equivalent of having pants. It’s a basic, basic level of agency required to go out and do <em>anything</em>.
User control is the person not being born in chains. It’s a prerequisite for basic self-determination that you’re crippled without. Companies just want you crippled.</p>
<p>Even if you <em>were</em> a would-be software pirate, having access to your own device is only an incidental step that is needed as part of a long exploit chain.
It’s not the act of piracy, and it doesn’t even facilitate it! To commit game piracy, you don’t just need control over your device, you still have to get the game software and install it. <em>That’s</em> the piracy! The piracy!
Incidentally getting the <em>ability</em> to pirate by un-crippling your own device isn’t piracy, it’s just having the ability to <em>act at all</em>.</p>
<p>Every company wants you to think user control is like a loaded gun, that it could only be used for crime and violence instead of self-determination, something that’s only objectionable to them. User control threatens Nintendo’s <em>business model</em>, its particular gamble of selling hardware and software in the hopes of locking customers into its marketplace.</p>
<p>Nintendo is free to pursue whatever business model it wants, but if it — like this one — turns out to be defeated by math, that has to be the end of it. That can’t be the end of math.
The practice of locking users into hardware is not sanctified by the fact that it makes Nintendo money. The fact that something turned a profit once, because no one had reacted to it yet, doesn’t mean you’re entitled to that profit forever! </p>
<p>The business model is not sacred, it’s not to be defended for its own sake. It’s a speculation whose profit potential is tied to its chance to fail. If you have to find ways to keep people from subverting your model, that indicates that you built your entire business model around trickery instead of delivering value.</p>
<p>The fact that Nintendo would prefer people locked into an extractive ecosystem does not obligate us to make that happen. We are not obligated to enforce whatever structures make corporations the most money. We have better foundations for our obligations, and if we follow them it turns out structures like the ones Nintendo wants to build are ethical violations against <em>us</em>, not the other way around.</p>
<p>Fortunately for Nintendo at least, it doesn’t <em>need</em> hardware lock-in to be a wildly successful business: the Wii, 3DS, and Switch have all been “hacked” — even to the point of allowing pirated games — and they have-been-and-continue-to-be <em>obscenely</em> profitable for Nintendo regardless. In fact, Nintendo’s most easily hackable consoles, the Classic series, are famous for being under such high demand no retailers could keep them in stock.
User’s ownership of their own consoles doesn’t threaten Nintendo’s profitability, only its power and pride.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-lie-and-its-job">The Lie and its Job<a class="headerlink" href="#the-lie-and-its-job" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Like <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/26/apples-trademark-exploit/">Apple’s Trademark Exploit</a>, this has been many different stories, like a bona fide horror anthology. They involve different periods of time, different areas of law, different actors and differing levels of severity. But those individual events don’t happen in a vacuum, and each kind can’t be understood without some awareness of the others.
<strong>It’s all one conflict.</strong></p>
<!-- [What a YouTube Copyright Strike From 2015 Has to do With 'Mario Maker 2' in 2019 (what-a-youtube-copyright-strike-from-2015-has-to-do-with-mario-maker-2-in-2019)](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43kjk9/what-a-youtube-copyright-strike-from-2015-has-to-do-with-mario-maker-2-in-2019) -->
<p>As part of the AM2R debacle, Nintendo issued this statement to Polygon:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.polygon.com/2016/8/8/12404100/metroid-2-fan-remake-am2r-copyright-claim">Allegra Frank, <em>Metroid 2 fan remake finally released, quickly hit with copyright claims</em></a>
“Nintendo’s broad library of characters, products, and brands are enjoyed by people around the world, and we appreciate the passion of our fans. But just as Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of others, we must also protect our own characters, trademarks and other content. The unapproved use of Nintendo’s intellectual property can weaken our ability to protect and preserve it, or to possibly use it for new projects.”</p>
</blockquote>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>It’s also fundamentally untrue that derivative works based on old Nintendo works weakens their ability to use it in new projects. It weakens their <em>exclusivity</em>, perhaps, but that’s something that was granted to them temporarily in order to encourage <em>exactly</em> the kind of creation they’re now using it to discourage. It was never their <em>property</em>.</p>
</aside>
<p>Hopefully at this point you can see that — and how — this is utter bullshit. Nintendo <em>does not</em> “respect the intellectual property rights of others”, or it would have left all the creative projects other people made (and had their own copyright over) I’ve talked about here alone, as creative rights <em>obligated them to do</em>. And it certainly wouldn’t have <a href="https://archive.org/download/Knock_And_Talk_directcontact/Knock_And_Talk_directcnotact/SSSPWN/smea_exploit_code/">infringed on other people’s copyright in the process</a> in a guns-blazing, ends-justifies-the-means frenzy of legal violence.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/">Copyright only grants creators a few specific rights.</a> It does <em>not</em> give Nintendo this broad authority to “control their content.” Copyright is — once again — the euphemism, the excuse used to justify their destructive, punitive responses to slights.
“Infringement of their copyrights” was never the real offense.</p>
<p>Identifying the euphemism like this is an incredibly valuable step in any analysis.
There are always two sides to the policy grift: the real goal and the lie. The lie is the euphemism, the excuse, the cover story. In this case, the lie is that this is about copyright, and Nintendo’s real priority is protecting rights, whoever they might belong to, with no special treatment given to themselves. This is unabashedly false.
It could not be clearer that this is not only false, but directly <em>opposed</em> to Nintendo’s goals. The invocation of copyright is just a post-hoc excuse constructed to hide Nintendo’s actual goal: amassing personal power and control.</p>
<p>Nintendo wants every degree of control imaginable. They want control over what programs you run on the hardware you buy. They want control over the shelf life of games you purchase, even physical copies. They want control over how people are allowed to talk about them in public. They want control over which games are popular. They want control over the entire digital video game-based entertainment industry. They want control over what games other people are allowed to make.
They want it all. </p>
<!-- mad at rom sites for preserving things they want to have a shelf life. Forced obsolescence -->
<p>They’re lying now about why they’re using their power to shut down other artists’ work, but this also shows how they were lying when they said they <em>needed</em> those laws to protect their creative rights in the first place. This is simply demonstrated by the fact that that is not what they’ve used that power for once they got it.</p>
<p>Once you’ve identified the lie you have to discount it when they say it. You can’t keep circling back around to the lie in good faith every time, just to be surprised every time when it’s still the same lie it always has been. When Nintendo pulls the “protecting our rights” card, from now on, your reaction can’t be “oh well, I guess they’re in the right, I just wish they’d have chosen to be kinder”, it has to be “oh, I know that one, that’s the lie they use when they’re being unapologetic brigands.”</p>
<aside class="cb qualified">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>That being said, being “the lie” is not an intrinsic property that Nintendo gets to permanently weld to creative rights just by using it as a cheap excuse. “Protecting our creative rights” is a lie here not because it’s wrong, but because it’s being told by a bad actor in service of a malicious agenda.
The thing the euphemism itself describes is good, that’s why it works as a delivery vector for the malicious agenda it’s being used to further.</p>
</aside>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-war">The War<a class="headerlink" href="#the-war" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>The fight is not against any policy or a doctrine, but an unlimited, voracious appetite that opportunistically picks up and wields whatever justifications seem most likely to work at the moment. Usually, that justification is “copyright”, but it’s plainly obvious that copyright is completely incompatible with the attacks it’s being used to commit.</p>
<!-- Summary -->
<p>InfernoPlus, DoctorM64, and many other individual artists made new creative works, drawing from a cultural touchstone but ultimately creating something entirely new and distinct.
Nintendo, a vastly wealthy corporation, decided it didn’t want that work to exist. It wasn’t convenient, it didn’t actively profit them, and it might compete with something they might make someday in the future, so they set out to destroy it. </p>
<p>What Nintendo wants is not strong protections for the creators of games and art. They don’t want copyright. What they want is personal dominion over a broad possibility space, which is something allowed to them by neither copyright nor any other valid ethos.
Their only consistent position here is that it should have unlimited personal power to strong-arm other people, indiscriminate except as directed by Nintendo’s own lawyers. Nintendo wants to be like unto a God, with the ability to smite any work and any person at its discretion. That’s not even rule-of-law, and it’s certainly not copyright. </p>
<p>In all these cases, copyright <em>should</em> be entirely devoted to protecting the artist’s right over his work here from Nintendo’s attacks against it.
Nothing in the ethos of copyright legitimises making so broad a claim as to pre-empt other people from creating their own works that are notable for being <em>different</em> from your own. Additional creativity is the exact scenario copyright exists to promote, not discourage. Want to sell a creative work? You have to make it and sell it!</p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>See how fundamentally pro-consumer incentives are baked into creative rights? If you want to make a profit, you have to create <em>more</em>, <em>better</em>, <em>faster</em>, and sell it <em>cheaper</em>. The pressures all exist to incentivize <em>creation</em> and disincentivize idle rent-seeking.</p>
<p>The limited monopolies are the little goodies used to incentivize the behaviour, but the end goal of the system is actually hyper-competitive and anti-monopoly.</p>
</aside>
<p>In nothing short of an utterly dysfunctional system would “copyright law” just automatically side with the richest person in the conflict, even when that means sacrificing every principle in the book. But that’s exactly what it did, because dysfunctional is exactly what we have.</p>
<p>Nintendo isn’t a unique offender. Nintendo is just a good example of a successful company because this vile behaviour is exactly what the system rewards. A system not of real rights, but of oligarchical dominance using the label “IP”.</p>
<p>…Wow. That was way more about Nintendo than I expected. I was planning on giving, like, two Nintendo anecdotes in a different article. I forgot they were that bad!</p>
<!--
## Drops/unsorted
If there were any truth to any of the lies, they would not be doing any of what they’re doing.
---
because when you see the whole picture it tells a poinent story
Nintendo then opened a creator programme where
you could play their games in your video if they got to take 30% of your money and micro-manage what you said.
Nintendo: emotional manipulation to line pockets
It's the same evil as always: corporations making money at the expense of people
One analysis from Moon Channel, a Real Lawyer
although I don't agree with his conclusions
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i13hrynnGNY
in his video, he compares IP to having oil on your property. this is exactly the landlord mentality that copyright is antethetical to, but it is precisely how businesses treat it
> Big business is ranked competitive capitalism.
> And intellectual property is one of the most important arenas of combat. Other companies are constantly looking for holes in your defenses to take what belongs to you.
> Nintendo is a big dog. It's me and Starcraft 2 Wings of Liberty. But its primary competitors are Sony at rank #122,
> and Microsoft at rank number three. And Google at rank number four, Facebook at number eight, Amazon at ♪5
> are looking very hungrily in Nintendo's direction. You can be assured that these mighty
> Predators are merely waiting for opportunities. A million smaller scavengers too are looking to take...
> their own bites of the prize. Nintendo does not have the sheer capital to do that. Resources of Microsoft.
> It does not have the century of business infrastructure that Disney has. It does not have the massive government support and Kaede2 business integration that Sony has.
> Nintendo has very much to fear and everything to lose. It is a company totally dependent on its franchises.
> In Nintendo's eyes, these franchises, these intellectual properties, pillars that hold up the entire edifice of the company.
> Any damage to these intellectual properties whatsoever is damage that cannot be afforded. Even if it's just some acid rain corrosion or chip damage.
> There is no measure of defense too unreasonable as there is simply too much to lose. And it is ever, ever so easy to lose when your opponents are quite so good.
> Nintendo is always playing defense because it must. Nintendo's giant war chest of cash reserves
> exist also not as offensive investment capital. But primarily as a massive defensive shell.
> And there is a reason why Nintendo acts so defensively. You see the history of the corporate
> world is littered with the corpses of ones promising companies that fail to protect their intellectual property.
> Nintendo itself had a razorclose shave. And it has no desire to repeat that experience again.
...
Nintendo is acting primarily out of fear for its intellectual properties.
As a lawyer with some.
> Let's say professional interest in corporate law and intellectual property. Nintendo's decision making has never been a surprise to me.
> I may not agree with their decision making as a fan. But in its context both legally and psychologically.
> It all makes sense to me as a lawyer.
this is the mentality I'm calling out as wrong, and it comes from a place of... being used to corporate law, instead of stepping back and recontextualizing
![videodante: every six months a legacy journalism outlet will be like "hm. video games. i hear the kids are into them these days" and hire a guy who has never written about games to do an article that starts like - video games aren't just for the arcades anymore -- they're big business.](https://twitter.com/videodante/status/1475612654383210498)
I get why executives who don't know better are scared about piracy. But their little emotional responses don't give them the right to bar people from consuming their own purchased media. Speculative fear or not, one simply isn't permitted to do that, ever. It's a *hard* line.
![giovan_h: it’s funny because playing a video game without permission of the corporate entity that owns the copyright should be a death sentence](https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1653916541065240576)
![coolranchzaku: nintendo could just start disappearing people into a branded van in broad daylight and gamers would rave about how hilarious and epic it is. pathetic](https://twitter.com/coolranchzaku/status/1653885641560580096)
![No such thing as a Nintendo](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_original/ijqzgsqfsslrfylg1v6j.jpg)
-->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="container related-reading">
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/6/15532448/fan-games-shut-down-by-nintendo-breath-of-the-nes-winterdrake">Owen S. Good, “Despite the certainty of takedowns, fan developers still pursue Nintendo’s works”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://hackaday.com/2019/05/20/that-super-mario-bros-c64-port-was-too-good-for-this-world/">Drew Littrell, “That Super Mario Bros. C64 Port Was Too Good For This World”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/10/05/919178106/super-mario-35-evokes-nintendo-s-strained-relationship-with-fan-developers">Vincent Acovino, “‘Super Mario 35’ Evokes Nintendo’s Strained Relationship With Fan Developers”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1cUIGHZLGA">Modern Vintage Gamer, “Secrets of the Nintendo Game Boy Boot Logo” (video)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade">Sega v. Accolade - Wikipedia</a></li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20150201040205/http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/01/nintendo-strikes-back-against-youtubers-demands-pe.html">Annabelle Fleury, “Nintendo Strikes Back Against YouTubers, Demands Percentage of Video Profits”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/05/nintendo-files-dmca-takedowns-on-switch-emulation-tools-just-before-tears-debut/">Kevin Purdy, Nintendo, ticked by Zelda leaks, does a DMCA run on Switch emulation tools</a> (<a href="https://archive.org/details/lockpick-rcm-master_202306">ia</a>, <a href="magnet:?xt=urn:btih:04ba8dba48cdcbbd9fac5bf61371b015bd537507&dn=LockPickRFepos&tr=https%3a%2f%2fopentracker.i2p.rocks%3a443%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2ftracker.opentrackr.org%3a1337%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fopen.stealth.si%3a80%2fannounce&tr=udp%3a%2f%2fopen.tracker.ink%3a6969%2fannounce">magnet</a>)</li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190307222916/https://r.ncp.nintendo.net/guide">Nintendo Creators Program (guide)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://craphound.com/internetcon/">Cory Doctorow, “The Internet Con”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position">Original position</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2020/03/nintendo_named_and_shamed_as_benefiting_from_the_use_of_chinese_forced_labour_camps">Damien McFerran, “Nintendo Named And Shamed As Benefiting From The Use Of Chinese Forced Labour Camps”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211214061821/https://gamingreinvented.com/feature/fake-nintendo-employee-taking-fan-works/">CM30, “Is a Fake Nintendo Employee Taking Down Fan Works?”</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<!--
+ [Andi McClure, "Super Mario World vs. the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Physics"](https://msm.runhello.com/p/20)
+ [Patrick Klepek, "What a YouTube Copyright Strike From 2015 Has to do With 'Mario Maker 2' in 2019"](https://www.vice.com/en/article/43kjk9/what-a-youtube-copyright-strike-from-2015-has-to-do-with-mario-maker-2-in-2019) -->
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:relative-position">
<p>Compare:<br>
<img alt="Graph showing Nintendo's relative market position compared to Microsoft, Disney, Sony" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/competitors.png">
<em><a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=value+of+Nintendo%2C+Microsoft%2C+Disney%2C+and+Sony">Value of Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, and Sony</a></em></p>
<p><img alt="Graph showing Nintendo's relative market cap compared to Microsoft, Disney, Sony" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/11/21/how-nintendo-misuses-copyright/market_cap.png">
<em><a href="https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=market+cap+of+Nintendo%2C+Microsoft%2C+Disney%2C+and+Sony">Market capitalization of Nintendo, Microsoft, Disney, and Sony</a></em> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:relative-position" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8bit">
<p><a href="https://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=RP2A03">Yes, the music too.</a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:8bit" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:roms">
<p>“roms” being the “game binary image” <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US6672963B1/en#:~:text=and%20interprets%20the-,game%20binary%20image,-(block%2072)%20and">called out here in the patent</a> as being crucial to a process which Nintendo is, in that very document, attesting is valuable and furthers the arts and sciences <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:roms" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:censor">
<p>I’m not giving these docs the “the sound of children screaming has been removed” censorship treatment. It’s important to communicate how genuinely evil all this was, so I’m going to show you the evil bits. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:censor" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Apple's Trademark Exploit2023-10-26T00:00:00-05:002023-10-26T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2023-10-26:/blog/2023/10/26/apples-trademark-exploit/<!-- Series: Copyright Abuse Revokes your Rights -->
<p>Apple puts its logo on the devices it sells. Not just on the outer casing, but also each internal component. The vast majority of these logos are totally enclosed and invisible to the naked eye.
This seems like an incredibly strange practice — especially since Apple doesn’t sell these parts separately — except it turns out to be part of a truly convoluted rules-lawyering exploit only a company like Apple could pull off and get away with.</p>
<p>Remember, trademarks are a consumer protection measure to defend against counterfeits. Apple’s registered logo trademark protects consumers from being tricked into buying fake products, and deputizes Apple to defend its mark against counterfeits.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-loaded-gun">The Loaded Gun<a class="headerlink" href="#the-loaded-gun" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>While some counterfeiting happens domestically the major concern is usually counterfeits imported from foreign trade. This brings us to Customs and Border Patrol, which you might know as the other side of the ICE/CBP border control system. You might be surprised to see them involved with this, since Border Patrol agents are fully-militarized police outfitted to combat armed drug cartels. </p>
<p>But among its other duties, Border Patrol takes a proactive role in enforcing intellectual property protection at ports of trade — backed by the full force of the Department of Homeland Security — by seizing goods it identifies as counterfeit and either destroying them outright or else selling them <em>themselves</em> at auction.<sup id="fnref:cbp-pub"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:cbp-pub">1</a></sup>
To get your property back, you have to sue Border Patrol — <a href="https://www.vox.com/23159672/supreme-court-egbert-boule-bivens-law-enforcement-border-patrol-immunity">an infamously untouchable police force</a> — and win.</p>
</section><!-- Series: Copyright Abuse Revokes your Rights -->
<p>Apple puts its logo on the devices it sells. Not just on the outer casing, but also each internal component. The vast majority of these logos are totally enclosed and invisible to the naked eye.
This seems like an incredibly strange practice — especially since Apple doesn’t sell these parts separately — except it turns out to be part of a truly convoluted rules-lawyering exploit only a company like Apple could pull off and get away with.</p>
<p>Remember, trademarks are a consumer protection measure to defend against counterfeits. Apple’s registered logo trademark protects consumers from being tricked into buying fake products, and deputizes Apple to defend its mark against counterfeits.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-loaded-gun">The Loaded Gun<a class="headerlink" href="#the-loaded-gun" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>While some counterfeiting happens domestically the major concern is usually counterfeits imported from foreign trade. This brings us to Customs and Border Patrol, which you might know as the other side of the ICE/CBP border control system. You might be surprised to see them involved with this, since Border Patrol agents are fully-militarized police outfitted to combat armed drug cartels. </p>
<p>But among its other duties, Border Patrol takes a proactive role in enforcing intellectual property protection at ports of trade — backed by the full force of the Department of Homeland Security — by seizing goods it identifies as counterfeit and either destroying them outright or else selling them <em>themselves</em> at auction.<sup id="fnref:cbp-pub"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:cbp-pub">1</a></sup>
To get your property back, you have to sue Border Patrol — <a href="https://www.vox.com/23159672/supreme-court-egbert-boule-bivens-law-enforcement-border-patrol-immunity">an infamously untouchable police force</a> — and win.</p>
<p>Apple participates in CBP’s <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/trade/priority-issues/ipr/protection">e-Recordation Program</a>, a “<a href="https://www.uspto.gov/trademarks/protect/customs-and-border-protection">service for trademark owners</a>” where American rightsholders proactively re-register their US registered trademarks with CBP and pay regular fees to ensure special, stricter enforcement on the particular trademarks they request.
In exchange, Apple gets to <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/trade/priority-issues/ipr/bestpractices"><em>train law enforcement themselves</em></a>; owners of registered marks can record webinars, and companies like Apple literally get to send their own staff to give Border Patrol in-person seminars on how to identify their products and what all they want counted as infringing.</p>
<p><img alt="toothpaste cop" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/26/apples-trademark-exploit/toothpaste_cop.png"></p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>If Apple wanted to send its own private investigators to stake out ports… that would be okay? I guess? But obviously they couldn’t have any special authority to search and seize cargo. They’re not the police! If they wanted to ruin someone’s day, they would need to make a criminal complaint and go through due process like anyone else. </p>
</aside>
<!-- secret club -->
<p>Between the relative obscurity of the program and the continued cost of paying CBP to enforce your trademarks, only a tiny number of corporations take advantage of this program at all: CBP only reports having 20,758 registered copyrights and trademarks it enforces.
Compared to the 3,114,306 active registered US trademarks and 40,116,623 active registered copyrights, that’s not just a drop in the bucket, proportionally, that’s one droplet in a 600 gallon industrial tank.</p>
<p>Now, this might just sound like presumption of guilt inflicted on the enemies of anyone who can afford it.
A system where the police only enforce the laws they’re paid by private companies to enforce, who pay the police outright in dollars to selectively enforce the law against the payer’s business rivals might seem like a bad framework for judge-and-jury<sup id="fnref:judge-and-jury"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:judge-and-jury">2</a></sup> style law enforcement agencies like the DHS. </p>
<p>Anyway,</p>
<p>In 2021 (latest data) CBP seized <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2022-Sep/202994%20-%20FY%202021%20IPR%20Seizure%20Statistics%20BOOK.5%20-%20FINAL%20%28508%29.pdf">over $3.3 billion</a> in allegedly counterfeit merchandise. But here’s what that looks like in practice:</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="versus-third-party-repair">Versus Third-Party Repair<a class="headerlink" href="#versus-third-party-repair" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Repair shop owner Jessa Jones purchased third-party iPhone screens for use in repair, <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-screens-jessa-jones">but the shipment from China was seized by CBP</a>. </p>
<p>The screens that were seized are “hybrid” parts: the screens are third-party, but use a few original Apple parts like a flex cable that connects the screen to the phone. That invisible, internal part is marked with an Apple logo, which is enough to let the CBP seize the entire shipment. </p>
<p>The parts aren’t being seized because they’re counterfeit. In fact, they’re demonstrably <em>not</em> counterfeit: the only reason an Apple logo is on a piece of a “third-party” component is because that piece <em>is</em> original <abbr title="Original Equipment Manufacturer">OEM</abbr> Apple hardware being legally re-sold:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The parts I buy have an original flex on it because that’s what’s best for my consumers,” [repair shop owner Jessa Jones] said. “It’s difficult and pointless to erase the existing Apple logo that’s printed on a tiny piece of flex. There’s no customer-facing Apple logo, no logo anywhere on the glass. It’s smaller than a grain of rice. We have never said online, in person, or anywhere else that these are Apple-certified screens.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>From Vice’s coverage:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/evk4wk/dhs-seizes-iphone-screens-jessa-jones">Jason Koebler, DHS Seizes Aftermarket iPhone Screens From Prominent Right-to-Repair Advocate</a>
Aaron Perzanowski, a trademark, copyright, and intellectual property law professor at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law, told me that Jones’s parts likely can’t be considered “counterfeit.”</p>
<p>“Assuming that: (1) the cable bearing the Apple mark is a genuine Apple product, (2) the cable used on these screens is the same as the one Apple uses in the U.S., and (3) the importer/seller clearly communicates that the screens are a non-Apple aftermarket product, then Apple’s case for treating these as ‘counterfeit’ goods is very weak,” Perzanowski said in an email. “Refurbished or repaired products are generally permissible under trademark law’s first sale doctrine, so long as they are clearly labeled as such.”</p>
<p>“This strikes me as an abuse of trademark law by Apple,” he added, “one clearly designed to maintain its stranglehold over the repair market and, ultimately, to force customers to buy new hardware.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of course, Apple has rigged it so it doesn’t matter that their case is obviously fraudulent. Apple doesn’t have to argue its case to anyone, because the CBP already seized Jessa’s property; it’s done. If victims like Jessa want to be let alone and run their own businesses, they have to sue the government to get their parts back <em>first</em>, just to break even. </p>
<p>But at least Jessa’s parts were seized at customs. Other smartphone repair shops have been raided, in person, by drug-bust style police raids. The squad? A public/private partnership slurry of armed DHS agents… and Apple representatives:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.local10.com/news/2013/04/29/federal-agents-raid-smartphone-repair-shops/">Federal agents raid smartphone repair shops</a>
“It’s a wide investigation that is multi-state. We are looking at whole industry spectrum of repair shops that are using substandard products,” said Gerard O’Neill, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of Miami Field Office for Homeland Security.</p>
<p>O’Neill says it’s a public safety issue and that is how Homeland Security is involved. …
“There are trademark and licensing violations as well,” he added.</p>
<p>Apple says if a repair shop puts counterfeit parts in your phone it will void any warranty.</p>
<p>“Unless they are getting it from an Apple authorized manufacturer, they are most likely getting substandard parts which are counterfeit and illegal to possess,” Said Agent O’Neill</p>
<p>Abel Abella’s says his store was raided by agents who seized $5000 worth of parts.
“When they came in it almost looked like a drug raid,” Said Abella.
Abella claims there were 20 ICE agents and two people from Apple in his small Bird Road store.</p>
<p>According to an Apple spokesman, only Apple authorized repair centers can use Apple parts with the Apple logo.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is an older article, and there are some minor discrepancies — Abella seems to have confused CBP with ICE, for example — but those are some <em>ghastly</em> direct quotes. </p>
<p>Apple’s snivelling little “only Apple authorized repair centers can use Apple parts with the Apple logo” may be a statement of <em>Apple</em> policy, but there’s absolutely no <em>trademark</em> excuse for stealing someone’s property! <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2018/04/ftc-staff-warns-companies-it-illegal-condition-warranty-coverage-use-specified-parts-or-services">They’re not even allowed to void the warranty!</a> Apple’s IP rights over those specific parts were exhausted after they sold them, remember? </p>
<p>Apple is being asked why they had the police raid someone’s business and steal their merchandise, and their response is a recitation of their <em>business model:</em> an incredible admission of how they view law enforcement as a simple weapon for Apple to use use to enforce their preferences.</p>
<!-- Repairing a phone without permission isn't a DHS offense. -->
<p>Meanwhile assistant-in-charge Gerard O’Neill hides behind some nebulous excuses about “safety”, which is both irrelevant and false. Consumer safety is a justification for trademark enforcement in general, but it doesn’t excuse wrong judgements. But the seizure that takes place here proves that safety isn’t a concern at all. The police is seizing property customers already paid for, without compensation, instead of just labelling them with a relevant warning (like CBP does when <em>it</em> resells counterfeits).
If customers got counterfeit goods, they would only be getting partial value, but here police ensure they’re getting no value at all. Mislabelled generic Band-Aids aren’t as good, but they’re better than bleeding. Seizure isn’t protective, it’s punitive. </p>
<p>But Gerard ultimately confirms that the issue stems from a trademark and licensing issue. The Apple reps confirm the raid was conducted in direct conjunction with Apple, as part of their war against independent repair: a business model decision, not a legal one. And they’re waging that war with live guns!</p>
<p>These aren’t isolated stories. In fact, there are some machines Apple uses the CBP to prevent from being repaired at <em>all:</em></p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/AVL65qwBGnw?autoplay=1" title="Apple & Customs STOLE my batteries, that they won't even provide to AASPs." frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/AVL65qwBGnw/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>As part of the auction process, when they sell seized goods, CBP is allowed to erase trademarks on parts and resell them without violating the trademark. This makes sense, because without the mark, the parts are clearly labelled as generic and non-violating. </p>
<p>However, in the supreme court of Norway, <a href="https://www.lexology.com/commentary/intellectual-property/norway/advokatfirmaet-hjort/supreme-court-rules-in-favour-of-apple-on-trademark-debranding">Apple successfully argued</a> that repair shops doing exactly the same practice of obscuring the mark are still violating the trademark, in a consumer-agnostic argument that thoroughly fails to grasp what a trademark is even for.</p>
</aside>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="versus-competing-accessories">Versus Competing Accessories<a class="headerlink" href="#versus-competing-accessories" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But as bad as those stories are, at least Apple is involved in the transaction. Pieces of those parts were, at some point, sold by Apple, or at least eventually touched an Apple device. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1305300486090825731" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" data-bigimg="true"><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/CBP/" title="CBP secures our nation's borders & facilitates lawful international travel & trade. For all official CBP social media accounts, visit: https://t.co/V9BivmgI2u"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1355124069092515842/hC7JdgT-_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">CBP</span><span class="at">@CBP</span></div></a></div><div><p>THAT'S NOT AN 🍎 —</p><p>CBP officers at JFK Airport recently seized 2,000 counterfeit Apple AirPods from Hong Kong, valued at $398K had they been genuine.</p><p>Details via @CBPNewYorkCity: <a href='http://bit.ly/3hivSLT' target='_blank'>bit.ly/3hivSLT</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/CBP/status/1305300486090825731/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eh1b32mWoAAA7PM.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/CBP/status/1305300486090825731/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eh1b38yWoAEzdIX.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/CBP/status/1305300486090825731" target="_blank">Mon Sep 14 00:21:01 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, I’ll grant them this one, that’s not an Apple or even an Apple product. Fact is, that’s a different company altogether: <a href="https://www.oneplus.com/us/product/oneplus-buds">OnePlus</a>, a multinational smartphone corporation that manufactures earbuds along with various accessories and even full-featured Android phones. You can tell because the boxes are clearly labelled “OnePlus Buds”, and aren’t counterfeits of anything. In fact even in that tweet, the first picture shows us an AirPod, and it’s distinctly different than the OnePlus Bud it’s being compared to.</p>
<p>OnePlus isn’t Apple, but of course “not being Apple” isn’t a crime. Companies other than Apple can still do business in the US, even if they compete with Apple. Right? Surely?</p>
<p>God, I wish.</p>
<p>No, Customs and Border Patrol seized shipments of entirely legal, correctly labelled, non-counterfeit products, because Apple paid CBP off.
Worse still, CBP is usually tipped off by corporations who do their own investigations, so it’s highly likely Apple sicced them on OnePlus <em>specifically</em>.</p>
<p>After the original tweet saw some backlash, CBP released a public statement sticking to their guns and confirming that it <em>wasn’t</em> a mistake, they really did mean to confiscate Apple-competing goods because Apple told them to:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436760/us-customs-statement-oneplus-buds-seized-apple-airpod-trademarks">CBP statement</a>
Upon examining the shipment in question, a CBP import specialist determined that the subject earbuds appeared to violate Apple’s configuration trademark. Apple has configuration trademarks on their brand of earbuds, and has recorded those trademarks with CBP. Based on that determination, CBP officers at JFK Airport have seized the shipment....</p>
<p>CBP’s seizure of the earbuds in question is unrelated to the images or language on the box. A company does not have to put an ‘Apple’ wordmark or design on their products to violate these trademarks.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Woof!</p>
<p>These were clearly branded products from an established company, but Apple has trained CBP to take out the competition, and CBP just does it. And not just OnePlus! <a href="https://www.cultofmac.com/742821/counterfeit-airpods/">A bunch! With many different brands!</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.cultofmac.com/742821/counterfeit-airpods/">Josh Gerben, trademark lawyer</a>
Apple is claiming, basically, that it owns a trademark or trade dress registration around the shape of these AirPods. They’re claiming that [a product with a similar shape is] a counterfeit, or that’s an infringement on their trademark.
There are certainly valid defenses to that point. [But you could also argue that] there’s certain functionality of this design that you just can’t protect. How many ways you can design something that fits in somebody’s ear?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Apple is asserting a “configuration trademark” so broad that it covers any earbud product shaped to fit the inside of an ear.
The “trademark” being objected to is just the shape of an ear, which is clearcut <a href="https://bitlaw.com/source/tmep/1202_02_a_iii_B.html"><em>de jure</em> functionality</a>, and definitely doesn’t constitute a trademark violation! In fact, we <em>know</em> these wireless earbuds <em>don’t</em> constitute a trademark violation, because they’re sold in the US, and Apple hasn’t complained anywhere where due process would be required. </p>
<p>Essentially, CBP is willing to deem anything that remotely competes with Apple’s AirPods a trademark violation. And, because they’re a a militarized police force paid with tax dollars plus some extra kicked in by Apple, that’s not just an accusation of a violation, it’s an automatic seizure. No due process required; Apple wins by default. </p>
<!-- Talk about "picking winners and losers"! -->
<p>And even if such a thing as a form factor trademark were legitimate, in the case of OnePlus, the molded plastic shapes are distinctly different. The CBP photo obscures this by placing a legitimate AirPod on the OnePlus box, but the OnePlus buds are clearly distinguishable, even if they <em>hadn’t</em> had clear brand labelling, which they did.</p>
<p>Note that the aspect being objected to here is, according to CBP, explicitly a <strong>trademark</strong>: they’re not claiming there was a <strong>patent</strong> violation, which would have been a much stronger case to make against a form-factor.
…except CBP can’t make discretionary judgements on patent violations. For patents, they have to execute specific <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2310-006a_3.pdf">exclusion orders</a>, which aren’t suitable for Apple’s purposes because they requires real due process, and the fraud would be found out.</p>
<p><img alt="OCP the only choice stillframe" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/26/apples-trademark-exploit/ocp_the_only_choice.jpg"></p>
<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>As I think about the e-recordation system, it strikes me that the whole system isn’t architected to prevent counterfeiting at all. </p>
<p>If you wanted to fight counterfeiting, you would prosecute the retailers trying to knowingly sell counterfeit goods they purchased from overseas counterfeiters. </p>
<p>In the vast majority of cases, individual people who get scammed by ordering a counterfeit product aren’t buying in bulk from overseas, so the demographic CBP is targeting is <em>resellers</em>. But <em>selling</em> counterfeit goods is exactly what trademarks are designed to police, not <em>buying</em> them. </p>
<p>And no one is in a better position to track down resellers of counterfeit products than the CBP, who can identify counterfeit products at ports of trade and track down their destination. They’re shipped cargo, they have the destination labelled on them!</p>
<p>But CBP’s system is attacking the entirely legal behaviour of <em>purchasing</em> goods, and I don’t think that’s a mistake. This isn’t a system designed to fight counterfeiting, it’s a system designed to treat entirely legal behaviour as a criminal offense just because corporations object to it.</p>
</aside>
<!-- Apple is falsely claiming impersonation -->
<p>The purpose of trademarks is to allow the customer to safely do business without getting a different product than they bought.
Fundamentally, to claim a trademark violation is to claim impersonation. Apple is not being impersonated with these competing products, and they know it. They are lying.</p>
<!-- Apple is using BP, active agency -->
<p>Border Patrol isn’t just a rogue agency. They’re not exercising agency in these cases. They’re just the weapon Apple is using. Apple is the brain, BP is the brawn. The agency isn’t the one with the agency. I’m not letting CBP off the hook, but ultimately Apple is the one having them do this; Apple is responsible for making it happen. </p>
<p>Apple is exploiting a loophole in enforcement order here. Usually policy enforcement requires due process: Apple would have to show that something positively <em>is</em> infringing, or counterfeit, <em>before</em> they could have the government take action against it. Here, instead, the action comes <em>first</em>, before argument or evidence, and the burden of proof is shunted onto the victim instead of the aggressor. That’s why it’s CBP doing this proactively, instead of Apple suing companies or going after competitors with court-issued warrants: they <em>know</em> their accusations are bogus, but CBP lets Apple enforce them anyway.</p>
<!-- They are being competed with, and it sent them into a spiralling rage. -->
<!-- Apple isn't aligned with trademark goals -->
<p>Trademarks exist so that customers can safely do business, which pits the idea of trademarks <em>against</em> Apple.
Apple doesn’t care about consumer safety nearly as much as it cares about pursuing its feudal lord dream of still owning your phone after they sell it to you.
Not only is Apple directly harming consumers and making commerce more dangerous (opposing the goal of trademarks) it’s also attacking companies’ ability to do business under their <em>own</em> names (opposing the means of trademarks).</p>
<!-- Apple specifically wants you to be unsafe -->
<p>In fact, Apple doesn’t want you to safely do business with anyone but Apple, so much so that they’re abusing trademark <em>law</em> to artificially inject risk if you try to buy from their competitors.
That’s why they’re siccing militarized police on its rivals: not to protect the consumer from fakes, but simply because it benefits them and Apple can get away with it.
It’s simple thuggery. </p>
<p>These items aren’t being seized because of a trademark violation, they’re being seized <em>despite</em> trademark law. Apple just doesn’t want them sold, and the DHS has put Apple nebulously “in charge” of the entire mobile phone market.
Apparently, between their wealth and “IP”, Apple just get to govern now.</p>
<!-- "Didn't want us to take your goods? Should have shut up and bought what we sold you. Let this be a lesson: don't step out of line again." -->
<!-- Apple was being fairly competed with. They’re being told they have to participate in a marketplace instead of just taking what they want from who they want.
Their response is “no, and you need to be thrown in prison.” -->
<!--
the only thing Apple gets to be territorial about is the .apple top level domain it was apparently granted for some reason, which is actually basically land, unlike copyright or patent or trademarks
https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/tld/
which they apparently only use themselves, so it's exactly the same as the apple.com domain name? but that's the kind of normal petty thing anyone can buy, and they need to feel like the emperor of a serfdom -->
<aside class="cb update">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Note: This was originally published 2023-10-03; the publication date has been updated to reflect its position in the series.</p>
</aside>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="container related-reading">
<ul>
<li><a href="https://repair.eu/news/apple-uses-trademark-law-to-strengthen-its-monopoly-on-repair/">Van der Velden Maja, “Apple uses trademark law to strengthen its monopoly on repair”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/technology/apple-trademarks.html">Ryan Mac and Kellen Browning, “Apps and Oranges: Behind Apple’s ‘Bullying’ on Trademarks”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-watch-patents-5b52cda0">Aaron Tilley, “When Apple Comes Calling, ‘It’s the Kiss of Death’”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://pluralistic.net/2021/03/22/gandersauce/">Cory Doctorow, “Patent troll IP is more powerful than Apple’s“</a>
<!-- - <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay">Cory Doctorow, "Adversarial Interoperability: Reviving an Elegant Weapon From a More Civilized Age to Slay Today's Monopolies"</a> --></li>
</ul>
</div>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:cbp-pub">
<p>As described by the CBP themselves in a (currently linked-to) publication titled <a href="https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2020-Feb/ICP-IPR-Enforcement-2012-Final.pdf">What Every Member of the Trade Community Should Know About: CBP Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights</a>, but upon closer inspection proclaims its title to be… “Insert Title Here”, thanks to the work of law enforcement’s best and brightest:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This publication, prepared by the National Commodity Specialist Division of Regulations and Rulings is entitled “*Insert Title Here*”. It provides guidance regarding the classification of these items.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>No, really. I know that sounds like ham-fisted writing from a novice political satirist trying to portray the police as utterly incompetent and thoroughly unworthy of respect, but they portray themselves that way in real life too. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:cbp-pub" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:judge-and-jury">
<p>CBP agents are authorized (or at least consider themselves authorized) to make standing, legal judgements about copyright violations on-the-spot, the kind that would normally have to go through a court with due process:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2020-Feb/ICP-IPR-Enforcement-2012-Final.pdf">CBP Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights</a>
As an administrative agency with law enforcement powers, CBP has the powers of search, seizure, and arrest, and the legal authority to make substantive determinations
regarding infringement of trademarks and copyrights, pursuant to the Tariff Act of 1930,
the Lanham Act of 1946, the Copyright Act of 1976, and the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act of 1998</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:judge-and-jury" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>You've Never Seen Copyright2023-10-25T00:00:00-05:002023-11-16T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2023-10-25:/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/<p>Hear me out: copyright is good. </p>
<p>When it comes to copyright, it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees. That’s why I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of copyright doctrine as a whole, and the context in which our modern experience of copyright sits.</p>
<p>The current state of copyright law is a quagmire, due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don’t understand the topic and who even actively disagree with each other.
That convolution is exactly why I don’t want to get lost in those twists and turns for this, and instead want to start with the base principles we’ve lost along the way.</p>
<!-- The current state of copyright *law* is a quagmire, due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don't understand the topic and who even actively disagree with each other.
So when it comes to understanding the concept of copyright as a whole, it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees.
That's why I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of copyright doctrine as a whole, and the context in which our modern experience of copyright sits.
-->
<!-- The current state of copyright *law* is such a quagmire -- due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don't understand the topic and even actively disagree with each other -- that it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees. So I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of the whole. -->
<!-- But, if you step back and look at the high-level happenings, it's much easier to make out the shape of things. -->
<!-- International copyright policy is a dense, convoluted beast, which is exactly why I *don't* want to get lost in those twists and turns for this. -->
<p>You don’t need to understand the layers to see the problem. In fact, intellectual property is a system whose convolutions <em>hide</em> the obviousness of the problem.
Complexity is good only when complexity is needed to ensure the correctness of the outcome. But here, far from being necessary to keep things working right, <strong>the complexity hides that the outcome is wrong.</strong> </p>
<p>But that outcome, our current regime that we know as copyright policy, is <em>so wrong</em> — not only objectively bad, but wrong even according to its own definition — that at this point it takes significant work just to get back to the idea that</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="copyright-is-supposed-to-be-good">Copyright is supposed to be good<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-is-supposed-to-be-good" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>This is my controversial stance, and the premise of my series: copyright (as properly defined) is a cohesive system, and, when executed properly, is actually good for everyone.
And I’m not “one true Scotsman”ing this either; copyright isn’t just an arbitrary legal concept, it’s a system that arises naturally from a set of solid base principles.</p>
<p>The first step in my “understanding the forest for the trees” project is separating the big, nebulous, polluted idea of “copyright” out into the parts people can mostly agree on and the parts that are just evil and bad.
Fortunately, the “good” and “bad” groups line up really well with “original intent” compared to “junk that was added later”.
Generally speaking, it’s not useful to just make a distinction and act like doing so is the whole job done, unless you just care about smarmy pedantic internet points. But I’m not doing this to be pedantic, I’m making the distinction between the core idea and the junk that’s corrupted it because it turns out to be <em>really important</em>.</p>
<p>What we’re subjected to today in the name of copyright does not come from the real principles of copyright. Compared to the current state of US intellectual property law, the “real copyright” I’m talking about is like grass so utterly smothered by concrete that not only do no strands poke through, everyone involved has forgotten it was ever there.</p>
<!-- It's a repulsive corruption of the image it's made to be. -->
<p>The situation is so bad that even though I think copyright should be a good thing, I think our current bastardization of it may be worse than nothing at all, to the point where we’d be better off with the problems real copyright is meant to solve than with all the new, worse problems it’s inflicted on us.</p>
<p><img alt="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp92AGvlWl0/" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/werewolf.jpg"/></p>
<p>But because what we’re enduring now is a corruption of another thing and not its own original evil, we’re not limited to measuring it by the harm it inflicts: we can also measure it by its deviation from what we know it should be.</p>
<p>So what’s the good version? This true, unadulterated form of creative rights?</p>
</section><p>Hear me out: copyright is good. </p>
<p>When it comes to copyright, it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees. That’s why I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of copyright doctrine as a whole, and the context in which our modern experience of copyright sits.</p>
<p>The current state of copyright law is a quagmire, due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don’t understand the topic and who even actively disagree with each other.
That convolution is exactly why I don’t want to get lost in those twists and turns for this, and instead want to start with the base principles we’ve lost along the way.</p>
<!-- The current state of copyright *law* is a quagmire, due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don't understand the topic and who even actively disagree with each other.
So when it comes to understanding the concept of copyright as a whole, it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees.
That's why I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of copyright doctrine as a whole, and the context in which our modern experience of copyright sits.
-->
<!-- The current state of copyright *law* is such a quagmire -- due not just to laws but also international treaty agreements and rulings from judges who don't understand the topic and even actively disagree with each other -- that it can be very easy to lose the forest for the trees. So I want to start this series with a bit of a reset, and establish a baseline understanding of the whole. -->
<!-- But, if you step back and look at the high-level happenings, it's much easier to make out the shape of things. -->
<!-- International copyright policy is a dense, convoluted beast, which is exactly why I *don't* want to get lost in those twists and turns for this. -->
<p>You don’t need to understand the layers to see the problem. In fact, intellectual property is a system whose convolutions <em>hide</em> the obviousness of the problem.
Complexity is good only when complexity is needed to ensure the correctness of the outcome. But here, far from being necessary to keep things working right, <strong>the complexity hides that the outcome is wrong.</strong> </p>
<p>But that outcome, our current regime that we know as copyright policy, is <em>so wrong</em> — not only objectively bad, but wrong even according to its own definition — that at this point it takes significant work just to get back to the idea that</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="copyright-is-supposed-to-be-good">Copyright is supposed to be good<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright-is-supposed-to-be-good" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>This is my controversial stance, and the premise of my series: copyright (as properly defined) is a cohesive system, and, when executed properly, is actually good for everyone.
And I’m not “one true Scotsman”ing this either; copyright isn’t just an arbitrary legal concept, it’s a system that arises naturally from a set of solid base principles.</p>
<p>The first step in my “understanding the forest for the trees” project is separating the big, nebulous, polluted idea of “copyright” out into the parts people can mostly agree on and the parts that are just evil and bad.
Fortunately, the “good” and “bad” groups line up really well with “original intent” compared to “junk that was added later”.
Generally speaking, it’s not useful to just make a distinction and act like doing so is the whole job done, unless you just care about smarmy pedantic internet points. But I’m not doing this to be pedantic, I’m making the distinction between the core idea and the junk that’s corrupted it because it turns out to be <em>really important</em>.</p>
<p>What we’re subjected to today in the name of copyright does not come from the real principles of copyright. Compared to the current state of US intellectual property law, the “real copyright” I’m talking about is like grass so utterly smothered by concrete that not only do no strands poke through, everyone involved has forgotten it was ever there.</p>
<!-- It's a repulsive corruption of the image it's made to be. -->
<p>The situation is so bad that even though I think copyright should be a good thing, I think our current bastardization of it may be worse than nothing at all, to the point where we’d be better off with the problems real copyright is meant to solve than with all the new, worse problems it’s inflicted on us.</p>
<p><img alt="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp92AGvlWl0/" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/werewolf.jpg"></p>
<p>But because what we’re enduring now is a corruption of another thing and not its own original evil, we’re not limited to measuring it by the harm it inflicts: we can also measure it by its deviation from what we know it should be.</p>
<p>So what’s the good version? This true, unadulterated form of creative rights?</p>
<p><strong>From now on, in this series, when I talk about concepts like Copyright, I’m referring to what those concepts actually mean, not necessarily what all abuses current law allows.</strong></p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-bargain">The Bargain<a class="headerlink" href="#the-bargain" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- Copyright was originally invented for books. More specifically, it was invented as a reaction to the invention of the printing press, which suddenly allowed books to be printed at (relatively) little cost. Anyone with a printing press could churn out new copies of someone else's book and sell them without giving the author a dime.
Sure, okay. If you're trying to sell a thing, but someone else is either selling identical copies or outright giving it away, that sucks. You might decide it's not even viable to keep writing, and then everyone loses out, because there's less writing in the world. Hence, copyright: the right to copy. -->
<!-- They might have had one reason: goodwill. People will respect you a lot if you come out and say directly that fan work is okay. But not enough people for it to be worth it to a corporate monolith, because most people don't really care. We're kind of accustomed to this state of affairs. -->
<!-- Law inspires our sense of morality; we easily confuse what is legal with what is right. -->
<!-- There are entire miniature economies built upon artists selling their fan work.
This is exactly what copyright is supposed to accomplish! It's meant to encourage creation, not just for the sake of the creator, but for the sake of everyone else. For the sake of culture. -->
<!-- First, let's talk about the coherent doctrine of creative rights and how copyright *should* work: -->
<p>The fundamental purpose of creative rights is to reward creative (or, for patents, inventive) work by giving the creator a limited monopoly over the production, distribution, and first sale of their creation for a period before it falls back into the public domain. </p>
<!-- Summary -->
<p>There are three basic categories of creative rights (or, historically, “creative monopolies”): Copyright, patents, and trademarks. </p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Copyright</strong> gives the creator limited exclusivity to reproduce and distribute “<a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/102#:~:text=original%20works%20of%20authorship%20fixed%20in%20any%20tangible%20medium%20of%20expression">original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression</a>.” In other words, it protects specific creative works after they’ve been made. It explicitly <em>does not</em> protect abstract ideas, concepts, or technology. Those protections are reserved for…</li>
<li><strong>Patents</strong> give the inventor limited exclusivity to profit from newly invented (man-made) technology in exchange for public disclosure of the information. But never over pre-existing methodologies (“prior art”) or abstract concepts, only new, real inventions.</li>
<li><strong>Trademarks</strong> are the odd one out because while they do clearly benefit the trademark holders, their purpose is to be consumer protection measure to prevent impersonation and counterfeiting, not a subsidy to the firm that holds the mark. </li>
</ul>
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<section class="section3">
<h3 id="copyright">Copyright<a class="headerlink" href="#copyright" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Copyright — the right to make copies — grants a limited, exclusive monopoly right over the reproduction and distribution of a specific creative work. Copyright specifically governs <em>copies</em>, or derivatives based on the original work designed to substitute for it entirely, where the harm done is a “lost sale.”
Fundamentally, <strong>copyright is to incentivize creation of new, creatively expressive work</strong>.</p>
<p>Historically, copyright was a reaction against <em>copying</em>: responding to the printing press in particular, and the increasing ease of copying and distribution in general.
It was created so that the development of technology that enables better, faster, faithful copying and distribution of ideas and information doesn’t disincentivize new creative work.
Copying a new creative work — like a book, comic, game, or movie — and distributing unauthorized copies is a copyright violation.</p>
<p>Crucially, <strong>copyright is not a property right</strong>, or even equivalent to one. The market exclusivity given to authors is a privilege <em>granted</em> by the federal government, and by definition can exist for a strictly limited span of time.<sup id="fnref:limited-times"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:limited-times">1</a></sup> (Let’s say, as a theoretical maximum, the entire lifetime of the creator.)
Though it can be “sold” (or, usually, automatically assigned to a corporation) by contract, that’s the only analogue; it’s not intangible bonus property artists own in addition to the work they make.</p>
<p>Having a copyright isn’t the “idea” equivalent of land ownership. Having a copyright doesn’t mean there’s an idea you’ve somehow reserved unlimited, exclusive rights over in perpetuity because you’re the rightful god over it and it’s “yours”.
Copyright is for specific, produced works — “expressions”, as a noun —, not aesthetic tastes.
It doesn’t carve out a patch of culture for you to lord over and charge other creators rent on, it’s a way of giving otherwise vulnerable creators reciprocity.
Copyright is <em>so</em> specifically limited to individual works that works where the “expression” and “idea” can’t be separated are ineligible for copyright altogether<sup id="fnref:merger"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:merger">2</a></sup>: even getting close to “owning an idea” corrupts the entire thing.
There’s no “area” to own to allow an “owner” to charge rent on <em>future</em> work that falls in that space, only temporary exclusivity over individual works.
Copyright <em>isn’t</em> property.</p>
<p>The “public domain”, then, is just the collection of all creative works that <em>aren’t</em> actively under copyright, whether due to not being granted copyright at the time of creation, the limited monopoly period having expired, or the copyright on the work being explicitly waived by the author. (This was the default even on new works until 1989, when US law changed to grant artists copyright automatically, without having to individually file works with the copyright office.)</p>
<p>Even within copyright’s highly limited monopoly, there is still a wide range of activities that would otherwise be considered “unauthorized copying” that are allowed anyway. This is the “Fair Use” doctrine. Fair Use protects specific acts that involve copying a protected work, like commentary, criticism, (some) parody, and news reporting. Even though they technically involve copying copyrighted material, you don’t need authorization from the copyright holder for these purposes. </p>
<aside class="cb update">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<h4 id="a-note-on-derivative-work">A note on Derivative Work<a class="headerlink" href="#a-note-on-derivative-work" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>Copyright’s doctrine of “derivative work” is generally very squirrely, because it’s a “you know it when you see it” question handed over to people who are categorically uninterested in getting the answer right. Copy extending to “derivative” work is for real derivatives. For instance, the right to make a screenplay of a book, or an audiobook recording, or a translation, or another type of <em>transposition</em>. </p>
<p>But the exclusive right to produce a <em>depiction</em> or other new-but-related work doesn’t go to the owner of the tools or the subject matter. A painting that includes trademarked subject matter is not automatically the property of the rights holder. The copyright for a photo I take in my library isn’t kept by the camera company, nor is it split between the authors and publishers of all the books on my shelf. The owner of the formula for a paint has no claim to ownership over all the work made with their product as a component. And, inversely, ownership over The Persistence of Memory doesn’t go to some clock company! That’s just a subject of the work!</p>
<!-- <img alt="The Persistence of Memory" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/10/25/youve-never-seen-copyright/memory.jpg">
*The Persistence of Memory* -->
<p>So derivative work has become a massive headache. Because copyright term is supposed to be short, this shouldn’t be a make-or-break issue in the first place. Culture isn’t <em>supposed</em> to be locked indefinitely unless you get permission.
But because we’ve over-extended the monopoly so much, this play-it-by-feel edge case has suddenly become very important, and that just doesn’t work at scale.</p>
</aside>
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<p>Because copyright’s purpose is to incentivize the creation of new work, the function of copyright is not just restrictive, but also expressly permissive.
In “the exclusive right to make copies”, the “exclusive” part restricts others from doing so, but the “right to make copies” is a positive right that guarantees the copyright rightsholder — technology and circumstance permitting — to reproduce, distribute, perform, and otherwise publish their works.
Therefore, in addition to violations of exclusivity, illegitimate attacks on authors’ ability to publish their own work are also violations of copyright.</p>
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<!-- The author of a work may have specific wishes about how they want the work handled. But when it comes to who is *legally* allowed to create new work, respecting previous authors or those author's *wishes* is not a factor.
"Past authors" are not a special caste whose wishes are more important than other people's right to create.
Except in cases of substitutionary **copies** of existing work, that right to create new art is not limited by copyright. Copyright protects authors' rights to reproduce and distribute their specific created works, only. -->
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</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="patents">Patents<a class="headerlink" href="#patents" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Patents are similar, but are designed to balance the scientific ethos of publishing reproducible work that can be researched and built upon with the economic necessity of inventors needing to be able to make money off their work.
In theory, without patents, the natural incentive would be to keep every discovery as a trade secret, and valuable work would end up unpublished. Likewise, spending time on inventing work that couldn’t be kept secret would be unfeasible as a career. </p>
<p>Patents fix this incentive problem by offering inventors a limited period of exclusivity to profit off their invention in exchange for filing a patent.
Vitally, “filing a patent” requires publicising the entire invention, including not only a description of the new technology, but also a full and detailed specification such that anyone familiar with the field can reproduce and recreate the patented technology using only the information contained in the patent.<sup id="fnref:enablement"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:enablement">3</a></sup>
Using a patented design — like a new engine design, drug, or chemical compound — commercially while that design is under patent without appropriately licensing it from the owner is a patent violation.</p>
<p>Under this patent system people can be actively researching and developing new technologies based on existing inventions, even during the period of exclusivity, but they can’t start selling them commercially until the monopoly period ends, unless they license the right from the patent holder. </p>
<p>Of course, it would be in the interest of the self-interested patent holder to secure rights <em>without</em> disclosing sufficient useful information, thereby creating legal leverage for themselves while depriving competitors of information. Such patents would actively pervert the system to the extreme detriment of society, so this cannot be allowed.
Patents should only be granted for “those inventions which would not be disclosed or devised but for the inducement of a patent<sup id="fnref:inducement"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:inducement">4</a></sup>”: in other words, patents should be limited as much as possible, and only given <strong>in exchange for the disclosure of legitimately valuable information.</strong> If it doesn’t cost them valuable information (as to a trade secret) to publish, it’s not a candidate for a patent.</p>
<p>Patents have an extremely limited scope for the kinds of ideas eligible for protection. Patents only protect specific inventive works, and those works must be a new or improved “machine, manufacture, or composition of matter”. “Truths” (like laws of nature), incidental improvements<sup id="fnref:improvements"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:improvements">5</a></sup>, and abstract ideas (like mental processes<sup id="fnref:mental-processes"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:mental-processes">7</a></sup>, algorithms, systems for organizing human activity<sup id="fnref:human-activity"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:human-activity">6</a></sup>, and game rules<sup id="fnref:game-rules"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:game-rules">8</a></sup>) are not patentable.</p>
<p>However, the Doctrine of Equivalents means that patents also protect against variations (or equivalents) of a patented invention or its claims, so if someone creates a slightly modified version of a patented invention it can be deemed an infringement as equivalent. This means patents, unlike copyright, get a conceptual “radius” they cover that protects not only the <em>exact</em> claims made in the patent, but also similar devices. </p>
<p>But patents are not a tool that allows you to describe an outcome you would like someone else to design and invent a machine to accomplish so you can own it when they do.
They’re not a way to stake a claim on land you haven’t discovered yet.
They’re also not a tool to lock customers into your system by making it illegal for other people to make parts that fit your machine.
They’re a temporary grant for the exclusive right to profit from something valuable you’ve already created, in exchange for your disclosure of valuable information.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="trademarks">Trademarks<a class="headerlink" href="#trademarks" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Trademarks — a “mark”, or name, used for trade — aren’t all that interesting here, or at least shouldn’t be.
Trademarks are exclusively for preventing others from trying to deceive the public by misusing your name.
A crypto spambot on Twitter using the “X” logo as its profile picture to mislead you into thinking it’s representing official Twitter activity is a trademark violation.</p>
<p>The thing a registered trademark “grants” the holder is the ability to police their own trademarks. Companies are “deputized” by the government to enforce the trademarks they hold. In turn, those companies become the party responsible for doing it, rather than the government. </p>
<p>But trademarks can only be “enforced” in specific circumstances against specifically deceptive behaviour; having a trademark doesn’t give you a right to control how (or whether) people are allowed to reference you by name.
Even uses of a trademark by unauthorized parties that directly harm the owner don’t violate trademark rights unless the misuse harms <em>customers</em>.
Trademarks protect the customer. </p>
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<p>This is a widely misunderstood point, because of how much value trademarks provide to the companies that hold them.
But, fundamentally, trademarks are <em>not</em> a subsidy to their holders: although they provide <em>value</em>, this is a side effect, not the purpose of the system.
Transferring extra value to trademark holders isn’t the purpose or the legal basis; trademark authority doesn’t even come from Article 1, Section 8, it’s an extension of the regulation of commerce.</p>
<p>The purpose of the trademark system — and the only thing it has the authority to do — is protect the consumer from being harmed by impersonation and misrepresentation of a brand.
Companies are free to profit from that, but if ever the primary purpose (protection) comes into conflict with the side-effect (profit), the primary purpose of trademarks, consumer protection, must always take priority over any incidental profit they provide business.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="property-rights">Property Rights?<a class="headerlink" href="#property-rights" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- End summary, defend -->
<p>These creative rights often get bundled up under the term “intellectual property”. There are two problems with that label: “intellectual” and “property”.
You probably see the problem with “property” already: it’s a terrible word to describe the category of state-granted monopoly. It (intentionally) obfuscates the contractual principle and tries to replace the core concept of a negotiated privilege with one of an absolute, natural property right, which it’s not.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html">Richard Stallman, <em>Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage</em></a>
The term [“intellectual property”] carries a bias that is not hard to see: it suggests thinking about copyright, patents and trademarks by analogy with property rights for physical objects.
(This analogy is at odds with the legal philosophies of copyright law, of patent law, and of trademark law, but only specialists know that.)
These laws are in fact not much like physical property law, but use of this term leads legislators to change them to be more so. Since that is the change desired by the companies that exercise copyright, patent and trademark powers, the bias introduced by the term “intellectual property” suits them.</p>
</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/">Cory Doctorow, <em>IP</em>:</a>
If you think you don’t have enough copyright, it’s hard to go to Congress or Parliament and demand an expansion of your regulatory monopoly – far more pleasant is demanding help in defending your “property.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Creative rights aren’t like mineral rights. They’re not a property right over all future produce of some tract of land you own.
Not only is that metaphor not at all analogous to how actual creation works, it’s fundamentally opposed to the core principles <em>of</em> copyright.
Corporations don’t grant creators permission to play in a box they own out of the kindness of their hearts, because they don’t own any such box. As a specific work-around for a specific problem of capitalism, they’re given a tiny, tiny right-of-way that they keep for only a short time.</p>
<!-- ::: aside furthermore -->
<p>You do get to have that ultimate, incontestable property right over your ideas if you really want it, though: you just can’t communicate them. But when you publish your art, or sell it, or post it, you’ve necessarily lost some control of the idea and your exclusive right to know and control it, because it’s in other people’s heads now too. A loss of control is an intrinsic property of what it means to “publish” work.</p>
<p>After publishing one can say “all rights reserved” all they want, but one can only reserve the rights one has already, and “unlimited power” was never a right for the author to keep. This is completely normal: you can’t sell a thing without losing some of your power over it! But you’re not at the mercy of the wolves, you still get a fair deal — in the form of a few select privileges — thanks to copyright.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="that-wasnt-the-argument-those-were-just-the-ground-rules">That wasn’t the argument, those were just the ground rules<a class="headerlink" href="#that-wasnt-the-argument-those-were-just-the-ground-rules" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>To be clear, none of this is pie-in-the-sky cyber-hippie “information <em>wants</em> to be free, maaaaaaaan”ing, or even me evangelizing a particular political theory I subscribe to. All these fundamental purposes I’ve described so far are definitively baked into the things’… definitions:</p>
<!-- General -->
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Constitution of the United States, Article 1, Section 8:</em>
The Congress shall have Power …
…
<strong>To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by</strong> securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;</p>
</blockquote>
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<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Article 1, Section 8 is particularly noteworthy for having “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” as a restrictive clause on the power, limiting it to a specific intent. Congress only has power to enact copyright and patent laws that serve this specific purpose! Federal copyright law that serves general economic interests but <em>doesn’t</em> promote the progress of the arts, e.g. maintaining a healthy public domain, is actually unconstitutional.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong class="cite">Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), Opinion of the Court</strong>
The clause is both a grant of power and a limitation.
This qualified authority, unlike the power often exercised in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by the English Crown, is limited
to the promotion of advances in the “useful arts.”
… The Congress in the exercise of the patent power may not overreach the restraints imposed by the stated constitutional purpose. Nor may it enlarge the patent monopoly without regard to the innovation, advancement or social benefit gained thereby. </p>
</blockquote>
</aside>
<p>With regard to copyright:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">17 U.S. Code § 102</em>
(a) Copyright protection subsists, in accordance with this title, in original works of authorship fixed in any tangible medium of expression…<br>
…<br>
(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.</p>
</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">17 U.S. Code § 107</em>
Notwithstanding the provisions of [copyright], the fair use of a copyrighted work… for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Pierre N. Leval in Authors Guild v. Google, Inc decision</em>
The ultimate goal of copyright is to expand public knowledge and understanding, which copyright seeks to achieve by giving potential creators exclusive control over copying of their works, thus giving them a financial incentive to create informative, intellectually enriching works for public consumption … Thus, while authors are undoubtedly important intended beneficiaries of copyright, <strong>the ultimate, primary intended beneficiary is the public</strong>, whose access to knowledge copyright seeks to advance by providing rewards for authorship.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And with regard to patents:</p>
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<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">35 U.S.C. 112</em>
(a) IN GENERAL. — The specification shall contain a written description of the invention, and of the manner and process of making and using it, in such full, clear, concise, and exact terms as to enable any person skilled in the art to which it pertains, or with which it is most nearly connected, <strong>to make and use the same</strong>, and shall set forth the best mode contemplated by the inventor or joint inventor of carrying out the invention.</p>
</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Thomas Jefferson, Writings</em>
It has been pretended by some, (and in England especially,) that inventors have a natural and exclusive right to their inventions, and not merely for their own lives, but inheritable to their heirs.<br>
…<br>
Stable ownership … is given late in the progress of society.
It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property.
If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it.<br>
…<br>
<strong>Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.</strong> Society may give an exclusive right to the profits arising from them, as an encouragement to men to pursue ideas which may produce utility, but this may or may not be done, according to the will and convenience of the society, without claim or complaint from any body</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 US 1 - Supreme Court 1966</em>
The patent monopoly was not designed to secure to the inventor his natural right in his discoveries. Rather, it was a reward, <strong>an inducement, to bring forth new knowledge.</strong> The grant of an exclusive right to an invention was the creation of society—at odds with the inherent free nature of disclosed ideas—and was not to be freely given. Only inventions and discoveries which furthered human knowledge, and were new and useful, justified the special inducement of a limited private monopoly.<br>
…<br>
…the underlying policy of the patent system that “the things which are worth to the public the embarrassment of an exclusive patent,” as Jefferson put it, must outweigh the restrictive effect of the limited patent monopoly. The inherent problem was to develop some means of weeding out <strong>those inventions which would not be disclosed or devised but for the inducement of a patent.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
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<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Justice Thomas in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc decision</em>
Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.<br>
…<br>
We have “long held that this provision contains an important implicit exception[:] Laws of nature, natural phenomena, and abstract ideas are not patentable.” …
Rather, “‘they are the basic tools of scientific and technological work’” that lie beyond the domain of patent protection. …
As the Court has explained, without this exception, there would be considerable danger that the grant of patents would “tie up” the use of such tools and thereby “inhibit future innovation premised upon them.” …
This would be at odds with the very point of patents, which exist to promote creation. …
(Products of nature are not created, and “‘manifestations … of nature [are] free to all men and reserved exclusively to none’”).</p>
</blockquote>
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<!-- > **13-298 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int'l**{: .cite}
> ...merely requiring generic computer
> implementation fails to transform that abstract idea into a
> patent-eligible invention.
> ...simply implementing a mathematical principle on a physical machine, namely a computer, \[i\]s not a patentable application of that principle. -->
<p>Everything so far is just the foundational, essential, if-you-ever-lose-sight-of-this-you-can-fuck-right-off-into-the-sun creative rights bedrock. It is the thing itself. If any of this sounds <em>subversive</em> to you —as it likely does!), that’s not because I’ve done anything to misrepresent these concepts, it’s because you’re the victim of widespread propaganda. </p>
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</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="coherence">Coherence<a class="headerlink" href="#coherence" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Note that copyright is <em>not</em> a system in turmoil: it is a coherent, non-contradictory doctrine. Everything logically follows from the ultimate goal to promote the useful arts and sciences.</p>
<p>The creation of new creative works via the consumption of old is a necessary part of a healthy culture, and people need to be paid for their work, so provisions are made to ensure artists have a window to profit before culture — not just contract-bound art-serfs — can truly start using it.
Science must be promoted, and people need to be paid for their work, so provisions are made to ensure inventors can profit even while others can immediately start developing further technologies from that research.</p>
<!-- "can start using it" needs to not include uses-under-copyright. you can "use" things you license. -->
<p>The creative rights system — as I’ve described it here, not as it exists in practice — is a functioning machine. There is <em>not</em> a grinding of gears, no piece of implementation at odds with any other, or the system as a whole. Everything follows and everything fits.</p>
<p>Thus, if ever something labelled “copyright” finds itself directly at odds with that goal, it’s because it’s been twisted and pitted against itself by some outside force. That’s <em>not</em> a proper part of the doctrine, it’s tendril of some other agenda, falsely labelled as copyright, and must<sup id="fnref:machine-policing"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:machine-policing">9</a></sup> be discarded as corrupt. </p>
<p>If this sounds like a whole lot of build up just for me to make a distinction without a difference, don’t worry! I’m not just making the distinction and treating it like that’s the job done. More importantly, you don’t need to personally need a religious belief in the original intent of the founders for this to matter. But there is a distinction, and even if it’s not important to you, it’s very important to see it here, early, because it’s going to matter later.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="exhaustion-of-rights">Exhaustion of Rights<a class="headerlink" href="#exhaustion-of-rights" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Neither copyright nor patents nor anything else give the original authors any authority over the <em>individual instances</em> after they sell them.
This is called the <strong>exhaustion of rights</strong>, or the “first sale doctrine”: after an item is first sold, the owner’s claim <em>on that particular item</em> is exhausted.<sup id="fnref:first-sale"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:first-sale">10</a></sup>
You can always modify or resell your own property, even if it includes copyrighted material or uses a patented design.
Even if you wouldn’t have the right to create <em>new</em> copies, you still own the items themselves, and the authors have already been fully-compensated, according to their own terms, at the time of sale. </p>
<p>The exhaustion of rights is not an exception to copyright, it is a foundational part of it.
Copyright, very specifically, does <em>not</em> create a perpetual, feudalistic monopoly. Copyright’s monopoly grants are discrete and limited, and the “first sale” is one of many extents that define the shape of the right.
As the extent of the monopoly right granted to copyright holders, it defines the right itself. The limited monopoly cannot exist at all without extents. </p>
<p>Monopolists predictably argue that they’re entitled to an unlimited, unbounded monopoly by default, and the <em>consumers</em> only have the rights explicitly granted to them in law.
This argument — that “first sale rights” need to be enumerated<sup id="fnref:redigi"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:redigi">11</a></sup> — gets it exactly backwards. Copyright does <em>not</em> confer an unlimited, unbounded monopoly right; the <em>monopoly</em> rights are the artificial privileges that are specifically defined and enumerated in law in exchange for specific concessions.
Aside from these special carve-outs, the actual owners of the property — the people who bought the products — own everything else, every imaginable right not explicitly reserved from them. </p>
<p>First sale was eventually <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/109">formalized in US law</a> as a point of clarity, but the rights of the owners already existed without this provision.
The law — very obviously — does <em>not</em> define the <em>only</em> rights property owners own over their property.
That exclusive/inclusive mixup is the same misunderstanding people frequently have about the bill of rights. Both documents give clarifying reference points in a wide field of existing rights, and neither <em>define</em> discrete, enumerated rights.
That dynamic of discrete, specific powers assigned by the government is only seen in the monopoly rights given to copyright <em>holders</em>, and never the rights of consumers.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-cycle">The Cycle<a class="headerlink" href="#the-cycle" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>As you can see, none of this exists to be — <a href="https://eev.ee/blog/2015/10/23/copyright-is-broken/#:~:text=This%20is%20why,make%20more%C2%A0things.">as Eevee so insightfully put it</a> — “a magical money fountain that makes you rich forever because you had an idea once”.
The purpose of copyright is not to guarantee profit, it’s to enable the possibility of it existing at all. The goal isn’t to provide a guaranteed income for “artists” (<a href="https://www.harvard.com/book/chokepoint_capitalism/">read: corporations</a>) or enshrine copyright-holders as the dominant social caste.
No, it’s a social, contractual arrangement that balances the health of culture and the sciences with the practical needs of individuals to be able to create valuable work and expect due compensation for their labor. </p>
<!-- Natural -->
<p>And this is a mutually-beneficial arrangement, because it’s the force that keeps the public domain — or society, the useful arts, the intellectual commons, whatever you want to call it — healthy and sustainable. Given that art and creativity is a good thing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc">everything is a remix</a> (to various extents) and people can’t create in a vacuum, but we live in a system where people need to be able to make money off their work, the system of copyright-as-a-buffer arises as the natural solution. </p>
<!-- The cycle -->
<p>Under a functional copyright doctrine, creators pull material and inspiration from a thriving public domain, use it to create a new artistic expression or a new scientific development, and release it themselves.
But, as a special treat, because we as a society have deemed artistic expression and scientific development to be important and valuable to society as a whole, instead of their work going directly back into the public domain (as it would without such organization), we reward them with a <strong>buffer period</strong> where the natural flow of the commons is temporarily suspended, and the creator has exclusive rights over the new work for a short period. </p>
<!-- TODO: short period -->
<p>But the full “social benefit” of the creation doesn’t kick in until the work becomes part of the public domain so the cycle can continue. Copyright’s purpose is that social benefit, though the way it incentivizes people to ensure the social benefit is by briefly delaying it. </p>
<!-- Creators are consumers and vice versa -->
<p>This benefits not only society as a whole, but also both the creators and the consumers of work, because the strict delineation between the “creator” and “consumer” classes is a fiction.
Any given party — a person or a corporation — is expected to consume <em>and</em> produce<sup id="fnref:non-contributing"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:non-contributing">12</a></sup>. Creator and consumer are just roles. For example, Disney creates works by taking short stories and fables and classical music, combining and re-writing and animating them to create new works which then make Disney money, for a short span, before people can start making their own adaptations of <em>those</em> stories. </p>
<p>No one can be expected to just produce their own monolith of IP, keep it to themselves forever, consume only from themselves and keep selling recycled versions of their own material forever. That is completely antithetical to the idea of copyright itself, which itself depends on the idea of a thriving commons in order to accomplish its goal of ensuring the <em>sustainability</em> of the commons. (It is, however, exactly what we have now, with monolithic media empires like Disney whose basic operating strategy is to continue to recycle material it “owns” while “owning” a big enough stable of media rights that it doesn’t need the commons to be healthy, because it can recycle its <em>own</em> products.)</p>
<!-- The purpose is the health of the commons -->
<p>Real copyright, then, exists to ensure the health and sustainability of the commons, and “incentivizing creativity” with carefully limited monopoly is how copyright does this.
Because consumption is non-rivalrous and creation of new art contributes to the commons, there are only two threats to the media commons. The first is creating too <em>high</em> a barrier to entry by making new creative works prohibitively expensive to produce: by, for instance, not giving artists <em>any</em> exclusivity, so their work is immediately copied and they cannot make a living at all. The second is letting people use the commons to create new works that <em>don’t</em> quickly return to the public domain, — i.e. enclosure, “the tragedy of the commons” — which is another way of creating a high barrier to entry by <strong>preventing other people from creating new works</strong>.
These are the two factors that are <em>balanced</em> to ensure the health of the system. </p>
<p>All that to arrive at a very, very basic conclusion: <strong>Participating in copyright is a contractual arrangement that requires respecting others’ rights.</strong>
Copyright isn’t a license to print money, it’s the rules for participating in the system and ensuring a clean game.
Everyone needs to be protected by both sides of this at all times. </p>
<!-- But this is a far cry of what we know as Intellectual Property today, as you're probably already very aware of. -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-other-thing-intellectual-property">The Other Thing: Intellectual Property<a class="headerlink" href="#the-other-thing-intellectual-property" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>I said earlier that there are two problems with the phrase “intellectual property”: “intellectual” and “property”. We’ve hit the other problem: “intellectual” spans a <em>vast</em> conceptual space, far greater than the finite set of real creative rights. While actual creative rights are only over specific, discrete scenarios, the doctrine implied by the phrase “intellectual property” makes it that — as a general principle — ideas are meant to be owned, which is exactly backwards.</p>
<p>Copyright is a specific, limited, discrete right. As are patents. “Intellectual property” isn’t content with those: it wants to swallow the whole conceptual possibility space of ideas. </p>
<p>The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) colloquially defines IP as such:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.wipo.int/about-ip/en/">WIPO, “What is Intellectual Property?”</a>
Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions; literary and artistic works; designs; and symbols, names and images used in commerce.</p>
<p>IP is protected in law by, for example, patents, copyright and trademarks, which enable people to earn recognition or financial benefit from what they invent or create. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I couldn’t have pointed out the problem any better myself. The term “Intellectual Property” refers to <em>all</em> “creations of the mind… used in commerce”, which is a set that contains far more than “owners” have a right to control. With this definition, actual discrete legal rights are an afterthought: a set of post-hoc tools to be used to enforce a principle of automatic general supremacy.
The IP grouping demands all ideas that can be used to make money — not just the specific cases protected by copyright — be treated as property. “Violations” of that “property right” can then be treated as criminal offences, simply because they challenge some corporation’s business model. </p>
<p>This over-grouping in the phrase “intellectual property” is a power grab emblematic of the core problem of the <em>real</em> conflict between copyright and IP. IP pursues private ownership and monopoly power over ideas for the sake of power rather than the true function of creative rights, or even just equality under the law. Again, this is why experts <em>hate</em> the term:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.en.html">Richard Stallman, <em>Did You Say “Intellectual Property”? It’s a Seductive Mirage</em></a>
It has become fashionable to toss copyright, patents, and trademarks—three separate and different entities involving three separate and different sets of laws—plus a dozen other laws into one pot and call it “intellectual property.” The distorting and confusing term did not become common by accident. Companies that gain from the confusion promoted it. The clearest way out of the confusion is to reject the term entirely.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/06/foia-be-damned/">Cory Doctorow:</a>
…”IP” is a misleading, ideological concept that lacks the precision needed to have an adult conversation about policy, or justice, or business. It’s like “family values” or “cultural Marxism” – an empty signifier used by unserious people for unserious purposes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Labelling enforcement of copyright and patents as “intellectual property protection” is like someone tasked with describing “New York and also LA” drew a circle around both, catching not only most of the continental United States but also four extra countries. The ideas “intellectual property” protection encircles are so disparate that the “cracks between them” are vast spaces that, vitally, <strong>must not have the protections</strong> the IP “circle” implies they should.</p>
<p>This power grab <strong><em>is</em></strong> the generalized intellectual property doctrine, as distinct from any real set of creative rights. “Intellectual Property” describes a set of claims that are incoherent as a category on their individual merits, but that snap into focus when you view it through the lens of corporate power.</p>
<!-- -->
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/">Cory Doctorow, <em>IP</em>:</a>
…“intellectual property” is an incoherent category: when you assert that your work has “intellectual property” protection, do you mean that you can sue rivals to protect your customers from deception; or that the government will block rivals if you disclose the inner workings of your machines; or that you have been given just enough (but no more) incentive to publish your expressions of your ideas, with the understanding that the ideas themselves are fair game?</p>
<p>When you look at how “IP” is used by firms, a very precise – albeit colloquial – meaning emerges:</p>
<p><strong>“IP is any law that I can invoke that allows me to control the conduct of my competitors, critics, and customers.”</strong></p>
<p>That is, in a world of uncertainty, where other people’s unpredictability can erode your profits, mire you in scandal, or even tank your business, “IP” is a means of forcing other people to arrange their affairs to suit your needs, even if that undermines their own needs.<br>
…<br>
Copyright laws – that is, “IP laws” – ban tampering with DRM, making it a serious, jailable felony to provide others with tools to bypass DRM. … but, tellingly, the ban on breaking DRM is not limited to copyright infringement. Bypassing DRM to get your printer to accept third-party ink is not a copyright violation: you’re not reproducing its code, nor are you duplicating the traces etched into its chips. But even though you’re not breaking copyright when you jailbreak your phone, you’re still breaking copyright law. The law bans legal conduct, if you have to break DRM to engage in it. This isn’t copyright protection – it’s felony contempt of business-model.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the core conflict at the heart of copyright and “intellectual property law”.
It’s not a question of crafting policy, it’s not even a power struggle between demographics. It’s a conflict between two fundamentally opposing ideologies.</p>
<p>On the one side, under the “Creative Rights” banner (where I’m sitting today) are all the creators’ rights I’ve talked about so far. These are copyright, patents, and trademarks: coherent doctrines that benefit creators and the public in turn, balancing incentives with the overall health of society.
Everything I already described here as “real” creative rights.</p>
<p>On the other side, under the general label of “Intellectual Property” is corporations’ unlimited appetite for power and control.
The real unifying thread between violations of “intellectual property” is that they’re scenarios that the extremely rich don’t want to happen.
A principle of converting all ideas into a transferable property right is far more profitable for corporations than any of the real principles of creative rights.
The structure represented by the intentionally-nebulous “IP” is a feudal system, where people can only build on culture if they agree to whatever demands are made by the elite few that own the culture.
In this bad future, wealthy concept-landowners get the first and final say, but now with unlimited swaths of land in conceptual space. </p>
<!-- "extremely rich" perhaps pejorative, unfair. better feudalism justification -->
<!-- updated: This section needs a clear relationship with contractual rights, currently it's talking about contactless relationships, but really this is just explaining why contracts are necessary and standard, they provide a layer of rights where they are seen as necessary, but do not naturally exist -->
<p><strong>One’s interest in an outcome does not give them a right to control it.</strong>
Every business has preferred outcomes: things it wants people to do, ways it wants people to act, things it wants people to buy. Some of those outcomes involve things that business made, or things with their name on them, or just their market share. Fine so far.</p>
<p>But that interest doesn’t entitle them to any authority! You’re not automatically in charge of a transaction because you manufactured an involved product, you don’t have a right to control how people speak about you, you can’t force people to buy brand new products every time. </p>
<p>This principle — that interest alone doesn’t entitle you to control — is why businesses depend on carefully negotiated contracts and licensing.
Contracts provide rightsholders a layer that <em>does</em> grant them more granular control with how their work is used, but such contracts also require reciprocity.
They’re not unilaterally imposed things; in order to claim a right to control how an idea is used, you need to offer something of value in exchange.
“Intellectual property” implies the opposite, a unilateral “ownership” rather than a relationship that must be negotiated.</p>
<p>But this contractual layer isn’t the default, it’s an optional extra. In the default relationship a rightsholder has with any given member of the public,
the rights they do <em>not</em> have are endless, and the rights they do have are finite: “just enough”. Intellectual property hungers for the opposite: automatic, feudalistic power over everything in an “intellectual domain”, with real people only getting what privileges the lord affords them day-to-day.</p>
<p>The system we’re living under today is not aligned with the principles of copyright and creative rights, and really isn’t even a copyright regime at all. It’s better understood as this generalized Intellectual Property doctrine, in all the bad ways.
This is why an accurate description of copyright and patents sounds so subversive: it is. Our current system only includes vague gestures toward those as vestigial justifications, but it has long since stopped holding up the principles.</p>
<p>In the next few parts of this series I’ll go through some case studies of real, recent events — ones likely immediately relevant to your life — so you can see how corporations on the “IP” side systematically fight <em>against</em> creative rights, including copyright and patents.
You don’t have to take my word for it, it’s <em>everywhere</em>.
And finally, at the end, I’ll talk about an option for one approach you can use in responding to the situation. </p>
<!-- But, just for now, let's pretend we haven't peeked behind the curtain already and don't know about The IP Crowd. We don't know we're competing against feudalism. We just know creative rights as they're laid out in their definitions and principles are fine and dandy, but there's something else mixed in. But what? -->
<!-- Copyright doesn’t create value for artists, it creates value for the companies who pay those artists by the hour anyway. The only individual artists who benefit from strong copyright are the ones who don’t have to work for a living and don’t need the income. -->
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="container related-reading">
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc">Kirby Ferguson, “Everything is a Remix” (YouTube)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpolicy/digital-feudalism-future-data-capitalism-shoshana-zuboff">Shoshana Zuboff, “Digital Feudalism”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/">Cory Doctorow, “IP”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://james.grimmelmann.net/ipbook/">James Grimmelmann, “Patterns of Information Law”</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:limited-times">
<p>Violated by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft">Eldred v. Ashcroft</a>, (actual commercial publishers vs… the MPAA, RIAA, and ASCAP) which invented the interpretation that the term of a copyright that had already been assigned to previously created works could be extended indefinitely, or even set to the length of thousands of years, and that this was not allowed to be understood as violating the limited times clause even though it clearly did. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:limited-times" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:merger">
<p>The merger doctrine <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:merger" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:enablement">
<p>Violated by the USPTO chronically failing to enforce the <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2164.html">Enablement Requirement</a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:enablement" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:inducement">
<p><a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9105652591497305710"><em>Graham v. John Deere Co. of Kansas City, 383 US 1 - Supreme Court 1966</em></a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:inducement" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:improvements">
<p>See <a href="https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=16500126654571728643&hl=en&as_sdt=6,44"><em>HOTCHKISS ET AL. v. GREENWOOD ET AL., 52 US 248 - Supreme Court 1851</em></a><br>
Violated by bad patents just being granted for improvements anyway. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:improvements" title="Jump back to footnote 5 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:human-activity">
<p>See <a href="https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2106.html"><em>USPTO 2106.04(a)(2) Abstract Idea Groupings</em></a><br>
Violated by bad patents just being granted for organizational systems anyway. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:human-activity" title="Jump back to footnote 6 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:mental-processes">
<p>See <em>Planet Bingo, LLC v. VKGS LLC, 576 Fed. App’x 1005, 1007 (Fed. Cir. 2014)</em> <br>
Violated by bad patents just being granted for processes anyway. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:mental-processes" title="Jump back to footnote 7 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:game-rules">
<p>See <em>In re Smith, 815 F.3d 816, 820 (Fed. Cir. 2016)</em>.<br>
Violated by the USPTO granting invalid patents for game rules <a href="https://patents.google.com/patent/US748626A">for centuries</a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:game-rules" title="Jump back to footnote 8 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:machine-policing">
<p>Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened, and so what we have in this metaphor is a writhing mass of tentacles almost completely hiding a machine underneath that can’t possibly do its job anymore. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:machine-policing" title="Jump back to footnote 9 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:first-sale">
<p>More technically, the “distribution right” held by the author is extinguished at the point of sale, but they still retain “reproduction rights”, i.e. the copy-right.
Violated by <em>Capitol Records, LLC v. ReDigi Inc.</em>, etc, etc. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:first-sale" title="Jump back to footnote 10 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:redigi">
<p>Violated by Capitol Recs., LLC v. ReDigi Inc. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:redigi" title="Jump back to footnote 11 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:non-contributing">
<p>And those who only consume from the commons without producing anything are irrelevant to the calculation, as consuming media is non-rivalrous and doesn’t damage anything. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:non-contributing" title="Jump back to footnote 12 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Netflix's Big Double-Dip2023-05-20T00:00:00-05:002023-05-20T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2023-05-20:/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/<p>Netflix is finally turning the screws on multi-user accounts. That “finally” is exasperation in my voice, not relief. Netflix is demanding you pay them an extra surcharge to share your account with remote people, and even then caps you at paying for a maximum of two. It’s been threatening to do something like this for a long, long time:</p>
<p>Since 2011, when the recording industry started pushing through legal frameworks to criminalize multi-user account use by <a href="https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/107/pub/pc0348.pdf">miscategorizing “entertainment subscription services” as equivalent to public services like mail, water, and electricity</a> for the purposes of criminal prosecution,</p>
<p>Since <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/11/psst-its-still-okay-to-share-your-netflix-password/">similar nonsense in 2016 exploiting the monumentally terrible Computer Fraud and Abuse Act</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2019, when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHK51RgeqdY&t=1836s">Netflix announced (to its shareholders) that it was looking for ways to limit password sharing</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2021, when <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-b2913b21f5c5ba79405ef5ddbc2c0eb3">Netflix started tracking individual users by location and device within a paying account</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2022, when <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230407105910/https://about.netflix.com/en/news/an-update-on-sharing">it started banning group use in Portugal, Spain, and New Zealand</a>, <a href="https://restofworld.org/2022/netflix-crackdown-password-sharing-peru/">to disastrous consequence</a>. Also, Canada, but temporarily. And, of course, then <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/21/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-early-2023/">threatened to “crack down” on “password sharing” in “Early 2023”</a>,</p>
<p>Since January, when it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23559483/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-earnings-q4-2022">threatened to roll out “paid password sharing” in the “coming months”</a>,</p>
<p>Since February, when it <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/netflix-backtracks-password-sharing-rules-162942246.html">released a disastrous policy banning password sharing</a>, then lied about the policy being an error and made a big show of retracting it due to the massive backlash, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/the-end-of-free-netflix-password-sharing-is-coming-heres-what-to-know/">but then went ahead and did it in Canada anyway</a>,</p>
<p>And finally now since just now, as it’s <a href="https://mashable.com/article/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown">finally, really, for-realsies banning password sharing this quarter</a>.</p>
<p>Netflix threatening this for so long was a mistake on its part, because that’s given me a long, long time for these thoughts to slowly brew in the back of my head. And there’s <em>a lot</em> wrong here. </p>
<p><img alt="the teat one" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/4cd45et68cgf/3irzHMHpxSNR2TzsEgmvy0/2b80e818e69ee0c1266b2598a18a961a/PaidSharing_Blog_Image_936x622.png?w=2560"/>
<em>this is a real graphic Netflix made!</em></p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="netflixs-pricing-model">Netflix’s pricing model<a class="headerlink" href="#netflixs-pricing-model" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So, first, what are multi-user accounts in the first place, and how does “password sharing” relate to that?</p>
</section><p>Netflix is finally turning the screws on multi-user accounts. That “finally” is exasperation in my voice, not relief. Netflix is demanding you pay them an extra surcharge to share your account with remote people, and even then caps you at paying for a maximum of two. It’s been threatening to do something like this for a long, long time:</p>
<p>Since 2011, when the recording industry started pushing through legal frameworks to criminalize multi-user account use by <a href="https://publications.tnsosfiles.com/acts/107/pub/pc0348.pdf">miscategorizing “entertainment subscription services” as equivalent to public services like mail, water, and electricity</a> for the purposes of criminal prosecution,</p>
<p>Since <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/11/psst-its-still-okay-to-share-your-netflix-password/">similar nonsense in 2016 exploiting the monumentally terrible Computer Fraud and Abuse Act</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2019, when <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHK51RgeqdY&t=1836s">Netflix announced (to its shareholders) that it was looking for ways to limit password sharing</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2021, when <a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-b2913b21f5c5ba79405ef5ddbc2c0eb3">Netflix started tracking individual users by location and device within a paying account</a>,</p>
<p>Since 2022, when <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230407105910/https://about.netflix.com/en/news/an-update-on-sharing">it started banning group use in Portugal, Spain, and New Zealand</a>, <a href="https://restofworld.org/2022/netflix-crackdown-password-sharing-peru/">to disastrous consequence</a>. Also, Canada, but temporarily. And, of course, then <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2022/12/21/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-early-2023/">threatened to “crack down” on “password sharing” in “Early 2023”</a>,</p>
<p>Since January, when it <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/19/23559483/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown-earnings-q4-2022">threatened to roll out “paid password sharing” in the “coming months”</a>,</p>
<p>Since February, when it <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/netflix-backtracks-password-sharing-rules-162942246.html">released a disastrous policy banning password sharing</a>, then lied about the policy being an error and made a big show of retracting it due to the massive backlash, <a href="https://www.cnet.com/culture/entertainment/the-end-of-free-netflix-password-sharing-is-coming-heres-what-to-know/">but then went ahead and did it in Canada anyway</a>,</p>
<p>And finally now since just now, as it’s <a href="https://mashable.com/article/netflix-password-sharing-crackdown">finally, really, for-realsies banning password sharing this quarter</a>.</p>
<p>Netflix threatening this for so long was a mistake on its part, because that’s given me a long, long time for these thoughts to slowly brew in the back of my head. And there’s <em>a lot</em> wrong here. </p>
<p><img alt="the teat one" src="https://images.ctfassets.net/4cd45et68cgf/3irzHMHpxSNR2TzsEgmvy0/2b80e818e69ee0c1266b2598a18a961a/PaidSharing_Blog_Image_936x622.png?w=2560">
<em>this is a real graphic Netflix made!</em></p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="netflixs-pricing-model">Netflix’s pricing model<a class="headerlink" href="#netflixs-pricing-model" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So, first, what are multi-user accounts in the first place, and how does “password sharing” relate to that?</p>
<p>Multi-user accounts are exactly what they sound like: Netflix accounts that support multiple users.
Netflix has supported multiple users for almost as long as they’ve been a streaming service; <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/10421">In 2013 they added support for up to five user profiles on the same account</a>, so multiple people can keep track of their lists and history. Because — and Netflix got it right themselves — <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwQoMHepwhw&t=37s">having your own profile is like having your own Netflix</a>. </p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/HwQoMHepwhw?start=37&autoplay=1" title="" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/HwQoMHepwhw/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>In the pricing plans too, they also specifically embraced multiple users simultaneously taking advantage of the same account, as long as it was made up of trusted people the account holder authorizes.
In <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/02/27/lies-damned-lies-and-subscriptions/">my subscriptions article</a>, I described Netflix’s pricing model like this:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/02/27/lies-damned-lies-and-subscriptions/">GiovanH, Lies, Damned Lies, and Subscriptions</a>
Netflix <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926">charges for quality × users by time</a>. On a standard plan, two users can stream HD content at the same time, but the premium plan increases that to four simultaneous users watching Ultra HD. The price of the additional usage and users is baked into the plan. (This is something Netflix routinely lies about in order to frame multiple users as somehow stealing from Netflix. It isn’t: that use is explicitly factored into the bill.)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(I’ll warn you now, a lot of this article is spent on just that last parenthetical.)</p>
<p>Netflix is a video streaming service. What they sell is on-demand video streaming; let’s still measure this in availability of <strong>quality × users per month</strong>.</p>
<p><img alt="Netflix pricing infographic, 2015" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/netflix_pricing_2015.png"><sup id="fnref:pricing-2015"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:pricing-2015">1</a></sup></p>
<p>As the price of the service goes up, so does the level of service delivered.
Each tier has a higher maximum quality (SD to HD to UHD), but <strong>each tier also offers more simultaneous users</strong>, or a higher total <em>amount</em> of video (1x to 2x to 4x). The more you pay, the more users can use the account effectively, and total time you can (theoretically) stream from Netflix in hours per month. </p>
<p>This money-for-viewing-time proposition has core to Netflix for as long as the service existed; when Netflix was still a DVD company and launched streaming for the first time, users’ allotment was measured in hours per month. With the modern “unlimited” plans you probably won’t feel the <em>need</em> to fully exploit your premium plan by having four people do nothing but watch Netflix all month, but Netflix and users both say it’s worth money to have that additional capacity available. </p>
<p>So that’s what you’re paying for: a quantity and quality of video. Is the intended use case to share your account with people? Demonstrably yes. That’s what the simultaneous devices are for, but it’s also what the multiple profiles are for.
Netflix doesn’t intend for one person to watch four streams simultaneously, they’re selling you bandwidth you can use how you want. The intended use here is for multiple people you authorize to use your service (even simultaneously!) according to how much you pay for, not for one person to watch four movies off four screens at once.</p>
<p><img alt="Elementary media room screenshot" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/S01E08-Media_room.jpg"></p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="sharing-with-your-household">Sharing with your household<a class="headerlink" href="#sharing-with-your-household" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>So, as your friends and family suckle at Netflix’s teat with some devices scattered around but uninvolved in the transaction <a href="https://images.ctfassets.net/4cd45et68cgf/3irzHMHpxSNR2TzsEgmvy0/2b80e818e69ee0c1266b2598a18a961a/PaidSharing_Blog_Image_936x622.png?w=2560">or whatever the hell is supposed to be going on in that graphic</a>, you can be confident in the knowledge that you’re using exactly the service you paid for. Because <strong><em>sharing your account isn’t piracy, it’s carpooling.</em></strong></p>
<p>Account sharing is a first-class feature of the service, and remote access is a part of that because — in the world of paying for and consuming an online service product — this is the only way it reasonably could work. </p>
<p>If you subscribe to Netflix and you pay the bills, you’re paying for a level of service that you’re only actually receiving if you’re able to authorize who does and doesn’t have access. Who has access to your service must be who you “authorize”, not who Netflix authorizes.
You have the authority to decide who can access your account, not Netflix. Netflix already transiently “authorized” your family and whoever else you authorize when they sold you a level of service that includes multiple users; that’s the point in the transaction where it gets to decide pricing, based on the level of service purchased.</p>
<p>But when you share your account with others, you also bear the responsibility for managing access and any risks of transient misuse by the people you’re sharing your agency with. That, in addition to the lost capacity, is the cost of letting others share in the resource pool. </p>
<!-- Who has access to your service must be who you “authorize”, not who Netflix authorizes. You have the authority to decide who can access your account, not Netflix. Netflix “authorizes” your family implicitly by selling you a level of service. That’s the point in the transaction where it gets to decide pricing, based on the level of service purchased. -->
<!-- Are you limited by other factors unrelated to what you’re paying for, like geographical distance between devices on the account? No. That would be arbitrary and stupid. There are geographical limitations based on how the content is licensed to Netflix by media companies, sure, but that’s a problem from way upstream. -->
<p>In the IP world, this is called <strong>Indirect Appropriability</strong>. Netflix appropriates revenue from everyone using the service by explicitly including usage by multiple people in the bill, even though not everyone benefiting is individually, directly paying Netflix.
Traditionally, the problems with indirect appropriability come in cases of “variability in the number of copies made from each original”, meaning when an indeterminate number of copies can be made from any master, like with file copying. But that’s not the case here: Netflix explicitly provisions a set number of users upfront, as part of the service package.</p>
<p>And the good news for Netflix is that the really dangerous problems solve themselves. </p>
<p>Netflix doesn’t want people sharing their passwords widely with strangers; that’s very much against the spirit of the thing. They specifically call this out in their <a href="https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse">terms of use</a>: the service is for “personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household” with a “limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access the Netflix service” that must not be used for “public performances”. This is all part of the same clause, and all adds up to the same thing: you can’t share your account freely, or make money off reselling accounts or access to accounts. In contrast to commercial use, accounts are for your “household” — friends and family — only.</p>
<p>But this clause doesn’t need special enforcement to prevent the imagined “share your password freely” scenario because the account architecture is self-policing. People <em>won’t</em> share their password with people they don’t trust because anyone with the password can access and change account information, including passwords/access control and payment info. So you’re only going to share access with trusted household members. “Your household”. The problem of widespread out-of-hand sharing solves itself, because to do that, users would have to endanger not Netflix, but <em>themselves</em>. Hazard resolved. </p>
<p>It’s also important that there’s no Netflix plan that buys truly unlimited use. If you were paying for unlimited simultaneous streams within a household, you’re clearly paying “by the household”, and sharing the service with remote users <em>would</em> be abuse.
But that scenario is the exact opposite of what exists with Netflix’s current and future plans: you’re paying for a set number of simultaneous users who can use the pool at once, so having multiple users watch is just using something that’s been paid for.</p>
<p>But not only is remote access a necessary part of the product, and not only is it safe, Netflix actually <em>wanted</em> it. </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="netflix-was-more-than-okay-with-this">Netflix was more than okay with this<a class="headerlink" href="#netflix-was-more-than-okay-with-this" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>“Share your account” has always been Netflix’s “be kind, rewind”.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1213422409576927232" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/NetflixIndia/" title="Fangtastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (here) 🧛♀️"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1486303887342866433/28o7yW9J_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Netflix India</span><span class="at">@NetflixIndia</span></div></a></div><div><p>This is absolutely fake. If you want free Netflix please use someone else's account like the rest of us. <a href='https://twitter.com/MuralikrishnaE1/status/1213385557180469251' target='_blank'>twitter.com/MuralikrishnaE…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/NetflixIndia/status/1213422409576927232" target="_blank">Sat Jan 04 11:30:21 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Netflix actively encouraged limited account sharing, and founder and CEO Reed Hastings was famously very vocal about this. </p>
<p>When Netflix launched the profile system in 2013, Reed <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2013/04/23/netflix-ceo-password-sharing/2106261/">explained in a shareholder meeting</a> that “We really don’t think that there is much going on of the ‘I’m going to share my password with a marginal acquaintance’“.
Profiles were for family and friends, and (as I described above) the system polices itself to prevent widespread sharing out of a trusted circle that the account holder authorizes. </p>
<p>And again, at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TR-NRpkW9I">Netflix 2016 CES Keynote</a>, Reed described how Netflix actually encourages account sharing, because it acts as marketing for the product:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We love people sharing Netflix whether they’re two people on a couch or 10 people on a couch. That’s a positive thing, not a negative thing.</p>
<p>As kids move on in their life, they like to have control of their life, and as they have an income, we see them separately subscribe. It really hasn’t been a problem.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And again, in <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/17/your-shared-netflix-password-is-safe-the-ceo-says.html">a 2016 shareholder meeting</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Reed Hastings said during the company’s third-quarter earnings webcast. “Password sharing is something you have to learn to live with, because there’s so much legitimate password sharing, like you sharing with your spouse, with your kids .... so there’s no bright line, and we’re doing fine as is.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sharing your password with your spouse and kids is fine, clearly and emphatically. </p>
<p>In his (excellent) article <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/netflix-account-password-sharing-family-intimacy/673145/">Netflix Crossed a Line</a>, Ian Bogost describes sharing account access as a kind of “soft product”; part of the product you’re paying for and expect, but not something explicitly guaranteed by the transaction:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you don’t get the hard product, you’ve been swindled. But that soft product has a value too: Without it, you’d feel shortchanged. … The distinction between hard and soft products helps explain the controversy about changes Netflix is making to its streaming service—along with many other changes in the internet-enabled service economy.<br>
…<br>
A password is meant to be secret. That makes sharing it intimate but also clandestine. For years, Netflix exploited that sense of intimacy as a marketing strategy, most famously in a tweet its official account posted: “Love is sharing a password.”</p>
<p>Sharing an account became characteristic of the Netflix brand, and one with real value to the company. Beyond the marketing benefit, user profiles meant that Netflix could perform data segmentation on its viewership, which in turn allowed the company to target recommendations to help retain subscribers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This wasn’t isolated to one CEO, or even one company. HBO CEO Richard Plepler expressed the same view in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLNNL98uFXM">a 2014 interview with BuzzFeed</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Pleper: It’s not material to our business, number
one. It’s not that we are unmindful of
it, but it has no real effect on the
business.<br>
…<br>
Pleper: To us, it’s a terrific marketing vehicle for the next generation of viewers, and to us, it is actually not material at all to business growth.</p>
<p>BuzzFeed: So the strategy is you ignore it now, with the hopes that they’ll subscribe later…</p>
<p>Pleper: It’s not that we’re ignoring it, and we’re looking at different ways to affect password sharing. I’m simply telling you: it’s not a fundamental problem, and the externality of it is that it presents the brand to more and more people, and gives them an opportunity hopefully to become addicted to it. What we’re in the business of doing is building addicts, of building video addicts. The way we do that is by exposing our product, our brand, our shows, to more and more people.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Even after <a href="https://www.eff.org/cases/u-s-v-nosal">U.S. vs. David Nosal</a> — a terrible court ruling that interpreted the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in a way that turns all sorts of legal and innocent behaviour into a felony by judicial fiat — Netflix was quick to say that, despite the implications of the ruling, it <em>did not</em> want people to stop sharing their passwords.
<a href="https://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/14/netflix-sharing-passwords-is-ok-just-dont-sell-them/">A Netflix spokesperson clarified</a> “As long as they aren’t selling them, members can use their passwords however they please”. Again, we see clear and correct messaging here: share your account with the people you authorize. It’s your account, it’s your access; don’t break your side of the service and we won’t break ours. </p>
<p>And so we know positively — before we get to any of the arguments against it, or acknowledge Netflix’s elaborately crafted fictions at all — that sharing your account with other people is fine and good.
When you buy service from Netflix, you’re buying service time. <strong>It’s okay for you to use your excess service time however you want.</strong> You can’t roll over your hours of the service, so if you don’t use it, you lose it. Netflix implicitly wants this waste, because they got paid without having to provide anything. But you paid for the right to use those hours, if you’re going to do the legwork to let someone else use your excess resources <em>of course</em> you have to be allowed to do that. </p>
<p>In fact, putting excess resources to use <em>is a good thing</em>.
Carpooling isn’t robbing car companies of the chance to sell more cars, it’s using resources efficiently. Efficiency isn’t an evil just because it doesn’t maximize the demand for consumption! More on this later.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="freeloaders">“Freeloaders”<a class="headerlink" href="#freeloaders" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So, with an understanding of Netflix’s actual price model in mind, let’s look at the rhetoric they’re deploying around the issue of password sharing, and how it’s a blatant lie.</p>
<p>Let’s start by looking at what Netflix has decided it wants people to think about shared accounts, and how news media has amplified and legitimized those ideas. </p>
<p>First, “cracking down on sharing” by cutting off forms of access accounts previously had is just a price hike. It’s charging the same for worse service with quantifiably less value. And Netflix knows that, that’s why they’re “<a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/video/netflix-braces-user-exodus-cracking-160102473.html">expecting a cancel reaction</a>.” But Netflix is able to hand-wave the fact that they’re the aggressor here by using emotional, moralizing language (“cracking down” on crime) to distract from the fact that they’re screwing their customers over. That’s their only weapon, so they lean on it <em>hard</em>.</p>
<!--
[netflix-braces-user-exodus-cracking-160102473.html](https://finance.yahoo.com/video/netflix-braces-user-exodus-cracking-160102473.html)
But this was something that Netflix new co-CEO Greg Peters talked about on the fourth-quarter earnings call a couple of weeks ago. He's saying, quote, "This will not be a universally popular move so there will be current members that are unhappy with this move. We'll see a bit of a cancel reaction to that. We think this is as similar to what we see when we raise prices." So Netflix is bracing for a potential a lot of users fleeing the platform. [Netflix knows what they're doing is like raising prices/cutting service!] -->
<p>There’s this very revealing moment from <a href="https://apnews.com/article/arts-and-entertainment-technology-business-0f9fd76c86ada1d1162f9e9f0b8ca7f5?utm_medium=AP">April 2021</a> where Reed Hastings says in a call “We would never roll something out that feels like ‘turning the screws’. It’s got to feel like it makes sense to customers, that they understand.”
I love this, not only because they <em>immediately</em> start overtly turning the screws on their customers when Reed Hastings left, but because of this importance placed on customers <em>accepting</em> paying more for less service without the underlying costs increasing.
How do you manufacture that consent? Evidently, shameless propaganda. </p>
<p>A lot of this rhetoric relies on imagery of freeloading and “password piracy” and just full on Ayn Rand “<a href="https://www.statista.com/chart/27333/netflix-password-sharing/">moochers</a>”, but as we’ve already established everything is bought and paid for already. Again, and I cannot hammer this point home enough: <strong>attacking people for how they allocate the usage of a service they’re paying for isn’t “preventing freeloading”, it’s giving the seller a right to charge twice for the same service.</strong></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1374446680515305476" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1374444398121918466"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1468753339282345986/-TqSYrY1_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1374444398121918466">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>So if you're concerned about "freeloaders", good news for you: the service they're using is already explicitly bought and paid for. With money! That Netflix gets! <a href='https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1372537039497916423' target='_blank'>twitter.com/WSJ/status/137…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1374446680515305476" target="_blank">Tue Mar 23 19:43:19 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="propaganda-examples">Propaganda examples<a class="headerlink" href="#propaganda-examples" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The WSJ’s article from March 2021, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/using-someone-elses-netflix-password-is-likely-to-get-harder-11616059801">Netflix Cracks Down on Sharing</a> subtitled “Streaming service’s recent experiment to tighten security puts freeloaders on notice” is a good place to start, especially that “puts freeloaders on notice” in the subtitle they’re so proud of:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1372537039497916423" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/WSJ/" title="Sign up for our newsletters and email alerts: https://t.co/WFU7oLKkip"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/971415515754266624/zCX0q9d5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">The Wall Street Journal</span><span class="at">@WSJ</span></div></a></div><div><p>Netflix’s recent experiment to tighten password security is putting freeloaders on notice <a href='https://on.wsj.com/3qZDSpS' target='_blank'>on.wsj.com/3qZDSpS</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1372537039497916423" target="_blank">Thu Mar 18 13:15:05 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>The streaming service for years turned a blind eye to password sharing, but recently started prompting some of its users to verify their identity through a text message.
…
Netflix is running out of room to grow in North America if it doesn’t nudge all of its users to pay for a subscription. Many industry experts said it was only a matter of time before Netflix got tougher on password surfers, who are costing the company subscribers and revenue.</p>
<p>“They have gotten away with it for years,” said Neil Begley, an analyst at Moody’s Investors Service, of streaming freeloaders. “If free is over, most people won’t begrudge the company for capturing its due revenues.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Now, we all know none of that is true.
Netflix didn’t “turn a blind eye toward password sharing”, it specifically sold a multi-user service, and when password sharing was pointed out it explicitly defended it as good for the company.
People using a Netflix account aren’t “not paying for a subscription”, <strong>they’re using a subscription that’s been paid for</strong>. They’re not getting service for free, they’re having it paid for.
So there’s no “getting away with it”, or “freeloading” at all, regardless of what lies <a href="https://www.srz.com/lawyers/neil-s-begley.html">professional investment capital simp Neil Begley</a> tells the Wall Street Journal. And Netflix certainly isn’t missing out on any “due revenues” and isn’t being stolen from; again, <em>they’ve been specifically paid for the exact service being consumed.</em></p>
<p>Let’s try some more: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/netflix-paid-password-sharing-plan-us-launch-1235587162/">Todd Spangler, Netflix to Expand Password Crackdown to U.S. in Q2 With Paid-Sharing Plans | Variety, April 2023</a>
Netflix said it will stage a “broad rollout” of its paid-sharing plan in the second quarter of 2023, including in the U.S., aiming to convert freeloaders borrowing someone else’s password into revenue-generating subscribers.<br>
…<br>
As part of Netflix’s crackdown on customers sharing passwords with people outside their household, the company plans to start blocking devices (after a certain period of time) that attempt to access a Netflix account without properly paying.<br>
…<br>
Netflix said the move to convert password-piggybackers into paying members produces an elevated volume of cancelations, leading to a hit on near-term subscriber growth.<br>
…<br>
Netflix estimates that passwords are being shared in violation of its rules with more than 100 million non-paying households worldwide. It first cited that figure a year ago, when the company told investors it was focusing on generating revenue from password-sharing users.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Again, “freeloaders”. No.
The account members using a multi-user account who didn’t directly pay for it aren’t not “revenue-generating subscribers”: <em>they’re being paid for.</em> Someone is paying for each access, and that’s revenue direct to Netflix!
Not everyone on the account needs to <em>directly</em> give Netflix their money in order to be “properly paying”. That’s a ridiculous lie. What matters is that the service has been paid for, which it has.
This is like selling an SUV and then complaining that the passengers aren’t buying cars. <em>They’re why people bought the SUV.</em> If you start insisting people can’t use their SUVs, they’re going to return the SUVs. </p>
<p>This is a more subtle point, but it’s also not true that sharing a Netflix account with a remote party was in violation of Netflix’s rules. Netflix’s <a href="https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse">terms of service</a> talk about a household, but they don’t enumerate a specific definition of what a household is, so <em>any</em> remote arrangement is clearly <em>not</em> clearly a violation, because there’s no clause for it to violate. All this is correct and necessary, because family might travel or be located in multiple places, and because any such specific definition of what a family looks like will definitely be wrong. The one who defines what the household is isn’t whoever has the most money, <em>it’s the household</em>.</p>
<p>More on this in a moment. But first, more garbage. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/19/millennials-are-going-to-extreme-lengths-to-share-streaming-passwords-.html">Sara Salinas, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon miss out on money as Millennials share passwords | CNBC, August 2018</a>
Streaming subscribers are sharing passwords and skirting systems in increasing numbers, creating an increasingly expensive problem for streaming services. Getting content in front of the addressable market can help to convert potential customers and inflate marketable metrics. But as younger users grow up used to accessing streaming services for free, the companies have to consider when and where to draw the line on password sharing.</p>
<p>“The cat is out of the bag,” said Jill Rosengard Hill, executive president at media research firm [Magid], in an interview with CNBC. “I wish I had a solution, because it’s really hurting the business model and monetization of these premium high value services.”</p>
<p>It’s not that different from staying on the family mobile phone plan into early adulthood, Hill said, or claiming a parent’s health insurance until 26. But even mobile phone plans charge extra per family member, and health insurers can verify a child’s age and cut off access.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This one comes <em>so close</em> to forcing itself into a corner of self-realization (between accusations of “skirting” and password sharing being an “expense”), but Sara realizes her mistake and stops talking right before she proves herself wrong.
Mobile phone plans do charge per family member, so people on the plan aren’t “freeloading”, they’re getting a “premium high value service” that’s being explicitly paid for… just like Netflix does.
Netflix <em>does</em> charge extra for simultaneous streams, i.e. “more members on the plan.” Using the service isn’t fraudulent, it’s working exactly as it’s supposed to. </p>
<p>It’s also impossible to ignore the aspect of intra-generational contempt present in this whole conversation, which they let slip here with a complaint about “younger users” who are used to getting services for free.
This is an especially aggravating attitude to see people take at a time when <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/12/stop-blaming-millennials-killing-economy/577408/">the economy is killing millennials, not vice versa</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.twipemobile.com/monetising-password-sharing-what-publishers-can-learn-from-netflix/">Monetising password sharing: what publishers can learn from Netflix (February 2020)</a>
What’s interesting about the password sharing trend is that it is mainly younger consumers that mooch off others’ subscriptions. In a survey on Netflix password sharing, 35% of millennials use another person’s login info, while only 19% of Gen X and 13% of Baby Boomers </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This ephebiphobia is <em>completely</em> intertwined with the “moral hazard” language being used here: “freeloading”, “piggybackers”. Looking past the many media mouthpieces, this comes from a generation of corporate financiers throwing a tantrum because “the youth” look — from a distance — like they aren’t suffering enough, <strong>even though the underlying reality proves their justifications for that petty emotional response wrong in every way.</strong></p>
<!-- There's no new crisis, there's nothing special, it's the tired old story of entrenched power inflicting cruelty on others. -->
<p>And yes, they’re talking about this “costing” the company money. Don’t worry, I’ll get to that. </p>
<!-- [Jennifer Kline, College students, Netflix and the common practice of password sharing](https://www.usatoday.com/story/college/2013/07/12/college-students-netflix-and-the-common-practice-of-password-sharing/37436623/) (July 2013)
> Essentially, Netflix wants to know who’s properly using the service — as opposed to watching from the sidelines as an estimated 10 million people enjoy it without paying a cent. That figure comes from Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who believes the company has to make even more assertive changes in order to effectively cut down non-paying users.
>
> This update is pretty minor — given the major backlash and loss of 800,000 subscribers Netflix faced after raising prices in 2011, the company is cautious about introducing new modifications. While the family plan will likely affect few password-sharing college students, it indicates that the company is proactively looking for ways to reduce the practice. -->
<p>Another great note on this is from <a href="https://torrentfreak.com/uk-govt-netflix-password-sharing-is-illegal-potentially-criminal-fraud-221219/">Andy Maxwell, “UK Govt: Netflix Password Sharing is Illegal & Potentially Criminal Fraud”</a>, which is not shameless propaganda, but reporting <em>on</em> some:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Andy Maxwell:</em>
There’s little doubt that Netflix password sharing contributed to the company’s growth and by publicly condoning it, the practice was completely normalized – globally.<br>
…<br>
In the background and across the entire industry, ‘password sharing’ is receiving a reverse makeover. Nobody loves today’s ‘password piracy’ and within [<a href="https://www.alliance4creativity.com/members/">the ACE anti-piracy coalition</a>], the situation is no different. </p>
<p>Given the obvious sensitivities, ACE publicly prefers “unauthorized password sharing” as a descriptor and elsewhere the phrase “without permission” is in common use. In Denmark, anti-piracy group Rights Alliance describes password sharing as “not allowed” but this summer there was a small but significant step forward.<br>
…<br>
In a low-key announcement today, the UK Government’s Intellectual Property Office announced a new campaign in partnership with Meta, aiming to help people avoid piracy and counterfeit goods online.
Other than in the headline, there is zero mention of Meta in the accompanying advice, and almost no advice that hasn’t been issued before. But then this appears:</p>
<p><img alt="password sharing on streaming services without paying a subscription breaks copyright law" src="https://torrentfreak.com/images/password-sharing-uk-govt.png"></p>
</blockquote>
<p>So this starts out by talking about the “reverse makeover” I’ve been discussing already as propaganda. </p>
<p>The government invoking “unauthorized password sharing” here is interesting, because ACE is trying to pull a switcheroo here. “Unauthorized” account access describes the case where your credentials have been stolen and someone <strong>you haven’t authorized</strong> is accessing your account, posing as you. But obviously, if you’re <em>sharing</em> your password, you’re authorizing the other person to use your account. </p>
<p>Because they don’t like that last part, because it gives individual people a little bit of freedom instead of letting corporations sponge it up, ACE is trying to redefine what “authorization” means completely. Now, access is “unauthorized” any time Netflix wants it to be, regardless of who you authorize and how. Netflix and the media companies are desperate for access to always be theirs to allocate, never yours, regardless of what you’ve paid for. In their world, you don’t get to make decisions, and you’re never entitled to anything, even what you’ve already bought from them.</p>
<p>But that’s just set dressing. The action is when the UK government itself, springboarding off that very campaign, just <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20221219100818/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/meta-counterfeit-and-piracy-campaign">unilaterally declares sharing your password on a streaming service to be <em>illegal</em></a>, without even a gesture towards qualifying it.
The service explicitly allows password sharing in its terms of service? Doesn’t matter, jail. Your wife glances at the TV while you watch your Netflix subscription? <em>Straight to jail.</em> </p>
<p>It’s an <em>audacious</em> display of blustering ignorance pushed out as “public awareness” by the government agency whose job is to be the expert in the law, not just serve as free PR for streaming services! The relevant law enforcement agency has the <em>least</em> leeway out of <em>anyone</em> to play fast and loose with the definition of what is and is not legal. But instead they’re lying about what the law says just because Netflix profits if, instead of “following laws”, the people just have to give the wealthiest corporations in history whatever they demand, on demand.</p>
<p>The article talks about how, under UK law, using an “unauthorized” password to access a members-only service can be considered fraud. But that doesn’t apply here: that would only apply to <em>stealing</em> a password, not having one <em>shared</em> with you. Netflix isn’t a “members-only club”, because Netflix sells access by bandwidth, not by person. Even their new rules include whole-household usage: it isn’t that kind of membership. And as I’ve already explained, the account holder is the one who “authorizes” use of their account. Password sharing must not constitute “unauthorized” use, because it <em>is</em> explicitly authorized by every relevant party.</p>
<p>I’m not even going to pull a quote here, but <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90420891/the-perils-of-netflixs-rumored-password-sharing-crackdown">Starr Rhett Rocque’s article for FastCompany</a> in a rare peek of absurdity tries to use “password users” as a derogative. It’s just a stunning display of complete ignorance being pushed as if it’s a coherent viewpoint people should take in order to side with Netflix, against themselves. </p>
<p>I have to stop myself there. I’ve read dozens of “news” articles from 2018-present and they’re all like this. </p>
<p>What these all articles are doing is regurgitating the marketing language Netflix is using to turn the screws on its users as if that’s representative of reality, even when it very clearly isn’t.
Netflix changed its framing of the issue so fast it’d snap your neck, and the media just pretended it didn’t notice.
They took the messaging straight from Netflix PR and regurgitated it as fact. It’s irresponsible, shameless, shoddy work. </p>
<p>The focus put on words like “crackdown” or “clampdown” pushes this false messaging that Netflix is “just tidying up” and if this affects you, it must be because you’re a criminal. It’s right there in the word clampdown: Netflix saying “it’s ours to hold, and since our grip got loose we’re tightening it.” But this is a fiction; Netflix is inventing a new, massive restriction out of whole cloth, not just adjusting policy. </p>
<p>It wasn’t enough for Netflix to encourage and advertise account sharing and then change their policy. No, sharing (and advertising) Netflix with your friends had to be the <em>definition</em> of what it means to be a good person. </p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="840268619305037824" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/" title="Heartstopper is about to become my entire personality and I'm not even sorry about it."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1235992718171467776/PaX2Bz1S_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Netflix</span><span class="at">@netflix</span></div></a></div><div><p>Love is an addiction.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840268619305037824" target="_blank">Fri Mar 10 18:30:24 +0000 2017</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="840276073040371712" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="netflix/840268619305037824"><a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/" title="Heartstopper is about to become my entire personality and I'm not even sorry about it."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1235992718171467776/PaX2Bz1S_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Netflix</span><span class="at">@netflix</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840268619305037824">netflix</a>:</span><p>Love is sharing a password.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712" target="_blank">Fri Mar 10 19:00:02 +0000 2017</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>…until the <em>minute</em> a Netflix executive thought it was bad for Netflix if people shared their accounts. That decision, that switch flipping in some ludicrously overpaid executive’s head, is when all of culture had to flip too. It wasn’t enough for Netflix to change their policy, password sharing had to become not just criminal, but understood <strong><em>societally</em></strong> as an evil, because the whim of capital is the pivot point around which morality itself must turn.</p>
<p>If you’re familiar with the history of automotive culture in the US, this whole dynamic might remind you an awful lot of the history of “jaywalking”. It’s a fascinating piece of political history and there’s a wealth of writing on the subject, but for a summary of the relevant dynamic I’ll pull from <a href="https://marker.medium.com/the-invention-of-jaywalking-afd48f994c05">Clive Thompson, “The Invention of ‘Jaywalking’”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Clive Thompson:</em>
…in the 1920s, the auto industry chased people off the streets of America — by waging a brilliant psychological campaign.
They convinced the public that if you got run over by a car, it was your fault.
Pedestrians were to blame. People didn’t belong in the streets; cars did.</p>
<p>It’s one of the most remarkable (and successful) projects to shift public opinion I’ve ever read about. Indeed, the car companies managed to effect a 180-degree turnaround.</p>
<p>That’s because before the car came along, the public held precisely the opposite view: People belonged in the streets, and automobiles were interlopers.<br>
…<br>
Public opinion against cars became so sulphurous that, after years of car sales increasing, in 1924 sales went down by 12%.</p>
<p>So the auto industry realized it needed to fight back. It did so using an incredibly clever gambit: By convincing pedestrians that traffic accidents were their fault.</p>
<p><strong>The invention of “jaywalking”</strong></p>
<p>Key to this strategy was the epithet “jaywalking.”</p>
<p>It’s not totally clear who invented the phrase, but it was a fiendishly clever portmanteau. In the early 20th century, the word “jay” meant an uncultured rube from the countryside. To be a “jaywalker” thus was to be a country bumpkin who blundered around urban streets — guileless of the sophisticated ways of the city.</p>
<p>The brilliance of the concept is that it weaponized urban snobbishness against itself. “What,” it coyly asked, “do you want to look like some sort of hayseed?”</p>
<p>If the auto industry could just lovebomb “jaywalking” into existence, then urbanites’ own anxieties about looking cool would do the rest. You wouldn’t need police to keep pedestrians out of the street if the pedestrians policed themselves.</p>
<p>Newspapers helped popularize “jaywalker,” in part because as the 1920s wore on, car advertising had become a gold mine. Newspapers began switching their allegiance from pedestrians to drivers, and they ran cartoons mercilessly mocking jaywalkers…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The primary application of this story has to do with laundering of corporate responsibility of <em>safety</em> issues, which of course doesn’t map to the Netflix situation. But the media angle <em>really, really does.</em></p>
<p>Like “freeloading” and “password piracy”, “jaywalking” was a corporate project to reshape public opinion in order to make more money by obfuscating the real dynamics at play.
Giant industrial powerhouses set out to reshape public opinion almost completely to demonize a specific behaviour (walking or account sharing) that was already integrated as a normal aspect of public life.
And they did it through marketing. Just as pedestrians became “jays”, would-be honest consumers become “freeloaders” and “password pirates.” The automotive industry coined a new word, but Netflix just stole an old one and hammered it into the public consciousness through <em>relentless</em> propagandising, with the full uncritical support of public media. </p>
<p>Here’s a representative example of what I would consider the success of the “freeloader” campaign, reflected in public opinion:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1582506487472979968" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/polotek/" title="Web developer, movie buff, and pretty much the best guy you know. Married to @operaqueenie."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3603780451/4775e8c65a9f6f70c824a5b689e6295c_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Marco Rogers</span><span class="at">@polotek</span></div></a></div><div><p>What feels wild is Netflix didn't have to approach this in a way that is hostile to customers. You can just charge people to let them do what they wanna do. They could've released a "Friends and Family" upgrade for an extra $2-3 dollars. <a href='https://twitter.com/engadget/status/1582495934063075328' target='_blank'>twitter.com/engadget/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1582506487472979968" target="_blank">Tue Oct 18 22:58:42 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1582507030127878145" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="polotek/1582506487472979968"><a href="https://twitter.com/polotek/" title="Web developer, movie buff, and pretty much the best guy you know. Married to @operaqueenie."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/3603780451/4775e8c65a9f6f70c824a5b689e6295c_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Marco Rogers</span><span class="at">@polotek</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1582506487472979968">polotek</a>:</span><p>Netflix isn't losing subscribers because of their prices. They're just in a more competitive market now. They need to retain subscribers while they figure out how to get new ones. But being hostile to existing customers feels like the worst of all worlds.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/polotek/status/1582507030127878145" target="_blank">Tue Oct 18 23:00:52 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>First off, this person clearly isn’t just bootlicking <em>or</em> whining about personal expenses. This looks on its face like a very reasonable take on the situation. Netflix <strong>is</strong> taking a hostile, combative stance towards its existing customers by pushing a price hike on them, and for implicitly accusing <em>them</em> of impropriety instead of apologizing for the price increase. This is bad! It’s accusatory, anti-consumer, and overall overtly hostile behaviour. </p>
<p>But is it really <em>unnecessary</em>? The alternative proposed here — a “Friends and Family” plan — would be a way for Netflix to be less hostile, except that it isn’t actually an option.
Because <strong>Netflix <em>does</em> have a “friends and family” pricing tier, and people are <em>already paying for it</em>. That’s the one being slashed.</strong></p>
<p>What Netflix is doing, fundamentally, is hiking prices by taking away value that was included in the plan before. It’s <em>prima facie</em> hostile; they could add a friends and family plan, sure, but that would make the underlying price hike even more obvious, and — crucially — disrupt their “we’re just tidying up and if this inconveniences you it’s because you’re a criminal” messaging.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="sidenote-the-enforcement-policy-is-outrageous">Sidenote: the enforcement policy is outrageous<a class="headerlink" href="#sidenote-the-enforcement-policy-is-outrageous" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>I also want to take a quick look at <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20230131144432/https://help.netflix.com/en/node/123277">the actual software-level mechanical controls</a> Netflix is using to <em>enforce</em> its policy, because they’re all, without exception, outrageous. </p>
<p>All devices are automatically blocked from using Netflix, regardless of whether or not you’re logged in and authenticated, unless specifically whitelisted by Netflix.
Netflix whitelists “trusted devices” — those are devices Netflix trusts, not you — which are defined as devices that are signed-on to Netflix and used on your home wi-fi network every 31 days. If you want to use Netflix on a device that hasn’t signed into Netflix on your home wi-fi network, you have to go through customer support to get it manually unblocked. </p>
<p>You can’t use Netflix while travelling without requesting a temporary code from Netflix customer support, which only lasts seven days. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1620871868772384768" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="GreatCheshire/1620871865576349696"><a href="https://twitter.com/GreatCheshire/" title="(she/her) Co-Writer Emily for Sarah Z. Writer for my own channel Lady Emily. TMBG Heardle champion. https://t.co/xD3XIoNUgf"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1524065387129810948/7f2SGLt7_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Lady Emily</span><span class="at">@GreatCheshire</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/GreatCheshire/status/1620871865576349696">GreatCheshire</a>:</span><p>In a world where people download Netflix on their tablets or phones just to have it in case they want to use it one day, suddenly being blocked out on a device because you’re not actively booting it up every month is going to be a huge mess. It makes having an account into work</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GreatCheshire/status/1620871868772384768" target="_blank">Wed Feb 01 19:49:02 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- ![mmasnick@: Kinda hoping that Netflix's new "we'll ban you if you watch the Netflix account you paid for outside of your home too much" story turns into a "New Coke"-style business school case study in how to do something totally stupid that pisses off your most loyal customers, and leads Netflix to reverse course quickly.](https://mastodon.social/@mmasnick/109792372817036617) -->
<p>So what’s the alternative to invasive, brittle, overtly-hostile software lockouts that turn “having a Netflix account” from a benefit into extra work?
Like I said already, you-the-customer have to be the one to define “your household”; anything else is absurd, and we’ve just seen why.</p>
<p>“You cannot reasonably limit accounts by household” would be a dealbreaker if Netflix was selling unlimited access to households, because that would make any single account effectively inexhaustible. As I keep saying, though, <em>that isn’t how Netflix sells access</em>. Accounts are limited by the number of simultaneous devices. The only thing that breaks this model is <em>trying</em> to limit access by households <em>too</em>, which is exactly the mistake Netflix is making.</p>
<p>For a very salient look at this issue of corporate definitions of undefinable social constructs being forced as policy — and because I have to cite him in every article I write — see <a href="https://doctorow.medium.com/netflix-wants-to-chop-down-your-family-tree-cc524a5dd7db">Cory Doctorow’s “Netflix wants to chop down your family tree”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><em class="cite">Cory Doctorow:</em>
Netflix says that its new policy allows members of the same “household” to share an account. This policy comes with an assumption: that there is a commonly understood, universal meaning of “household,” and that software can determine who is and is not a member of your household.</p>
<p>This is a very old corporate delusion in the world of technology.<br>
…<br>
<a href="https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-heist-part-iii-8561f6d5a4dc">https://onezero.medium.com/the-internet-heist-part-iii-8561f6d5a4dc</a><br>
…<br>
These weirdos, so dissimilar from the global majority, get to define the boxes that computers will shove the rest of the world into. If your family doesn’t look like their family, that’s tough: “Computer says no.”<br>
…<br>
I think everyone understood that this was an absurd “solution,” but they had already decided that they were going to complete the seemingly straightforward business of defining a category like “household” using software, and once that train left the station, nothing was going to stop it.</p>
<p>This is a recurring form of techno-hubris: the idea that baseline concepts like “family” have crisp definitions and that any exceptions are outliers that would never swallow the rule. …<br>
…<br>
There was a global rush for legal name-changes after 9/11 — not because people changed their names, but because people needed to perform the bureaucratic ritual necessary to have the name they’d used all along be recognized in these new, brittle, ambiguity-incinerating machines.</p>
<p>For important categories, ambiguity is a feature, not a bug.<br>
…<br>
The Netflix anti-sharing tools are designed for rich people. If you travel for business and stay in the kind of hotel where the TV has its own Netflix client that you can plug your username and password into, Netflix will give you a seven-day temporary code to use.</p>
<p>But for the most hardcore road-warriors, Netflix has thin gruel. Unless you connect to your home wifi network every 31 days and stream a show, Netflix will lock out your devices. Once blocked, you have to “contact Netflix” (laughs in Big Tech customer service).</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That middle bit — “everyone understood that this was an absurd “solution,” but they had already decided that they were going to complete the seemingly straightforward business of defining a category like “household” using software, and once that train left the station, nothing was going to stop it” — is the key takeaway from looking at the enforcement policy. </p>
<p>Netflix is fundamentally okay with not actually providing people with the access they purchased. as long as it looks like they’re making a half-hearted effort to. The literal sociopaths came up with a system that, even for the businessman who doesn’t share their password but occasionally travels, turns paying for Netflix into a horrible chore. As far as Netflix cares, people who pay for Netflix don’t actually have to be able to watch it. The product doesn’t have to be delivered; the system <em>doesn’t even have to work</em>.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="knew-this-was-unpopular-and-risky">Knew this was unpopular and risky<a class="headerlink" href="#knew-this-was-unpopular-and-risky" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>And Netflix knew all this. They knew the system they were building wouldn’t work, and they knew it was unpopular and risky. None of this was a surprise to anyone.</p>
<p>From the industry-facing “Twipe digital publishing” (a European consulting group) <a href="https://www.twipemobile.com/monetising-password-sharing-what-publishers-can-learn-from-netflix/">Monetising password sharing: what publishers can learn from Netflix (February 2020)</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Publishers are faced with limited options if they try to stop password sharing from a technology standpoint. Subscribers expect to be able to access the content they have paid for anywhere they are, on whatever device they are using. So publishers have to think carefully through the number of devices they limit a subscriber’s account to access content on. One subscriber might check the morning’s headlines on their phone in the morning, scroll through the homepage over lunch on their work desktop, and check for updates in the evening on their laptop. Add in a tablet or secondary mobile and one subscriber can easily access content on five different devices. Let alone what we might consider protected password sharing, such as sharing subscription info with a partner or children still living at home. Simply restricting access to a limited number of devices can cause more headaches for your customer service department. Even restricting access to geographical areas can cause problems for long-time subscribers trying to include their news habit on a vacation.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or Fastcompany’s <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90420891/the-perils-of-netflixs-rumored-password-sharing-crackdown">Starr Rhett Rocque, “The perils of Netflix’s rumored password sharing crackdown” (October 2019)</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In response to an analyst’s question about policing password sharing more actively, Greg Peters, Netflix’s chief product officer, said, “We continue to monitor it, so we’re looking at the situation, and we’ll see those consumer-friendly ways to push on the edges of that. But I think we’ve got no big plans to announce at this point and time in terms of doing something differently there.”</p>
<p>In other words, Netflix understands that taking extreme measures to reduce password sharing could be risky. It could alienate not only potential subscribers into the arms of Hulu, Apple TV+, Disney+, or eventually HBO Max or Peacock but also its current subscribers, some of whom are the ones with passwords being shared. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or watch how Netflix itself behaves as it <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/13f719af-b406-4c53-b283-d91e002dde5a">warns broadband partners that bundle Netflix to expect backlash over the value of their benefit getting slashed.</a>
Netflix knew they couldn’t reasonably do this, and did anyway. </p>
<p>This is why they were really desperate to manufacture some semblance of consent. Like in this rigged poll, where “I was paying for an account but won’t anymore” — the scenario you would expect them to want to know the most about — literally isn’t even an option.</p>
<p><img alt="Poll" src="https://i.redd.it/if5j9vzutwda1.png"></p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="double-dipping-the-new-model">Double Dipping: the “new model”<a class="headerlink" href="#double-dipping-the-new-model" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But even if it weren’t for the lying, and the bait-and-switch, and the invasion of privacy, and the marginalization, and the price hike, I would <em>still</em> object to the new pricing model, because of that wretched double-dip. </p>
<!-- It's a price hike, but more... -->
<p>The new pricing model is still priced based on quality and simultaneous screens, but adds an extra layer of restrictions that benefits Netflix at the expense of the user, and doesn’t correspond to costs or service or anything other than Netflix’s imagination. With the new requirements, unless you’re the account holder or a colocated family member who can regularly confirm their location, you won’t be able to use the service.</p>
<p>This is clearly a price hike: pay the same for a service you can do significantly less with, or pay more for a service that’s less-worse but still not as good as what you were getting before. That’s lousy behaviour from Netflix, but what really bothers me isn’t that, but the double-dipping involved in the extra arbitrary restriction. </p>
<!-- Not just a price hike, double dipping -->
<p>The double dip happens when, by means of adding some arbitrary<sup id="fnref:georestriction"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:georestriction">2</a></sup> restrictions on top of what you paid for, Netflix gets paid twice for providing the same thing one time.
When you subscribe to Netflix, you’re paying for usage, but you’re limited by usage <em>and</em> location <em>and</em> user, even though none of those extra limits represent any change in the actual service Netflix provides. Banning remote access is an entirely artificial metric Netflix is using to enclose space that they’ve already rented out so they can charge for it <em>again</em>.</p>
<p>As an easy example of how ludicrous this is, think about the “Netflix and chill” scenario where you have someone over and watch Netflix together. Since you’re sharing Netflix with someone from outside your collocated family, Netflix wants to say that’s a violation! No, you’d both need to pay for your own Netflix account… to watch one stream, on one of the accounts. That’s another double-dip sneaking in again!</p>
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<aside class="cb furthermore">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Nintendo pulled this same stunt with digital games on the 3DS; Digital 3DS games you purchased (full price) were tied to both your Nintendo Network account (NNID) <em>and</em> the physical console.
Even though they were required to be tied to your account you could only re-download them on the console you purchased them on. You didn’t have the right to redownload or even play your own copy of those games on a new console without going through a transfer process with customer service.<sup id="fnref:nintendo-transfer"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:nintendo-transfer">3</a></sup>
It’s the same dynamic: they charged for one thing, and then they limited the product in a whole new way that requires you to pay twice for what you already have. Cartridges stay winning. </p>
</aside>
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<p>In the “password sharing” scenario, the Netflix service being shared is all already paid for. If password sharers have to pay an additional fee (like they do in Canada), Netflix would be getting paid twice for one stream, since the original account holder has already paid for the service. They’re charging once for providing the service, and then charging again when you use it.</p>
<p>A “password sharing fee” would be another charge to access a service you already purchased, demanded only because you’re using it in a way the company thinks might decrease demand for their service. (Which, by the way, is what usage <em>does</em>; when you sell something, that decreases the demand to buy more of that thing, because that person <em>has some of it now.</em> You can’t sell things without decreasing the demand with each sale. This isn’t rocket science!)</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="maximize-your-use-of-your-resources">Maximize your use of your resources<a class="headerlink" href="#maximize-your-use-of-your-resources" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But it shouldn’t matter what Netflix thinks the results of my use would be, it’s okay for me to use <em>my excess resources</em> however I want. Every drop of service in the pool is fully paid for, so no matter who uses it, they’re not stealing anything. What Netflix is doing here is like if a gym membership sold a pass for unlimited use, but then found a way to punish frequent customers who were getting the most out of their subscription. It’s a shameless cash grab.</p>
<p>And this applies for all resources, not just Netflix: your broadband connection is being underutilized most of the time (whenever you’re not using it heavily) so go ahead and use that excess internet bandwidth by running p2p nodes for onion, seeding torrents, hosting ipfs, archiveteam warrior, etc. The broadband companies plan for non-continuous usage, and would rather you waste all that bandwidth so they can have it back, but that’s their problem. If we can put our idle resources to work helping other people, that’s better than donating them back to corporations.</p>
<p>Your service provider might not <em>like</em> that you’re actually using the service you paid for efficiently, but you paid for the usage and so you get to use it as efficiently as you want.
If some provider tries to pressure you not to use your excess bandwidth because they’d rather you just pay them for time spent providing nothing, the only valid response is the ol’ <a href="https://doctorow.medium.com/a-win-for-harley-riders-eec8025ac96b">Fuck you, I bought it, it’s MINE.</a></p>
<p>Netflix likes talking about “piracy”, but in reality the only thing close to theft that happens is how Netflix sells you bandwidth but automatically keeps any capacity you <em>don’t</em> use for itself, to resell. They love using <em>their</em> resources efficiently, but can’t stand it when their customers do the same.</p>
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<p>If companies wanted to charge fairly for other factors they’re trying to limit — like location — they could choose to do that. In Netflix’s case, that would look like selling a physical-household-tied subscription with unlimited simultaneous use, or literally tying subscriptions to buildings themselves. But that would loosen the grip somewhere else, letting the customer get a good deal depending on their situation, and so that can’t be allowed. </p>
<p>So yeah, it’s a shameless cash grab that very publicly makes Netflix look like a bunch of crooks. So why are they desperate enough to pull this crap?</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="imagined-lost-profit">Imagined lost profit<a class="headerlink" href="#imagined-lost-profit" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Let’s revisit some key sections in those articles from before:</p>
<p><a href="https://t.co/CoYIkeaPIo">Mae Anderson, Passing on your password? Streaming services are past it | AP</a> (May 2021)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Password sharing is estimated to cost streaming services several billion dollars a year in lost revenue.
…
Sharing or stealing streaming service passwords cost an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2019 according to the most recent data from research firm Park Associates, and that’s expected to rise to nearly $3.5 billion by 2024.</p>
<p>That may be a small fraction of the $119.69 billion eMarketer predicts people will spend on U.S. video subscriptions this year. But subscriber growth is slowing, and costs are increasing.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/using-someone-elses-netflix-password-is-likely-to-get-harder-11616059801?mod=e2tw">Netflix Cracks Down on Sharing</a> (March 2021)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Password sharing costs companies a lot of money. U.S. streaming platforms lost an estimated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2019 because of password sharing, and that amount is expected to increase to $3.5 billion in 2024, according to Parks Associates, a research firm.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/why-netflix-and-hbo-don-t-care-if-they-lose-500m-a-year-to-password-sharing-1.3154873">Why Netflix and HBO don't care if they lose $500M a year to password sharing | CBC News</a> (July 2015)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Streaming services like Netflix and HBO may be losing out on as much as $500 million US a year to people who share their passwords, yet on the whole there seems to be little appetite within the industry to crack down on the practice.</p>
<p>The eye-popping figure comes from a recent report by Parks Research analyst Glenn Hower, which says there’s a large and growing number of people who access legal streaming services yet aren’t captured in official membership numbers, because they share an account with someone else — who pays the bills.</p>
<p>Worldwide, people will spend $11 billion US on subscriptions to video streaming services, “so if they’re leaving $500 million a year on the table, you’re talking about a significant chunk of potential revenue,” Hower said in an interview.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These arguments all depend on you accepting one keystone lie, and it’s vital you understand it so you can see through the rhetoric: <strong>Imagined unrealized profit is not “loss” or “a cost”</strong></p>
<p>Netflix never “lost” $500M and/or $2.5 billion dollars. They did not have that money before but lost it to thieves, nor did they have assets worth that amount that they lost. <a href="https://bananonbinary.tumblr.com/post/623754530545418240/cant-believe-i-lost-1000-when-i-told-some-guy-at">They felt entitled to money that they did not have and still do not have.</a></p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Those $2.5 billion and $500M numbers seem to pop up everywhere. They come from (now ex-)Parks Research associate <a href="https://www.fiercevideo.com/person/glenn-hower">Glenn Hower</a>, and his reports <a href="http://www.parksassociates.com/report/cost-of-piracy">The Cost of Piracy</a> and <a href="https://www.parksassociates.com/report/paytv-passwords-piracy">Pay TV, Passwords, and Piracy</a>, but the articles that print those numbers are loath to attribute them to their source.</p>
<p>My personal theory is, because a PDF download of either report costs $3,500.00, none of the “news outlets” reporting on the data could actually be assed to purchase and read the source they were citing, and instead just grabbed numbers from stuff they’d heard <em>about</em> the reports, which also — on top of the fact that, as I’m explaining, the idea is fake in the first place — explains why the numbers vary so wildly. </p>
</aside>
<p>This is the same lie companies <em>always</em> try to sell when they talk about “piracy”. <strong>Piracy doesn’t make a company suffer a loss, and it isn’t a cost.</strong> The only thing it does is theoretically decrease the <em>demand</em> for a product the same way selling people that product — or any competition — does. <strong>When companies talk about money “lost” to piracy, that’s literally just money a company has decided it feels entitled to, but was not given.</strong></p>
<p>In fact, the scholarly, peer-reviewed research exists on this topic indicates that not even outright piracy — which, again, password sharing is not — is a measure or even indicator of lost or unrealized sales. </p>
<p>In regards to TV and serial media, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2426577">The “Invisible Hand” of Piracy: An Economic Analysis of the Information-Goods Supply Chain.</a> finds that “a moderate level of piracy” is good for the manufacturer, retailer, and consumer in a “win-win-win” scenario.
<a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2016.12.006">Piracy and box office movie revenues: Evidence from Megaupload</a> looks at movie piracy and finds that Megaupload’s shutdown actively harmed the average box office revenue, totally contradicting the entire “lost to piracy” narrative.</p>
<p>Even the MPAA “<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbarro/2012/01/18/thirty-years-before-sopa-mpaa-feared-the-vcr/?sh=4ea6776b5c8d">the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone</a>” itself argues in court that, even in the case of a known number of pirated works, “<a href="https://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-says-piracy-damages-cant-be-measured-131016/">actual damages are not capable of meaningful measurement.</a>”. So to see Netflix just casually asserting that account sharing is equivalent to lost revenue, when they’re <em>directly making revenue from it</em>, is <em>utterly</em> perverse.</p>
<p>This is why I bristle so much when <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-sharing-your-netflix-password-is-considered-piracy-lite-2015-10-13">Why sharing your Netflix password is considered piracy ‘lite’ - MarketWatch (2015-10-13)</a> uses the giant bold “Media companies stand to lose millions of dollars on account sharing” as the subtitle for the article. It’s completely inappropriate and at least borders on malpractice. They don’t defend the claim, they don’t explain the idea, and the article exclusively experts who don’t substantiate it. Because it’s false.</p>
<p>In Netflix’s case, this is even a worse perversion of the truth, because — as I keep reiterating — <em>Netflix was specifically paid for every unit of content it streamed</em>. So when Netflix cries about “losing” money to “password piracy”, it’s complaining that it was <em>paid for a service it provided, but not paid again extra times.</em> </p>
<p>Not only is that not an instance of people pirating Netflix, when you see the double-dipping it’s clear that it’s Netflix trying its hand at robbing its customers, not the other way around.
Netflix is demanding it should have been paid more for a certain kind of service (shared with household members who didn’t share the residence) simply because it unilaterally decided to after the fact.
And then it’s calling that imaginary, arbitrary amount of money “lost profit” it can “reclaim”.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1394803179456401408" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/NomeDaBarbarian/" title=""Surely the greatest living philosopher of sandwich ontology" "Really really good with words" & other fictions Accidental #ADHD Advocate, Queer Redneck, He/Him"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1478506772310597632/qrKpa5Au_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Nome</span><span class="at">@NomeDaBarbarian</span></div></a></div><div><p>"Cost them several billion dollars a year in lost revenue" is accepting their framing.</p><p>People share passwords to save money. If it wasn't possible, they wouldn't all go out and spend.</p><p>Those "lost" billions never existed, and they're obscenely profitable.</p><p>They aren't victims. <a href='https://twitter.com/AP/status/1393234923251720198' target='_blank'>twitter.com/AP/status/1393…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/NomeDaBarbarian/status/1394803179456401408" target="_blank">Tue May 18 23:52:46 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="infinite-growth">Infinite growth<a class="headerlink" href="#infinite-growth" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Netflix is desperate to find “costs” they can control because they’re not growing as fast today as they were during the height of the streaming boom, and they think that’s the end of the world. </p>
<p>They’re so short of their own growth goals that they’re having to <a href="https://digiday.com/future-of-tv/netflix-lets-advertisers-take-their-money-back-after-missing-viewership-targets/">refund advertisers</a>, in cash, for ads they can’t run simply because they don’t have enough eyeballs.
But they still feel an urgent need to keep “growing”, exponentially, even at the cost of the value of their own product.</p>
<p>This ultimately comes from hell capitalism brainworms, where <strong>exponentially increasing profits are expected to continue forever</strong>, and anything less is considered failure.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1652719304192983041" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/maxfperry/" title="Making a literal difference, metaphorically. Co-writer/producer of Netflix series - The Spy and others. Lover of animals and puns."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1653448091104845825/PPbhTqWt_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">(HBO) Max Perry Mason</span><span class="at">@maxfperry</span></div></a></div><div><p>From the @nytimes today. THIS right here is the crux of the issue: We have a consistently profitable business, but that doesn't matter anymore because we've sacrificed everything at the alter of 'exponential growth.' It's a false idol. It's insanity. #wgastrong </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/maxfperry/status/1652719304192983041/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fu-i46NaIAIFFV-.jpg"
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></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/maxfperry/status/1652719304192983041" target="_blank">Sun Apr 30 16:59:22 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1652836792112934912" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="maxfperry/1652719304192983041"><a href="https://twitter.com/cmhughesmd/" title="Founder, Moral Healthcare; former Hospice & ICU Doc; PA Dir @Drsforamerica; https://t.co/ia0yxYndQs, https://t.co/3Ufs3dzJRV Adj. Fac TJU GSPH, All opinions my own!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345043173001801730/AmfFlhiO_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chris M Hughes, MD</span><span class="at">@cmhughesmd</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/maxfperry/status/1652719304192983041">maxfperry</a>:</span><p>@maxfperry @nytimes When I took economics, admittedly a long time ago, there was a concept called "mature business." A mature business was expected to make a fair profit, but not to constantly grow or increase margins. Wall Street has killed this. All of pharma should be mature, not gouging us.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/cmhughesmd/status/1652836792112934912" target="_blank">Mon May 01 00:46:14 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Realistically, constant profit is a good goal, but constant growth isn’t. It’s not sustainable and shouldn’t be expected or pursued.
But in the realm of High Capitalism, businesses don’t measure success by profit, but by the <em>rate</em> of profit. In order to satisfy its investors, Netflix has to keep making <em>more</em> profit, year after year, forever. If Netflix makes two billion dollars in pure profits, after expenses, that its executives and shareholders get to just keep and spend, that’s considered stalling out. Where’s the growth?</p>
<p>That’s an easy question to answer, though. <strong>The past “growth” Netflix is chasing was actually a temporary excess caused by windfall profits.</strong></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1652838025959800833" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="maxfperry/1652719304192983041"><a href="https://twitter.com/jbhelfrich/" title="Reader, Writer, Ranter"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/430763818/sigpic_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">jbhelfrich</span><span class="at">@jbhelfrich</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/maxfperry/status/1652719304192983041">maxfperry</a>:</span><p>@maxfperry @jonrog1 @nytimes My employer (not a media company) laid people off in February because we "only" had 10M in margin in January.</p><p>The concept that "shareholder's best interest" is entirely and exclusively quarter over quarter profits is possibly the most harmful idea of the post WWII era.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/jbhelfrich/status/1652838025959800833" target="_blank">Mon May 01 00:51:08 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Netflix isn’t raking in money anymore because — broad strokes — its big growth periods were caused by specific booms, and often one-off technological developments. </p>
<p>First, a huge wave of development as media streaming became technically feasible, and was quickly forced into the mainstream thanks to regulatory capture at the W3C forcing the normalization of EMEs.
Second, for a (relatively) very long time, having little-to-no real competition in the streaming space, and being able to dominate the market.
Similarly, third, a huge spike in demand for at-home entertainment during the early parts of the COVID pandemic.
And fourth, pivoting to producing their own content without all the pesky “equitable pay for workers” unions had ensured in the traditional media space. </p>
<p>For years, Netflix has gotten away with saying “we’re a scrappy upstart trying to gain some footing against the vast corporate titans, like Blockbuster.” Obviously, that hasn’t been true for ages: Netflix is a vertically-integrated media production company and distribution network. That’s not some weird disruption the media industry hasn’t seen before, that’s the norm.
But it turns out if you insist the crew for your full-length TV series work on contracts designed for “digital media” when that consisted of 8-minute bonus webisodes of The Office, you can pay less than a living wage and pocket <em>a lot more money</em>, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/notes-on-hollywood/why-are-tv-writers-so-miserable">until it catches up with you</a>. </p>
<p>That windfall is being perversely treated as a baseline metric to beat, instead of the rare peak it actually was.
So Netflix is trying to keep up exponential increases in profit just like they did back when they were delivering increases in real value, even though they’re not creating that value anymore. They’re a fat tick so rich they can’t grow anymore, but their wealth can never keep up with their appetite, so they’re demanding another temporary windfall. And evidently, they’re happy for that cash to come directly at the expense of both the customer and of their own product. </p>
<p>Netflix’s inability to be satisfied with steady profits is a look directly into the failure state of capitalism that is the demand for infinite growth. It’s the grey goo scenario. The paperclip maximizer. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1652002907946995712" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="DylanRoth/1651722764342919168"><a href="https://twitter.com/qntm/" title="Creator of "Lena" (buy the book: https://t.co/Kat1kdckuQ), SCP-055 / There Is No Antimemetics Division (https://t.co/PkR6NYmdCO), Ra, Absurdle, HATETRIS and other things"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1287541413895438337/89gyUedJ_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">qntm</span><span class="at">@qntm</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/DylanRoth/status/1651722764342919168">DylanRoth</a>:</span><p>@DylanRoth Nothing can ever satisfy the investor class. Not even infinitely increasing revenue at accelerating rates forever. If you reach the top of Everest investors will furiously insist that you continue climbing</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1652002907946995712" target="_blank">Fri Apr 28 17:32:40 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1659053545952509953" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="k_trendacosta/1659053141646802944"><a href="https://twitter.com/k_trendacosta/" title="Assoc. Director of Policy and Activism for @eff, formerly managing editor of @io9 katharine @ eff dot org. She/her @ktrendacosta@mstdn.social Tweets are my own."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1066668675002855426/Z5THM6IN_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Katharine Trendacosta</span><span class="at">@k_trendacosta</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/k_trendacosta/status/1659053141646802944">k_trendacosta</a>:</span><p>AI is not going to save you. What would have saved you us being happy with guaranteed returns every year instead of trying to grow billions of dollars of worth every year which is IMPOSSIBLE</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/k_trendacosta/status/1659053545952509953" target="_blank">Thu May 18 04:29:23 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>This is another very predictable failure mode of investment capitalism. Investment capitalists want to move their money to whatever is booming now, and don’t care about things that generate consistent value, because they make their money not off profit, but off the <em>rate</em> of profit. </p>
<p>This is greed (the pursuit of more and more money) blinding people to reality and ultimately disconnecting them from it entirely.
It’s the ludicrous idea that if your profits don’t increase exponentially forever while your costs remain linear or constant, it must be because customers are getting too much, because you’re definitely entitled to that growth simply because you own the capital.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1583497382490013713" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/KrisWolfheart/" title="Twitch Partner. My mouth goes faster than my brain, I'm sorry. Some links are Affiliate Links. Bad Podcaster. Satire Parody Satire pfp by @Greyzilla_"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1562613909390905344/Fwpc0Wtp_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Kris P. Bacon</span><span class="at">@KrisWolfheart</span></div></a></div><div><p>It legit rocks that the completely irrational belief that exponentially increasing profits can continue forever is gonna lead all these terrible silicon valley companies into obliterating themselves over the next couple years </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/KrisWolfheart/status/1583497382490013713/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ffm2decUAAAv7ww.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/KrisWolfheart/status/1583497382490013713" target="_blank">Fri Oct 21 16:36:10 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>I say “Netflix” is making these choices, when really that agency is diffused through half a dozen layers of executives and shareholder responsibilities and investment mechanisms. The modern financial system works to diffuse the actual responsibility for these decisions that add up to self-destructive behaviour through layers and layers of artificial entities and LLCs and mutual funds, as if everything is run by inhuman AI already. </p>
<p>In effect the whole system serves to launder agency and liability and responsibility until the output is policy that serves to maximize the immediate profitability of the firm at the cost of literally anything else. It ensnares every bit of human decision making that could serve to change course such that it can only make decisions toward that imaginary goal of ur-expansion; any mind in the decision-making process that resists that pull is unfit for purpose. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold.
And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling.
If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them.</p>
<p>— The Grapes of Wrath</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1582822856362053632" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/" title="Writer, lawyer, Dodger fan, idealist, hater. nycsouthpaw18 at gmail. RTs = endorsement or scorn. (he/him)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1392905447590535175/ywV_EmmA_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">southpaw</span><span class="at">@nycsouthpaw</span></div></a></div><div><p>Stupid question, probably, but why does Netflix need to keep growing? Why can't it be 'we built this enormous thing. We think it's the right size now. It's profitable to the tune of about $3/share, and we're going to try to keep it around there'? <a href='https://twitter.com/UNILAD/status/1582730412790493186' target='_blank'>twitter.com/UNILAD/status/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1582822856362053632" target="_blank">Wed Oct 19 19:55:51 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1570214500393189376" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="stuartpb/1570213815966658561"><a href="https://twitter.com/stuartpb/" title="retweets = dinning echoes through my mind. if you post on Twitter, you post in real life"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1356366514237018112/P117Nxds_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Stuart P. Bentley</span><span class="at">@stuartpb</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/stuartpb/status/1570213815966658561">stuartpb</a>:</span><p>@daveexmachina @LeavittAlone I went through a round of seeking venture capital about a decade ago, and I asked the VCs who kept saying "I want to see exponential growth", point-blank, "what if I were comfortable just producing linear profits", and they said "we would instruct the board to have you replaced"</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/stuartpb/status/1570214500393189376" target="_blank">Thu Sep 15 00:54:44 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>In economics we call this <strong>The Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall</strong>, which is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a key point in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e8rt8RGjCM">Marx's Theory of Economic Crisis</a>, but it’s inherited from Adam Smith and David Ricardo. </p>
<p>A main cause of this is competition in the production economy: if the producer doesn’t grow, it’s out-competed until eradicated, creating an existential growth imperative for corporations. But, ironically, the competition pressure itself is what drives the rate of profit down, as companies are forced to burn more and more of their margins. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90420891/the-perils-of-netflixs-rumored-password-sharing-crackdown">Starr Rhett Rocque, “The perils of Netflix’s rumored password sharing crackdown”</a> compares that margin, or growth potential, or “growth hacks available”, to other services, and finds Netflix lacking:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The challenge is that Netflix does not likely have similar growth hacks at its disposal the way that Disney or Apple does (which is offering its Apple TV+ service, debuting November 1, free for a year for customers who purchase a new Apple device). In the U.S., Netflix, which added fewer than four million U.S. subscribers in the 12 months from September 30, 2018, is considered to have found all the customers it’s going to attract.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The market is saturated now. There’s no easy way for Netflix to attract more users without doing the work… unless they can manufacture their own. In fact, they come right out and explain that’s why they’re going after shared accounts: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://www.blogto.com/tech/2023/02/netflix-password-sharing-canada-this-week/">Netflix director of product innovation Chengyi Long:</a>
While [features like profiles and multiple streams] have been hugely popular, they’ve also created confusion about when and how you can share Netflix. Today, over 100 million households are sharing accounts — impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The crackdown isn’t a reaction to theft, it isn’t to adjust to external market factors, it’s just because the potential to turn happy customers into angry ex-now-potential customers is <em>there</em>, and Netflix is run by a load of blind jackasses that think that’s a good thing.</p>
<p>Netflix wants cheap growth, and they’re trying to get it with new users, but they’re trying to invent that demand <em>themselves</em> by making the service inaccessible to people who are already using it. But this framing is fundamentally flawed, because it misunderstands “freeloaders” as people not already involved in a transaction; in reality this means the thing Netflix is burning for a temporary boost in profitability isn’t “growth fuel”, but instead the value of their actual product. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="its-because-streaming-isnt-a-good-value-anymore-btw">It’s because streaming isn’t a good value anymore btw<a class="headerlink" href="#its-because-streaming-isnt-a-good-value-anymore-btw" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Side-soapbox: Netflix is <em>bad</em> now. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="116601504026214401" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/blockbuster/" title="The official Twitter feed for Blockbuster US. Follow us for updates and promos for all US Blockbuster fans."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000679852472/9ee706eca6f5d0b9fbc3a57d014ec807_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Blockbuster</span><span class="at">@blockbuster</span></div></a></div><div><p>Tweet why you’re leaving Netflix. The top three most creative tweets using #GoodbyeNetflix will win a 1-year subscription to Blockbuster!</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/blockbuster/status/116601504026214401" target="_blank">Wed Sep 21 19:55:39 +0000 2011</a>
</blockquote>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="cancellation">Cancellation<a class="headerlink" href="#cancellation" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>When I talk about Netflix’s cancellation problem, I’m not referring to the <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/video/netflix-braces-user-exodus-cracking-160102473.html">62% (!) of users who say they’ll stop using the service when password sharing ends</a>.
I’m talking about how nothing on Netflix has any real cultural power anymore, because Netflix is so trigger-happy with cancelling shows no one’s willing to get emotionally invested in one. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1610030396070154240" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/" title="Internet sloth, and gigantic nerd. Avatar by @skutchdraws banner by @LiquidAzalea. She/her. Streaming Tues/Wed/Thurs/Sun at: https://t.co/eJCosrLnrR"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1588637009358344195/z2DgQEwV_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Casey Explosion</span><span class="at">@CaseyExplosion</span></div></a></div><div><p>I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Netflix have done irreparable damage to their brand by constantly cancelling things, they have effectively trained their own audience never to get invested in any of their shows. It's short term cost-cutting, long-term harm. <a href='https://twitter.com/whatonnetflix/status/1609991074000379905' target='_blank'>twitter.com/whatonnetflix/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/CaseyExplosion/status/1610030396070154240" target="_blank">Mon Jan 02 21:48:53 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1655246108526870529" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="OSPyoutube/1655245591113334789"><a href="https://twitter.com/OSPyoutube/" title="Hi! We're Overly Sarcastic Productions, a two-person team youtube channel specializing in making the unfunny funny and the uninteresting interesting."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/749478405024940032/IpqUzmB__normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Overly Sarcastic Productions</span><span class="at">@OSPyoutube</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/OSPyoutube/status/1655245591113334789">OSPyoutube</a>:</span><p>can you believe we used to get 7+ seasons of shows that were only okay on average? isn't it wild that there are older series where everybody knows it only gets good AFTER the first two seasons? what a wondrous bygone age. anyway support the writer's strike -R</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/OSPyoutube/status/1655246108526870529" target="_blank">Sun May 07 16:19:59 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Netflix is out of new users, and streaming competitors are increasingly pulling their content from Netflix in order to stock their own shelves.
But, if you remember from <a href="#infinite-growth">Infinite growth</a>, Netflix has another crumple zone: original programming. </p>
<p>Netflix Originals are extremely attractive because they come without the need to license the IP from other studios and without the risk of those studios refusing to renew those licenses in the future. They’re also far cheaper to produce than traditional television or movies because of various labor abuses that the <a href="https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/writers-strike-negotiations-wga-updates-1235601043/">writers strike</a> is finally shining a clear light on.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1653259503494905857" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/elizaskinner/" title="Comedian…Co-EP/Headwriter/Roaster Toaster for #EarthToNed (Disney+/Jim Henson Co)… Emmy winning writer… she/her/mistress… my comedy album is at the link👇"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1479982429922160643/8TjjWHDk_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eliza Skinner #wgastrong</span><span class="at">@elizaskinner</span></div></a></div><div><p>This is truly, simply what the WGA strike is about: do you detect a difference b/t the shows you stream (through Roku, your laptop, etc) and the ones you watch through a cable box? Bc we do the same work for both, but we take a HUGE paycut for streaming shows. 1/3</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/elizaskinner/status/1653259503494905857" target="_blank">Tue May 02 04:45:56 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Sometimes these topics intersect in comically evil ways, like Netflix “cancelling” shows and immediately rebooting them as on-paper separate entities <em>specifically</em> to prevent their workers from getting a full paycheck:</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1550998757155737600" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/" title="Your leading source for quick reliable news and one of a kind content. Home for healthy and liberating discussion on all things pop culture."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1478853769710510080/FAP8TTPR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">DiscussingFilm</span><span class="at">@DiscussingFilm</span></div></a></div><div><p>‘DAREDEVIL: BORN AGAIN’ is 18 episodes long. Charlie Cox will return. #SDCC </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1550998757155737600/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYZBJigXoAE1opp.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1550998757155737600" target="_blank">Sun Jul 24 00:18:14 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1551201670570336257" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/t_NYC/" title="Union worker. Eleanor’s dad. poet. Born in Queens, raised in Staten, made in Brooklyn. #RankAndFile IATSE Grip #AnInjuryToOneIsAnInjuryToAll #1U"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1396488079502979076/vKjbNFFu_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">thomas 🛠 IATSE STRIKE!</span><span class="at">@t_NYC</span></div></a></div><div><p>I worked on all three seasons of Netflix Daredevil. We get wages/conditions based on seasons, and season three is when we get our full wages/conditions. They cancelled it at season three. It will comes back as “season one”. What a racket <a href='https://twitter.com/DiscussingFilm/status/1550998757155737600' target='_blank'>twitter.com/DiscussingFilm…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/t_NYC/status/1551201670570336257" target="_blank">Sun Jul 24 13:44:32 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>This is where we get “Larry, I’m on DuckTales.” The only ones making money are the investors; even the stars get the shaft.</p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/76HijAoXi6k?autoplay=1" title="Larry, I'm on DuckTales. (YT)" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/76HijAoXi6k/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>Because Netflix is bent on pursuing “hits” — shows that immediately get high engagement and bring in new viewers — it’s focusing almost all its resources in throwing pilot seasons at the wall and hoping for a miracle instead of just sitting down and grinding out good media. </p>
<p>But after a few cycles of this, users <em>know</em> that there’s a good chance any given new show won’t last past a first season, so they’re less willing to get invested in shows that aren’t established. This just re-enforces the cycle, because now <em>every</em> new show gets cancelled, because it wasn’t a smash-hit, because people know if they like it, Netflix will cancel their show.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1612274757046616064" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/CartoonCrave_/" title="Home Of Animation News!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1620717769921527808/kDV8omji_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Cartoon Crave</span><span class="at">@CartoonCrave_</span></div></a></div><div><p>Netflix has reversed the season 2 renewal for INSIDE JOB. The series is now cancelled.</p><p>Creator Shion Takeuchi shares her thoughts in the second photo. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/thecartooncrave/status/1612274757046616064/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fl_zWDPXgAAhfQO.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/thecartooncrave/status/1612274757046616064/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fl_zWC3XoAERkfB.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/CartoonCrave_/status/1612274757046616064" target="_blank">Mon Jan 09 02:27:11 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1612383979734179842" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/art_dweeeb/" title="Art Velasco A.K.A ArtDweeb Storyboard Artist on "Hello Kitty & Friends Supercute Adventures" Author of "Mandy and the Magic Toad" 🇧🇷 He/Him."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1590513841879801857/cBB1-XXG_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Art "Dweeb" Velasco</span><span class="at">@art_dweeeb</span></div></a></div><div><p>If Adventure Time or Steven Universe came out today they'd be cancelled after season one. This business model of cancelling shit if it doesn't immediately become number 1 will be the death of animation <a href='https://twitter.com/CartoonCrave_/status/1612274757046616064' target='_blank'>twitter.com/CartoonCrave_/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/art_dweeeb/status/1612383979734179842" target="_blank">Mon Jan 09 09:41:12 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1563759788915564549" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Northernlion/" title="I play video games for the amusement of strangers on the internet. Business email: northernlionbusiness@gmail.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2236512789/ChannelIcon_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ryan Letourneau</span><span class="at">@Northernlion</span></div></a></div><div><p>netflix 2 days after a new show comes out: "the show has already been watched for one trillion minutes, making it the most successful entertainment property in human history, which is why we're sharing the news with a heavy heart that it has not been renewed for a second season"</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Northernlion/status/1563759788915564549" target="_blank">Sun Aug 28 05:26:01 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1636111738054557698" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/maryswraith/" title="some kind of fucked up gothic romance 🔞🇨🇦🏳️🌈 (she/her)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1569061617328951302/MACwIOXu_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">was it raining louis ✨</span><span class="at">@maryswraith</span></div></a></div><div><p>at what point can we finally acknowledge that sinking a bunch of money into a tv show, giving it only one season, ending on a cliffhanger, and then cancelling it isn’t just a netflix problem. this isn’t a bug in the streaming systems and their business models, this IS the system <a href='https://twitter.com/DEADLINE/status/1636056763089793025' target='_blank'>twitter.com/DEADLINE/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/maryswraith/status/1636111738054557698" target="_blank">Wed Mar 15 21:06:50 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s yet another miserable, self-destructive cycle that could be avoided if executives could step back and understand the dynamics as they really are, instead of hyperfixating on doing whatever they possibly can to maximize quarter-to-quarter growth. It all just adds up to Netflix’s product getting worse and worse in a completely avoidable way. </p>
<p>On top of that, the promise of streaming is already being broken with huge prices:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11u5wn6/oc_the_cost_of_cable_vs_top_streaming/"><img alt="/u/Dremarious: The Cost Of Cable Vs. Top Streaming Subscriptions" src="https://i.redd.it/0hbxum5fkdoa1.png"></a>
<em class="image-caption">/u/Dremarious: The Cost Of Cable Vs. Top Streaming Subscriptions</em></p>
<p>That sale of streaming services, that they’re the sleek, efficient, modern replacement for cable bundles, has been so utterly destroyed that Disney is actually <a href="https://www.disneyplus.com/welcome/disney-hulu-espn-bundle">bundling their own streaming services together in a cable package</a> to give people some relief from the exorbitant prices they themselves set. And you still get ads no matter what you pay!</p>
<p>From [Paris Marx, “Netflix is Bringing Back Piracy”]:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The sell to consumers was a big one: Not only would this new way of viewing be more convenient because you could just log onto your service and be greeted with a massive catalog of content — all without ads — but it would also be cheaper and of higher quality than what you could expect on cable. What was not to like? The only problem is the promise was never realistic, and now that aspects of it are slowly being revoked, consumers are rightfully angry.</p>
<p>Companies are increasingly pulling content from their libraries and trying to reduce future expectations. It started with companies removing shows from Netflix to put them on their own platforms, but more recently HBO Max has been gutting its catalog after its parent company Warner Brothers merged with Discovery, Netflix has become known for prematurely canceling shows, a number of companies are scrapping and canceling planned shows and movies, and services like Disney are planning to make less content moving forward.</p>
<p>On top of those changes to the viewing experience, streaming services are getting more expensive and adding advertising to squeeze more revenue from subscribers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And when they aren’t cancelling new shows, streaming services spend their time <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/05/disney-remove-series-streaming-disney-plus-hulu-big-shot-willow-y-dollface-turner-hooch-pistol-1235372512/">cutting huge swaths of their library, including direct-to-streaming content</a>. It doesn’t matter that they own the show and don’t have to licence it from other studios, if publishing media means streaming giants <a href="https://twitter.com/Bitterstaff/status/1659338758779703296">have to pay the people who made the media they’re profiting on even a dime</a>, <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/hbo-max-removed-6-streaming-movies-1234747761/">or if they can commit amortization fraud hard enough to invent tax breaks for themselves</a>, it’s worth it to them to just purge everything from existence. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1560157731394289665" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/hamishsteele/" title="he/they | Eisner award winning creator of DeadEndia / Dead End: Paranormal Park | DEADENDIA DEFINITIVE EDITIONS 1 AND 2 OUT NOW!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1611782647440719872/ekN7SEaP_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">hamish steele!</span><span class="at">@hamishsteele</span></div></a></div><div><p>What’s happening at HBO Max is so scary from a creator perspective? Like making a show for a streamer, you rarely get a chance for a physical release, or for it to air anywhere else, and being reminded they can just delete it from existence, all your work, your portfolio, awful!</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/hamishsteele/status/1560157731394289665" target="_blank">Thu Aug 18 06:52:44 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Who wants to buy into that ecosystem? Nobody. Not writers, not directors, and certainly not viewers. And instead of fixing the policies that are rotting their industry from the inside, Netflix is putting the squeeze on its customers.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="anti-market">Anti-market<a class="headerlink" href="#anti-market" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Another reason I particularly hate this is that it’s punishing people for behaving rationally in the marketplace. People looked at the offerings and bought what made sense with a plan to use it, and <em>now</em> Netflix attacks it. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1504887653271015425" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/" title="Boy Named Ana. 💕 Twitter busker. Enby trans boy in love with another trans boy, trying our best. ☀ Pronouns: xie/xer/he/him. White against white supremacy. 🦕"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1299382311650172929/DLhbjq9c_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ana Mardoll</span><span class="at">@AnaMardoll</span></div></a></div><div><p>Netflix being like "we're cancelling everything you've ever loved AND raising our rates, but you're stealing from us if you share your password with your family" is certainly a choice.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1504887653271015425" target="_blank">Fri Mar 18 18:29:10 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>But here’s the thing about the market: your account is a resource you should try to maximize the value of. If you’re buying a service, you have to have meaningful rights over the service you purchase and retain agency in that space! I already mentioned this at the beginning, but it’s worth reiterating how important this is, and how sinister attacks on it are.</p>
<p>“Password sharing” was a core part of the service agreement. You were buying it. As <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/02/netflix-account-password-sharing-family-intimacy/673145/">Ian Bogost recently pointed out in his piece in The Atlantic</a>, password sharing was an explicit part of what Netflix was selling. Now they want us to believe we were stealing from them this whole time.</p>
<p>What Netflix is doing is punishing its users for trying to… use resources effectively? The families that made intelligent purchasing decisions, or the friend group that all pitched in to split an account, Netflix is angry at <em>them</em> for making good use of their resources. </p>
<p>Carpooling isn’t robbing car companies of the chance to sell more cars, it’s using resources efficiently. It’s actively, objectively, a good thing.</p>
<p>The logical extreme of this — and, arguably, stretching further than is wise — is a formal system for managing password sharing. For instance, there was <a href="https://github.com/backus/jam">Jam</a>, a “social password manager” that synchronized and shared account access between people without revealing secrets. This doesn’t mitigate because they still have account access when logged in, but it’s an interesting step towards tech to share account resources effectively — not just with Netflix, but universally.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a class="cite" href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/10/share-netflix-password-app/">Jam developer backus, interviewed for TechCrunch:</a>
The need for Jam was obvious. … Everyone shares passwords, but for consumers there isn’t a secure way to do that. Why? … In the enterprise world, team password managers reflect the reality that multiple people need to access the same account, regularly. Consumers don’t have the same kind of system, and that’s bad for security and coordination.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The opposite scenario — not allowing resource pooling in order to artificially increase demand through violence — would be like car manufacturers prohibiting you from transporting multiple people in your vehicle, or landlords demanding every individual person has to rent their own apartment without letting anyone else use it, and let all the unused space go to waste. And, because landlords are scum, <a href="https://www.kctv5.com/2022/04/26/city-shawnee-bans-co-living-rentals/">they try to do exactly that</a>.</p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1519796317379305478" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/birkmurkrow/" title="they/he || 23 || autistic & disabled || there are many things left in this world for me to discover, and i do plan on discovering them all... after a long nap."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1460923851957755906/DASJ-a_N_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">bing bong ♿</span><span class="at">@birkmurkrow</span></div></a></div><div><p>I'M NOT SORRY BUT HOW THE FUCK ARE Y'ALL GONNA BAN PEOPLE LIVING TOGETHER. PEOPLE. LIVING. TOGETHER. im gonna throw up </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/birkmurkrow/status/1519796317379305478/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRdlryVXwAElHGt.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/birkmurkrow/status/1519796317379305478" target="_blank">Thu Apr 28 21:50:53 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1520227978487209986" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1521648105313218574/KkgIRUCp_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>it’s really astonishing how openly ghoulish people are willing to be. no living, only rent <a href='https://twitter.com/birkmurkrow/status/1519796317379305478' target='_blank'>twitter.com/birkmurkrow/st…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1520227978487209986" target="_blank">Sat Apr 30 02:26:09 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
<p>They don’t want a market. If you look at how Netflix is behaving, it’s clear they <em>hate</em> the market. No, what they want is</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="casino-capitalism">Casino capitalism<a class="headerlink" href="#casino-capitalism" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>A casino has a lot of different games, but they all have one thing in common: the house always wins. The player has the illusion of choices, but the odds for every game are precisely calculated to make sure the players won’t net a profit. </p>
<p>This is what late capitalism hell services like Netflix want. They define multiple metrics and tweak the odds until people get a raw deal behind every door. That’s why there’s all this effort spent trying to box consumers into behaving the way that is the most profitable for Netflix.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1393688728552493058" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1393687689971519488"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1468753339282345986/-TqSYrY1_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1393687689971519488">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>The fact is, "services" don't want to sell you services. They don't want to let you pay for 4 active screens, or 1000 mbps internet. They want to sell you an amorphous relationship with the company where customers pays as much as possible for as little product as possible.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1393688728552493058" target="_blank">Sat May 15 22:04:21 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1393689337649418244" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1393688728552493058"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1468753339282345986/-TqSYrY1_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1393688728552493058">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>Any power the customer has to make smart decisions, or optimize their experience, or get the most out of what they're paying for, the company doesn't want. That's why they're so persistent about stripping the customer of agency and locking them into an "experience".</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1393689337649418244" target="_blank">Sat May 15 22:06:46 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>There’s no market, there’s no trade, and there are no more mutually beneficial transactions. The house has to win and you always have to lose. It’s the adversarial nature of mercantilism twisted into the business model. </p>
<p>In a real transaction, you would expect to see a distribution of values for how much the consumer benefits from their purchase; some people are going to use Netflix very heavily and thus be getting a very good value for their money, while others might not use very little or it at all and end up not getting their money’s worth. But the majority probably fall into some category of “moderate use”. A company like Netflix could visualize this as some sort of distribution:</p>
<p><img alt="Sketch of a generic distribution curve" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/distribution.png"></p>
<p>You could make a chart like this (called a Profitability Distribution Chart) for each pricing plan to visualize “the amount of profit each customer makes you”, with minimum usage and thus maximum profit on the far right, and maximum usage and thus minimum profit on the far left, but with most of your users falling somewhere in the center. With real data it might look like <a href="https://i0.wp.com/ucanalytics.com/blogs/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Profit-Distribution.jpeg?w=714">this</a>. The plan — “the deal” — is fixed, and the variable you’re measuring is user behaviour. </p>
<aside class="cb update">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is called a Portfolio Business: while the behavior of individual customers after they sign up dictates how profitable they are to the business — if they are at all — you can’t determine this behavior <em>before</em> they sign up, so you have to manage them as a portfolio. </p>
</aside>
<p>But sociopathic brain-poisoned executives see everything left of “just hand Netflix your money and don’t get anything in return” as a failing, so they try to “shift the curve” by finding ways to chop off the users who are getting the best deal. But the idea of the distribution reminds us that it’s not just hostile behaviour that costs them users and erodes public trust in the product, it’s also completely stupid. You can’t just make maximum profit of everyone all the time for the same reason half of the class has to be below average; behaviour <em>does</em> vary, and so there will <em>always</em> be a distribution, and it will <em>always</em> have edges. </p>
<p>But despite everything, despite the fact that Netflix already set up the terms to overwhelmingly favour them in the first place, they keep rigging the game over and over again, until what’s left is more rigging than game.</p>
<p>I already talked about how Netflix is happy for the service not to work in the “edge case” of people travelling or splitting time between two living spaces (showing that they’re happy for the edges to be <em>huge</em>) but even in the case where you’re following Netflix’s dreamed-up conditions and meet its definition of what constitutes an acceptable lifestyle, <strong>they still don’t provide the thing they sell in any meaningful way at all.</strong> </p>
<p>Videos used to buffer, and that was bad. If less than one second’s worth of video is coming over the connection per second, you can’t watch a video at full speed, unless you paused and waited for the entire thing to download first. Now sites stream video at a <strong>dynamic bitrate</strong>: if your connection can’t handle HD video at full speed, the server sends a lower quality video (with a lower rate of bits per video minute) and instead of pausing the video just decreases in quality<sup id="fnref:codec"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:codec">4</a></sup>. This is the “Auto” button on the quality selector on YouTube videos. If you’re getting a lower-quality stream, it’s because your connection can’t robustly support the full quality video, which you can see for yourself by forcing the quality higher. (Try it at home!)</p>
<p>Netflix doesn’t have a quality selector. It always streams at the dynamic bitrate… which Netflix sets. So, regardless of what quality you “pay” for, Netflix <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Piracy/comments/rmaymb/why_i_pirate_netflix_is_playing_at_540p_even/">can just decide to send you quarter-HD video</a>. That means Netflix sends a quarter of the data at a quarter of the cost… whenever it wants to. The subscriber has no say in the matter and no recourse, because Netflix makes sure to put in the fine print that you’re not <em>entitled</em> to the quality you purchase, that’s just the <em>maximum</em> they’ll send you. <strong>There’s fundamentally no guarantee of service nor any redress if service is denied.</strong></p>
<p>So you’re paying for nothing: Netflix still gets to decide to send you whatever it wants, regardless of what you pay. “Netflix can send you however much video they want” is the same set of “rights” you get <em>without</em> subscribing to Netflix, because it’s nothing. You’re not actually entitled to anything no matter what you pay for or how much you pay for it. That’s not a service, that’s just a bribe. </p>
<p>This is just another aspect of the degeneration from products you own, to services you buy, to “experiences” you “use”. It’s extracting rent without putting the company on the hook to fulfil any responsibility at all.</p>
<p>What Netflix (and almost every digital subscription that exists) is modelling there isn’t exchanging money for the performance of a specific service, it’s throwing money into a wishing well because if you throw enough money in fast enough and wish with a pure heart, the faeries will come to your aid. </p>
<p>Netflix has no business trying to sell itself as an experience because it isn’t the experience. Netflix isn’t a theme park ride. The videos are the ride, Netflix is the line. <a href="https://twitter.com/qntm/status/1652020827716501509">Netflix is <em>infrastructure</em></a> whose purpose is to provide a reliable service at a competitive price point, just the same as the cables in the wall that came before it.</p>
<p>But instead of reconciling with any of that, Netflix refuses to sell a “product” or “service”, Netflix only sells an <em>experience</em>, which turns out to be <strong>nothing</strong>. And now they’re charging double for it.</p>
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</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.disconnect.blog/p/netflix-is-bringing-back-piracy">Paris Marx, “Netflix is Bringing Back Piracy”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/deloitte-survey-millennial-gen-z-cancel-streaming-subscription-inflation-2023-4">Reed Alexander, “Millennials, Gen Z Cancel Streaming Subscriptions Amid Inflation”</a></li>
</ul>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="capitalism-growth-ip">Capitalism, growth, IP<a class="headerlink" href="#capitalism-growth-ip" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://ez.substack.com/p/the-rot-economy">Ed Zitron, “The Rot Economy”</a>, <a class="related-reading" href="https://ez.substack.com/p/absentee-capitalism">Ed Zitron, “Absentee Capitalism”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://medium.com/parsa-vc/break-through-the-subscription-wall-know-your-companys-growth-ceiling-1d6018385325">Parsa Saljoughian, “Break Through the Subscription Wall: Know Your Company’s Growth Ceiling” (brain worm perspective)</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22387601/smart-fridge-car-personal-ownership-internet-things">Dan Greene, “The erosion of personal ownership”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://direct.mit.edu/books/book/4662/The-End-of-OwnershipPersonal-Property-in-the">Aaron Perzanowski and Jason Schultz, “The End of Ownership: Personal Property in the Digital Economy”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1833064">S. J. Liebowitz (1985). Copying and Indirect Appropriability: Photocopying of Journals. Journal of Political Economy, 93(5), 945–957.</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-found-piracy-do-1818629537">Jennings Brown, “The EU Suppressed a 300-Page Study That Found Piracy Doesn’t Harm Sales”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.cjr.org/analysis/defector-last-good-website.php">Danny Funt, “‘The last good website’“</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/270721-twiddler-configurability-for-me-but-not-for-thee/fulltext">Cory Doctorow, “Twiddler: Configurability for Me, but Not for Thee”</a></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="worker-mistreatment-strike">Worker mistreatment, strike<a class="headerlink" href="#worker-mistreatment-strike" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://jacobin.com/2023/05/writers-strike-wga-amptp-streaming-pay/">Alex N. Press, “TV Writers Say They’re Striking to Stop the Destruction of Their Profession”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.wgacontract2023.org/uploadedfiles/members/member_info/contract-2023/wga_proposals.pdf">WGA Negotiations—Status as of May 1, 2023</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://deadline.com/2023/04/dexter-fletcher-ghosted-apple-streamers-1235341010/">Zac Ntim, “‘Ghosted’ Filmmaker Dexter Fletcher On Directing For Streamers”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/business/media/writers-guild-hollywood-ai-chatgpt.html">Noam Scheiber and John Koblin, “Will a Chatbot Write the Next ‘Succession’?”</a></li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="cancelled-and-removed-shows">Cancelled and removed shows<a class="headerlink" href="#cancelled-and-removed-shows" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.techradar.com/news/lockwood-and-co-fans-are-boycotting-netflix-after-the-shows-cancellation">Tom Power, “Netflix has cancelled Lockwood & Co – and fans are absolutely furious”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.ign.com/articles/hbo-max-is-reportedly-removing-content-to-save-money-heres-what-that-means-for-you">Rosie Knight, “HBO Max Is Reportedly Removing Content To Save Money: Heres What That Means For You”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1164146728/why-are-dozens-of-tv-shows-disappearing-from-streaming-platforms-like-hbo-max">Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, “Dozens of TV shows are disappearing from streaming platforms like HBO Max. Here’s why”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.vulture.com/2023/06/streaming-industry-netflix-max-disney-hulu-apple-tv-prime-video-peacock-paramount.html">Josef Adalian and Lane Brown, “TV’s Streaming Model Is Broken. It’s Also Not Going Away.”</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Thread
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1661452351188893697" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheKylieChi/" title="Endearingly inappropriate, emotionally magnificent. She/her. Wife to sex on a skeleton herself, @thekatyo. Trying to escape the simulation"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1392547137808855041/hP75n-65_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Kylie Chi 季 STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE!</span><span class="at">@TheKylieChi</span></div></a></div><div><p>I think often about an enlightening call with HBOMax execs where they tried to explain (part of) the reason why the Warner/Discovery merger happened. Apparently there is a common issue where non-entertainment companies (like AT&T) buy entertainment companies (like Warner),</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/TheKylieChi/status/1661452351188893697" target="_blank">Wed May 24 19:21:23 +0000 2023</a>
</blockquote></p>
</section>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:pricing-2015">
<p>This graphic is from 2015, and while the details of the pricing model have changed over the years that’s still representative of how Netflix tiers their offerings. Even now as I type this, <a href="https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926">Netflix still includes streaming on multiple devices simultaneously as a primary selling point of their more expensive plans</a>, so I’ll use that chart because it’s nice and concise. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:pricing-2015" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:georestriction">
<p>There are still geographical limitations based on how the content is licensed to Netflix by media companies, sure, but that’s a problem from upstream, not one directly caused by Netflix’s policy decisions. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:georestriction" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:nintendo-transfer">
<p>You’re <em>supposed</em> to be able to run a one-off transfer process to move your games. It only works if you have the old console and the new one together, so it’s not applicable for replacing a broken 3DS (which is the main use case for buying a new one), and it can’t be repeated freely to move games back and forth… </p>
<p>But having given all those qualifiers, I’ve <em>still</em> been burned multiple times by running through one of Nintendo’s transfer wizards and losing rights or data on both consoles, so I’m not counting that as even being a real feature that works at all. </p>
<p>But this isn’t new information, it’s just another reminder that <strong>this can’t be left to them.</strong> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:nintendo-transfer" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:codec">
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DMcm4ga_Vc"><img alt="codecs" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2023/05/20/netflixs-big-double-dip/Alan_Resnick.png"></a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:codec" title="Jump back to footnote 4 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>The Génocidaires: People2022-07-28T00:00:00-05:002022-07-28T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-07-28:/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for more overt exterminationism, violence, acts of terrorism, sexual abuse, discrimination against rape victims, and the holocaust. </p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support">Eugenicists need broad centrist support</a><ul>
<li><a href="#buying-the-euphemism">Buying the euphemism</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-shirley-exception">The Shirley Exception</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#conditions-mental-health-and-the-suicide-epidemic">Conditions, Mental health, and the suicide epidemic</a><ul>
<li><a href="#the-survivors-network-case">The Survivors’ Network case</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#propaganda">Propaganda</a><ul>
<li><a href="#mainstream-media-transphobia">Mainstream media transphobia</a><ul>
<li><a href="#women-dont-count">Women Don’t Count</a></li>
<li><a href="#you-cant-say-women">You can’t say women</a></li>
<li><a href="#lowbridge-on-the-bbc">Lowbridge on the BBC</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#conservatives-stirring-up-controversy">Conservatives stirring up controversy</a><ul>
<li><a href="#weimar">Weimar</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-trans-question">The Trans Question</a></li>
<li><a href="#children-as-the-wedge">Children as the wedge</a></li>
<li><a href="#echo-outrage">Echo outrage</a></li>
<li><a href="#legitimacy-of-belief">Legitimacy of Belief</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#final-word-save-the-nuance">Final word: Save the nuance</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support">Eugenicists need broad centrist support<a class="headerlink" href="#eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- Psychology of genocide & Buying the euphemism -->
<p>Now, a lot of people pushing the anti-trans agenda aren’t actually murderers or overt political fascists. The extremists are still the extremists. Moderates sustain these genocidal movements, but they don’t drive them. Unlike the center, the people who rise to the top are always the ones drawn to the movement <em>because</em> of its viciousness. It still matters, though, whether the people towards the middle are willing to help them or not.</p>
<p>It’s still true that legislators and anti-trans activists are <em>not</em> pursuing moderate treatment (psychotherapy, etc); they’re distinctly aiming for obliteration. But that message only works for people who agree with those people openly willing to back genocide outright, or people who can agree with the lampshade. </p>
<!-- ### Republican center -->
<p>Even most of the republicans don’t actually know the people they’re voting for are full-on cuckoo-bananas. But the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” types end up pushing this agenda, even if they’re unaware.
People see a ballot where one choice describes a more convenient world for them, and they tick it. They’re not supposed to think about the violence it takes to make that happen.</p>
<p>People like framing the idea of pride like they frame the abolition of slavery or civil rights: as a celebration of a positive political change that happened in history, rather than an ongoing conflict. As soon as pride feels like a conflict, it feels like a conflict they’re on a side of, because they are.</p>
<p><img alt="r/pansexual: You're not welcomed" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/r_pansexual.jpg"/></p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="buying-the-euphemism">Buying the euphemism<a class="headerlink" href="#buying-the-euphemism" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>A lot of the people helping propel the cause of genocide don’t actually believe in the case for genocide; the genocidalists depend heavily on people <strong>buying the euphemism</strong>. That’s another topic I want to do a longer piece on someday, but here’s a brief summary on how rhetoric works on marks.</p>
<p>The mark says they don’t want children to be abused. Now, the people pushing the anti-abuse laws don’t care about children being abused, and their laws don’t prevent abuse, but anti-abuse is the euphemism they’re using to disguise their intents, and the mark agrees with that euphemism, so they think they must agree with the policy. In effect, the fascist hijacks the legitimate cause, just like they hijack institutions. </p>
<p>Even though the marks would, in isolation, be opposed to the real agenda of genocide, they believe enough in the cover story that they show up to support the genocidal cause. </p>
<!-- TODO a little more on this -->
<!-- ![pookleblinky: For each nazi or klansman, there's 100 white moderates and they are the ones who'll most fiercely defend the legitimacy of any institution the nazi captures. - He *relies* on their devotion to the institution, he needs it in order to exert power through the institution.](https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1543687956132777989) -->
<!-- ![pookleblinky: If those 100 white moderates rejected the legitimacy of that institution, simply refused to accept it, the nazi's attempt to use it is fucked. - He needs, desperately, those 100 people to fiercely defend it as he shapes it toward his will.](https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1543688389861556224) -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-shirley-exception">The Shirley Exception<a class="headerlink" href="#the-shirley-exception" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another key factor in why people support policies they disagree with is the so-called <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004401076777504769">Shirley Exception</a>. Transphobic culture and legislation are both perceived as uncomfortable and inconvenient for a few people — adding some hoops they have to jump through — but they’re usually not seen as being explicitly genocidal. </p>
</section></section><aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for more overt exterminationism, violence, acts of terrorism, sexual abuse, discrimination against rape victims, and the holocaust. </p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support">Eugenicists need broad centrist support</a><ul>
<li><a href="#buying-the-euphemism">Buying the euphemism</a></li>
<li><a href="#the-shirley-exception">The Shirley Exception</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#conditions-mental-health-and-the-suicide-epidemic">Conditions, Mental health, and the suicide epidemic</a><ul>
<li><a href="#the-survivors-network-case">The Survivors’ Network case</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#propaganda">Propaganda</a><ul>
<li><a href="#mainstream-media-transphobia">Mainstream media transphobia</a><ul>
<li><a href="#women-dont-count">Women Don’t Count</a></li>
<li><a href="#you-cant-say-women">You can’t say women</a></li>
<li><a href="#lowbridge-on-the-bbc">Lowbridge on the BBC</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#conservatives-stirring-up-controversy">Conservatives stirring up controversy</a><ul>
<li><a href="#weimar">Weimar</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#the-trans-question">The Trans Question</a></li>
<li><a href="#children-as-the-wedge">Children as the wedge</a></li>
<li><a href="#echo-outrage">Echo outrage</a></li>
<li><a href="#legitimacy-of-belief">Legitimacy of Belief</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#final-word-save-the-nuance">Final word: Save the nuance</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support">Eugenicists need broad centrist support<a class="headerlink" href="#eugenicists-need-broad-centrist-support" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- Psychology of genocide & Buying the euphemism -->
<p>Now, a lot of people pushing the anti-trans agenda aren’t actually murderers or overt political fascists. The extremists are still the extremists. Moderates sustain these genocidal movements, but they don’t drive them. Unlike the center, the people who rise to the top are always the ones drawn to the movement <em>because</em> of its viciousness. It still matters, though, whether the people towards the middle are willing to help them or not.</p>
<p>It’s still true that legislators and anti-trans activists are <em>not</em> pursuing moderate treatment (psychotherapy, etc); they’re distinctly aiming for obliteration. But that message only works for people who agree with those people openly willing to back genocide outright, or people who can agree with the lampshade. </p>
<!-- ### Republican center -->
<p>Even most of the republicans don’t actually know the people they’re voting for are full-on cuckoo-bananas. But the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” types end up pushing this agenda, even if they’re unaware.
People see a ballot where one choice describes a more convenient world for them, and they tick it. They’re not supposed to think about the violence it takes to make that happen.</p>
<p>People like framing the idea of pride like they frame the abolition of slavery or civil rights: as a celebration of a positive political change that happened in history, rather than an ongoing conflict. As soon as pride feels like a conflict, it feels like a conflict they’re on a side of, because they are.</p>
<p><img alt="r/pansexual: You're not welcomed" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/r_pansexual.jpg"></p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="buying-the-euphemism">Buying the euphemism<a class="headerlink" href="#buying-the-euphemism" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>A lot of the people helping propel the cause of genocide don’t actually believe in the case for genocide; the genocidalists depend heavily on people <strong>buying the euphemism</strong>. That’s another topic I want to do a longer piece on someday, but here’s a brief summary on how rhetoric works on marks.</p>
<p>The mark says they don’t want children to be abused. Now, the people pushing the anti-abuse laws don’t care about children being abused, and their laws don’t prevent abuse, but anti-abuse is the euphemism they’re using to disguise their intents, and the mark agrees with that euphemism, so they think they must agree with the policy. In effect, the fascist hijacks the legitimate cause, just like they hijack institutions. </p>
<p>Even though the marks would, in isolation, be opposed to the real agenda of genocide, they believe enough in the cover story that they show up to support the genocidal cause. </p>
<!-- TODO a little more on this -->
<!-- ![pookleblinky: For each nazi or klansman, there's 100 white moderates and they are the ones who'll most fiercely defend the legitimacy of any institution the nazi captures. - He *relies* on their devotion to the institution, he needs it in order to exert power through the institution.](https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1543687956132777989) -->
<!-- ![pookleblinky: If those 100 white moderates rejected the legitimacy of that institution, simply refused to accept it, the nazi's attempt to use it is fucked. - He needs, desperately, those 100 people to fiercely defend it as he shapes it toward his will.](https://twitter.com/pookleblinky/status/1543688389861556224) -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-shirley-exception">The Shirley Exception<a class="headerlink" href="#the-shirley-exception" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another key factor in why people support policies they disagree with is the so-called <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004401076777504769">Shirley Exception</a>. Transphobic culture and legislation are both perceived as uncomfortable and inconvenient for a few people — adding some hoops they have to jump through — but they’re usually not seen as being explicitly genocidal. </p>
<p>The Shirley Exception is a way people rationalize supporting policies that are much harsher than they believe are appropriate. People are generally concerned about people taking advantage of policies. The example <a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004401076777504769">Alexandra Erin</a> uses is service animals: people think others are taking advantage of service animal policies to bring their pets to public spaces, and so they want to crack down on that legislation. The policy change, though, is to crack down completely: “facilities aren’t required to respect service animals” was the example used in 2018, although “abortions are illegal even in cases of rape, incest, and impregnated children” might ring more familiar today. </p>
<p>The Shirley Exception is when people say “well, surely there will be exceptions”.
People who (wrongly) trust policing institutions have a strong instinct that the administrators in power will make the appropriate exceptions, to the extent that they’re willing to support the angry, punitive policies that explicitly criminalize the very legitimate cases they want exceptions made in. Even when the policy is explicit that it will not allow for exceptions, and even punishes facilities that make any.</p>
<p>“No, this is just to cut down on abuse”, advocates of cruel policy say. The perception that there’s this ongoing abuse of the current system is crucial, and highly effective at getting people angry enough to pass terrible laws.
They say “no one’s talking about <em>legitimate</em> cases”, even though the policies themselves very explicitly do include those cases. </p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004402236338917378" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004402003185938432"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402003185938432">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>If you back up an anti-abortion activist to the point where they actually have to grapple with a case where the parent would 100% die delivering a 100% non-viable fetus, you'll get the same answers: "No one is talking about those cases." and "But surely there will be exceptions."</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402236338917378" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:38:48 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004402425367756800" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004402236338917378"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402236338917378">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>All of those studies of people in Trump Country USA who were shocked, shocked, that the kind man next door who is a good father and a great neighbor and a real part of the community was dragged away by ICE?</p><p>They all thought that surely he'd be an exception.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402425367756800" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:39:33 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004402661289091072" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004402425367756800"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402425367756800">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>If you point out that the laws/policies they're talking about *don't* offer such exceptions and in some cases explicitly forbid them, if you say "So let's put those exceptions in writing."... well, then you're back to Surely People Will Take Advantage.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402661289091072" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:40:30 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004402890419654657" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004402661289091072"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402661289091072">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>See, the people who are sure that Surely There Will Be Exceptions are very comfortable with the idea of justice being decided on a case-by-case basis. They've always had teachers, bosses, bureaucrats, even traffic cops giving them some slack for reasons of compassion and logic.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004402890419654657" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:41:24 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004403578298093569" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004403468826742784"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004403468826742784">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>Surely, they think, surely the leopards will know to only eat the *right* faces, the faces that need eating, and leave alone all the faces that don't deserve that.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004403578298093569" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:44:08 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004404176091320320" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004403800449445888"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004403800449445888">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>So moderate conservatives, what we might call "everyday conservatives", the ones who don't wear MAGA hats or tea party costumes and think that Mr. Trump fella should maybe stay off of Twitter, they will vote for candidates and policies that they don't actually agree with...</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004404176091320320" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:46:31 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1004404413987983360" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlexandraErin/1004404176091320320"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/" title="Nonfiction: https://t.co/BBDZzEdH40 Fiction: https://t.co/SAQRrPnrLy Tip: https://t.co/W9fRsk1Gae Query: blueauthor@alexandraerin.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1312106752868003840/QCqpmlJi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alexandra Erin (She/Her)</span><span class="at">@AlexandraErin</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004404176091320320">AlexandraErin</a>:</span><p>...because in their mind the exact law being prescribed is just a tool in the chest, an option on the table, which they expect to be wielded fairly and judiciously. Surely no one would do anything so unreasonable as actually enforcing it as written! Not when that would be bad!</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlexandraErin/status/1004404413987983360" target="_blank">Wed Jun 06 16:47:27 +0000 2018</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>And then, of course, exceptions are <em>not</em> made. That thread was written in 2018. Now, in July 2022, we have the case study of the century right in front of us: post-roe abortion treatment. </p>
<p>State laws written to be as extreme and punitive as possible have kicked in, to monstrous results. The medical procedures to end pregnancies that are known to be fatal to the mother are banned, and women are dying. A 10-year-old rape victim had to escape Chicago to get an abortion and escape certain death, and the doctor is being <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/indiana-abortion-rape-ohio-00045899">attacked under the law</a> for doing so. <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1548395145740947456">Activists are pretending</a> this is some misrepresentation of the law, but it isn’t: the laws are as broad and vague as possible, and are written specifically to facilitate this sort of legal attack on minor rape victims and their medical care.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547617746346598400" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/" title="SCOTUS, legal & political journalism at @lawdorknews Also: @gridnews @msnbc @boltsmag / DM or: lawdorknews@gmail.com / Sober. Queer. Bipolar. Buckeye. / He/him."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1539097603354382337/I6YENjWV_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner</span><span class="at">@chrisgeidner</span></div></a></div><div><p>Ohio AG Yost said on Monday that the 10-year-old rape victim who needed an abortion “did not have to leave Ohio to find treatment.”</p><p>Not so, says Ohio’s nonpartisan Legislative Service Commission. </p><p>Exclusive at @lawdorknews this morning: <a href='https://chrisgeidner.substack.com/p/jeff-crossman-wants-to-protect-abortion' target='_blank'>chrisgeidner.substack.com/p/jeff-crossma…</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1547617746346598400/photo/1" target="_blank">
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</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1547617746346598400" target="_blank">Thu Jul 14 16:23:18 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1548016267243634692" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/politico/" title="Nobody knows politics and policy like POLITICO. Congress nerds 👉 @politicongress All 2022 race calls 👉 @politicoelex Got a news tip? 👉 https://t.co/JBzpu5pJz6"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/677177503694237697/y6yTzWn6_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">POLITICO</span><span class="at">@politico</span></div></a></div><div><p>“Oh, God no,” one prominent Republican strategist said after members of his party suggested the 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio should have carried the pregnancy to term <a href='https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/republicans-fear-abortion-backlash-00046005' target='_blank'>politico.com/news/2022/07/1…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/politico/status/1548016267243634692" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 18:46:53 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/republicans-fear-abortion-backlash-00046005">‘Oh, God, no’: Republicans fear voter backlash after Indiana child rape case - POLITICO</a></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1548399337062875136" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="chrisgeidner/1548397334987296770"><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/" title="SCOTUS, legal & political journalism at @lawdorknews Also: @gridnews @msnbc @boltsmag / DM or: lawdorknews@gmail.com / Sober. Queer. Bipolar. Buckeye. / He/him."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1539097603354382337/I6YENjWV_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner</span><span class="at">@chrisgeidner</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1548397334987296770">chrisgeidner</a>:</span><p>In sum: Anyone who confidently tells you that broad, vague laws are always, for all people, going to be narrowly interpreted to protect medical decisions wherever they are arguably allowed under the law has no understanding of the criminal legal system and should not be believed.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1548399337062875136" target="_blank">Sat Jul 16 20:09:04 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/04/15/lizelle-herreras-arrest-in-texas-is-not-unique-and-could-get-much-more-common/">Lizelle Herrera’s arrest in Texas is not unique — and could get much more common – Grid News</a></p>
<p>This was all known. People told them this, this was the case made against the laws in the first place, but extremist lawmakers pushed them through anyway. Because “abortions” are things only sluts get to escape the consequences of their sin, and the law’s job is to come down hard and swift and without room for escape. (Again, angry law.) And, if you ask the extremists, the core people who pushed the wording of the bills and stoked the fears that “people are taking advantage in the first place, you won’t see the shock and concern you see on the decent people tricked into supporting the policies. No, you’ll see people insist <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/anti-abotion-10-year-old-ohio-00045843">the ten-year-old should have just had the baby</a>, even though, for a child that age, carrying a pregnancy to term would have been fatal. Irrational, dogmatic, and cruel.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547760202295885824" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><p>This thread is a fair example of the shitty hand-wave analysis by the idiots and/or liars who are saying that Ohio law obviously permitted an abortion on a 10-year-old. It’s pure applesauce. /1 <a href='https://twitter.com/pbolyard/status/1547700578934919171' target='_blank'>twitter.com/pbolyard/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547760202295885824" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 01:49:22 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547760207517794306" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547760202295885824"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547760202295885824">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/2 You don’t even have to read the whole thing. The entire travesty rests on the magical thinking in this post — “of COURSE nobody would disagree that giving birth would cause impairment.” But that’s both wishful thinking and not the whole standard. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547760207517794306/photo/1" target="_blank">
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547761220001771522" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547760207517794306"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547760207517794306">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/3 The law doesn’t permit abortion if “golly gee we all figure there would be impairment.” The standard is incredibly strict and narrow. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547761220001771522/photo/1" target="_blank">
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</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547761220001771522" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 01:53:25 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547762743180005376" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547761220001771522"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547761220001771522">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/4 Note how the risk has to be based on a medically diagnosed CONDITION. Is being a 10 year old a condition? If they meant that they would have put it in the statute. </p><p>You could absolutely charge a doctor under this unless the 10-year-old had a distinct medical condition.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762743180005376" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 01:59:28 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547762744824193024" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547762743180005376"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762743180005376">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/5 The argument seems to be “ooh, you can trust the government, they’d never prosecute a 10 year old.” First, it’s the doctor being prosecuted — and ABSOLUTELY the government would do that, for votes and culture war points. I mean look at these assholes.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762744824193024" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 01:59:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547762745986035716" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547762744824193024"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762744824193024">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/6 Also, you might say “hey aren’t conservatives betraying their values by arguing we should just trust the government not to abuse power?” Of course they aren’t! They don’t have actual values. Just hate and lust for power. There’s nothing to betray.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762745986035716" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 01:59:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547763121837592576" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Popehat/1547762745986035716"><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/" title="Mostly Ken White. I do the RICO. Popehat Report: https://t.co/xplJA72lpq Podcasts: Serious Trouble, Make No law"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/884879301190967296/oTCsTck5_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">HatKicksSandOnDershReaders</span><span class="at">@Popehat</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547762745986035716">Popehat</a>:</span><p>/7 Again: people telling you the law permitted the abortion and that it would be legally safe to perform it are stupid or liars or both. Don’t trust them.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Popehat/status/1547763121837592576" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 02:00:58 +0000 2022</a>
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</div>
<p>It’s such a horrific story that the media kept lying about it, over and over again. First, the story was that it <a href="https://twitter.com/AriCohn/status/1547274296321626117">didn’t happen, and it’s just a bunch of democrat lies</a>.
Then the story was <a href="https://chrisgeidner.substack.com/p/jeff-crossman-wants-to-protect-abortion">Ohio law permitted it</a>, and there was no need to flee the state, trust us. (Then the Ohio AG came in to confirm that, no, <a href="https://twitter.com/OhioAG/status/1547681251909242880">that would have been a crime under Ohio law</a>.)
Then
Then the prosecuting AG got on Fox News and lied about the doctor being <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1547367841539756038">“an abortion activist acting as a doctor” who didn’t file proper reports</a> when it was obvious <a href="https://fox59.com/indiana-news/abortion-report-confirms-indiana-doctor-followed-law-after-ag-vowed-investigation/">that they had</a>. (They also took that opportunity to dox the doctor to an audience with a history of violent terrorism toward abortion providers, as a fun bonus.)
Now the best they have is <a href="https://twitter.com/NYCdisinterest/status/1548306600066134016">these cases are rare and hard to find</a>, which is of course still a lie.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547766734156750850" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="libbycwatson/1547765161825423366"><a href="https://twitter.com/mom20886/" title="Unplanned cat mother. Pockets advocate. Callipygian. Fully vaxxed. Pro-feeding people. Pro-Jorts. Pro-duck. Anti-asshole. Squish that cat!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1523793414839406592/PnRMlezm_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Kitty Mom</span><span class="at">@mom20886</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/libbycwatson/status/1547765161825423366">libbycwatson</a>:</span><p>@libbycwatson They really don't want this horrific story to be believed. It's about as extreme a scenario as anyone could imagine, and really undercuts their arguments.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mom20886/status/1547766734156750850" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 02:15:20 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1552026646093389827" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/" title="Senior writer @Slate. Courts and the law. Do you have a link to the ruling?"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1482122731755868167/n3ZD3Wlv_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Mark Joseph Stern</span><span class="at">@mjs_DC</span></div></a></div><div><p>Faced with a steady stream of horror stories about the impact of abortion bans on patients suffering failed pregnancies, anti-abortion advocates have retreated into a paranoid conspiracy theory that doctors are trying to "create viral stories making abortion bans look culpable." </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1552026646093389827/photo/1" target="_blank">
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</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mjs_DC/status/1552026646093389827" target="_blank">Tue Jul 26 20:22:42 +0000 2022</a>
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<p>Anyone with half a brain can tell the Shirley Exception is nonsense. Laws are policy. When the text of the law is angry, violent, and vicious, it’s because the people writing it are creating policy that is angry, violent, and vicious in order to further an agenda that is angry, violent, and vicious. There can be no tolerance given to policymakers by the people, because there is no tolerance given to the people by the policy. </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="conditions-mental-health-and-the-suicide-epidemic">Conditions, Mental health, and the suicide epidemic<a class="headerlink" href="#conditions-mental-health-and-the-suicide-epidemic" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>One insidious part of the genocide is that it doesn’t rely on extermination camps or state violence. Just creating the right set of societal conditions can be enough to drive people to suicide or destitution.</p>
<p>You might be tempted to file this under <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_murder">Social Murder</a>, but it’s really an intentionally genocidal tactic.
I’ll quote from <a href="https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00661.x">Monroe, K. R. (2008). Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>That was the key: dehumanization. You first call your victim names and take away his dignity. You restrict his nourishment and he loses his physical beauty and sometimes some of his moral values. You take away soap and water, then say the Jew stinks. Then you take their human dignity further away by putting them in situations where they even will do such things which are criminal. Then you take food away. When they lose their beauty and health and so on, they are not human anymore. When he’s reduced to a skin-colored skeleton, you have taken away his humanity. It is much easier to kill non-humans than humans.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trans people are forced into situations that put them at high risk. See <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-community-in-2021">Fatal Violence Against the Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Community in 2021 - Human Rights Campaign</a>: while many cases of violence are clearly anti-transgender hate crimes, there’s a significant amount of violence caused by risk factors exacerbated by trans stigma, like unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and even sex survival work.
Many trans homeless people report being <a href="https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS%20Full%20Report%20-%20FINAL%201.6.17.pdf">denied access to homeless shelters</a>, or reported avoiding shelters altogether because of fears of mistreatment. </p>
<p><img alt="Increased risk factors" src="https://hrc.imgix.net/assets/images/Fatal-Violence-2020/2019-transgender-violence-risk-graphic.jpg?auto=format%2Ccompress&crop=focalpoint&fit=clip&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&ixlib=php-2.1.1&w=800&s=e288b3ed060e50737aea543857f41f0d">
<em>from <a href="https://reports.hrc.org/dismantling-a-culture-of-violence#:~:text=for%20transgender%20people.-,what%20leads%20to%20violence%20against%20transgender%20and%20non-binary%20people%3F,-Since%202013%2C%20HRC">Dismantling a Culture of Violence</a></em></p>
<p>HRC finds the same phenomenon in how we’re treating trans people as Monroe saw in his study of the holocaust: “The dehumanization of transgender people begins with stigma — hostile political climate, lack of acceptance, cultural marginalization — which simultaneously leads to direct violence in the form of anti-trans hate crimes, but also increases other risks for violence; unequal policing, exclusion from healthcare, employment discrimination, etc lead to poverty, and environments that allow more violence.”</p>
<p>The data is incredibly sobering. Some highlights (lowlights?):</p>
<p>From <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Suicidality-Transgender-Sep-2019.pdf">UCLA Williams Institute - Suicide thoughts And attempts Among transgender adults - Findings from the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey</a>, which primarily used the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey (USTS), the largest survey of transgender people in the U.S. at the time:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>81.7%</strong> reported ever seriously thinking about suicide in their lifetimes, while <strong>48.3%</strong> had done so in the past year. <strong>40.4%</strong> reported attempting suicide at some point in their lifetimes, and <strong>7.3%</strong> reported attempting suicide in the past year.</li>
<li>Experiencing discrimination or mistreatment in education, employment, housing, health care, in places of public accommodations, or from law enforcement is associated with a higher prevalence of suicide thoughts and attempts: The prevalence of past-year suicide attempts by those who reported that they had been denied equal treatment in the past year because they are transgender was more than double that of those who had not experienced such treatment: <strong>13.4%</strong>.</li>
<li>Those rejected by their religious communities or had undergone conversion therapy were more likely to report suicide thoughts and attempts.</li>
<li>The cumulative effect of minority stress is associated with a higher prevalence of suicidality. For instance, <strong>97.7%</strong> of those who had experienced four discriminatory or violence experiences in the past year (being fired or forced to resign from a job, eviction, experiencing homelessness, and physical attack) reported seriously thinking about suicide in the past year (!!!) and <strong>51.2%</strong> made a suicide attempt in the past year.</li>
<li>Minority stress experiences, such as family rejection, discrimination experiences, and lack of access to gender-affirming health care, create added risks for transgender people. The cumulative effect of experiencing multiple minority stressors is associated with dramatically higher prevalence of suicidality.</li>
<li>Future research that supports the design and evaluation of suicide intervention and prevention strategies for the transgender population is urgently needed.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Trans-GNC-Suicide-Attempts-Jan-2014.pdf">Williams institute: Suicide Attempts among Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Adults</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Overall, the most striking finding of our analysis was
the exceptionally high prevalence of lifetime suicide
attempts reported by NTDS respondents across
all demographics and experiences.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of those surveyed, 50-54% were harassed at school and 50-59% were discriminated against or harassed at work. 60% were refused care by a doctor’s office, and 63-78% suffered physical or sexual violence at schools alone. (At work, that number dips slightly to 64-65%.) 57-61% were harassed by law enforcement, and 60-70% suffered physical or sexual violence at the hands of law enforcement.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-suicide-risk-prevent-summary/">UCLA Suicide Risk and Prevention for Transgender People: Summary of Research Findings - September 2021</a> found that studies indicate approximately 40% of transgender adults have attempted suicide in their lifetimes, and that 30% of transgender youth have attempted suicide in the past year. This report reiterates previous findings, such that family and social support dramatically reduce suicide thoughts and attempts. Parental support is, again, crucial: Transgender youth with families that used their chosen name reported less suicide ideation compared to those whose families would not use their chosen name at home.</p>
<p>As another case of psychological violence, there’s also an extrordinarily high level of targetted bullying of trans students in the US. <a href="https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000244652">Out in the open: education sector responses to violence based on sexual orientation or gender identity/expression: summary report</a> found that 85% of LGBTQ students in the US were verbally harassed within the year, compared to 55% in Canada and just 16% in Nepal.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-survivors-network-case">The Survivors’ Network case<a class="headerlink" href="#the-survivors-network-case" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Trans people are denied access to crisis centers. I’ve already mentioned homeless shelters, but it doesn’t end there. In the UK, there’s a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61958346">rape recovery center being sued by one of its patients for also offering services to someone suspected of being trans</a>. A person — “Sarah” — attended a group session with this suspected trans person, and took that as an attack. I say “suspected” because Sarah obviously didn’t know the other person’s birth status, she just assumed. This wasn’t snuck on her: the charity was clearly labelled as being trans inclusive. (Of course, men can be rape victims too, but this was indeed a trans-inclusive women’s only facility.)</p>
<p>Of her group therapy session, Sarah says “I felt manipulated and coerced into talking … When I left the session I had a panic attack, I was absolutely distraught.” Of course, you are asked to talk in group therapy, that’s expected, but not demanded. The problem here is she decided one of her fellow victims was an outsider, an invader, and was more interested in striking back at her than anyone having any sort of recovery that day. What Sarah is asking here is to deny a rape victim a place to heal so she can be more comfortable. </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="propaganda">Propaganda<a class="headerlink" href="#propaganda" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>For every openly genocidal activist, there needs to be a small crowd of people who really <em>are</em> just “concerned” about all the supposed harm the victim group is doing. That’s why there are so many opinion columns and raving blog posts trying to paint the “trans agenda” as anything other than “exist”. The fear and paranoia is the only way it works, and that’s why manufacturing it is so key to the movement.</p>
<p>To quote Edwin Moriarty,</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'>From <a href="https://www.goonhammer.com/editorial-transphobic-language-and-the-horus-heresy/">Transphobic Language and the Horus Heresy</a></cite>
Into this boiling pot of stress and fear is poured bile and viciousness by a small percentage of the population who believe that trans people deserve this treatment, or worse. They are not the majority of people but they have loud voices, and they are relentless. There’s a joke in the UK that there’s only a few hundred dedicated transphobes in the UK, but they all have newspaper columns. It’s not really much of a joke.</p>
<p>The language of hate these people use poisons the discussion of trans issues. They use a trick that has been used by bigots from time immemorial to reframe discussion in the public eye by using terms and phrases that seem innocuous and unremarkable from the perspective of an uninformed observer, but slowly build together to create a twisted version of the real world that doesn’t reflect reality but instead their own hate.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536720105203195904" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/" title="he/him. https://t.co/CXFt8dAqbV https://t.co/Z2XYWcMC95"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1507627313604743171/T8ksXYZu_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Shaun</span><span class="at">@shaun_vids</span></div></a></div><div><p>it can be hard to talk about political schemes that are both 1: intended as divisive time-wasting distractions and 2: still very serious and dangerous for the actual humans involved</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/status/1536720105203195904" target="_blank">Tue Jun 14 14:39:58 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- ### Intentional misinformation campaign -->
<p>Keeping people anti-trans relies on lies, and those lies only exist when fuelled by sensationalized repetition.</p>
<p>For example: The social contagion narrative pushes the idea that people are being tricked into a “lifestyle” and somehow fast-tracked through gender-affirming care.
In reality, trans healthcare is the <em>opposite</em> of rushed, and there certainly isn’t any fast track.
If you’ve ever been friends with a trans person in your life, you know that trans healthcare is notoriously slow and difficult to get, as — in addition to the immense societal pressure to eradicate trans people, including criminalizing care and attacking doctors — few physicians have the appropriate medical training to administer or recommend the appropriate care.
This is a common misconception because — between centrist reporting and outright genocidal propaganda — the media misrepresents these facts.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544766912873213953" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanaFeral/" title="The lady feral, hard femme, trantifa supersoldier, eater of fish, titles, titles, she/her🏳️⚧️ Professional Fighter 1-0-0 MMA"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1468147409972707329/GAqJugrO_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alana McLaughlin🏳️⚧️</span><span class="at">@AlanaFeral</span></div></a></div><div><p>Something missing from "the trans debate" right now: a lot of trans kids are actively discouraged from transition. I was put through conversion therapy, punished, stripped of privacy, abused, bullied, and shamed by everyone from parents to teachers and peers. I'm still trans.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanaFeral/status/1544766912873213953" target="_blank">Wed Jul 06 19:35:07 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544767713624481792" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="AlanaFeral/1544766912873213953"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanaFeral/" title="The lady feral, hard femme, trantifa supersoldier, eater of fish, titles, titles, she/her🏳️⚧️ Professional Fighter 1-0-0 MMA"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1468147409972707329/GAqJugrO_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alana McLaughlin🏳️⚧️</span><span class="at">@AlanaFeral</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/AlanaFeral/status/1544766912873213953">AlanaFeral</a>:</span><p>A lot of transphobic arguments boil down to claiming that gender-affirming care is bad parenting/abuse and that trans kids won't happen if parents will just FORCE their kids to conform to cisgender norms. Speaking from personal experience, I promise that shit won't work.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlanaFeral/status/1544767713624481792" target="_blank">Wed Jul 06 19:38:17 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>As, yet again, there’s so <em>much</em> of it, I’m going to try to divide it into categories and go through it.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="mainstream-media-transphobia">Mainstream media transphobia<a class="headerlink" href="#mainstream-media-transphobia" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The media — especially in Britian and the UK, but also now in the US — have turned sensationalized transphobic opinion columns into mainstream news in a pattern that, for some reason, reminds me of Lotka-Volterra equations. This behavior normalizes genocidal talking points and helps radicalise moderates against trans people.</p>
<p>And in case it wasn’t obvious, that’s a mainstream news community that trans journalists are more and more excluded from. Organizations like the <a href="https://transjournalists.org/style-guide/">Trans Journalists Association</a> have tried to support trans-friendly news coverage and educate writers on how to respectfully cover trans issues, but with the popularity of anti-trans sensationalism in the news, this has gained little traction.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543233526409183233" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/" title="trans man, Community Manager for Slate, I'd rather be playing pinball"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1353103444219932672/uvmtQLWM_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Evan Urquhart</span><span class="at">@e_urq</span></div></a></div><div><p>If you are straight and cisgendered, over the next few years you may start seeing and hearing LGBTQ people a lot less.</p><p>It may be very gradual and subtle, and therefore hard for you to notice.</p><p>So, I'm going to say now, while you can still see and hear me- this was deliberate.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543233526409183233" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 14:01:59 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543233875039617026" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="e_urq/1543233526409183233"><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/" title="trans man, Community Manager for Slate, I'd rather be playing pinball"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1353103444219932672/uvmtQLWM_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Evan Urquhart</span><span class="at">@e_urq</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543233526409183233">e_urq</a>:</span><p>Do not for one moment allow yourself to believe that LGBTQ people simply lost a taste for "identity politics" or that LGBTQ identities were a phase or a fad.</p><p>They're driving us out with laws and violence and, perhaps soon, violent laws.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543233875039617026" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 14:03:22 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543292604661600256" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="e_urq/1543234288371515396"><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/" title="trans man, Community Manager for Slate, I'd rather be playing pinball"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1353103444219932672/uvmtQLWM_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Evan Urquhart</span><span class="at">@e_urq</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543234288371515396">e_urq</a>:</span><p>I've been accused of being too negative, and that's fair enough. </p><p>But what I see is mainstream news outlets who 5 yrs ago would run a story like "First Openly Trans Woman Does X" aren't running those stories. But they are running "Shouldn't There Be Less Trans People, Maybe?"</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543292604661600256" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 17:56:44 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543293290698637312" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="e_urq/1543292604661600256"><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/" title="trans man, Community Manager for Slate, I'd rather be playing pinball"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1353103444219932672/uvmtQLWM_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Evan Urquhart</span><span class="at">@e_urq</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543292604661600256">e_urq</a>:</span><p>Trans journalists are leaving journalism or going private if they have a big enough audience. I know bc I'm one of them. Can't place stories, not as much interest. </p><p>This isn't a prediction for something that might happen. It's happening already, I'm trying to help you notice.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/e_urq/status/1543293290698637312" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 17:59:28 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="women-dont-count">Women Don’t Count<a class="headerlink" href="#women-dont-count" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>So to dive into “The Mainstream”, here’s Pamela Paul’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/03/opinion/the-far-right-and-far-left-agree-on-one-thing-women-dont-count.html">“The Far Right and Far Left Agree on One Thing: Women Don’t Count”</a>, an opinion piece published by the New York Times (about… two days ago, as I write this bit).
The basic premise is that both the far right and the far left are mistreating and disenfranchising women: a feminist perspective that seems to try to say “back up, both sides are wronging women in their own way.”
Except that once you get past the first paragraph, the entire 1,200-word article is dedicated to attacking trans acceptance on the left and trans people in general.</p>
<p>So, the headline and opening intentionally misrepresent the article, right off the bat.
The contents of the article are the standard uninteresting TERF arguments: trans support is misogynist and spearheaded by a cabal of “activists” (it’s bad to be active in politics, you see) working to attack the real women. The thought-police left won’t let you say “woman” anymore (more on that later), while the “sisterhood” has been accommodating and kind while “males” invade their spaces. In trying to make a parallel to the right, she alleges trans people somehow reduce women to gender stereotypes, but doesn’t really support that with anything. </p>
<p>Nowhere in the entire piece does Pamela treat a trans person as human. Nowhere does a trans person — even hypothetically — <em>do</em> anything other than loom as a spectre and threat. Nowhere in the article does she cite a single action a trans person has done, and she certainly doesn’t talk to one for her article.
This kind of “journalism” is typical. Anti-trans writing struggles to show how their views are grounded in reality (rather than the authors’ imaginings) for the simple reason that they are not.</p>
</section>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="you-cant-say-women">You can’t say women<a class="headerlink" href="#you-cant-say-women" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>Now, “you can’t say the word women anymore”. That’s a fun one, let’s dive into that.
First: demonstrably false. In no way, in any context, is it “verboten” to accurately describe women as such. Pamela’s example of this is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/08/us/women-gender-aclu-abortion.html">another opinion from Michael Powell</a> that implies groups like the ACLU aren’t using the word, <a href="https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1501309538624065543">when they clearly are</a>. But this disconnect is caused by intentional misuse of the word.</p>
<p>When people discuss how abortion care effects “menstruating people”, it’s because that’s the accurate descriptor for the population she’s describing. Not all people with female reproductive parts identify as women, but also, of course, not all cis women menstruate, and it would be incorrect to include them. Even if trans people <em>didn’t</em> exist, using “women” here would be intentionally inaccurate. Same with “pregnant people”: not all women are pregnant, not all women can get pregnant, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/indiana-abortion-rape-ohio-00045899">some children can get pregnant but aren’t yet women</a>, and not all people who are pregnant identify as women.
TERFs aren’t upset because anyone actually prevents them from saying “woman”, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/10/19/you-can-say-woman-and-we-can-say-person.html">they’re upset because they don’t want <em>other</em> people to say the word “people”</a>.</p>
<p>The actual ideas of “man” and “woman” that anti-trans activists are trying to conserve aren’t any kind of biological fact. They’re social ideas: how people dress, what kind of jobs they have, what their temperament is. There’s nothing about wearing a tie written as part of our DNA, or even mandated by God. The Two Genders, in all their holy wisdom, are inarguably social constructs themselves.
It’s actually a disagreement over taxonomy, terminology, and methods of categorization. It’s a fight over conflicting definitions of categories, and ultimately it’s a conflict of the belief system of biological determinism against self determination.</p>
</section>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="lowbridge-on-the-bbc">Lowbridge on the BBC<a class="headerlink" href="#lowbridge-on-the-bbc" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>Let’s go even more mainstream. Let’s go to the BBC.</p>
<p>Here’s Caroline Lowbridge’s <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211026084108/https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385">“We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women”</a>, published under news, not opinions.
It’s about lesbians who are pressured into sex by predatory trans women. That’s borderline sexual assault, that’s really bad.
Well, no, it’s actually about arguments within the cis lesbian community, like a lesbian who had an argument with their partner about having a threesome. That argument was between the two lesbians, and didn’t involve any trans people.
Well, no. It’s actually about pushing extremist anti-trans rhetoric, like fringe group Get The L Out’s unhinged “research” study <a href="http://www.gettheloutuk.com/blog/category/research/lesbians-at-ground-zero.html">“Lesbians at Ground Zero - How transgenderism is conquering the lesbian body”</a>, which Lowbridge spends six paragraphs lauding. </p>
<p><img alt="Is a lesbian transphobic if she does not want to have sex with trans women? Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as partners - then shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too." src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/bbc.png"></p>
<p>“Lesbians at Ground Zero - How transgenderism is conquering the lesbian body” is extremely thinly veiled radical trans-exclusionary propaganda, and rants about how
“All transsexuals rape women’s bodies by reducing the real female form to an artefact, appropriating this body for themselves”,
“[the LGBT movement] is a constant invasion: invasion of lesbian spaces and invasion of the lesbian body as the ultimate women-only space”, and
“The female pronoun [is] an honorific, a term … due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. [Trans women] cannot occupy such a position”.</p>
<p>If the paper has anything useful to say, it’s something like “the awareness of trans women creates a crisis in people who relied on a particular notion of ‘lesbian’ as self-identity”, which would almost be interesting to think about (hey, isn’t subversion of a worldview revolving around gender supremacy the thing that makes misogynists so angry at feminists, etc) if this paper didn’t spend its time demanding that said identity crisis is trans people’s fault.</p>
<p>All this to say, the intent of the article is to launder anti-trans propaganda and attack trans women by painting them as sexual threats and predators. It’s not concerned journalism, and it’s not concerned with the wellbeing of people.</p>
<p>To confirm this, let’s check to see how concerned Lowbridge and the BBC are about sexual predators. Remember, that scary thing from the headline, that turned out not be what the article was about at all.
The article prominently features lesbian porn star actor Lily Cade as a trusted source to describe supposed trans violence against lesbians.
Problem: Lily Cade was accused of and then admitted to a series of sexual assaults. This was known before the article was published, but intentionally omitted.
You might call this an editorial slip-up, but the BBC <a href="https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/11/01/bbc-trans-article-complaints-impartiality/">specifically said</a> they put this specific article through “[its] rigorous editorial process”, Lily Cade and all.
I don’t want to go too in-depth on the gory details here (including how the article lies about its other sources) because <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg">Shaun has an excellent response here already</a>. But we know, for sure, that the people involved in writing and publishing this article don’t care one <em>iota</em> about sexual assault. All it’s for and all it does is attack the trans population as a group of sexual predators.</p>
<p>How’s our friend Lily Cade doing? Oh, she’s <a href="https://uk.news.yahoo.com/lesbian-porn-star-platformed-bbc-123812848.html">leveraging the fact that the BBC platformed her to advocate for mass ‘execution’ and ‘lynching’ of trans women</a>. Here are some fun excerpts from her philosophy:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>If you left it up to me, I’d execute every last one of them personally</p>
<p>Cancel the ever-living f**k out of this. Cancel this so hard that no man dare walk the path of the trans woman in public ever again! Enough is enough.</p>
<p>[In the same post, she said trans people should be “killed… as is the duty of the man to protect the women and the children from pedophile pervert monsters”, and claims that same-sex marriage “was the fall of Rome”.]</p>
<p>Lynch Kaitlyn! Lynch the ‘Sisters’ Wachowski! Lynch Laurel Hubbard! Lynch Fallon Fox!</p>
<p>They can’t take down Lily Cade. She’s already dead. I’m the bullet, bitch. I’m a f**king soldier. You ready? I’m ready.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So that’s… well, a lot of death threats, including listing out names of specific trans women she personally wants lynched. There are also rape threats in there against the <em>families</em> of trans people, made in the name of… protecting sexuality. </p>
<p>Here’s the point: <strong><em>the people pushing these ideas are like that.</em></strong></p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536712209513996290" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/BBCNews/" title="News, features and analysis. For world news, follow @BBCWorld. Breaking news, follow @BBCBreaking. Latest sport news @BBCSport. Our Instagram: BBCNews"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1529107486271225859/03qcVNIk_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">BBC News (UK)</span><span class="at">@BBCNews</span></div></a></div><div><p>Transgender hate crimes up 87% in Scotland <a href='https://bbc.in/3b1pgUQ' target='_blank'>bbc.in/3b1pgUQ</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1536712209513996290" target="_blank">Tue Jun 14 14:08:36 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537596976593870849" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/fujoshimoder/" title="Queer Anarchist ¤ TechnoDyke ¤ Xenofeminist #ArmTransWomen"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531415046299037697/rZ4szTRb_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">𝔉𝔲𝔧𝔬𝔰𝔥𝔦 🦂🥛</span><span class="at">@fujoshimoder</span></div></a></div><div><p>BBC reporting on this like <a href='https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1536712209513996290' target='_blank'>twitter.com/BBCNews/status…</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/fujoshimoder/status/1537596976593870849/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVakTTqWAAEtP57.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/fujoshimoder/status/1537596976593870849" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 00:44:21 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>And the children. Oh, won’t somebody please think of the children? The <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/11/meet-the-parents-of-trans-kids-fighting-gender-cult/">New York Post’s “Anguished parents of trans kids” fighting back against the “‘gender cult’ trying to silence them”</a>, about those parents who found out medical science went against their intuition and got very upset about it instead of parenting. Although, as usual, that article and the parents it’s about don’t seem concerned about children at all, so maybe it’s just “think of the parents”.</p>
<p>There’s so much sensationalizing around the idea of potential child abuse, but how do these outlets report on real child abuse? </p>
<p><img alt="nypost fabulous heiress" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/heiress.jpg">
<em>Again, the headline in this very story is about how she raped a child</em></p>
<p>That’s a headline from the New York Post. Glamour shots. Like it’s nothing but a social faux pas to be excused. The very same outlet who published about the dangerous “gender cult”. Why the disconnect? Because the mainstream media sees trans people as targets for sensationalism.
It’s more socially acceptable to attack a trans child because they were rejected by their family than it is to attack a rich woman for raping a minor. That’s not some conclusion I’m extrapolating, that’s just a straight read of the situation. And it’s hideous.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="conservatives-stirring-up-controversy">Conservatives stirring up controversy<a class="headerlink" href="#conservatives-stirring-up-controversy" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Of course, some institutions push that sensationalism as a means to an end, with the intent of feeding their base and fomenting new hostility.</p>
<p>Take <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/july-4-parade-conservatives_n_62bf126ae4b065b10ad41361">Friendswood, Texas</a>. The city brought in hometown hero Haley Carter, ex-marine and retired professional soccer player. Just the kind of person to lead a parade.
Then conservative talk radio personality Jesse Kelly <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1539640064841506816">tweeted screenshots he dragged up of “communist” behaviour</a>, and told his 500,000 followers to call Friendswood and complain, even posting the number. It was a hit job, and a successful one. Carter stepped down, citing “threats of harm to herself and her family”. <a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1539986379245060100">Kelly celebrates, his work accomplished</a>. Haley supported gun reform and took her son to a pride event, so she had to be removed from public life by any means necessary.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1539820027108540416" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/" title="Host of the nationally syndicated Jesse Kelly Show. Host of ‘I’m Right’ on The First. Anti-Communist. Community college credits."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1268181440543559681/yBRyQxhc_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jesse Kelly</span><span class="at">@JesseKellyDC</span></div></a></div><div><p>Haley Carter will no longer be the Grand Marshal of the Friendswood 4th of July parade. If you’re looking for someone to blame, Mayor, you should know that it’s me who did this. I stopped your communist friend from representing a great community.</p><p>Welcome to The New Right. <a href='https://twitter.com/SylvesterTurner/status/1539811885574459392' target='_blank'>twitter.com/SylvesterTurne…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JesseKellyDC/status/1539820027108540416" target="_blank">Thu Jun 23 03:57:57 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s a culture war that keeps people angry at their “enemy” and keeps them fed with “victories” like this one. </p>
<p>Truth doesn’t matter here. Take Scott Smith, who gave an interview to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/loudoun-county-schools-tried-to-conceal-sexual-assault-against-daughter-in-bathroom-father-says">The Daily Wire</a> (Ben Shapiro’s media site) testifying that his ninth-grade daughter was sexually assaulted in a school bathroom by a man in a skirt. He positioned this as an objection to allowing trans kids to use the bathrooms, because they’re “using it as an advantage to get into the bathrooms.” The boy in question, meanwhile, was arrested and charged with rape. While his hearing was pending, he enrolled in another school and sexually assaulted another girl. The story was a hit, and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1738346636354138">the interviewer went on Tucker Carlson’s show</a> to talk about how “the Loudoun County public schools covered up the rape of a 14-year-old girl at the hands of a boy wearing a skirt in order to pass a school policy that Democrats were adamant about passing.” The outrage sparked fed Glenn Youngkin’s political race, fuelling the narrative of schools pushing leftist policy instead of caring for students.</p>
<p>The problem is the assault had nothing to do with trans people or bathroom policy. The daughter’s testimony in the court hearing revealed that it was something horrific but less sensational: domestic violence. She had a pre-existing sexual relationship with her attacker, and they’d had consensual sex twice already in school bathrooms. On the day of the attack they agreed on the bathroom as a meeting place in advance, but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/in-case-at-center-of-political-firestorm-judge-finds-teen-committed-sexual-assault-in-virginia-school-bathroom/2021/10/25/42c037da-35cc-11ec-8be3-e14aaacfa8ac_story.html">it went bad</a>. In addition, the attacker wasn’t allowed in the bathroom by any sort of bathroom policy; the only inclusive bathroom policies were set <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-virginia-loudoun-county-bathroom-assault-transgender_n_61784469e4b093143210f8d6">months later</a>. </p>
<p>This was <em>not</em> a case of someone identifying as trans as a guise to enter a bathroom, as conservatives wanted it to be. But the damage was done. It was talked up enough in conservative circles that it feels like real evidence; a case study in exactly the kind of violence aggressive policing is needed to prevent. Making people associate right-wing state violence with public safety like this is a classic conservative tactic for securing power, and unfortunately a highly effective one. The facts were fake, but the feelings are real.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544821564696313856" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/" title="Comms Strategy @ACLU // Opinions are my own // She/Her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1515980642772828160/DL6b2hWs_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gillian Branstetter</span><span class="at">@GBBranstetter</span></div></a></div><div><p>1. Who is "they"</p><p>2. What did "they" take that you had previously owned</p><p>3. Who is "us" </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1544821564696313856/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FXBOm5uWIAEvpgy.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1544821564696313856" target="_blank">Wed Jul 06 23:12:17 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>And it’s in this crucible of conservative conspiracy that we get “stories” like <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/27/federally-funded-researcher-studying-trans-children-married-trans-woman-profit-child-mutilation/">“Tax-Funded Researcher Studying Trans Children Is Married To Trans Woman; Both Profit From Child Mutilation”</a> from The Federalist, next to headlines like <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2022/07/18/fake-news-board-commonly-known-as-pulitzer-prize-defends-award-to-2018-russia-hoaxers/">Fake News Board (Commonly Known As Pulitzer Prize) Defends Award To 2018 Russia Hoaxers [NYT]</a>, that cites 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, Lisa Littman, ROGD… debunked bunk, all of it. Or <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-analyst-matthew-dowd-jesus-christ-groomer-alive-today">“MSNBC analyst claims ‘Jesus Christ would be called a groomer’ if ‘alive today’”</a> and <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trans-gender-activism-biden-schools-kids">“Biden pushes radical trans activism in schools”</a> on Fox News. Please excuse me for not dissecting those, but it’s just all the same.</p>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="weimar">Weimar<a class="headerlink" href="#weimar" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>Oh, Fox. Never one to disappoint, here’s Fox News, with Tucker Carlson opening a segment (supporting the right-wing counterprotestors harassing a family pride event) with the choice phrase “Just another week in Weimar.”</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534025370139119616" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/jasonrantz/" title="🎙Host of the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH 770AM/94.5 FM in Seattle/Tacoma from 3-6pm. ☕️⚽️✈️🎬nut. 🇺🇸✡️🏳️🌈 Member BFCA. Conservative. Talk Radio. ManCity."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1523031790092361730/ymOHOkcJ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio</span><span class="at">@jasonrantz</span></div></a></div><div><p>Remember when Drag Queen Story Hour was controversial? Well, now it's taking kids to drag shows at bars. How in the world is this appropriate? I stopped by Tucker Carlson Tonight with a report. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1534024872652722176/vid/640x360/uVIHH4bZHhbACW0E.mp4?tag=14" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/jasonrantz/status/1534025370139119616" target="_blank">Tue Jun 07 04:12:03 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>What looks like offhand language here is actually a head nod to a very specific far-right cryptofascist talking point.</p>
<p>The Weimar Republic was the German government immediately preceding Nazi Germany. It was perceived as destabilized and weak, with the new Nazi party blaming Jews, liberals, and socialists in government for the German loss of WWI. That perception of weakness was a key factor in allowing fascism to take over Germany.</p>
<!-- ![Homeschool_LLC: Groomers, pedophiles, and degenerates. So as in the days of Noah, of Sodom, or the Weimar Republic… This will not end well. https://t.co/0BylEF7CRa](https://twitter.com/Homeschool_LLC/status/1532422064178466817) -->
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1443779333701742592" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="IHateSocDems/1443773494563643399"><a href="https://twitter.com/JacksonWyomingz/" title=""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1443399720400003072/Jhrsw6tb_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jon Deli</span><span class="at">@JacksonWyomingz</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/IHateSocDems/status/1443773494563643399">IHateSocDems</a>:</span><p>@JamesDawson__00 @SaxonBeerGut @mrsmitler420 In the Weimar Republic, Queers influenced the society as a result of a decadent era leading to a degernate culture. When war broke the gays vanished. Gays have no kids and can only groom future generations with immese social power. Hard times in 1 generation is all it takes.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JacksonWyomingz/status/1443779333701742592" target="_blank">Fri Oct 01 03:26:31 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1525249111175450633" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/_Plac3_hold3r/" title="Come, follow me, and leave the world to its ramblings"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1338182298869620738/ZSuSAkFE_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Placeholder</span><span class="at">@_Plac3_hold3r</span></div></a></div><div><p>Groomer makes thread on weimar degeneracy in attempt to gain sympathy <a href='https://twitter.com/EliErlick/status/1524525944828006407' target='_blank'>twitter.com/EliErlick/stat…</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/_Plac3_hold3r/status/1525249111175450633/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FSrF-8dWAAUGhSX.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/_Plac3_hold3r/status/1525249111175450633" target="_blank">Fri May 13 22:58:20 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1341477274130866177" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/SN1P35/" title="Snipes McKinley"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1539850465277423616/QkIeOuYR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Sn!pes McKinley</span><span class="at">@SN1P35</span></div></a></div><div><p>Weimar 2 Degenerate Boogaloo</p><p>How many times do we have to teach them this lesson? <a href='https://twitter.com/dailystar/status/1341377670374895622' target='_blank'>twitter.com/dailystar/stat…</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/SN1P35/status/1341477274130866177/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ep3ieG0VgAAj9B4.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/SN1P35/status/1341477274130866177" target="_blank">Tue Dec 22 20:14:40 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534123070155259910" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/" title=""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1417724898512969728/O9_3YiO8_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Shams</span><span class="at">@drandelson</span></div></a></div><div><p>If you want a preview of the upcoming years in America, look at the Weimar Republic. </p><p>The Weimar Republic was Jewish ran, had massive inflation & was filled with degeneracy. Sound familiar? </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/status/1534123070155259910/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUpMy1FX0AAPmi3.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/status/1534123070155259910/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUpMy1pXwAAIAgm.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/status/1534123070155259910/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUpMy2qXsAABCnO.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/status/1534123070155259910/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FUpMy9WXwAACpZJ.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/drandelson/status/1534123070155259910" target="_blank">Tue Jun 07 10:40:17 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
<p>The fascist “America is like Weimar” talking point says “America has become weak (cultural degeneracy, pride, etc) and it’s time for us fascists to take control again.” </p>
<p>Policy serves to keep people agitated, too. Like the <a href="https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/education/2022/06/29/leon-county-school-board-approves-lgbtq-guide-dont-say-gay-moms-for-liberty-parental-rights/7765205001/">Leon High School policy to broadcast warnings about queer people in PE or overnight trips to parents</a>, which just serves to further anti-trans tropes and keep people concerned and angry by enforcing this narrative that all queer people (even kids) are comparable to sex offenders. Or <a href="https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/judge-blocks-tennessee-anti-trans-restroom-sign-law">a Tennessee law</a> requiring businesses allowing people to use the bathrooms of their choice to display a sign in order to discourage businesses from having those policies and stigmatize the ones that did. (Obviously a violation of the first amendment in the form of compelled speech.) The law was <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et-al-v-lawrence-et-al-order-granting-preliminary-injunction">struck down by injunction</a>, but note the clear intent seen here to stigmatize the target population.</p>
<p>And high-profile conservatives online have the same effect. Here’s Jordan Peterson calling an adult consenting to top surgery equivalent to Nazi medical war crimes:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1542930870012563456" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/thebadstats/" title="making IDW content accessible to those with average IQs and below"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1291169876535463936/BJ239r4Y_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">bad_stats</span><span class="at">@thebadstats</span></div></a></div><div><p>Jordan Peterson googled top surgery and realized it wasn't illegal. So he doubles down and compares adults consenting to get gender affirming surgery to Nazi medical experiments - not technically illegal, just a crime against humanity. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1542929927980269570/pu/vid/640x360/OPSJkQ2H4-mPP5kk.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/thebadstats/status/1542930870012563456" target="_blank">Fri Jul 01 17:59:20 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-trans-question">The Trans Question<a class="headerlink" href="#the-trans-question" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>You also see liberal institutions serve much the same function as the hyper-conservative outlets by “legitimizing the debate”. In this case, you’ll remember that “the debate” is between exterminating all the trans people, or not doing that. But boy, do we ever like debates, and you can’t have a Debate if you acknowledge that one side is an atrocity.</p>
<p>And so we get things like <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/07/the-tories-trans-question-essential">Joan Smith, “The Tories are right to be debating the trans question”</a>.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547990029791678465" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="shoeleatherkate/1547988267210944513"><a href="https://twitter.com/shoeleatherkate/" title="LGBTQ+ Reporter @19thNews | Proud trans person | they/them | formerly @logoTV INTO @windycitytimes | ksosin@19thnews.org | Media: press@19thnews.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1525336460823367680/dSztsvLq_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Kate Sosin</span><span class="at">@shoeleatherkate</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/shoeleatherkate/status/1547988267210944513">shoeleatherkate</a>:</span><p>Our legacy newsrooms report on transgender care and lives as if we are question mark on this earth: should we exist or not? </p><p>Every major medical association has come to a consensus about transgender medicine. Media outlets fuel extremist debates about our lives anyway.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/shoeleatherkate/status/1547990029791678465" target="_blank">Fri Jul 15 17:02:38 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Originally, “The X Question” was used to describe how countries established a national identity by tying the nation to an ethic identity. This was the very early notion of a Nation-State: a State, a government, that corresponded to a Nation, a people. “National questions” were the discussion of those nation/state mappings; the Roman Question was the question of whether the Roman catholic church should be an independent state or not, with “yes” corresponding to independence, statehood, and “nationalism”. </p>
<p>It wasn’t until Nazi Germany that the idea of “The X Question” was tainted the way it is today. The Germans raised “The Jewish Question” rhetorically with the intent to answer it with a resounding “no.” Because of thousands of years of Jewish stigmatization in Europe though, “no” here didn’t mean “no Israel for you”, it meant an escalating series of attacks: forced societal integration, deportation, and finally “The Final Solution”. The final solution, the holocaust, was the final “answer” to “The Jewish Question”, and arguably the reason the Nazis brought it into public consciousness the way they did in the first place. </p>
<p>Since that atrocity, and the incomprehensible evils conducted in the name of the answer, no one has brought a national question into the public discourse since. The idea of asking a National Question means you want to answer it “no”, in the most horrible way imaginable. To ask a national question is to incite genocide. Which is why it’s back in force. It’s not a coincidence. The rhetoric is constructed to invoke the idea of outside invaders in society, to prompt discourse to come to the conclusion that it’s unacceptable for them to exist, and to generate a mandate to do whatever it takes to eliminate them. </p>
<p>And so we have <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/quickfire/2022/07/the-tories-trans-question-essential">Joan Smith, “The Tories are right to be debating the trans question”</a>, and the political climate it puts into words. We have <a href="https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2021/02/09/the-transgender-question-n2584392">Derek Hunter, “The Transgender Question”</a>, and all the equivalent columns and thought pieces and blog articles. And we know exactly what they’re for.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="children-as-the-wedge">Children as the wedge<a class="headerlink" href="#children-as-the-wedge" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>That’s what cries about children are for, too. Concern about children is used as a wedge to seize policing power. Conversely, the goal of the genocidalists isn’t to protect children, the children are a means to an end. I cannot emphasize this enough: <strong>the goal isn’t protecting children, and the campaign doesn’t end at children.</strong></p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381643034752774144" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="chasestrangio/1381641701245194244"><a href="https://twitter.com/Brian_B_Baker/" title="I write horror and thriller stories. He/Him"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1527782902338945025/qkS5lW7C_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Brian B Baker</span><span class="at">@Brian_B_Baker</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1381641701245194244">chasestrangio</a>:</span><p>@chasestrangio @gregpak What is the logic of this? Let’s just traumatize a trans kid even more. It’s not like they’re not trying to figure things out and feel like they’re in the dark and fighting by themselves already.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Brian_B_Baker/status/1381643034752774144" target="_blank">Mon Apr 12 16:19:03 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381787180880777216" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Brian_B_Baker/1381643034752774144"><a href="https://twitter.com/ireneista/" title="You're all dreams, and you're nice dreams. We're an asexual autistic trans-femme plural system. Ad privacy, Tech Inquiry, ex-Google, they/them. 🏳️⚧️🇨🇦"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/772952457441796097/Wu4ip9U0_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Irenes (many)</span><span class="at">@ireneista</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Brian_B_Baker/status/1381643034752774144">Brian_B_Baker</a>:</span><p>@Brian_B_Baker @chasestrangio @gregpak the logic is to kill trans children, so they can't reach adulthood and become trans adults who advocate for our rights. that's what all the rhetoric adds up to.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ireneista/status/1381787180880777216" target="_blank">Tue Apr 13 01:51:50 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>The effort that’s driving this doesn’t limit itself to minors. I’ve evidenced this throughout, but look also at pieces like <a href="https://www.sfexaminer.com/archives/opinion-the-health-establishment-is-failing-young-adults-who-question-their-gender/article_52832479-1ddd-596b-b64b-6c7b60addbdf.html">“The health establishment is failing young adults who question their gender”</a> in which Erica Anderson specifically attacks the informed consent model of health care, which is the principle that allows trans adults to consent to treatment. Anderson argues instead that people cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves, and their gender must be controlled instead by the state. Despotic.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="echo-outrage">Echo outrage<a class="headerlink" href="#echo-outrage" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The propaganda works, and people echo these stupid ideas and fuel the paranoia.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544051522052440064" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/" title="Pro abortion"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1520557752594096128/bFw5bnce_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Katy Montgomerie 🦗</span><span class="at">@KatyMontgomerie</span></div></a></div><div><p>The fact that anyone seriously believes "you can't even say woman anymore" shows just how massively outgunned in the propaganda wars trans people are to the far right</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1544051522052440064" target="_blank">Mon Jul 04 20:12:24 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Oh, here’s a good one. A clothing designer sells pants and underwear designed to reduce the visible profile of male genitals, targeted towards MtF trans people. They’re not sex toys or clips, they’re just underwear that reduce your profile rather than accentuate it. If you’re anti-trans, this annoys you, because you wish there weren’t trans people. But then you go read a book or something.</p>
<p>But if you’re anti-trans <em>and</em> absolute human garbage, you get this instead: <a href="https://archive.ph/LlRlJ">Transgender designer is accused of ‘child abuse’ for selling pants that seek to ‘flatten’ the genitals of boys as young as four - as doctors warn the underwear could cause infertility</a>. Contort the fact that the clothing comes in small sizes as child abuse. Get Tory peer Baroness Nicholson (who <a href="https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/04/23/20/56965931-10746809-image-a-16_1650741546798.jpg">looks like a knock-off Jessica Walter character who just saw an immigrant</a>) up in arms about. Find a doctor to quote about testicular health, even though the doctor quoted <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10746809/Transgender-designer-accused-child-abuse-selling-pants-flatten-genitals-boys.html#:~:text=%E2%80%98Testicles%20need%20to,eventually%20die%20off.%E2%80%99">isn’t speaking about the clothing issue at all, and doesn’t seem to know anything about the story his words are being used for</a>. Get our friends at Transgender Trend, why not, to describe underwear as “barbaric interference with a child’s genitals” and other rhetoric that would seem to insist children not be permitted access to clothes at all. Associate anything in the neighbourhood of “trans” with child abuse, by any means necessary, even when all you’re talking about is selling comfortable pants.</p>
<p>Of course it’s not really about the clothing; they think trans people existing in the world at all is child abuse. That’s why the clothing argument doesn’t make sense, it isn’t trying to.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1535863176151064577" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/" title="Ex-philosopher, good YouTuber, bad Tweeter. Email: info@contrapoints.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1425907860773515264/a30IKa1f_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Natalie Wynn</span><span class="at">@ContraPoints</span></div></a></div><div><p>for the last several days I have been flooded, on all platforms, with hundreds of comments from people who are very angry because they believe, in all sincerity, that I am plotting "to switch genders for every child in America" </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/1535863176151064577/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVB631oX0AUgEwa.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/1535863176151064577" target="_blank">Sun Jun 12 05:54:50 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Bombard people like Jeremy David Hanson with terrorizing misinformation until they <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21718668-hanson">go on a rampage</a> to get vengeance on such enemies of the people as Mr. Potato Head and Merriam-Webster for perceived “radical homosexual agenda.”
He posted threats online that he wanted to “go on a shooting spree”. He sent a rabbi the threat “That identifies you as some kind of tranny abomination and a radical Marxist… You and your entire family should be gassed and your synagogue shot up and bombed” for putting their pronouns in their social media profile. He messaged DC comics directly “I am going to fucking kill you… I am going to rape your wife and decapitate her then blow up DC Comics headquarters” and that he would “EXTERMINATE you cultural Marxists destroying America” after a new superman identified as bisexual in a comic book. That “IGN is obviously a far-left extremist, cultural Marxist propaganda site” and “I will have to keep posting my comment, and if IGN keeps deleting it, I will shoot up their offices. The radical left needs to pay for silencing and oppressing conservatives.”</p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is an example of <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27073433">Stochastic Terrorism</a>: the demonization of something which predictably results in an act of terrorism, although the specifics cannot be precisely predicted. This is the “will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” effect: you communicate to the public that someone is hated, and dangerous, and that it would be wonderful and heroic for someone to take matters into their own hands and commit an act of violence. And, when they do, no one directly incited a specific act of violence, so there’s enough deniability that the media that actually incited the violence can keep doing it.</p>
</aside>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543342279930281990" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Imposter_Edits/1543302060858286081"><a href="https://twitter.com/Olqaba/" title="Your biggest enemies are those you once helped in their lowest moment-My views are personal and I tweet my mind, but not infallible. I fear no evil."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/468679482186817536/CQA_HoXi_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Olqaba</span><span class="at">@Olqaba</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Imposter_Edits/status/1543302060858286081">Imposter_Edits</a>:</span><p>@Imposter_Edits Abortion is crime period,no one has right to take another persons life even one of foetus. Life begins at conception. Homo sexuality is wrong, sexual pervert, sexual deviance, paraphilia should be locked up(gays and abortionist). Then nature will take it cause as God destined</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Olqaba/status/1543342279930281990" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 21:14:08 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544409967754616832" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/" title="Pro abortion"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1520557752594096128/bFw5bnce_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Katy Montgomerie 🦗</span><span class="at">@KatyMontgomerie</span></div></a></div><div><p>Real women don't need hormones, they're born with breasts 🤪 </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1544409967754616832/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FW7Yi1iX0AkqSOl.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1544409967754616832" target="_blank">Tue Jul 05 19:56:44 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>To many people, it doesn’t matter how obviously false the claims are (or how completely the people talking misunderstand their own points), this radicalising rhetoric works.
Moral salience kicks in; the act of identifying the outgroup prompts action. They believe the people telling them every day on every channel that the existence of trans people is an existential threat and the worst offence that could be committed by humanity, and they internalize it, believe it, and act on it. That’s what the propaganda does, and that’s what the propaganda is for.</p>
<p><a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/28/the-genocidaires-people/hate.jpg">Human hate can adapt to anything.</a></p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="legitimacy-of-belief">Legitimacy of Belief<a class="headerlink" href="#legitimacy-of-belief" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>When we see people rise up and attack each other like this, see them deteriorate into fodder for a war, it prompts the question: Do they really believe these things? </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="final-word-save-the-nuance">Final word: Save the nuance<a class="headerlink" href="#final-word-save-the-nuance" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1397064591486726148" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1550052730168819712/uavTkSN0_400x400.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>i think we should save the nuanced debate over how queer people should present themselves for a day when they’re no longer regularly murdered over that</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1397064591486726148" target="_blank">Tue May 25 05:38:49 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p>There are open questions about best practices in trans medical care and psychology. Those questions are, for the most part, the business of qualified experts and the trans folks in question. There are questions of science, and questions of personal choice, and that is all. There is no space here for a public debate about whether or not trans people should be allowed to exist, or vigilante mobs raising arms to enforce what they’ve been told “righteousness” looks like. There is never room for an exterminationist debate.</p>
<p>Right now, people are fighting for their right to exist. The right to not be tortured and lynched. Fighting for their lives.
<strong>There is no way to responsibly criticise the same population that is the victim of a genocide while that genocide is occurring, because such criticism actively aids the genocide.</strong>
Keep people free. Keep them safe from threats of government and social violence. That is priority one. Only in conditions of reasonable safety can nuanced discourse responsibly exist. Without that, any “critical” discussion is just fuel for the genocidal fire.</p>
</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://iowastartingline.com/2022/07/13/whats-happening-with-the-vinton-public-library/">Ty Rushing, “What’s Happening With The Vinton Public Library”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://medium.com/@mimmymum/transphobia-how-the-trans-hostile-media-coverage-began-in-the-uk-429dc76bf0ac">Mimmymum, “Transphobia: How the trans-hostile media coverage began in the UK”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/a-national-epidemic-fatal-anti-trans-violence-in-the-united-states-in-2019">A National Epidemic: Fatal Anti-Transgender Violence in the United States in 2019 | Human Rights Campaign</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27073433">Molly Amman and J. Reid Meloy, “Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/14/indiana-abortion-rape-ohio-00045899">Indiana AG eyes criminal prosecution of 10-year-old rape victim's abortion doc | POLITICO</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.grid.news/story/politics/2022/04/15/lizelle-herreras-arrest-in-texas-is-not-unique-and-could-get-much-more-common/">Lizelle Herrera’s arrest in Texas is not unique — and could get much more common | Grid News</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://sci-hub.se/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00661.x">Monroe, K. R. (2008). Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust. Political Psychology</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://reports.hrc.org/dismantling-a-culture-of-violence">Dismantling a Culture of Violence | HRC Digital Reports</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2021/10/19/you-can-say-woman-and-we-can-say-person.html">Florence Ashley, “You can say woman and we can say person”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4buJMMiwcg">shaunvids, “Response to BBC transphobia”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/bongo-productions-llc-et-al-v-lawrence-et-al-order-granting-preliminary-injunction">Bongo Productions LLC et al v. Lawrence et al - Order Granting Preliminary Injunction | American Civil Liberties Union</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21718668-hanson">Affidavit Of Special Agent Casey Anderson In Support Of a Criminal Complaint Against Jeremy David Hanson</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27073433">Molly Amman and J. Reid Meloy, “Stochastic Terrorism: A Linguistic and Psychological Analysis”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://medium.com/@mimmymum/transphobia-how-people-are-becoming-radicalised-online-97cff2425fd7">Mimmymum, “Transphobia: How people are becoming radicalised online.”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://healthliberationnow.com/2022/06/01/a-new-era-key-actors-behind-anti-trans-conversion-therapy/">Lee Leveille, “A New Era: Key Actors Behind Anti-Trans Conversion Therapy”</a></li>
</ul>
</section>The Génocidaires: Exterminationism2022-07-26T00:00:00-05:002022-07-26T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-07-26:/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/<!-- ad: it's only nice if you don't think twice -->
<hr/>
<p>Okay. We looked at law. Let’s keep looking. Let’s gaze straight at the horrors until our stomachs churn and our eyes bleed.</p>
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for the same topics discussed previously, with a particular focus on individuals and organizations overtly advocating for violence and genocide. Also, one photo with women in revealing clothing near children.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#rhetoric-background-info">Rhetoric background info</a><ul>
<li><a href="#the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria">The Social Contagion lie & Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria</a></li>
<li><a href="#groomer-child-sexualization">“Groomer” & child sexualization</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#overt-exterminationism">Overt exterminationism</a><ul>
<li><a href="#our-duty">Our Duty</a></li>
<li><a href="#helen-joyce">Helen Joyce</a></li>
<li><a href="#pride-riots-chaya-raichik-libs-of-tiktok">Pride riots & Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)</a></li>
<li><a href="#constitutional-coalition">Constitutional Coalition</a></li>
<li><a href="#springer">Springer</a></li>
<li><a href="#robert-foster">Robert Foster</a></li>
<li><a href="#alisabeth-lancaster">Alisabeth Lancaster</a></li>
<li><a href="#mark-berns">Mark Berns</a></li>
<li><a href="#stedfast-baptist">Stedfast Baptist</a></li>
<li><a href="#matt-walsh-what-is-a-woman">Matt Walsh & “What is a Woman”</a></li>
<li><a href="#irreversible-damage">Irreversible Damage</a></li>
<li><a href="#bethel-mcgrew-estherofreilly">Bethel McGrew (@EstherOfReilly)</a></li>
<li><a href="#misc-internet">Misc internet</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#killing-trans-people-directly">Killing trans people directly</a><ul>
<li><a href="#terrorism">Terrorism</a></li>
<li><a href="#wisconsin-kiel-bomb-incident">Wisconsin Kiel bomb incident</a></li>
<li><a href="#fake-shooter-assault">Fake shooter assault</a></li>
<li><a href="#murders">Murders</a></li>
<li><a href="#trans-panic-defence">Trans panic defence</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#bathrooms">Bathrooms</a></li>
<li><a href="#passing">Passing</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="rhetoric-background-info">Rhetoric background info<a class="headerlink" href="#rhetoric-background-info" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Before we get too deep into the craziness, I want to explain a couple common talking points.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria">The Social Contagion lie & Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria<a class="headerlink" href="#the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (activists, left-handed, ROGD, shrier) -->
<p>In real life, the scary sounding “social contagion” is just the study of the propagation of ideas across a social network, more commonly known as memetics.
As applied to transgender people though, “social contagion” is the conspiracy theory that transgenderism is an invented evil that is being spread to children through education and social media.
This idea helps keeps people from seeing trans exterminationism as a true genocide: transgender people aren’t a “real” group of people, they’re actually an effect of people being tricked by “biased out-of-control transgender activists”, psychiatrists, scheming liberals, a cabal of elite pedophiles, or just <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/helping-kids-recognize-the-myths-of-gender-identity-and-transgenderism/">Satan himself</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown="1"><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/opinion/transgender-culture-war.html">Ross Douthat, “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War”, NYT op-ed</a></cite>
What we’re seeing today isn’t just a continuation of the gay rights revolution; it’s a form of social contagion which our educational and medical institutions are encouraging and accelerating. These kids aren’t setting themselves free from the patriarchy; they’re under the influence of online communities of imitation and academic fashions laundered into psychiatry and education — one part Tumblr and TikTok mimesis, one part Judith Butler.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first this seems like the same basic myth as the debunked <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2118&context=hlr">Homosexuality as Contagion</a> false narrative now understood as the <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-agendas-social-contagion-peer-pressure-and-prevalence-c3694d11ed24">left-handed fallacy</a>: the real cause for the increase in visibility is of course <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303927">reduced social stigma and advancements in social and legal recognition</a>.
But the contagion myth has been recently “legitimized” by the pseudo-medical label of <strong>Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria</strong>, describing a phenomenon where “children seemed to experience a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria, appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion” correlating with “an increase in social media/internet use.”
The only paper in the medical literature about Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria is the one that invents the diagnosis: Lisa Littman’s <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202330">Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports</a>. </p>
<p>Littman’s study has been <a href="https://www.verywellhealth.com/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-4685597">widely discredited</a> by actual medical doctors — a thing Littman is not — for pulling numbers from online straw polls in order to claim discovery of a brand new disease without even attempting to assess single case of it. The real fatal flaw, though, is right in the title: it’s a study of <em>parental reports</em>, where untrained parties not actually afflicted by the alleged condition are asked to assess its existence in people, who in many cases are <a href="https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/blog/2018/12/5/psychology-today-response">actively motivated to conceal it</a> for fear of abuse or rejection.
Worse, due to the ultrapartisan anti-transgender bias of the websites on which the polls were conducted (4thwavenow, transgender trend, and youthtranscriticalprofessionals. No, seriously.), the data was from parents who were already upset about their children coming out as trans and looking for an external, pathological factor to blame. </p>
</section></section><!-- ad: it's only nice if you don't think twice -->
<hr>
<p>Okay. We looked at law. Let’s keep looking. Let’s gaze straight at the horrors until our stomachs churn and our eyes bleed.</p>
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for the same topics discussed previously, with a particular focus on individuals and organizations overtly advocating for violence and genocide. Also, one photo with women in revealing clothing near children.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#rhetoric-background-info">Rhetoric background info</a><ul>
<li><a href="#the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria">The Social Contagion lie & Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria</a></li>
<li><a href="#groomer-child-sexualization">“Groomer” & child sexualization</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#overt-exterminationism">Overt exterminationism</a><ul>
<li><a href="#our-duty">Our Duty</a></li>
<li><a href="#helen-joyce">Helen Joyce</a></li>
<li><a href="#pride-riots-chaya-raichik-libs-of-tiktok">Pride riots & Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)</a></li>
<li><a href="#constitutional-coalition">Constitutional Coalition</a></li>
<li><a href="#springer">Springer</a></li>
<li><a href="#robert-foster">Robert Foster</a></li>
<li><a href="#alisabeth-lancaster">Alisabeth Lancaster</a></li>
<li><a href="#mark-berns">Mark Berns</a></li>
<li><a href="#stedfast-baptist">Stedfast Baptist</a></li>
<li><a href="#matt-walsh-what-is-a-woman">Matt Walsh & “What is a Woman”</a></li>
<li><a href="#irreversible-damage">Irreversible Damage</a></li>
<li><a href="#bethel-mcgrew-estherofreilly">Bethel McGrew (@EstherOfReilly)</a></li>
<li><a href="#misc-internet">Misc internet</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#killing-trans-people-directly">Killing trans people directly</a><ul>
<li><a href="#terrorism">Terrorism</a></li>
<li><a href="#wisconsin-kiel-bomb-incident">Wisconsin Kiel bomb incident</a></li>
<li><a href="#fake-shooter-assault">Fake shooter assault</a></li>
<li><a href="#murders">Murders</a></li>
<li><a href="#trans-panic-defence">Trans panic defence</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#bathrooms">Bathrooms</a></li>
<li><a href="#passing">Passing</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="rhetoric-background-info">Rhetoric background info<a class="headerlink" href="#rhetoric-background-info" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Before we get too deep into the craziness, I want to explain a couple common talking points.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria">The Social Contagion lie & Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria<a class="headerlink" href="#the-social-contagion-lie-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (activists, left-handed, ROGD, shrier) -->
<p>In real life, the scary sounding “social contagion” is just the study of the propagation of ideas across a social network, more commonly known as memetics.
As applied to transgender people though, “social contagion” is the conspiracy theory that transgenderism is an invented evil that is being spread to children through education and social media.
This idea helps keeps people from seeing trans exterminationism as a true genocide: transgender people aren’t a “real” group of people, they’re actually an effect of people being tricked by “biased out-of-control transgender activists”, psychiatrists, scheming liberals, a cabal of elite pedophiles, or just <a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/helping-kids-recognize-the-myths-of-gender-identity-and-transgenderism/">Satan himself</a>. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/13/opinion/transgender-culture-war.html">Ross Douthat, “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War”, NYT op-ed</a></cite>
What we’re seeing today isn’t just a continuation of the gay rights revolution; it’s a form of social contagion which our educational and medical institutions are encouraging and accelerating. These kids aren’t setting themselves free from the patriarchy; they’re under the influence of online communities of imitation and academic fashions laundered into psychiatry and education — one part Tumblr and TikTok mimesis, one part Judith Butler.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>At first this seems like the same basic myth as the debunked <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2118&context=hlr">Homosexuality as Contagion</a> false narrative now understood as the <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-agendas-social-contagion-peer-pressure-and-prevalence-c3694d11ed24">left-handed fallacy</a>: the real cause for the increase in visibility is of course <a href="https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303927">reduced social stigma and advancements in social and legal recognition</a>.
But the contagion myth has been recently “legitimized” by the pseudo-medical label of <strong>Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria</strong>, describing a phenomenon where “children seemed to experience a sudden or rapid onset of gender dysphoria, appearing for the first time during puberty or even after its completion” correlating with “an increase in social media/internet use.”
The only paper in the medical literature about Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria is the one that invents the diagnosis: Lisa Littman’s <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202330">Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports</a>. </p>
<p>Littman’s study has been <a href="https://www.verywellhealth.com/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-4685597">widely discredited</a> by actual medical doctors — a thing Littman is not — for pulling numbers from online straw polls in order to claim discovery of a brand new disease without even attempting to assess single case of it. The real fatal flaw, though, is right in the title: it’s a study of <em>parental reports</em>, where untrained parties not actually afflicted by the alleged condition are asked to assess its existence in people, who in many cases are <a href="https://www.gdaworkinggroup.com/blog/2018/12/5/psychology-today-response">actively motivated to conceal it</a> for fear of abuse or rejection.
Worse, due to the ultrapartisan anti-transgender bias of the websites on which the polls were conducted (4thwavenow, transgender trend, and youthtranscriticalprofessionals. No, seriously.), the data was from parents who were already upset about their children coming out as trans and looking for an external, pathological factor to blame. </p>
<!-- for a perceived meddling by some foreign force -->
<p>There is a remarkable amount of literature discrediting this particular paper. See
<a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2">Restar, A. J. (2019). Methodological Critique of Littman’s (2018) Parental-Respondents Accounts of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(1), 61–66.</a>, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212578">Brandelli Costa, A. (2019). Formal comment on: Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. PLOS ONE, 14(3), e0212578.</a>,
<a href="https://psychcentral.com/lib/there-is-no-evidence-that-rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-exists">Florence Ashley, B.C.L., LL.B. (2018). There Is No Evidence That Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria Exists</a>,
<a href="https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-03-19/gender">Brown University’s statements on gender dysphoria study (2019)</a>,
and even <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0214157">the correction the original journal had to make</a>.
Suffice it to say, rapid-onset gender dysphoria <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/shannonkeating/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-flawed-methods-transgender">isn’t a real thing</a>, as convenient as it would be if it were for a certain category of parent who, without the label of ROGD to reach for, would conclude their child were a changeling and drown them in the river. </p>
<p>But it gets even worse than that. If we work backwards, it turns out the paper wasn’t just poorly sourced by some parents: the whole idea was devised <em>by</em> those parents, who had already decided amongst themselves their children’s behaviour was due to a social contagion, just within the last few years.
Julia Serano wrote an excellent history titled <a href="https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2019/02/origins-of-social-contagion-and-rapid.html">Origins of “Social Contagion” and “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria”</a> in which she determines that <em>both</em> the “Social Contagion” and “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria” labels were contrived by reluctant parents on a set of three websites: 4thwavenow.com, transgendertrend.com, and youthtranscriticalprofessionals.org. Yes, the same trio of websites that made up Littman’s entire sample set. Littman, whose study was conceived of, written, and published in <em>less than a year</em> of those ideas first being posted online.</p>
<p>This entire narrative was kicked off by angry parents of trans children bootstrapping themselves a narrative based on their own guesses as to why their children weren’t thinking the way their parents want them to, who then just cooked up phony scientific literature that consisted of those same assumptions evidenced only by them interviewing themselves about it.</p>
<p>And that’s <em>still</em> the best basis the “concerned parent” contingency has. ROGD was the main medical basis of Abagail Shrier’s now-infamous “Irreversible Damage - The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters”; a thoroughly unserious affair comprised of anecdotes, <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/political-minds/202012/new-book-irreversible-damage-is-full-misinformation">flagrant journalistic malpractice</a>, and speculation about <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/making-sense-of-autogynephilia-debates-73d9051e88d3">now-discredited fetish theory</a> that ignores all available data that doesn’t directly serve the author’s agenda.
But the book serves much the same purpose of giving parents enough plausible uncertainty to mistreat their children. Shrier uses her book to explicitly tell parents to reject their children’s identity, which is the primary <a href="http://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27046450/">cause of suicide in trans children</a>. More on Shrier later.</p>
<p>A “diagnosis” of rapid-onset gender dysphoria is incredibly harmful to those children it targets. First and foremost, it’s a clear example of parents withholding support, which is astonishingly effective at inducing suicide: a <a href="https://www.transpulseproject.ca/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Impacts-of-Strong-Parental-Support-for-Trans-Youth-vFINAL.pdf">research report from the Trans PULSE project</a> found that 57% of trans adolescents and young adults without parental support attempted suicide in the past year, as opposed to just 4% with support. But on top of that, the idea of other-as-contagion leads to DIY conversion therapy and very real abuse. Panicking parents who <a href="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FMy9LcnUcAAiutX?format=jpg&name=medium">read the wrong book</a> now feel the need to “save their child” by denying access to media and culture, isolating them, and cutting them off from their friends and support networks.</p>
<p>And all that to advance the “Social Contagion” lie to affirm “Gender Critical” parents. It’s a horrifying ideology that sees the mind of a person as an afterthought, full of parents who are so opposed to treating their children with any dignity or respect that they would rather see them die, so long as the corpse had the right clothes and hormones.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="groomer-child-sexualization">“Groomer” & child sexualization<a class="headerlink" href="#groomer-child-sexualization" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (rhetoric, dehumanization, sexualization) -->
<!-- ![CarlosGSmith: #DeSantis’ spokesperson openly accused opponents of #DontSayGay of being ‘groomers’— aka PEDOPHILES. Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst. They’re disgusting and dangerous and have NO PLACE in the Guv’s office. - @ChristinaPushaw must resign. https://t.co/UAMjvIELBx https://t.co/xbIXpmX5Eb](https://twitter.com/CarlosGSmith/status/1500522373719732241) -->
<!-- "Grooming", by the way, is a term -->
<p>You’ll also hear the word “groomer” thrown around a lot.
“Grooming” is the act of a predatory adult psychologically conditioning a child into being compliant for sex.
It’s used to describe other verbal and psychological conditioning designed to prime people for abuse: these are usually children, but it’s sometimes used in other cases. “Groomer” is a description of the worst-of-the-words: sexual offenders and child predators.</p>
<p>Recently, though, it’s become a favourite word of the more virulent anti-trans activists, who now use it to slur the entire LGBTQIA+ spectrum as child abusers by virtue of existing in public at all.
It’s become extrordinarily popular rhetoric (<a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/doom-groom-fox-news-has-aired-170-segments-discussing-trans-people-past-three-weeks">mediamatters</a>, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/20/republicans-grooming-democrats/?itid=lk_inline_manual_57">wapo</a>) but it’s incredibly wrong and harmful on many layers.</p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533217028731027456" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><p>An ugly protest today. A mob of self described “Christian Fascists” tried to force their way into a gay establishment in the gayborhood of Dallas holding a family event while chanting “Groomers” </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1533216985164783622/pu/vid/1280x720/PSyVHVFE2Wnqi2q7.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533217028731027456" target="_blank">Sat Jun 04 22:40:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1512977926819618818" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="saoirsegowan/1512974362571423747"><a href="https://twitter.com/saoirsegowan/" title="and no matter how tender, how exquisite... a lie will remain a lie! young hollow, there are but two paths - inherit the order of this world, or destroy it"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1513127963713282052/HZn77a7B_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">saoirse gg 🏳️⚧️⚢📉</span><span class="at">@saoirsegowan</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/saoirsegowan/status/1512974362571423747">saoirsegowan</a>:</span><p>this fucking “child groomer” paranoia is getting terrifying how are we supposed to feel safe on transit :( @Janeese4DC @BrianneKNadeau @ZacharyforWard5 @mdc_dsa ) </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1512977628688535552/pu/vid/720x1280/SW4v5ZbOBNPChPeo.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/saoirsegowan/status/1512977926819618818" target="_blank">Sun Apr 10 02:17:02 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1551641401749901314" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/CovidRadicals/" title="Highlighting the radicalisation of conspiracy theorists and their followers."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1480316220486344705/W5vkWpiL_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Covid Radicals 🇺🇦</span><span class="at">@CovidRadicals</span></div></a></div><div><p>NEW: Activists infiltrated parent & child story time with Drag Queen. </p><p>They accuse the Drag Queen of grooming children and ‘Wokeism’ before being asked to leave. </p><p>Video blurred to protect identities. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1551641253934235658/pu/vid/480x852/dvY7xaE0wV6atDXa.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/CovidRadicals/status/1551641401749901314" target="_blank">Mon Jul 25 18:51:52 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
<!-- Depersoning slur -->
<p>First and foremost, it’s a targeted slur to de-person and dehumanize queer people as a population.
This is a crucial component of genocide campaigns:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00661.x">Monroe, K. R. “Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust”</a></cite>
Genocidalists and their supporters … see themselves as a people under attack. There is a bitter irony to this, for in the genocidalists’ worldview, the Jewish victims of genocide are seen as threats. The following conversation with two Nazis illustrates how Nazis believed the Jews were threatening their world and had to be destroyed, much as the rest of us would destroy cockroaches invading our home.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>In a camp in Upper Silesia, I asked one of our guards, pointing at the big gun in his holster, “Did you ever use that to kill?” He replied, “Once I had to shoot six Jews. I did not like that at all, but when you get such an order, you have to be hard.” Then he added, “You know, they were not human anymore.” That was the key: dehumanization. You first call your victim names and take away his dignity.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We can even see the core “groomer” idea in historical records from Nazi Germany: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS0008938918000602">labeling the homosexual as predator</a> in service of the <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/persecution-of-homosexuals/">§175 campaign</a>. “Queer people are grooming” is literal Nazi ultranationalist propaganda.</p>
<!-- TODO more about depersonalizing language -->
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534581212555059200" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/" title="Wise Latina. Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law @Cyberlawclinic. Gender & Tech. Host: #QueeringTheLaw. Bylines @slate, @teenvogue, @wired. Views=my own. (she/her)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1451706477929017344/j1GjLTdX_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alejandra Caraballo 🇵🇷🏳️⚧️</span><span class="at">@Esqueer_</span></div></a></div><div><p>In 6 months on social media we've gone from "we are concerned about fairness in women's sports" to "the nazis were right about gays, they are groomers." Anti-trans rhetoric has always been a trojan horse for eliminationist beliefs about LGBTQ people and it's working.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1534581212555059200" target="_blank">Wed Jun 08 17:00:46 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>This demonization reinforces a siege mentality: the idea that the persecuting community is actually the ones under attack, and that the victims of the genocide are threats. It exploits the human fear mechanism by demanding that survival depends on absolutely eradicating the scapegoat.
This is parallel to the Nazi tactic of labelling groups as an “infection.” It’s an effective rhetorical tactic that serves the triple purpose of denoting the population to be targeted, re-enforcing the persecution complex of the perpetrators, and depersoning the victims both legally and in the minds of the perpetrators.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.164">Glass, J. M. “Group phantasy: its place in the psychology of genocide”</a></cite>
The euthanasia program of the late 1930s classified a number of different groups as infectious (either biologically or genetically) and therefore subject to extermination on the grounds of being a danger to the nation’s (or community’s) health. From the internal point of view – that is, from the group’s consciousness outwards – nothing of their action was perceived to be psychotic.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It also functions as a diffusal of criticism. This tactic says “This group is evil and dangerous, and anyone who thinks they should be protected is also evil and dangerous. You’re not evil and dangerous, are you? You’re not an active threat we need to eliminate, right?” We don’t need German Nazism to demonstrate this one, we have Republican officials from March of this year:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499886619259777029" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/" title="debunking false Narratives about Florida & @GovRonDeSantis • John 15:18 • personal views my own • reporters: no DMs please, email our press office"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1509003694049796097/uNPQpe0M_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸</span><span class="at">@ChristinaPushaw</span></div></a></div><div><p>The bill that liberals inaccurately call “Don’t Say Gay” would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1499886619259777029" target="_blank">Fri Mar 04 23:16:51 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499890719691051008" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ChristinaPushaw/1499886619259777029"><a href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/" title="debunking false Narratives about Florida & @GovRonDeSantis • John 15:18 • personal views my own • reporters: no DMs please, email our press office"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1509003694049796097/uNPQpe0M_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christina Pushaw 🐊 🇺🇸</span><span class="at">@ChristinaPushaw</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1499886619259777029">ChristinaPushaw</a>:</span><p>If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1499890719691051008" target="_blank">Fri Mar 04 23:33:08 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Note the three-step maneuver here: this measure protects against evil, if you’re against it (or, in this case, don’t actively support it) you must be evil too, and this should all go without saying. Deplorable, obviously.
But ultimately this works. It’s a textbook example of laying the rhetorical groundwork for eugenics and genocide campaigns and inciting intimidation and violence in public.</p>
<!-- Specific harm from meaning -->
<p>In the “queer groomer” case, it’s actually worse than that because of the specific harmful work that particular word does.</p>
<!-- equating a person's queerness to them ontologically being a sexual predator -->
<!-- Sex abuse -->
<p>First, using “groomer” to describe queer people fundamentally trivializes child abuse.
The people using “groomer” as an offhand insult to describe queer people causing them social discomfort are equating their discomfort to that child abuse. They’re saying trans people peaceably living their own lives is equivalent to people sexually assaulting children.
That’s reprehensible in both directions. It’s reprehensible to say innocent people are such extrordinarily awful reprobates, of course, but it’s also reprehensible to say that real child sex abuse should <em>only</em> be as serious as a mild annoyance.</p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1539604742883639297" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="WhiteRoseAFA/1539603835538341888"><a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/" title=""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1488983634447155205/jGwgD4lf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">CARP</span><span class="at">@WhiteRoseAFA</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/status/1539603835538341888">WhiteRoseAFA</a>:</span><p>13. She pretends like the "groomer" callout is just her defending kids, but gives it all away by just randomly calling an actor a groomer. It's simply a pejorative to demonize people she doesn't like and that's a broad swath of American </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/status/1539604742883639297/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FV3GWdmXEAAwZOy.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/status/1539604742883639297/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FV3GWrEWYAA76_U.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/WhiteRoseAFA/status/1539604742883639297" target="_blank">Wed Jun 22 13:42:29 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1549967851452338176" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Esqueer_/1549964440581414913"><a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/" title="Wise Latina 🇵🇷. Clinical Instructor, Harvard Law @Cyberlawclinic. Gender & Tech. Host: #QueeringTheLaw. Bylines @slate, @wired. Views=my own. (she/her)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1542689700489695232/3WDW90vZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alejandra Caraballo</span><span class="at">@Esqueer_</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1549964440581414913">Esqueer_</a>:</span><p>Nothing screams caring about children more than using a term used by survivors of abuse for a discount code for merch on shopify. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1549967851452338176/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYKXjCfXkAEx5eK.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Esqueer_/status/1549967851452338176" target="_blank">Thu Jul 21 04:01:47 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
<p>Describing teachers teaching sex-ed as “grooming” is even more perverse, because sex-ed actively protects children from real sexual abuse. Demonizing the very education that empowers children makes them vastly more susceptible to abuse.
Preserving “childhood innocence” by keeping children ignorant of sex keeps them ignorant of warning signs and robs them of the language to describe abuse when it happens, making them prime targets.</p>
<p>Is this intentional? Are people intentionally trying to shift the language so that the focus for “child abuse” is on the queer community, in order to let non-lgbtq people get away with sex crimes? There are certainly <em>some</em> abusers jumping on the anti-trans movement for that kind of personal gain. Actual sex predators <em>love</em> trivializing the word groomer like this, because it’s best for them if people don’t have usable language to identify and talk about predatory abusers. So they love to see this word weaponized against trans people, because the more the word is politically weaponized, the less it can be used to describe reality.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1518335690823680000" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ThoughtSlime/1518334761525207043"><a href="https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/" title="I make videos about slime, feces, genitalia, and other things considered ugly. NB. Any/All. Dude+ Avatar by @izzi8bit. https://t.co/USTSaSfzwS"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1482838737159659525/CVXjrIdN_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Mildo</span><span class="at">@ThoughtSlime</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/status/1518334761525207043">ThoughtSlime</a>:</span><p>If you wanted to know what grooming looked like, a good example would be state officials saying "Hey kid, if you don't assume the prescribed gender role we have created for you, we will put your parents in jail and torture you."</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ThoughtSlime/status/1518335690823680000" target="_blank">Sun Apr 24 21:06:52 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- Innate sexuality -->
<p>The idea of grooming isn’t <em>just</em> being diluted though. The idea of abuse is being invoked here as part of a larger mentality that queerness is inherently sexual, and queerness isn’t a natural and passive thing. This angle makes the idea of trans people sexually grooming children immediately intuitive and appealing to conservatives.</p>
<p>There’s a significant contingency of people — not just anti-trans activists — who see queerness as so unnatural that any queer person must only identify that way because they were tricked into it, and that eventually they’ll realize they’ve been duped and desperately want to go back to normal. (That, or they’re degenerate sexual fetishists.) I talked about this a bit before, as part of the idea of transgenderism being “taught” by teachers at schools as part of the “social contagion” narrative, as pushed by lawmakers.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1550247931453718528" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Married to @skprufo. Views mine. Newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><p>No child has an innate sense of being "genderqueer," "pansexual," "two-spirit," or "gender-fluid." Adults impose these ideological constructs on children and facilitate their adoption as sexual identities. It's manipulative, destructive, and wrong.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1550247931453718528" target="_blank">Thu Jul 21 22:34:43 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/at-orlando-weekly-we-say-gay-and-we-will-keep-saying-gay-regardless-of-what-gov-ron-desantis-or-91-florida-legislators-think-31183867">comments from Florida “Don’t Say Gay” bill sponsor Sen. Dennis Baxley</a></cite>
Gay is not a permanent thing. LGBT is not a permanent thing.</p>
<p>Why is everybody now all about coming out when you’re in school? And there really is a dynamic of concern of how much of these are genuine … experiences and how many of them are just kids trying on different kinds of things they hear about</p>
</blockquote>
<p><img alt="LGBT ideology in schools Pat Cross cartoon" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/Indoctrination-scaled.jpg"></p>
<p>Teachers are already painted as being a key part of an ongoing power struggle between the liberal elite and all that’s good in the world: traditionalism, Christianity, and the family. “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-11-05/jd-vance-professors-are-the-enemy-politics">The professors are the enemy</a>, <a href="https://holycrusade.news/2021/05/03/nixon-was-right-professors-are-the-enemy/">still</a>.” The idea of evil teachers corrupting <em>your</em> children with their dangerous ideas is — in addition to being a very familiar component of fascism in general — a key component in the social contagion lie. Now teachers aren’t just secular: they’re perverts, and an active danger to <em>your children</em>. </p>
<p>“Don’t worry, your parenting is perfect. It’s just that you’re under siege: evil comes from <em>them</em>, and so constant vigilance is required. <a href="https://mindfulpolitics.org/florida-hb-233-signed-into-law/">We need to make teachers register their political beliefs with the state, to make sure they’re not teaching the wrong ideas</a>. But you, concerned parent, you can act <em>now</em>. Find them online, dig through their personal lives, and have your outrage and anger ready to go.”</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1544430546427731970" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/frankstrong/" title="Writing teacher. PhD in Comparative Literature. https://t.co/OWZTPxHpTj"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1383432232828739587/MFbii1O2_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">frank strong</span><span class="at">@frankstrong</span></div></a></div><div><p>Moms for Liberty and allied groups are now training members to monitor teachers’ social media. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/frankstrong/status/1544430546427731970/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FW7rZX3WAAM1s_u.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/frankstrong/status/1544430546427731970" target="_blank">Tue Jul 05 21:18:31 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>And since transgenderism is this fake plot concocted by the liberals, and not a natural thing, the only reason those tricky teachers <em>would</em> be tricking children into believing something “incorrect” about gender would be the adult’s sexual gratification.</p>
<!-- normalization -->
<p>Of course, there’s a “correct” kind of sexuality — bikinis at beaches, catcalling, mudflaps, hooters — cisgendered and heterosexual. It’s normal and fine to integrate into society. Correct sexuality is healthy. Pornographic billboard advertisements either aren’t a problem or are just invisible, because of how default heterosexuality is. It’s cultural heteronormativity.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543957390411894784" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" data-bigimg="true"><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/SassBaller/" title="My account was previously hacked, so I’m trying to re-follow those accounts I was previously connected to. Still #BLM #Equality"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1455554993864548357/8_bn0_i4_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">SassBaller</span><span class="at">@SassBaller</span></div></a></div><div><p>Hold up…so drag queen story hour and saying “gay” is damaging to children, but this is okay? You can’t ask for parental rights without evening the playing field first. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/SassBaller/status/1543957390411894784/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FW09EAZWQAACklc.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/SassBaller/status/1543957390411894784" target="_blank">Mon Jul 04 13:58:21 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>But queer existence doesn’t get that treatment, because it is by definition “not correct”: nonstandard, different, “queer”. Every expression of queer existence — even just having a flag sticker — is seen as rooted in sexual perversion, existing only to satisfy sexual perversion, and thus must always be treated as the filthiest pornography until society is sexually homogeneous. This is the fundamentally hostile culture the “groomer” label seeks to propagate and re-enforce.</p>
<p>This is why “queerness” in media is seen as something that has to be snuck in by activists pushing an agenda, instead of… media just reflecting society, including the full spectrum of people who produce and consume it. </p>
<p>See how Chris “Swords Emoji” Rufo (<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-inquiry/how-a-conservative-activist-invented-the-conflict-over-critical-race-theory">who manufactured the critical race theory panic in Virginia</a>) takes this weaponization of the spectre of sexuality one step further:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537807543895998464" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Happily married to @skprufo. Free newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><p>Conservatives should start using the phrase "trans stripper" in lieu of "drag queen." It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1537807543895998464" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 14:41:04 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537812213582516224" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="realchrisrufo/1537807543895998464"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Happily married to @skprufo. Free newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1537807543895998464">realchrisrufo</a>:</span><p>"Drag queens in schools" invites a debate; "trans strippers in schools" anchors an unstoppable argument. </p><p>Let the Left try to nitpick the phrase: we can say that "trans" is a stand-in for "transvestite" and we can show videos that are undeniably strip shows.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1537812213582516224" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 14:59:37 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537814441957498880" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="realchrisrufo/1537813504035545088"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Happily married to @skprufo. Free newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1537813504035545088">realchrisrufo</a>:</span><p>"Trans strippers in schools" is a powerful frame to this debate and, if the Left chooses to engage in language games on that phrase, they will find themselves defending concepts and words that are deeply disturbing to most people. Let them get stuck in the linguistic mud.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1537814441957498880" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 15:08:28 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1538236293464965125" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="realchrisrufo/1538232677459009537"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Happily married to @skprufo. Free newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1538232677459009537">realchrisrufo</a>:</span><p>We have a phenomenon that needs a descriptor. We can submit to the Left's frame and call this a "family-friendly drag show" or we can create our own frame and call it a "transvestite strip show for children." The latter is honest, accurate, and persuasive. Use it. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1538236293464965125/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVjpvu7X0AEyuyr.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1538236293464965125/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVjpwZbXwAALo9J.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1538236293464965125" target="_blank">Sat Jun 18 19:04:46 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1549520456843141120" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/" title="Writer, filmmaker, activist. @ManhattanInst and @CityJournal. Married to @skprufo. Views mine. Newsletter: https://t.co/S4w3i1BvoK."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532845681051766784/7tZ93175_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️</span><span class="at">@realchrisrufo</span></div></a></div><div><p>Tomorrow, I'll be publishing my first report in a new series on gender ideology in K-12 schools. My goal is to publish one story per week for six weeks, establishing the frame, driving multiple news cycles, and generating 500 million media impressions. Get ready to rumble.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1549520456843141120" target="_blank">Tue Jul 19 22:24:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the whole <!-- political --> playbook laid bare. </p>
<p>First, using words as weapons against the trans people for overtly political purposes. Pick the phrase with the most lurid connotations possible in order to incite discussions about how disgusting trans people are. <!-- Always play offence. --></p>
<p>Second, prevent discussion of the issues. Real language allows for understanding and nuance; the goal of the fascist is to prevent that and instead create an “unstoppable argument” that wins political support. </p>
<p>Third, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA">never play defence</a>. Use misleading and manipulated media to make it seem like a problem exists. Use slurs to frame the discussion from the outset as an attack on objectionable people. Force people to untangle your knot of words instead of engaging with the issue, and it’ll look like you won while the other person tries to quibble about semantics. Fact checking as a stall tactic.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="overt-exterminationism">Overt exterminationism<a class="headerlink" href="#overt-exterminationism" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>That’s authoritarianism, though. Back to rhetoric and violence overtly advocating for extermination, today. Back to the genocide.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="our-duty">Our Duty<a class="headerlink" href="#our-duty" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (transgender trend, bioethics, eradication/desistance) -->
<p>As an example of an explicitly genocidal manifesto, let me turn your attention to <a href="https://ourduty.group/about/">Our Duty group</a>, an advocacy group for “parents with a child who thinks they are transgender”. They push the standard anti-trans ideology cocktail: that <a href="https://www.transgendertrend.com/">transgenderism is a recent trend</a> and that it’s important to support Good Parents in their righteous battle against their children who have been corrupted by the <a href="https://ourduty.group/information/is-it-a-cult/">the cult of “gender ideology”</a> which <a href="https://ourduty.group/about/our_duty/#:~:text=in%20effect%2C%20they%20are%20groomed%20and%20brainwashed%20into%20a%20belief%20system.">grooms and brainwashes children into a belief system</a>.
And they only ever seem to cite peer “gender critical” groups within the echo chamber like “<a href="http://www.transgendertrend.com/">Transgender Trend</a>” (really) to do it. This is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting">circular reporting</a>.</p>
<p>There’s a lot of really laughably terrible attempts at reasoning here (like <a href="https://ourduty.group/information/rogd-what-is-it/#:~:text=the%20nhs%20says%20that%20gender%20dysphoria%20is%20a%20recognised%20medical%20condition%20and%20is%20not%20%E2%80%9Ca%20mental%20illness.%E2%80%9D%20(5)%20yet%2C%20by%20its%20very%20nature%2C%20diagnosis%20has%20to%20rely%20on%20self-identification%20and%20subjective%20feelings.%20there%20are%20no%20definitive%20tests%20that%20can%20be%20carried%20out%20and%20assessment%20must%20rely%20on%20self-affirmation.">arguing that any condition with subjective symptoms must be mental illness</a>) that only make sense if you understand the whole organization’s purpose is to start with an assumption they have and try to string together some words to justify it.</p>
<!-- Anti-science -->
<p>I actually kinda love Our Duty just because of how incredibly telling their language is. They’re entirely willing to be upfront and honest about their cause and hide relatively little in political correctness, especially how they seem to categorically reject the practice of science.
On all their pages, in all their literature, they keep hitting the same bell: “parents’ instincts are right”. It’s all about intuition and feeling: you’re right if “your <strong>instincts</strong> tell you that a ‘sex-change’ is an extreme solution for a problem which <strong>probably</strong> exists in the mind”<a href="https://ourduty.group/about/">ˣ</a>, you need to know that “there are other parents who <strong>feel</strong> the same as they do”<a href="https://ourduty.group/about/">ˣ</a>, that “[parents] know, instinctively, that a ‘sex change’ is not an appropriate treatment pathway for their (or any) child”<a href="https://ourduty.group/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Nuffield-Bioethics-Submission.pdf">ˣ</a>.</p>
<p>When they do make some attempt to source their claims reputably on their little wordpress site, it’s something like using the flashy and exciting… <a href="https://ourduty.group/information/rogd-what-is-it/#:~:text=scientific%20data%20does%20not%20show%20that%20gender%20dysphoria%20and%20associated%20feelings%20of%20distress%20are%20alleviated%20in%20the%20longer%20term%20by%20medication%20and%20surgery%20(4)">CAG-00446N</a>, an administrative memo that attempts to determine insurance coverage standards but that determines more studies are needed before any categorical decision can be reached, to make the claim that “Scientific data does not show that gender dysphoria and associated feelings of distress are alleviated in the longer term by medication and surgery”.
Despite repeatedly calling their approach “evidence-based” as opposed to the “faith”<a href="https://ourduty.group/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Nuffield-Bioethics-Submission.pdf">ˣ</a> of “gender ideology” (an “<a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/anti-gender-campaigns-in-europe-mobilizing-against-equality/oclc/1154685945">empty signifier</a>” used vaguely by these groups to describe badness), the <em>word</em> “evidence” is as far as they go. (Remember postmodern rationalism?)</p>
<p>I told you there was a manifesto though. That’s found in their <a href="https://ourduty.group/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Nuffield-Bioethics-Submission.pdf">Submission of Evidence to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics</a><sup id="fnref:bioethics"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:bioethics">1</a></sup>. There is far, far too much wrong in the full 13-page document for me to address every error (the word “evidence” in the title being the first), but here is a broad-strokes analysis.</p>
<p>This submission, like all Our Duty’s other work, bases its conclusions on collected anecdotes rather than peer-reviewed studies or work with any sort of academic rigour:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This submission is informed by the evidence of many parents received by us in support meetings, one-to-one interviews, and responses to our invitation to contribute to this exercise.<br>
…<br>
Our personal experience of using gender identity services comes as parents of the direct users – our children.<br>
…<br>
We propose that transgenderism could be very similar to a deep seated fear of growing up into one’s adult sexed body.
Unfortunately, these personal anecdotes are the <em>most</em> rigorous this letter gets. Most of it is simply unsubstantiated assertions that, in most case, even the most cursory research reveals to be false:
A child becomes transgender because the idea is planted and then is nurtured by others.<br>
…<br>
It is likely that persisting transgenderism is an unfortunate condition that could be avoided if it is resolved early enough in its presentation.<br>
…<br>
There is no good quality evidence that supports medical interventions for gender diverse children and adolescents.<br>
…<br>
When used in gender medicine [blockers] almost invariably lead onto [hormone therapy]. … Moreover, they do not even improve the short-term wellbeing of those receiving them.<br>
…<br>
The existence of a great many detransitioners is indicative that the GAMT is widely ineffective. The risk of OSIM failing to cure dysphoria combined with the very real risk of regret at the profound, life limiting effects of the treatment, means that the GAMT is patently unethical.<br>
…<br>
The administration of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in response to gender identity issues is at the extreme end of questionable medical practice. There is no evidence of any long-term good, and plenty of evidence of long-term harm. Patients are vulnerable and not yet mature enough to properly know themselves and are being taken advantage of.<br>
…<br>
it is widely acknowledged that adolescents do not mature in terms of long-term or doubly abstract thinking capacity until approximately 25 years of age.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>(I swear to God that “25 years” metric is just thrown in completely unsourced. Simply incredible.)</p>
<!-- -->
<!-- > Practitioners would need to be aware that they were at risk of
prosecution for Grievous Bodily Harm -->
<p>As you can see this is mostly recitation of the basic premises of gender-critical ideology, presented as conclusions rather than assumptions. Children are being taken advantage of, transgenderism is being inflicted on society by an external semi-religious cabal, etc. </p>
<!-- Of course, many of these factual claims are provably false. -->
<p>Our Duty presents itself throughout as being victims, rather than perpetrators:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We operate in a societal environment where it is difficult for parents to be public in their views and their opposition to the medical harm being done to their children. Our opponents are aggressive, intolerant, and very well funded.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But all that’s just garnish. The purpose of this paper is to let them make explicit demands on how trans people should be treated in specific situations, and they do just that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Q: In your view, how should young people with gender dysphoria be treated, cared for, or supported?</p>
<p>A: A young person claiming a transgender identity needs immediate and holistic psychotherapeutic intervention … Social affirmation must not occur. <br>
…<br>
If gender dysphoria is to be ‘nipped in the bud’ then social transition must cease to be an acceptable practice. Society needs to do its part in rejecting ‘pronoun culture’ and the concept of ‘Self-ID’.<br>
…<br>
Puberty suppressants and cross-sex hormones should not be available, at all, for the purposes of treating gender identity issues in minors. <br>
…<br>
Each ‘persister’ that reaches ‘a point of no return’ with their [gender-affirming treatment] has been let down – let down by society, let down by the psychotherapeutic professions, and profoundly let down by the medical profession. <strong>It should be the objective of any advanced civilization presented with this problem to TARGET 100% DESISTANCE, and as early as possible.</strong></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is what we in the evaluating-possibly-genocidal-causes business call “saying the quiet part out loud.” Explicitly claiming that any existence of the group is illegitimate, calling every instance of someone being trans is a failure of society, asserting that puberty blockers should categorically be banned regardless of medical opinion or patient consent, and finally — their all-caps, not mine — demanding that civilization must set as its goal 100% eradication. </p>
<p>Yeah. So that’s Our Duty.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="helen-joyce">Helen Joyce<a class="headerlink" href="#helen-joyce" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (instutional capture, xenophobia) -->
<p>Here’s an excerpt of a streamed zoom call with British anti-trans campaigner Helen Joyce:</p>
<p>
<video alt="Helen Joyce Zoom call" controls="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/joss_prior-1532511819583062025-20220602_185745-vid1.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite>Helen Joyce:</cite>
I think that for quite a while now this has not been about consciousness raising, that’s been irrelevant. That was important two or three years ago when there weren’t enough people, but there’ve been enough people to be critical mass, to be funding the crowdfunders, to be writing letters to MPs, all that sort of thing, to have a movement, to have support for women; and men of course, I mean there’s people like [Graham Lineham] of course as well who’ve got their necks stuck out on this but—
We can’t win this by saying there’s 60x million people and we’ve got to persuade all of them or a great majority of them.
<strong>We’ve got to get through to the decision makers</strong> and in the meantime while we’re trying to get through to the decision makers <strong>we have to try to limit the harm and that means reducing or keeping down the number of people who transition</strong>…</p>
<p><strong>Every one of those people is basically, you know, a huge problem to a sane world.</strong>
Like if you’ve got people who whether they’ve transitioned whether they’re happily transitioned whether they’re unhappily transitioned whether they’re de-transitioned if you’ve got people who’ve dissociated from their sex in some way <strong>every one of those people is someone who needs special accommodation<sup id="fnref:accommodation"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:accommodation">2</a></sup> in a sane world</strong> where we re-acknowledge the truth of sex and I mean the people who’ve been damaged by it the children who have been put through this those people deserve every accommodation we can possibly make but every one of them is a difficulty, you know
And I know that sounds heartless I’m trying to say exactly the opposite of sounding heartless I’m saying every one of those people for 50, 60, 70 years is going to need things that the rest of us just don’t need because the rest of us are just our sex
so <strong>the fewer of those people there are the better in the sane world</strong> that I hope we will reach.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is, again, explicitly genocidal rhetoric. She starts with saying the only way to succeed is to infiltrate politics and go for institutional capture instead of getting real public support. Then her goal is explicitly to “reduce or keep down the number” of trans people because they’re “a huge problem” to the world. The reason she gives here is the trans community’s need for accommodation: the xenophobic case for genocide. This wasn’t caught on candid camera, this was public-facing, explicitly obliterationist rhetoric by a public activist.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="pride-riots-chaya-raichik-libs-of-tiktok">Pride riots & Chaya Raichik (Libs of TikTok)<a class="headerlink" href="#pride-riots-chaya-raichik-libs-of-tiktok" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>There have been a number of disgusting protests against pride events.
Here’s Trump organizer and <a href="https://www.newjerseyhills.com/bernardsville_news/news/bedminster-mayor-township-ready-should-pro-trump-bikers-rally-saturday/article_cd66b1b4-0bd5-5157-bb0a-6ed55dd47d2d.html">“Bikers for Trump”</a> activist Terry Beck using Facebook to target a pride event at a New Jersey school:</p>
<p><img alt="terry.jpg" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/terry.jpg"></p>
<p>She and <a href="https://jerseycounterinfo.noblogs.org/transphobes-led-by-terry-beck-attack-pride-event-in-red-bank-nj/">about a dozen others</a> showed up at the event, true to their word, although the calls for violence were reportedly contained by community support.</p>
<!-- bridge -->
<p>As seen with Terry Beck, these attacks on pride events are often coordinated beforehand on social media. I’ll defer to Parker Molloy’s <a href="https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/anti-lgbtq-right">The anti-LGBTQ right is going to get people killed</a> and Cassandra’s <a href="https://first-draft.com/2022/06/15/everythings-coming-up-nazis/">Everything’s Coming Up Nazis</a>, which you should read in their own right.</p>
<p>In particular, Chaya Raichik (the person behind the “Libs of TikTok” anti-lgbtq social media account) frequently highlights trans-positive pride events in order to make it easy for domestic terrorist groups like the Proud Boys or Patriot Front to directly attack the events, as they did in California and Idaho, respectively. As Parker notes, the Libs of TikTok account serves to “find an excuse to attack LGBTQ events.”</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537845702591762432" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><p>A quick thread on extremists targeting Pride and drag queen events:</p><p>You’re not imagining it. Threats against these communities are increasing.</p><p>Targeted threats canceled Pride events and forced people out of their homes in the last week.</p><p>It's part of a new anti-trans "machine."</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537845702591762432" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:12:41 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537846344903163906" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="oneunderscore__/1537845702591762432"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537845702591762432">oneunderscore__</a>:</span><p>You may have saw 31 white nationalists get busted in a UHaul in Idaho on Saturday.</p><p>The next day, though, a California state senator had bomb sniffing dogs casing his home.</p><p></p><p>He had joked earlier in the week about making Drag Queen Story Hour part of school curriculum. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846344903163906/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVeGpbwWUAEmM04.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846344903163906" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:15:15 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537846713616154626" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="oneunderscore__/1537846344903163906"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846344903163906">oneunderscore__</a>:</span><p>Also in northern California, Proud Boys stormed a Drag Queen Story Hour in San Larenzo, California that same morning.</p><p>How did everyone on the far-right become fully obsessed with drag queens so quickly?</p><p>“It’s a very orchestrated attack machine,” State Sen. Scott Wiener told me. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846713616154626/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVeHRCcXsAAttw5.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846713616154626" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:16:42 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537847435707441154" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="oneunderscore__/1537846713616154626"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537846713616154626">oneunderscore__</a>:</span><p>The anti-LGBTQ “attack machine” is in full-gear.</p><p>Since June 1, mentions of Drag Queen Story Hour have increased 777% (!) on Twitter, according to Zignal Labs.</p><p>It’s driven by right-wing influencers like LibsOfTikTok, who ID drag events, adding captions like “We live in hell.” </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847435707441154/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVeIETUXoAIVetd.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847435707441154" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:19:35 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537847998176165891" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="oneunderscore__/1537847435707441154"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847435707441154">oneunderscore__</a>:</span><p>Michael Hayden, a researcher at the SPLC, told me “the level of disruption [to LGBTQ events] in the last few weeks is new.”</p><p>“There’s a level of chaos involved with the target, but the choice of target comes from the top down,” he told me, pointing to accounts like LibsOfTikTok. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847998176165891/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVeIjRPWIAI4yq4.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847998176165891" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:21:49 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537848280687820801" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="oneunderscore__/1537847998176165891"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/" title="Senior reporter, dystopia beat, @NBCNews."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1100064833360355328/KggFqa8t_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Collins</span><span class="at">@oneunderscore__</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537847998176165891">oneunderscore__</a>:</span><p>This is happening all over the country.</p><p>Hours after the Idaho U-Haul bust, a Georgia youth justice group canceled their trans rights event for the next day.</p><p>They received a “vulgar death threat,” an organizer told me, with the date and time of the rally in an email. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537848280687820801/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVeIunvXEAEQ9rt.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1537848280687820801" target="_blank">Fri Jun 17 17:22:56 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>From <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/anti-lgbtq-threats-orchestrated-on-internet-shut-down-events-rcna33955">Anti-LGBTQ threats orchestrated on the internet shut down trans rights and drag events</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There is a very orchestrated network of right-wing accounts and personalities to coordinate on whatever the current attack message is and who’s going to be targeted. And they have an army of social media trolls who amplify their messages,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s a very orchestrated attack machine.”<br>
…<br>
The threats mostly aimed to shut down events for transgender rights and drag performances, which have become frequent targets of extremists, militias and far-right personalities during June, which is Pride Month. They come as more than 200 bills targeting LGBTQ people have been filed across the United States this year.<br>
…<br>
Michael Hayden, a senior researcher at the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights and legal advocacy organization, said the “level of disruption that’s happened in the last few weeks is new.”</p>
<p>He said the process of targeting specific LGBTQ events has become mainstreamed and systematized in recent months by far-right influencers with megaphones on social media.
“The way this works is, that they have to get their targets from somewhere,” Hayden said. “Things get broadcast in advance by LibsOfTikTok and other major influencers on the right-wing right now. Then, extremists go into planning over it.” “There’s a level of chaos involved with the target, but the choice of target comes from top down,” Hayden said. “And the messaging is tied up with the far-right machine.”<br>
…<br>
[Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White] told reporters that he assumed the Pride event became a “flashpoint” for anti-LGBTQ groups. Groups that participated in the Jan. 6th riots such as the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters also appeared at the rally, along with Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group.</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533217028731027456" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><p>An ugly protest today. A mob of self described “Christian Fascists” tried to force their way into a gay establishment in the gayborhood of Dallas holding a family event while chanting “Groomers” </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1533216985164783622/pu/vid/1280x720/PSyVHVFE2Wnqi2q7.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533217028731027456" target="_blank">Sat Jun 04 22:40:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533575338302767105" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="EFJBGC/1533575273840623617"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533575273840623617">EFJBGC</a>:</span><p>“It’s going to be so fun when we take away all of your rights”</p><p>“All of them” </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1533575294132621312/pu/vid/1280x720/cgipBsC7DmL0OIyR.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533575338302767105" target="_blank">Sun Jun 05 22:23:47 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534426157852119040" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="EFJBGC/1534423080474402818"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1534423080474402818">EFJBGC</a>:</span><p>Alex Stein @alexstein99 was previously named as the assailant trying to force his way into the gay establishment. After being pushed back by antifascists Alex went on several disturbing rants: </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1534426113933467648/pu/vid/1280x720/gRvMCxzkxyp0dsid.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1534426157852119040" target="_blank">Wed Jun 08 06:44:38 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533590583356313601" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><p>Christian Fascist leader John Doyle encourages police to “go in there and put bullets in all theirs heads” “that’s what the badge is for” </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1533590538468921345/pu/vid/480x270/2XA0YLeXvLbLYmSw.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533590583356313601" target="_blank">Sun Jun 05 23:24:22 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533323135054921728" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/" title="Promoting and assisting marginalized communities in organizing community defense against white supremacists / fascism. Not a militia. efjbgc @ https://t.co/nPsmXrRUqr"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465511888696098819/dOy3TR-Z_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club</span><span class="at">@EFJBGC</span></div></a></div><div><p>This video, shared by Andy Ngo, shows the terrifying moment a man who stated: “I’m a Fascist, Not a Nazi” charged at a family with two young children leaving the event. </p><p>Antifascists blocked his path and he attempted to barrel through them. It’s unclear what he intended to do. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1533323017647972352/pu/vid/584x360/3wiTeXvGiYdoHgV8.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EFJBGC/status/1533323135054921728" target="_blank">Sun Jun 05 05:41:37 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536121893270523906" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/" title="Senior Investigative Reporter and Spokesperson, @splcenter | 🇺🇸🇪🇬 | Member @SPLCUnion | 334-320-6436 for Signal"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1536435016036655104/v1xT2NKU_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Michael Edison Hayden</span><span class="at">@MichaelEHayden</span></div></a></div><div><p>The apparently unhinged video guy for @TPUSA, Drew Hernandez, is just walking around Pride LA, taking video of other people's children and publicly accusing strangers of pedophilia.</p><p>If you're in LA, watch out for this person. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1536121893270523906/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVFlTCpWYAAqs-w.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1536121893270523906/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVFlUmgXwAAO2_E.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1536121893270523906/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVFlWhFX0AA599q.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1536121893270523906/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVFlYYhWAAA9mnr.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MichaelEHayden/status/1536121893270523906" target="_blank">Sun Jun 12 23:02:53 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="constitutional-coalition">Constitutional Coalition<a class="headerlink" href="#constitutional-coalition" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (sterility, contagion) -->
<p>On to lighter, slightly less immediately dangerous imbeciles. <a href="http://constitutionalcoalition.org/2019/06/07/speak-truth-save-children/">“Speak the Truth … To Save Our Children”</a> (ellipsis in title) from The Constitutional Coalition starts:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Today, somewhere in a public school classroom, five and six-year-old kindergarten children are being recruited by Planned Parenthood’s comprehensive sex education curriculum into a lifestyle glamorizing sex, which for some, ultimately results in castration and sterilization.</p>
<p>Teens as young as 15 in Oregon (and potentially other states) are receiving hormone blocking drugs and even surgery to change their gender without parent’s knowledge, [sic] leading to the child losing their ability to bear/father children, even if later the grown child wants to reverse the sex change. Adults, including doctors, are using the “affirmative care” approach that lets the child chart his future instead of allowing wise adults to provide sound science…</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The article then — bafflingly — embeds the entire contents of an unrelated article calling pedophilia a natural extension of the queer agenda. The article has nothing to do with trans people aside from saying they were invented in 2014, which it <a href="https://twitter.com/ZJemptv/status/1503077587224084488">wasn’t</a>.</p>
<p>Again, this contents here are mostly false, but I’m mostly interested by the framing. “Somewhere in a public school your children are being corrupted by a devious liberal cult” — here, just meaning sex education — “and the crafty conspiratorial liberal elite are hiding it from you.” Again, we see the obsession with sterility, even though no actual procedure ever administered on minors involves sterilization.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536958183641694210" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="biggestjoel/1536957779000315904"><a href="https://twitter.com/biggestjoel/" title="I'm medium size and make content for the internet. https://t.co/jUFFc19YfV https://t.co/y3BiAo91du. My poetry Twitter: @bigjoelpoems"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1347804971320958976/TzsmRl7g_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Big Joel</span><span class="at">@biggestjoel</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/biggestjoel/status/1536957779000315904">biggestjoel</a>:</span><p>the problem with transphobes is that they find bottom surgery so irresistible a talking point, so innately gross, that they can't resist exclusively talking about it even where it makes literally no sense</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/biggestjoel/status/1536958183641694210" target="_blank">Wed Jun 15 06:26:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- BRIDGED -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="springer">Springer<a class="headerlink" href="#springer" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (Fox, children as property) -->
<p>That “young as 15 in Oregon” bit comes from a <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/oregon-allowing-15-year-olds-to-get-state-subsidized-sex-change-operations">Fox News article by Dan Springer</a>. The core “story” of the article is mundane, despite the sensationalized “Oregon allowing 15-year-olds to get state-subsidized sex-change operations” headline: the Health Evidence Review Commission updated its decision guidelines for Medicaid to match medical consensus. The 15 number comes from Oregon’s age of medical consent, but that does <em>not</em> mean doctors are allowed to prescribe surgery to minors.
The article spends extrordinarily little time on that, though, and mostly acts as a vehicle for the standard talking points:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It is trespassing on the hearts, the minds, the bodies of our children,” said Lori Porter of Parents’ Rights in Education. “They’re our children. And for a decision, a life-altering decision like that to be done unbeknownst to a parent or guardian, it’s mindboggling.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Skipping over the factual inaccuracy, this is another beautifully honest quote. To Lori here, the children aren’t even an actor in the equation, they’re just property of the parents. <a href="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/billboard.jpg">They’re paper dolls</a>. This is a recurring idea we see in the background (trans peoples’ lived experiences are never considered) but this is the full version: the child as an object. The only possibility Lori can conceive of is an invasion by a foreign adversary on her turf; the child as a person is a non-entity in her worldview as expressed here. I love glimpses of thoughts like this: they’re honest, they’re illuminating, they’re real, and they’re so, so ugly.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1501458826167558148" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/" title="hacker, gamedev, artist, etc • she/her 🦊🏳️⚧️ • 💍 @glitchedpuppet • other half of @floraverse • workin' on @foxfluxDELUXE • weird furry porn at @squishfox"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1484360216804085760/6INZzUoH_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">eevee</span><span class="at">@eevee</span></div></a></div><div><p>a running problem with Parenting Discourse is that a lot of parents do not understand something that to me is self-evident:</p><p>for a non-trivial number of kids and teens, their parents are part of the threat model, an antagonizing force to be evaded</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501458826167558148" target="_blank">Wed Mar 09 07:24:14 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1501459064680636419" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="eevee/1501458826167558148"><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/" title="hacker, gamedev, artist, etc • she/her 🦊🏳️⚧️ • 💍 @glitchedpuppet • other half of @floraverse • workin' on @foxfluxDELUXE • weird furry porn at @squishfox"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1484360216804085760/6INZzUoH_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">eevee</span><span class="at">@eevee</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501458826167558148">eevee</a>:</span><p>forcing teachers to out students to their parents is a good way to get a good number of those students abused, and also teach them that they cannot trust any authority figure</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501459064680636419" target="_blank">Wed Mar 09 07:25:11 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1501460484658110465" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="eevee/1501459064680636419"><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/" title="hacker, gamedev, artist, etc • she/her 🦊🏳️⚧️ • 💍 @glitchedpuppet • other half of @floraverse • workin' on @foxfluxDELUXE • weird furry porn at @squishfox"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1484360216804085760/6INZzUoH_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">eevee</span><span class="at">@eevee</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501459064680636419">eevee</a>:</span><p>"i am entitled to everything about my child, because i am a good parent" buddy no one thinks they're a bad parent, the bad parents just think they have bad kids</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501460484658110465" target="_blank">Wed Mar 09 07:30:49 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1501461529694117889" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="eevee/1501460484658110465"><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/" title="hacker, gamedev, artist, etc • she/her 🦊🏳️⚧️ • 💍 @glitchedpuppet • other half of @floraverse • workin' on @foxfluxDELUXE • weird furry porn at @squishfox"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1484360216804085760/6INZzUoH_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">eevee</span><span class="at">@eevee</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501460484658110465">eevee</a>:</span><p>western culture is not really set up to handle "the parents are the enemy", since it treats them basically as owner-deities for almost two decades, and that makes it all the more imperative that we not fuck up the escape hatches for the kids that need them</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1501461529694117889" target="_blank">Wed Mar 09 07:34:59 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<!-- TODO children
::: thread unified
![AnaMardoll: A lot of people on here do not seem to understand that a large number of evangelical Christian Republicans DO NOT CARE about their own children as "people". We're more like "pets" or "possessions" to them.](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533288099207315458)
![AnaMardoll: Example: Too many people responding to this Ohio bill think that if we just subject the lawmakers' daughters to these "accusations", then the lawmakers will care. - Many Republicans will not care if their daughters are medically raped for the cause. - https://t.co/P7SL4cjA3J](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533288894535553024)
![AnaMardoll: I imagine it can be hard to think of the evangelical base as so fundamentally inhuman that they don't love their own children the way we do, but people need to face this difficult fact because it isn't going to go away!](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533289576957198336)
![AnaMardoll: They will send their queer children to conversion therapy to be abused and tortured. They will throw us out and make us homeless for being queer or sexually active or just plain disobedient. They want a helpless pet to abuse, a possession to own and control. - Not all, but many.](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533290024464265218)
![AnaMardoll: These societies view ALL children as possessions of the patriarch. Boys are treated differently from girls, yes, but that doesn't mean they aren't still abused. - I mention this because of the number of people who thought "apply this to boys!" would fix the Ohio law. No.](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533294826950631425)
![AnaMardoll: This is a culture that will absolutely agree to sexually assault their boys in order to "prove" they aren't trans. Applying the law to boys will not make the lawmakers stop what they are doing. You cannot play Abuse Chicken with people who are pro-abuse!](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533295054273527809)
![AnaMardoll: I need folks to understand that people who are drawn to "religious community that centers abuse" would, in the absence of religion, be drawn to "non-religious community that centers abuse". - They're drawn to the abuse, not the religion.](https://twitter.com/AnaMardoll/status/1533467993941884935)
::: thread
![AnnaStevensonFR: @AnaMardoll Yes - mine told me they wanted me to die, pelvic pain was holy judgment and if I died, they’d look better to the Church. I almost did from hemorrhaging caused by a torsioned burst endometrioma at age 21. They phoned the hospital to ask them to let me die. (I’m safe &amp; healthy.)](https://twitter.com/AnnaStevensonFR/status/1533350015581708288)
![IamJadehawk: @AnaMardoll also some of these laws are even intended to apply to these folks’ own children. one of the biggest fears of fundieland is children who manage to get out once they’re adults. so it serves them if the outside world is just as hostile to queers &amp; ppl who don’t wanna make babies.](https://twitter.com/IamJadehawk/status/1533313498238881792)
![cheesesque: @AnaMardoll being reminded, even briefly, that their children are thinking, feeling people separate from themselves makes them angry, actually](https://twitter.com/cheesesque/status/1533288641602019328)
![bitterkarella: @AnaMardoll used to weird me out how they literally do not believe other people love their kids - they think Latinos only have kids as "anchor babies," blacks only have kids for "welfare checks" - until i realized, oh, it's cuz they just assume everyone thinks of their kids the way they do](https://twitter.com/bitterkarella/status/1533289495906226177)
![seb4466: @AnaMardoll @swampwubba I’ve noticed that. They keep talking about their rights to *their* children, as if children aren’t children of God, individuals in their own right, entrusted to them as a charge, not a possession.](https://twitter.com/seb4466/status/1533294277119418369) -->
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>There is a real phenomenon, though, of “cis grief”: where a trans person transitioning makes one feel the “loss” of the way that person used to be.
And even if we can say on paper that the feeling is “objectively incorrect”, it’s still a genuinely experienced grief, and I can’t discount that.
However, it’s a grief that should be worked through, with therapy if needed, not thrust upon the trans person as an injury they caused you. This behaviour — <em>especially</em> in cases of parent/child relationships — is flagrant emotional manipulation, and arguably psychological violence.
You have a right to feel illegitimate grief, but not to attack others over it, especially when your grief is caused by their joy.</p>
<p>I’ll quote from Daniel Lavery’s “Something That May Shock And Discredit You”, chapter 16, “Pirates at the Funeral: “It Feels Like Someone Died,” but Someone Actually Didn’t”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>All change entails at least some loss, if only the loss of a certain type of potential or expectation. Everyone has the right to mourn a loss. <em>You’re taking _____ away from us, at least let us hold a funeral.</em> And yet other changes, other losses, even significant ones, are not counted as bereavements. …</p>
<p>On the one hand, here is death: stagnant, permanent, immobilized, silent, unvarying, inactive, formless, characterless, shrinking, constrictive, irreversible. On the other hand, here is transition: active, forceful, adaptable, energetic, animated, expansive, full of possibility, capacious, comprehensive, vital, ambitious. Loss may be a part of the project of transition, but hardly the primary or initializing force. The question for the transitioner, then, is how to act in such a way that one is not mistaken by friends and family for Death itself; how to cope with being merely noticed rather than seen, how to prepare oneself to announce the end of a funeral only to be met with, “No, you’re dead, or as good as. We’ll stick with our corpse, thanks.” …</p>
<p>But the loss was not only necessary, it was inevitable, and it cleared room for the possibility of something new, compelling, shared, productive, and profoundly good. Loss was present; death wasn’t. There is something willfully perverse about bereavement in the face of new life.</p>
</blockquote>
</aside>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="robert-foster">Robert Foster<a class="headerlink" href="#robert-foster" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (execute trans sympathizers, religious) -->
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1507183998967160833" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/RobertFoster4MS/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Robert Foster</span><span class="at">@RobertFoster4MS</span></div></a></div><div><p>Some of y’all still want to try and find political compromise with those that want to groom our school aged children and pretend men are women, etc. I think they need to be lined up against wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/RobertFoster4MS/status/1507183998967160833" target="_blank">7:34 PM - 24 Mar 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s Mississippi republican gubernatorial candidate and <a href="https://ballotpedia.org/Robert_Foster_(Mississippi)">two-term representative Robert Foster</a> openly saying people who believe people can transition their gender — not just trans people, mind you, but anyone who agrees with the medical science — should be summarily executed. (And yes, this is criminalizing political dissent, but that’s the least of our problems here.) <a href="https://www.mississippifreepress.org/22283/ex-gop-gov-candidate-calls-for-firing-squad-for-trans-rights-supporters-political-foes/">When asked about it in an interview, he doubled down</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I said what I said… The law should be changed so that anyone trying to sexually groom children and/or advocating to put men pretending to be women in locker rooms and bathrooms with young women should receive the death penalty by firing squad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This wasn’t a one-off tweet, he circled back around in a formal interview to reiterate his position. “Round up and execute my political and religious opponents” is this guy’s actual policy stance, and he’s popular for it.</p>
<p>Robert’s case for genocide comes from the religious corner. In addition to his mention of an “early judgement”, he tweeted that the problem was that <a href="https://twitter.com/RobertFoster4MS/status/1507378309386182658">“the Godless have power”</a> and <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220327163317/https://twitter.com/RobertFoster4MS/status/1507185178938122240">“God will judge them” (although he thinks “they need to be sent to an early judgment”)</a>, and views himself as enthralled in a battle against <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220329041814/https://twitter.com/RobertFoster4MS/status/1088814515184119810">“radical outside groups who are hard at work trying to rid [Christian values] from our society”</a>.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="alisabeth-lancaster">Alisabeth Lancaster<a class="headerlink" href="#alisabeth-lancaster" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another from the political barrel, here’s <a href="https://www.pnj.com/story/news/2022/07/20/santa-rosa-school-board-candidate-florida-suggests-hanging-doctors-transgender-kids/10099135002/">Alisabeth Lancaster</a>. She’s running for the Santa Rosa County school board. At the “Closing Arguments” forum hosted by the Gulf Coast Patriots at St Sylvester Catholic Church, she introduced herself and explained her platform, including</p>
<blockquote>
<p>These doctors that are going along with mutilating these children and prescribing hormone blockers to these kids, in my opinion, they should be hanging from the nearest tree.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>which was met with raucous applause. So much applause, in fact, that the audience cut her off just to emphasize how enthusiastic they were about lynching people.</p>
<p>
<video alt="" controls="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/Esqueer_-1549768103000625152-20220720_094803-vid1.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</p>
<p>When asked about the incident later, republican state representative Alex Andrade commented “As someone who fought to pass the Parental Rights in Education Act, I know that common sense will win, and I’ll keep working in the Legislature to protect children from woke indoctrination” before reluctantly admitting that it’s wrong to “joke” about lynching. Perhaps he didn’t see the video.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="mark-berns">Mark Berns<a class="headerlink" href="#mark-berns" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (HCUA, legal framework) -->
<p>Here’s Republican South Carolina congressional and “<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/meet-pastors-support-donald-trump/story?id=38406350">Donald Trump’s Top Pastor</a>” Mark Burns campaigning on platform of rebooting the House Committee on Un-American Activities (<a href="https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/education/presidential-inquiries/house-un-american-activities-committee">yes, really</a>) in order to hold public hearings to convict “traitors to the constitution” of treason:</p>
<p>
<video alt="Mark burns interview" controls="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/ErinInTheMorn-1536824337218551809-20220614_163409-vid1.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</p>
<p>Who does he consider to be traitors to the constitution? Who else? “The LGBT, transgender, grooming our children’s minds” who he thinks are “destabilizing the republic.” That’s a solid mix of social contagion lies and xenophobic “destabilizing” rhetoric used to lay out an explicit legal framework to execute trans people. You know what, South Carolina? I hope, for your sake, this <em>isn’t</em> your guy.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="stedfast-baptist">Stedfast Baptist<a class="headerlink" href="#stedfast-baptist" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (theocracy, awes hatred, execution) -->
<p>On the subject of pastors, here’s Jonathan Shelley from <a href="https://stedfastbaptistkjv.org/">Stedfast Baptist Church</a> (a KJV-only baptist outfit, part of the “<a href="https://www.thenewifb.com/what-is-the-new-ifb">New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement</a>”, a revival of the 20s’ fundamentalist movement) speaking at an Arlington city council meeting:</p>
<p>
<video alt="Clip" controls="true" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/shelley.mp4_8mb.mp4" type="video/mp4"></video>
</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I’m horrified and ashamed that this city has decided to promote and solicit “Pride” in this city.
Pride is nothing to be celebrated, in fact it’s an abomination.
… [Some confused theology about what the word pride means here] …
We should humble ourselves to what the bible says (yup) and not what the small minority here that is bullying would say (amen)</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>I don’t understand why we would celebrate what used to be a crime (yep, mhm) not long ago (yup) (scattered laughter)
In fact, according to the Texas penal code (council-member admonishes laughter for being disrespectful) homosexual conduct — a person commits an offence if he commits deviant sexual intercourse with another person of the same sex. In fact, that is still on the books today, even though Warrens v Texas overruled that in 2003. (mhm)
But God’s already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, rape, beastiality, homosexuality are “crimes” <strong>worthy of capital punishment.</strong>
… [lists several biblical verses out of context, including some unrelated to any of those topics] …</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>They say that they “love” so much, but they hate children (yup), they hate baptists, they hate Christianity (whoop!), and they hate God. (Amen!) </p>
<p>We should eliminate pride month, we should eliminate the LGBT department liaison, we should eliminate the [unintelligible] LGBT, and everyone in this room should watch The Sodomite Deception (scattered laughter) which would clearly illustrate what the Bible says on this issue, providing actual stats instead of bullying people. (Standing ovation, “Amen”s)</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So that, then, is the full-on advocation for a theocratic state, where homosexuality is a capital punishment that the city (???) should executing people for. (What he says about Texas having sodomy laws on the books is true, by the way, and those laws can go back into effect without legislative action depending on court ruling.) His speech, especially the parts advocating for state violence against pride, is met with affirmations and “Amen”s from the crowd — this is an agenda with popular support!</p>
<p>Moving out of city hall and into the pulpit, though, here’s <a href="https://newtube.app/AlwaysBaptist/swXlmo3">“Why We Won’t Shut Up”</a>, a sermon from Pastor Dillon Awes (also from Stedfast; it’s no wonder they’ve been <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/01/30/anti-lgbt-church-splits-amidst-turmoil-following-resignation-pastor-reveals-fault-lines-new">labelled a hate group</a>).
I watched the whole hour-long recording (on “newtube”; looks like they’ve been kicked off YouTube already), and boy is this just a whole heap of shit. I want to say the “big moment” is when ol’ dilly boy here says all homosexuals should be put to death, but (a) he repeats that too much for it to count as a moment and (b) there’s a lot of really telling buildup to that point that’s really relevant to the phenomenon of churches as hate groups. So let’s go over the whole thing.</p>
<p><img alt="Awes at stedfast" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/awes.jpg">
<em>Awes: “They should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head!”</em></p>
<p>This message was delivered in the context of Stedfast already being a known hate group. Everyone in the building had to get through a wall of protestors outside to be there.
Awes’ basic premise is that they’re being persecuted by “the LGBT Mafia” for preaching the Bible as it’s written, instead for their preaching extra-biblical extremism. This isn’t true, of course — the vast majority of this very sermon is blatantly distorting the text to match the speaker’s agenda including, I swear to God, “Love works no ill towards your neighbour… that’s why the loving thing to do is not to celebrate pedophilia in our nation, that’s why the loving thing to do is to put sodomites to death” — but this framing allows Awes to position himself as parallel to actual victims of persecution for being… banned on YouTube, apparently.
(“The kings of the earth come together to conspire against god: Facebook, YouTube, Google… conspiring against the lord today” is a real, actual thing he says from the pulpit.)</p>
<p>But with that foundation of supreme biblical authority established, Awes can preach what he wants to preach, from the heart: that the LGBTQ community (he calls celebrators of Pride “sodomites” throughout, <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+16%3A49-50&version=KJV">a classic misinterpretation of the text</a>) are “brute beasts”, “dumb animals”, and “stupid dogs” “out to hurt you, that hate you” “made to be taken and destroyed”. (Much of the text for these descriptions <em>do</em> come from the bible… but they’re descriptions of entirely unrelated groups, certainly not the modern-day pride movement.) </p>
<p>That “sodomy” is “the worst sin in the bible” (???), that homosexuals are all pedophiles in their hearts and “aren’t like other sinners” because they’re always getting worse:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So here’s the thing: Maybe not every single homosexual has been with a child yet, but what about tomorrow when they’re filled with a little more unrighteousness? … These people are not normal, they’re not your average everyday sinner, they’re what the bible calls “reprobate”, they’re rejected by god, they have no hope of salvation. Now look at verse 30.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He preaches that the existence of gay people is the fault of Christians for not persecuting them aggressively enough, that “this probably could have been squashed like a bug a long time ago”, and that the church across the street with a pride flag is “screaming “we hate god” for doing so. That preaching “god hates sin but loves the sinner” is a vicious lie that keeps people from being as cruel to sinners as they need to be. That this failure of Christianity is evidenced by the fact that LGBTQ families “are so accepted that they can have kids.”
That children in our society are becoming “meat” to the “predators” of LGBTQ families, who are all pedophiles, and that some (fake) churches hate Christians so much that they actually allow “sodomites and trannies” into the house of god.
That the only reason the f*ggots (he says the word!) aren’t storming in and murdering us right now is their fear of law enforcement. </p>
<p>That gay pastors should be put to death, a point which should be obvious to anyone. That everyone queer should be put to death, really: “What does God say is the solution for the homosexual in 2022, here in the new testament, here in the book of Romans?” (Nothing, is the answer.)
“That they are worthy of death! These people should be put to death! Every single homosexual in our country should be charged with the crime, the abomination of homosexuality that they have, they should be convicted in a lawful trial, they should be sentenced to death, they should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head!” The audience cheers, here.
(Note it’s very important to him that the state legitimate this violence, because that’s baptist fundamentalism. It’s also a key numbing agent in genocide: see <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/gazing-steadfastly-at-the-holocaust-robert-jay-lifton-the-nazi-doctors-medical-killing-and-the-psychology-of-genocide-new-york-basic-books-1986-pp-xiii-561-1995/79E04FBF90D0CC94D2B3034E89C5D364">Robert Jay Lifton, “Gazing Steadfastly at the Holocaust: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.</a>)
Awes continues “That’s what god teaches! That’s what the bible says!” This is not true. “You don’t like it, you don’t like God’s word, because that is what god says.” No!</p>
<p>Little pickle boy here covered all that within an hour. Also, he prophesies that God will destroy various US cities — that he names — by volcano eruption for their sin. Of queerness, he demands people “teach your children to be disgusted by it” and tells a fun anecdote about how even his wife was shocked by how much he despises gay people just existing in public. Also, he slips in “Zionists” infiltrating our government, because of course he does. All in all, this is propaganda to “Have zeal to fight the battles of the lord!” Which, in this religion, means the only way to demonstrate your virtue is overt cruelty to an outgroup you need to dogmatically believe is sub-human.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="matt-walsh-what-is-a-woman">Matt Walsh & “What is a Woman”<a class="headerlink" href="#matt-walsh-what-is-a-woman" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>On June 1, right-wing anti-trans commentator Matt Walsh released anti-trans documentary “What is a Woman?” Which, well,</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1538353146929422337" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/jessiegender/" title="YOUTUBER ABOUT STAR TREK & TRANS ISSUES | VIDEO PRODUCER @GAMESPOT | Aspiring filmmaker | Trekkie by birth, believer in IDIC"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1387216800408952834/D3pK1yHq_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jessie Earl</span><span class="at">@jessiegender</span></div></a></div><div><p>This is an excerpt from the book version of Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman? In case it wasn’t clear, Matt Walsh’s film is a fascistic direct call to action to justify violence against trans people. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/jessiegender/status/1538353146929422337/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVlUCKgUYAAFhuj.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/jessiegender/status/1538353146929422337" target="_blank">Sun Jun 19 02:49:06 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533611776763371520" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MattWalshBlog/1533611316635631617"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/" title="Theocratic fascist, bestselling children’s author, women’s studies scholar, biologist"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1536824114253529089/Cz7JCkgi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matt Walsh</span><span class="at">@MattWalshBlog</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1533611316635631617">MattWalshBlog</a>:</span><p>This is why we can’t just oppose the transition of children. Yes that’s particularly evil but it’s also evil to do it to anyone of any age. This young woman was 19, a legal adult, when she was mutilated. Does that make it okay? Obviously not.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1533611776763371520" target="_blank">Mon Jun 06 00:48:35 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533611960612229120" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/BlakeWardLove/" title=""><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw=="onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Blake Ward</span><span class="at">@BlakeWardLove</span></div></a></div><div><p>It should be illegal for anyone of any age to transition. Period</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/BlakeWardLove/status/1533611960612229120" target="_blank">5:49 PM - 5 Jun 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1533612406525546497" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/" title="Theocratic fascist, bestselling children’s author, women’s studies scholar, biologist"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1536824114253529089/Cz7JCkgi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matt Walsh</span><span class="at">@MattWalshBlog</span></div></a></div><div><p>Yes. Put another way: it should be illegal for doctors to do this to anyone of any age. <a href='https://twitter.com/BlakeWardLove/status/1533611960612229120' target='_blank'>twitter.com/BlakeWardLove/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattWalshBlog/status/1533612406525546497" target="_blank">Mon Jun 06 00:51:05 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>It’s a “gotcha” documentary meant to reveal how trans people aren’t being intellectually honest and going around trying to deceive people.</p>
<p>Now, about that. See, Matt Walsh is a vicious hack known for attacking LGBTQ people and generally acting in bad faith, so no trans person would volunteer to interview with him. So, instead, he set up a whole elaborate honeypot, as reported on twitter by Eli Erlick: </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1490799028401020932" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EliErlick/" title="PhD candidate at @UCSC researching political philosophy, social movements, and trans history. Writer, public speaker, and organizer. She/her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1446109550046703633/neQxw9Mg_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eli Erlick</span><span class="at">@EliErlick</span></div></a></div><div><p>So @MattWalshBlog's crew is trying to trick trans people into joining a fake documentary. His producers set up a whole front organization (@GenderUnityProj) and tried to recruit me into his next anti-trans documentary. Here's the wild story of how it went down (1/x): </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/EliErlick/status/1490799028401020932/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLBf00tXMAUrLlt.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EliErlick/status/1490799028401020932" target="_blank">Mon Feb 07 21:26:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>When “What is a Woman” reached out to people to interview, it did so as the fake “<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220208004609/https://twitter.com/GenderUnityProj">Gender Unity Project</a>”, now defunct. The producer, “Makenna Lynn”, reached out to trans people to interview, claiming the documentary was self-funded. Lynn, though, is Makenna’s middle name; she was really Makenna Waters, Matt Walsh’s producer. The Gender Unity Project itself was registered to Justin Folk, a documentarian who works for Matt Walsh and Prager U. </p>
<p>Even after this was discovered, the documentary itself stole trans people’s photos from social media to use for commercial purposes without any sort of licensing, and specifically to degrade the people in the images.</p>
<p>There’s more information about the deception with perspectives from others in <a href="https://twitter.com/EliErlick/status/1490799028401020932">Eli’s twitter thread</a>, and coverage on <a href="https://www.insider.com/matt-walsh-accused-luring-trans-people-into-anti-trans-doc-2022-2">Insider</a> and <a href="https://www.losangelesblade.com/2022/02/08/anti-trans-matt-walsh-tries-to-lure-trans-people-into-fake-documentary/">Blade</a>. See also Nathan J. Robinson’s <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/06/what-is-a-woman-is-a-feature-length-exploration-of-conservative-ignorance-and-prejudice">“What Is A Woman?” Is a Feature-Length Exploration of Conservative Ignorance and Prejudice</a>.</p>
<p>As for the question, “What is a woman”? Well, that’s not too hard, actually.
The actual ideas of “man” and “woman” that anti-trans activists are trying to conserve aren’t any kind of biological fact. They’re social ideas: how people dress, what kind of jobs they have, what their temperament is. There’s nothing about wearing a tie written as part of our DNA, or even mandated by God. The Two Genders, in all their holy wisdom, are inarguably social constructs themselves.
It’s actually a disagreement over taxonomy, terminology, and methods of categorization. It’s a fight over conflicting definitions of categories, and ultimately it’s a conflict of the belief system of biological determinism against self determination.</p>
<p>I’ll also point to <a href="https://medium.com/@kiraprince/what-is-a-woman-7b47624c68dc">Kira Prince’s “What is a Woman?”</a>, which answers this question well.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Lately the question has seemed to be on some people’s minds. There’s a whole documentary about it. Though sadly, the documentary in question doesn’t actually seem to be genuinely curious about the answer. Instead it’s very clear that it wishes to pretend to be curious as a pretense to spread its own underlying argument: “These people are nuts, they don’t want you to know the truth, trust your feelings and your 6th grade science teacher, woman=vagina.”<br>
…<br>
This is how gender actually works. We like to believe we’re seeing a biological reality, but we’re not. We see combinations of cues: a dress, long hair, dark mascara laden eyelashes, a smooth face, talking with hands, etc, and our brains go, “OH I KNOW,” and put that person in the woman box. And once they’re in that box we seldom let them out it. But of course we know that any one of those qualities individually doesn’t mean anything about gender.<br>
…<br>
Come across a particularly butch woman and you might very well assume she’s a man. Run too fast and you’ll get assumed to be a man too.<br>
…<br>
Which is why we tend to think gender and sex are the same thing, and that we’re seeing sex in our day to day lives when we aren’t. It’s that correlation thing. But some people, (GASP: THE TRANSES), don’t.<br>
…<br>
And then most people say, “sure fine, whatever, can you pass the ketchup?” And a smaller group say “Oh my GOD civilization is CRUMBLING I don’t know what to do! There’s an outbreak of pedophiles! God is dead! What is TRUTH?!? What do you mean I haven’t been perfectly aware of everyone’s genitals all the time? How am I going to know who to treat badly? WE NEED GENITAL INSPECTIONS NOW! HELP! I HAVEN’T BREATHED SINCE THEY ELECTED A BLACK MAN!”<br>
…<br>
Weird right? Sometimes pointing out the matrix does that to people. Those old simplistic worldviews are really sticky.</p>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="irreversible-damage">Irreversible Damage<a class="headerlink" href="#irreversible-damage" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p><a href="https://www.glaad.org/gap/abigail-shrier">Abagail Shrier</a>’s “Irreversible Damage - The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” is an anti-trans book that’s become so popular it’s a cornerstone of the movement. Shrier’s views put her directly in the trans-exclusionary radical feminist category: she describes trans rights as “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-transgender-war-on-women-11553640683">a war on women</a>” and, as per the book’s title, is particularly concerned with the perversion of womanhood. Her book is so significant I can’t skip over it, but it doesn’t really have anything to say that we haven’t seen already. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/202012/new-book-irreversible-damage-is-full-misinformation">Jack Turban MD MHS, “New Book “Irreversible Damage” Is Full of Misinformation”</a>:</cite>
The book’s central (and false) premise is that there are massive numbers of transgender youth who are not truly transgender, but rather just confused, and that they are all being rushed into gender-affirming medical interventions and surgeries that they will later regret. As a physician and a researcher who has dedicated my career to taking care of and understanding transgender youth, I recognized the book as bizarre and full of misinformation. I assumed it wouldn’t gain much traction. I was wrong.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Irreversible Damage is a huge advocate of rapid-onset gender dysphoria and social contagion myths. “The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” is right there in the title.
Shrier argues that young cis women are “seduced” by predatory communities on social media and the internet into thinking they’re transgender, stealing them away from their families like fae in the night. </p>
<p>The book explicitly tells people to discount and reject their children’s gender identity, and encourages conversion therapy. In chapter 11, “The Way Back: What Should We Do For Our Girls?” Shrier explicitly advocates parents engage in those abusive behaviors: cut your child off from the world. Move to another state to reset her social circle. “If she is already at college, bring her home.” “Do what it takes to lift her out and take her away.” This is, again, extrordinarily dangerous.</p>
<p><img alt="Billboard: Your daughter is learning about gender identity on social media. Puberty is not a medical condition (Irreversible Damage)" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/billboard.jpg"></p>
<p>The book itself is written in a vaguely journalistic style, which makes sense, because Shrier is a freelance journalist with no medical or psychological qualifications of any sort. Unfortunately, “journalistic style” is a phrase which here means “terrible science”. Shrier almost never cites any sources for her claims, and when she does they’re links to social media posts or anecdotes. In many cases she just wonders aloud about topics like “is becoming trans all an act of sexual withdrawal and avoidance?” At one point she cites an episode of the damn Joe Rogan podcast on Spotify to support the claim that someone said once that “adolescent girls today are in a lot of pain”. It’s the same nonsense circular reporting we saw in Littman.</p>
<p>The journalism itself though is blatant malpractice. A good portion of the book is dedicated to writing the stories of specific, real-world transgender adolescents. As Shrier makes clear, though, she never at any point interviewed or attempted to interview any of these subjects. Instead, she interviewed the parents, selecting for those who did not accept their children’s identities and platforming their grievances. Most of these parents were estranged from their children due to how thoroughly they rejected them. On top of that, Shrier states in an authors note that she changed details so people in the book would not be able to recognize themselves, denying them any opportunity to tell their side of the story or correct the accounts of their lives given by their oppositional parents.</p>
<p>I really can’t overstate how hard this book falls into the parent trap. In Shrier’s mind, the parents are entirely the victims, and the children are either adversaries or broken objects, not performing as expected. Even the expert sources she cites usually don’t have direct experience with trans patients: they’re usually just fellow amateurs who themselves heard grievances from unhappy parents. In Shrier’s view, children and teenagers can’t be trusted: they “<a href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/irreversible-damage-to-the-trans-community-a-critical-review-of-abigail-shriers-book-irreversible-damage-the-transgender-craze-seducing-our-daughters-part-two/">lie to get on hormones, lie about being trans, and blame their parents for not being supportive of the lies</a>”. (Trans adults, of course, are all predators). </p>
<p>A particularly disgusting facet of this is what Shrier describes as the “suicide narrative.” The kind of parental rejection that Shrier advocates for puts children in such intense distress that they kill themselves, and Shrier knows it. In the real world, when we know how our actions will harm others, the reality of that situation informs what we can and cannot ethically do. If one deprives their child of food, they starve, and that’s abuse. Understanding those things and doing what’s most healthy for the child <em>is parenting</em>. Instead, Shrier sees the requirement to do right by children as — what else — an attack on parents. </p>
<p>In a fit of foot-stomping tantrum, she describes “if you don’t affirm, your child may kill herself” as a threat being brandished against parents. “If you don’t support me”, your wretched children implicitly threaten, “I can’t go on.” And then, when the parents follow Shrier’s guidance and cause the deaths of their children, Shrier is there to pat them on the back and assure them it was the child’s fault for daring to have unmet needs. God. Yes, Abbie, the world <em>does</em> make demands on how you behave, and harm you inflict on others <em>is</em> counted against you. You cannot possibly be so privileged that you haven’t learned that yet. Grow up.</p>
<p>Suicide is the fatality case of dysphoria and other psychological ailments the same way cardio-respiratory arrest is the fatality case of rabies, or blood loss is the fatality case of being shot. Dysphoria is a psychological condition, and suicide is what a direct cause/effect relationship between the condition and the death of the patient looks like. The fact that it’s a suicide doesn’t imply that the person is interfering for personal gain, it’s (very obviously) the opposite.</p>
<p>When she does cite scientific theories they’re things like the <a href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/making-sense-of-autogynephilia-debates-73d9051e88d3">thoroughly rejected autogynephilia theory</a> which postulates that trans women transition due to a fetish. This has been rejected by the scientific community but we again see the sexualization angle in the use of this rhetoric: queerness must be a fetish. There’s a vague gesture made toward testosterone use increasing risks of “various cancers”, which isn’t cited and doesn’t appear to be true. The science that disproves her logic is flatly ignored; no mention given to the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5866176/">frequency of natural atypical genital presentation (as high as 1 in 200!)</a>, that <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20182162/37381/Ensuring-Comprehensive-Care-and-Support-for">gender-affirming care is known to give more positive outcomes</a>, or the fact that the real regret rate of sex reassignment surgery is <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/">less than 1%</a>.</p>
<p>I can point out all these problems, but I can’t quite convey how deeply <em>ugly</em> this book actually is. Shrier has taken these deeply toxic ideas, legitimized them with emotional stories and rhetoric, and wrapped them in flowery “womanhood is beautiful! :)” girlboss language. The whole thing has a decidedly “Dolores Umbridge” quality about it, the unfortunate irony of which does not escape me.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="bethel-mcgrew-estherofreilly">Bethel McGrew (@EstherOfReilly)<a class="headerlink" href="#bethel-mcgrew-estherofreilly" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>So next I’m just going to reach into the grab bag and out comes self-proclaimed “Based Christian humanist, Twitter thought leader, hopeless Anglophile” Bethel McGrew, who wrote the article…</p>
<p>…<a href="https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/mutilating-our-bodies">Mutilating Our Bodies</a>.</p>
<p><img alt="Scalpels" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/firstthingsmag.png"></p>
<p>Good lord. </p>
<p>So I think what most gets me about this piece is how Bethel frames herself from coming from a place of sympathy. She talks about “minor boys and girls who are socially brainwashed into making catastrophic, self-harming decisions”, and frames the whole article as a (frankly condescending) paternalistic discussion about helping the vulnerable by saving them from themselves.</p>
<p>And she uses that framing to justify her conclusion, that conservatives be aggressive in attacking trans-friendly policies and ultimately ban all gender-affirming care, even for adults:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The time has come for conservative-thinking people to take a forward position in the transgender debate, grounded in metaphysical sureties and animated by a passion for the common good. While adults who regret their sex changes may themselves tend to libertarianism, their stories testify to a hidden horror: vulnerable, disturbed individuals of all ages hastily ushered into procedures that are nothing short of medical malpractice. Justice demands a reckoning in the form of penalties and strictures, for their sakes and for the sakes of others like them who may yet be saved from this Hippocratic Oath-breaking. We must not be silent. We must open our ears to the anguished cry of a Kellie Newgent, when she tells Matt Walsh through tears, “It got me at forty-two. Your child doesn’t have a chance.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That nicey-nice act breaks down very quickly though, when there’s someone in the room who doesn’t agree with her:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543331836134395905" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/" title="Based Christian humanist, Twitter thought leader, hopeless Anglophile. Words @firstthingsmag, @Spectator, @NRO, @Plough, etc. Sub to my Stack!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1452827014617051144/UIQVYGbk_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Bethel McGrew</span><span class="at">@EstherOfReilly</span></div></a></div><div><p>Sharing this again with a thought: It is meet, right, and our bounden duty to have an "us vs. them" attitude to a medical industrial complex that preys on the vulnerable, and under no circumstances should we seek peace with such people.</p><p><a href='https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2022/07/mutilating-our-bodies' target='_blank'>firstthings.com/web-exclusives…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/status/1543331836134395905" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 20:32:38 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543332238259011590" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="EstherOfReilly/1543331836134395905"><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/" title="Based Christian humanist, Twitter thought leader, hopeless Anglophile. Words @firstthingsmag, @Spectator, @NRO, @Plough, etc. Sub to my Stack!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1452827014617051144/UIQVYGbk_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Bethel McGrew</span><span class="at">@EstherOfReilly</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/status/1543331836134395905">EstherOfReilly</a>:</span><p>It is simply false that we should at all times and in all places seek peace with our enemies. Some enemies should be pursued and punished to the full extent of the law, and their just reward should be commensurately celebrated.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/status/1543332238259011590" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 20:34:13 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543334252321832960" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="EstherOfReilly/1543332238259011590"><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/" title="Based Christian humanist, Twitter thought leader, hopeless Anglophile. Words @firstthingsmag, @Spectator, @NRO, @Plough, etc. Sub to my Stack!"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1452827014617051144/UIQVYGbk_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Bethel McGrew</span><span class="at">@EstherOfReilly</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/status/1543332238259011590">EstherOfReilly</a>:</span><p>(Or, if the scales of justice have not yet been so balanced, it's our duty to see that they are.)</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/EstherOfReilly/status/1543334252321832960" target="_blank">Sat Jul 02 20:42:14 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>It’s a kinder, gentler hand, to save people from the big scary liberal plot. But if you step out of line, you’re done. It’s us vs. them, and if you don’t want to be forcibly medically detransitioned when we ban gender care, it’s time for you to be gone.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="misc-internet">Misc internet<a class="headerlink" href="#misc-internet" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (steam, tyler, broken hand) -->
<p>In addition to major players and organizations, I’m sure you’ve seen how this hate is everywhere online. <strong>Time for the lightning round.</strong></p>
<p>Here’s a couple of people in a comments section casually talking about rounding up “leftists” to rot in prison in order to “snuff out” trans people. (Note “Activist” used here as a scare word, as if the people speaking aren’t pushing a political ideology themselves.) RealTXPatriot, meanwhile, is “giddy” about reporting their neighbour to child services. Boasting about turning in their neighbours. Giddy.</p>
<p><img alt="as described" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/realtxpatriot.jpg"></p>
<p>Here’s Tyler Dinsmoor, small business owner and reactionary domestic terrorist (maybe we should just call that the <a href="https://twitter.com/tzimmer_history/status/1546302913479327751">Proud Boy Effect</a>:</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537007340389404672" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/" title="Seattle's grassroots police watchdog. Got a good tip about a bad cop? DM us. Sustain our work with a monthly donation at https://t.co/6vE1PfwD7b"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1388145305808347137/PLNuUbsm_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">DivestSPD</span><span class="at">@DivestSPD</span></div></a></div><div><p>🚨ALERT🚨</p><p>Tyler Dinsmoor, 27, Oak Harbor/Whidbey Island.</p><p>We've received reports community reports that Dinsmoor, a Christian fundamentalist fascist, has been fantasizing online about killing gay ppl & insinuating that he plans to go to Pride at Anacortes on June 18 </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537007340389404672/photo/1" target="_blank">
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></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537007340389404672" target="_blank">Wed Jun 15 09:41:20 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537008561926025216" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="DivestSPD/1537007340389404672"><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/" title="Seattle's grassroots police watchdog. Got a good tip about a bad cop? DM us. Sustain our work with a monthly donation at https://t.co/6vE1PfwD7b"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1388145305808347137/PLNuUbsm_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">DivestSPD</span><span class="at">@DivestSPD</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537007340389404672">DivestSPD</a>:</span><p>CW: Homophobic slurs and threats of violence </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537008561926025216/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVSMt0jVsAA09ma.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
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</a><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537008561926025216/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVSM8nBUEAATHqr.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
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</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537008561926025216" target="_blank">Wed Jun 15 09:46:12 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<!-- ![DivestSPD: https://t.co/M4wtXRRewJ](https://twitter.com/DivestSPD/status/1537009177607798784) -->
<p>Fortunately, he was <a href="https://www.whidbeynewstimes.com/news/oak-harbor-man-with-history-of-homophobic-posts-arrested-on-1-million-bail/">arrested</a> before he got the chance to execute his attack on the June 18 event.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1547269100790956032" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/" title="Your nonbinary internet mom. Award-winning advocate, bestselling author, speaker, trauma survivor, pretend fancy person, mom to 4. Memoir 2 out in 2023 They/She"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1543699062284849152/KuBHygyG_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Mx. Amanda Jetté Knox</span><span class="at">@MavenOfMayhem</span></div></a></div><div><p>I was added to a Twitter list today that called for my forced sterilization, just in case you want to know what trans and nonbinary people are living through right now and how all this “people are allowed to disagree with your ‘gender ideology’” talk is going.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MavenOfMayhem/status/1547269100790956032" target="_blank">Wed Jul 13 17:17:55 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Here are some notes I took in January, when the video game Tabletop Simulator <a href="https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22879963/tabletop-simulator-moderation-homophobic-transphobic-global-chat">banned a trans user from global chat</a> for mentioning their status, and gamers took to the Steam review pages for the game to… cheer the anti-lgbtq culture war stance.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1480739788672147456" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531872210708840451/jMQqpBZC_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>gamers can't be that bad. see, just look at the positive reviews of tabletop simulator from the past 48 hours </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1480739788672147456/photo/1" target="_blank">
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</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1480739788672147456" target="_blank">Tue Jan 11 03:14:11 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1480764320019619841" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1480740848425971715"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531872210708840451/jMQqpBZC_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1480740848425971715">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>the thing is before anyone even gets a chance to say "oh, maybe this subject should actually be banned from global chat" these lynch mobs come out of the woodwork screaming LOOK AT US WE'RE MADE OF STRAW as if their stated goal was to leave no doubt that they're the baddies</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1480764320019619841" target="_blank">Tue Jan 11 04:51:39 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1483221785571115013" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1540886460550856705/J7zMhbwW_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>anyway did you know that you can just go on steam and report the reviews that tell trans people to commit suicide? it’s free</p><p>what’s funny is people usually don’t directly tie their bannable hate speech to accounts worth thousands of dollars but that is what has happened here <a href='https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1480739788672147456' target='_blank'>twitter.com/giovan_h/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1483221785571115013" target="_blank">Mon Jan 17 23:36:45 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>This is a variant of the old gamer favourite, “hate raids”.
See <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/08/25/twitch-hate-raids-streamers-discord-cybersecurity/">Nathan Grayson’s “Twitch hate raids are more than just a Twitch problem, and they’re only getting worse”</a></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537207374351679495" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/" title="livvy | 28 | she/her | video game player, avid writer, kaede akamatsu defender | lover of small cute things | LONG LIVE DRAGALIA LOST | ✨ @flowershroud ✨"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1523684440349843457/XLPixCH3_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">bondforged friend</span><span class="at">@blivveries</span></div></a></div><div><p>Never forget the greatest moment in all of gaming journalism </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/status/1537207374351679495/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVVB9FWWYAAAUXz.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/status/1537207374351679495/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVVB9QhWAAAlIHJ.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/status/1537207374351679495/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVVB9ZMWYAMLcIB.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/status/1537207374351679495/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVVB9hyXEAECxVC.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/blivveries/status/1537207374351679495" target="_blank">Wed Jun 15 22:56:12 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Here’s self-proclaimed “megaterf” replying to “Emilys mum”. Emily (her transgender daughter) was playing outside when a gang of kids surrounded her and instigated physical violence. One of the boys punched Emily so hard he broke his own hand, that was how violent this event was. Emily is a thirteen year old child.</p>
<p><img alt="megaterf emily broken hand" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/megaterf.png"></p>
<p>Megaterf blames Emily for invading the sidewalk. If Emily were a “real girl”, her skin would have apparently been softer, and her assailant wouldn’t have had any consequences. No, seriously, that’s how far gone this person is.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1501462799477657602" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/NeasaLaKali/" title="Neasa grey | she/her | Roma/Minceiri | typical Dahlstrom groupie | Transsexual diva| gender woo gerbil | #Blacklivesmatter 🧜♀️🖤💛❤️"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1436656882265907202/UeIiJ8vh_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Neasa Carmody 💙❤️💚</span><span class="at">@NeasaLaKali</span></div></a></div><div><p>This right here is the only logical end point to the Transphobic extremist movement inspired by Rowling/Bindel et all. I remember being called ‘dramatic’ by one of the more high profile British Trans activists for calling gender critical feminism a genocidal ideology </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/NeasaLaKali/status/1501462799477657602/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FNZEdIKVUAIbbs9.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/NeasaLaKali/status/1501462799477657602" target="_blank">Wed Mar 09 07:40:01 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- TODO misc internet
Outright lies and very dumb terfs 4
![jk_rowling: Intimate touching without consent is sexual assault. A self-proclaimed doctor says it’s ‘psychotic’ for disabled women to assert the right to female-only intimate care. I’m praying he’s not actually an MD, just a standard misogynist here to troll, but either way - 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩 https://t.co/pJYKsjU3RH](https://twitter.com/jk_rowling/status/1546062968764485633)
![WomenAreWomen3: @jk_rowling My friend’s severely disabled daughter is having to have tampons changed by a male member of staff because school say it’s not just impossible to tell someone’s sex, it’s illegal to ask for it. Oh and besides, ‘genitals don’t make a difference’. They’ve obliterated safeguarding](https://twitter.com/WomenAreWomen3/status/1546100988200853504)
![SamWhyte: 500 RTs for a barefaced lie. There is no way a service user would be using tampons unless they were able to insert them themselves. https://t.co/nHe4vHqukS](https://twitter.com/SamWhyte/status/1546522634661371906)
![SamWhyte: Also, it is not illegal to ask someone's sex, that is also just flat out made up.](https://twitter.com/SamWhyte/status/1546526944619106305)
![WomenAreWomen3: Your daily reminder that if ‘transwomen are women’ was true, the corollary mantra ‘women are transwomen’ would be equally true.](https://twitter.com/WomenAreWomen3/status/1544461042121641988) -->
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="killing-trans-people-directly">Killing trans people directly<a class="headerlink" href="#killing-trans-people-directly" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>As bad as that abuse is, it gets worse. Of course it gets worse. </p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="terrorism">Terrorism<a class="headerlink" href="#terrorism" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>The growing anti-trans movement radicalizes terrorists. I’ll start with Rebecca Boone’s introduction to the topic, written in response to the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/06/14/far-right-influencers-hyped-coeur-dalene-pride-patriot-front-showed">Patriot Front anti-lgbtq attack</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-religion-arrests-riots-race-and-ethnicity-c65c1090ed923687716114be371e9fdb">Rebecca Boone, “Right-wing extremists amp up anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online”</a></cite>
A few weeks before 31 members of a white supremacist group were arrested for allegedly planning to riot at a northern Idaho LGBTQ pride event, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his Boise congregation that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government.</p>
<p>Around the same time, a lawmaker from the northernmost region of the state, Republican Rep. Heather Scott, told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging “a war of perversion against our children.” </p>
<p>A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur d’Alene.<br>
…<br>
In the same way that it mobilized against Black Lives Matter in the nation’s capital in December, the Patriot Front harnesses what’s in the news cycle — in this case, drag queen story hours, disputes about transgender people in schools, and LGBTQ visibility more broadly. A “massive right-wing media ecosystem” has been promoting the notion that “there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to ‘groom’ your children,” Lewis said.<br>
…<br>
Several posts have falsely sought to label teachers and librarians who accept the LGBTQ community as abusers or groomers of children. Others have lambasted pride events or drag performances as “depraved.”<br>
…<br>
At her public appearance weeks ago, she introduced two members of the Panhandle Patriots motorcycle club, who urged watchers to join them in “the fight” against LGBTQ people at the Coeur d’Alene pride celebration. They dubbed their counter-protest “Gun d’Alene.” “Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight. … We say, ‘Damn the repercussions,’” the motorcycle club members said. “They are trying to take your children.” The Panhandle Patriots later changed their event to a prayer rally, saying they are “a Christian group that stands against violence in all its forms.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The rhetoric is part of the movement. The laws are part of the movement. The propagandising of extremist ideology is part of the movement. And the terror attacks on people are part of the movement. It’s all one genocide.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1541204864457383937" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="NireBryce/1541204863215968256"><a href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/" title="hEDS. flaky. ND. a GF gf | 'non-functional programmer' | 30 +/-2 | gq, they(pl, s)/she | Ace-ish, Trans | object in mirror is smaller than appears | 'far left'"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/900478234038460416/7VjQACda_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Nire Bryce</span><span class="at">@NireBryce</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/status/1541204863215968256">NireBryce</a>:</span><p>the Oslo shooting yesterday was the first shooting in Norway in 11 years, since Brevik.</p><p>It targeted a pride parade planning event at a gay bar, the day before the pride parade.</p><p>banned weapons.</p><p>two days after Roe was overturned.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/status/1541204864457383937" target="_blank">Sun Jun 26 23:40:48 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1541204867200520199" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="NireBryce/1541204865698906112"><a href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/" title="hEDS. flaky. ND. a GF gf | 'non-functional programmer' | 30 +/-2 | gq, they(pl, s)/she | Ace-ish, Trans | object in mirror is smaller than appears | 'far left'"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/900478234038460416/7VjQACda_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Nire Bryce</span><span class="at">@NireBryce</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/status/1541204865698906112">NireBryce</a>:</span><p>So if it is motivated by the same forces as violence in the US and elsewhere, and if the timing isn't just a very, very dire coincidence,</p><p>it's now very clearly international.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/NireBryce/status/1541204867200520199" target="_blank">Sun Jun 26 23:40:49 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Anti-LGBT+ mobilization has increased <a href="https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/ACLED_FactSheetAntiLGBTMobilization_fmt2022.pdf">more than 400%</a> just between 2020 and 2021. From ACLED:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'><a href="https://acleddata.com/2022/06/16/fact-sheet-anti-lgbt-mobilization-is-on-the-rise-in-the-united-states/">Fact Sheet: Anti-lgbt+ Mobilization On The Rise In The United States</a></cite></p>
<p>Anti-LGBT+ mobilization — including demonstrations, political violence, and offline propaganda activity like flyering — increased by over four times from 2020 to 2021 … ACLED data indicate that 2022 is on track to be worse than last year<br>
…<br>
Incidents of political violence targeting the LGBT+ community this year have already exceeded the total number of attacks reported last year<br>
…<br>
Nine times as many anti-LGBT+ demonstrations were reported in 2021 relative to 2020 … At least 15% of these demonstrations turned violent or destructive last year<br>
…<br>
Far-right militias and militant social movements increased their engagement in anti-LGBT+ demonstrations sevenfold last year, from two events in 2020 to 14 in 2021
… Their engagement in anti-LGBT+ events in 2022 is on track to either match or outpace their activity in 2021<br>
…<br>
Far-right militias and MSMs — like the Proud Boys — increased their engagement in anti-LGBT+ demonstrations sevenfold last year, from two events in 2020 to 14 in 2021. This is a dangerous trend: right-wing demonstrations are 12 times more likely to turn violent and/or destructive when far-right militias or MSMs are involved.<br>
…<br>
Similar to the cross-pollination opportunities presented by activism against issues like abortion access and critical race theory, anti-LGBT+ mobilization will likely offer a conducive environment for far-right militias and MSMs to build networks not only with the wider right-wing activist community but also amongst each other. For example, on 4 June 2022, a far-right demonstration against a drag show in Dallas, Texas, brought together a wide range of different groups as well as unaffiliated individuals, including self-proclaimed ‘Christian Fascists,’ adherents to the QAnon conspiracy movement, and affiliates of the American Populist Union, the New Columbia Movement, and Groypers</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1537055292566867968" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/C_Broome/" title="Web developer, music listener, liberal, etc... I have a soft spot for sports teams that haven't won it all since 1983 #baltimore"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1250772934240751616/XfrHfHdV_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chris Broome</span><span class="at">@C_Broome</span></div></a></div><div><p>At 4 AM this morning, on the corner of Barclay and 31st St, someone burned a Gay Pride flag posted on my neighbor’s porch. Three houses went up in flames #Baltimore </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/C_Broome/status/1537055292566867968/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVS3o43XEAI5eLq.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/C_Broome/status/1537055292566867968" target="_blank">Wed Jun 15 12:51:53 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>In New Hampshire, parent <a href="https://vtdigger.org/2022/06/15/canaan-parent-cited-transgender-people-in-threat-against-school-court-documents-show/">Shane Gobeil “threatened to show up and kill somebody”</a> if his child was approached by a transgender person at school. “The school’s changing… Before you know it, there’s going to be a drag queen show and, you know what, I’m probably going to show up and kill somebody. A lot of body’s. … If you guys ever do that to Canaan and my daughter’s in that school, be ready for God’s wrath.” When state police investigated, he repeated the threat to them, saying “don’t take what I said as a threat, take it as a promise”. Police tried to cover for him by “advising” him to stop, but after his persistence he was detained and charged. He is prohibited from buying the AK-47 he said he intended to purchase… for six months, after which the prohibition is lifted.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="wisconsin-kiel-bomb-incident">Wisconsin Kiel bomb incident<a class="headerlink" href="#wisconsin-kiel-bomb-incident" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another school attack stands out: the Wisconsin Kiel bomb threats.</p>
<p>In June 2021, <a href="https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-confirms-title-ix-protects-students-discrimination-based-sexual-orientation-and-gender-identity">the Biden administration restored protections against discrimination on the basis of gender to Title IX law</a> that had been removed in the Trump administration. This triggered a wave of right-wing fearmongering. Conservatives <a href="https://media.dojmt.gov/wp-content/uploads/Title-IX-Coalition-Letter-4.5.22.pdf">protested</a>, on the basis that… previous iterations of the rules — not the ones being proposed! — were problematic.
Of course, that’s all just to cover for their actual outrage, that the changes protect against the kind of discrimination they want to engage in and encourage. They even explicitly complain that reinstating anti-discrimination rules might conflict with Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law… because of how aggressively that law discriminates on the basis of gender, which is the thing they like about it.</p>
<p>In the context of this charged atmosphere, in March the Kiel Middle School in Wisconsin <a href="https://fox11online.com/news/local/parent-of-kiel-student-investigated-for-sexual-harassment-over-mispronouning-fights-back">followed up on a harassment complaint against students for bullying a student by misgendering and namecalling</a>. This was almost immediately <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/right-wing-media-furious-over-biden-administration-effort-to-protect-lgbtq-students">sensationalized by media outlets</a> like Fox, One America News Network, and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/twitter/libs-tiktok-has-used-twitter-target-over-200-individual-teachers-schools-and-districts-2022">Libs of TikTok</a> with the usual mismash of anti-trans hate rhetoric, but also as a First Amendment issue, because the bullying was spoken.
Do I need to remind you about the conservative <a href="https://www.wftv.com/news/local/teachers-voice-concerns-after-orange-county-previews-dont-say-gay-impact-classrooms/R6VGDIOC2RFURLBUVT6TVWPDGA/">compelled speech pronouns laws</a>? I’m sure I don’t. You’ve figured it out by now: there are no principles here, only violence.</p>
<p>And that violence culminated when <a href="https://www.wpr.org/kiel-school-board-closes-title-ix-investigation-over-wrong-pronouns-prompted-threats-violence">anti-trans activists made multiple bomb threats against the school</a> and local government. The bombers were clear as to their demands: they would bomb the locations if the school district didn’t drop the investigation by June 3.
The police entirely failed to manage the incident for weeks, and the threats were so violent and credible that on June 2, the school board <a href="https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/kiel-school-district-closes-title-ix-investigation">gave into the demands to appease the terrorist</a>. (And, yes, the federal authorities called in to consult allowed this. The FBI, whose jurisdiction this is, did not intervene.) A vulnerable child was bullied, and violent, genocidal activists decided the bullies couldn’t be punished. And the terrorists literally won.
Another man was <a href="https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/california-man-accused-of-threatening-kiel-school-staff-arrested">arrested for threatening to kill school district staff</a> over the incident. This turned out to not be directly related to the bomber; the media’s rhetoric worked two people (at least) into separate violent frenzies.</p>
<p>Trump-appointed federal judge Charles Atchley <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/17/us/judge-blocks-biden-lgbt-student-rules.html">seems to agree with the terrorists</a>, as he <a href="https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/attorneygeneral/documents/pr/2022/pr22-23-order.pdf">recently blocked enforcement</a> of these Title IX protections after 20 conservative state attorneys filed suit, citing interference of “[states’] sovereign authority to enforce state laws.”</p>
<p>I like doing personal studies. Let’s do another personal study. Let’s look at George Will’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/08/wisconsin-school-district-pronoun-police/">“When the pronoun police come for eighth-graders”</a>, placed in the Washington Post’s opinion section on June 8. He decries “today’s progressive dogma” and “the arrogance and cynicism of the U.S. Education Department” for “making a mockery of Title IX”. His evidence that Title IX can overreach comes from 2014 — before even Obama’s reforms that added protection against gender discrimination. He defends the three accused boys as being “biologically correct, if politically incorrect”, as if grammar were somehow biological, while conveniently forgetting about the bullying wrapping that tidbit. But that’s just window dressing. What’s truly unforgivable about this is that it intentionally omits the <em>weeks long terrorist campaign of bomb threats culminating in successful political intimidation</em> from the conversation. Utterly shameless.</p>
<p>Of the overblown outrage over the original incident, LB Klein, a professor who specializes in LGBTQ health, <a href="https://www.wpr.org/kiel-school-board-closes-title-ix-investigation-over-wrong-pronouns-prompted-threats-violence">said</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>When even a little bit of support is provided, or attention is provided, that there is such a backlash is a reminder to us of what trans and gender-diverse kids are facing every day in this country … Folks are acting out in violence about basic names, pronouns and terms, and that’s politicized — trans and gender-diverse kids are not being political, they’re being politicized.</p>
<p>… I don’t think we have these conversations when it’s not about trans and gender-diverse kids — I know a lot of people, as a parent, who have kids that go by names other than the names on their government documents, and people don’t bat an eye about that.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I can attest to that personally. I went to a conservative Christian high school, and I had a good friend. She was a cis girl, but she had a male-sounding legal name, so she stuck a -y on the end of it. It was a purely cosmetic, gender-affirming identity choice. And, since she wasn’t trans, it was (to my knowledge) never an issue. I only ever even knew the name from seeing it on a few old ledgers produced by outdated software. And if people had bullied her by refusing to call her by her chosen name? It would have been bullying. There are no surprises here, no special privilege being demanded by the all-powerful lgbtq lobby. It’s basic human decency, but when it’s time to show that decency to a queer person, it’s turned into an all-out war by those who want them destroyed. </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="fake-shooter-assault">Fake shooter assault<a class="headerlink" href="#fake-shooter-assault" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Another incident of school violence, in a very different way. In response to the Robb Elementary School shooting, a right-winger on the internet (possibly as a “troll”) pulled photographs of a transgender person from reddit and accused them of being the shooter, without basis.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1529276382609547266" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/keffals/" title="covering news and politics at https://t.co/gPFBDZTyCY for business & inquiries: inquiries@keffals.info"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1539494382180655104/TxvXxPkX_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">keffals</span><span class="at">@keffals</span></div></a></div><div><p>this is so messed up. the narrative is already spreading and is going to ruin an innocent person's life </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1529276382609547266/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FTkUhX6XsAcBl-a.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/keffals/status/1529276382609547266" target="_blank">Wed May 25 01:41:16 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The baseless theory <em>did</em> spread and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-news/trans-womans-photo-used-spread-baseless-online-theory-texas-shooter-rcna30511">the internet ran with it</a>. GOP lawmaker Paul Gosar saw the lie and liked how it gelled with his political agenda so much he <a href="https://www.advocate.com/politics/2022/5/25/far-right-rep-paul-gosar-tweets-lie-texas-shooter-was-trans">boosted it himself</a> despite (or, because of) it being blatant disinformation.</p>
<p>The girl in the photo? Used to spur violence. <a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/5/27/texas-trans-girl-attacked-after-false-uvalde-claims-spread-online-el-paso">A group of four men outside a library</a> saw a seventeen-year-old trans girl and used the disinformation pretext to assault her. “Yeah, you know it was one of your sisters who killed those kids,” they said. “You’re a mental health freak!” The shooter wasn’t her, the shooter wasn’t trans, but they just wanted violence against trans people <em>so much</em> that they made it work.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="murders">Murders<a class="headerlink" href="#murders" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>And then there are all the murders.</p>
<p>The United States <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6555145/">has some of the highest rates of transphobic violence</a>.</p>
<p>Since 2015, the <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/a-national-epidemic-fatal-anti-trans-violence-in-the-united-states-in-2019">Human Rights Campaign</a> has published a report on violence and homicides of trans people in the united states. There’s a lack of accurate data collection, so it’s difficult to know how widespread the violence really is; the data gathered is always a minimum amount, due to unreported incidents. Worse, <a href="http://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/HRC-AntiTransgenderViolence-0519.pdf">an analysis of the FBI’s hate crime statistics revealed trans-motivated murders that went unreported despite evidence</a>. The HRC even suspects its own numbers to be low, due to <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/additional-concerning-deaths-of-transgender-and-gender-non-conforming-individuals">many more deaths and murders that could be, but aren’t definitively, hate-motivated</a>. All in all, violence against the trans community has steadily increased from 2015 to present.</p>
<p>As this violence is primarily hate-driven, violence is wildly disproportionately more likely if the person is part of other targeted groups: trans black women, for instance, are disproportionately more likely to be effected. Likewise, in areas with more discrimination (notably the south), violence again becomes disproportionately more common. From their 2018 report, of transgender people killed in the US, 82 percent of them were women of color and 55 percent lived in the South, especially Texas.</p>
<p><img alt="Disproportionately more likely if in the south" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/HRC Anti-TransViolenceReport2019 Regions.png"></p>
<p><img alt="Disproportionately more likely if in texas" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/HRC Anti-TransViolenceReport2020 Regions.png"></p>
<p>HRC’s research is synthesized in its excellent report <a href="https://reports.hrc.org/dismantling-a-culture-of-violence">Dismantling a Culture of Violence; Understanding Violence Against Transgender and Non-Binary People and Ending the Crisis</a>, published 2021. It links the startling outbreak of violence to anti-transgender stigma, denial of oppertunity, and increased risk factors. For example, 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ, often due to family rejection. “Exclusion from these vital safety nets doesn’t just worsen physical and mental health outcomes, it directly contributes to higher risk of homelessness, sexual assault and violence.” Being LGBTQ is a risk factor for violence, but the homelessness caused by this compounds the risk.</p>
<p>As I have done, the report notes the uptick in anti-LGBTQ political attacks and efforts to prevent transgender youth from accessing medical care and counseling, as well as dangerous conversion therapy practices. </p>
<p>Other organizations like the <a href="https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf">NCTE</a> report similar findings; “Transgender and non-binary people who have had a professional try to stop them from being transgender or non-binary were far more likely to experience psychological distress, attempt suicide, run away from home and experience homelessness.”</p>
<p>There are also isolated cases that have gotten some attention, like the <a href="https://time.com/5601227/two-black-trans-women-murders-in-dallas-anti-trans-violence/">murders of Chynal Lindsey and Muhlaysia Booker</a> in Dallas. Chynal, 26, was murdered and dumped in a lake just weeks after Muhlaysia, 23, was shot in the street. Both were young, black, trans women. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H28f5uvGjTA">Only months prior</a>, Muhlaysia captured video of herself being assaulted after a routine exchange of insurance information escalated into the other man holding her at gunpoint. A crowd gathered and assaulted her; she suffered a concussion and broken bones. But her video of the incident gathered traction, making her a target for further violence. </p>
<p>Rev. Louis Mitchell said of the incident</p>
<blockquote>
<p>This is intersectional. When you have the combination of a society that protects racism, misogyny and transphobia, it creates insurmountable odds. This is not so much an issue just in the Dallas area, but an international pandemic.</p>
<p>The idea that somehow no one is going to look for these women, that they’re so deeply disposable, and that level of disregard is horrible. It stems from misogyny, one of the things I would hope all women, cis and trans, recognize is the commonality of their plight when it comes to assault.</p>
<p>The bottom line is when you don’t treat trans people with basic dignity and respect that permeates to the rest of society.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It all comes back to that, doesn’t it.</p>
<p>There are more recent murders of trans women, even just in Dallas. <a href="https://www.fox7austin.com/news/dallas-pd-investigating-similarities-in-recent-attacks-on-transgender-women">Brittany White</a> for one, and others <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/21/us/dallas-transgender-women-homicides-assault/index.html">who were never identified</a>. But it’s part of the larger pattern of murders, which is part of the larger pattern of genocide.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="trans-panic-defence">Trans panic defence<a class="headerlink" href="#trans-panic-defence" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>But maybe the ugliest part of homicides against trans people are those who are caught and still get away with it. </p>
<p>The so-called “<a href="http://lgbtbar.org/what-we-do/programs/gay-and-trans-panic-defense/">trans panic defense</a>” is the legal argument that killing people specifically because they’re trans is an okay thing to do. No, really. They think their feelings are worth that much more than trans lives. And it works on juries. </p>
<p>In 2014, <a href="https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/philippines-trans-murder-marine-uses-trans-panic-defense.html">US Marine Joesph Pemberton brutally murdered trans woman Jennifer Laude in cold blood by drowning her to death in a toilet</a> after just <em>seeing</em> their genitals. After, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/aug/24/us-marine-philippines-transgender-murder-charge">he told a friend</a> “I think I killed a he/she”. He argued in court that he “felt like Laude had raped him” and was so “repulsed” that he acted to “defend his honor”. Pemberton was granted an absolute pardon, and Laude never got justice.</p>
<p>Fifteen-year-old boy Larry King was shot execution-style in front of his teacher and classmates by his classmate, fourteen-year-old Brandon McInerney. He walked into the classroom with a .22 calibre handgun and shot Larry, and only Larry twice, then left.
Larry’s crime, in Brandon’s eyes? He wore girls’ clothes. Nothing against the rules, nothing sexual, just a target for bullying. But Brandon was “disgusted”, and the jury found him not guilty of any hate crimes.
Also, just think for a second: what kind of family creates a fourteen year old child willing to kill a classmate for that? Imagine the pressure cooker of hate these people are being raised in. <em>That’s</em> abuse.</p>
<p><a href="http://mediacommons.org/tne/pieces/introduction-murder-jorge-steven-l-pez-mercado">Jorge Steven Lopez-Mercado</a> (gay, not trans) was decapitated, dismembered, and burned. But the police investigator’s professional opinion of the matter was “people who live this lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen.”</p>
<p>In 2022, Virginia Tech footballer Isimemen Etute was found not guilty for the murder of Jerry Smith. The two met on Tinder, met up in person, and engaged in consensual oral sex. Etute later regretted the encounter, sought him out a second, groped Smith’s genitals and then beat him to death. Etute was an elite athlete, and vastly overpowered Smith, breaking every bone in his face. Etute testified that he felt “violated” because Smith catfished him on Tinder. In a public statement, Isimemen’s lawyer said “Nobody deserves to die, but I don’t mind saying, don’t pretend you are something that you are not.”</p>
<p>The American Bar Association has <a href="http://lgbtbar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Gay-and-Trans-Panic-Defenses-Resolution.pdf">argued for the abolition of the panic defense</a>, but so far this has not happened and, given the current political climate, isn’t likely to soon.</p>
<p><img alt="Trans panic defense prohibited in minority of states" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/panicmap.jpg"></p>
<p>And even in states with the trans panic defence prohibited, it still happens. Virginia has <a href="https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1403818392599941121">specific legislation</a> prohibiting trans panic as a defence, but it was still used successfully in the Etute case.</p>
<p>It’s the <a href="https://twitter.com/iboudreau/status/1458951746441596930">Rittenhouse problem</a>: it’s not that people don’t <em>really</em> think this won’t harm trans people, it’s just that a lot of people think we should be doing that.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="bathrooms">Bathrooms<a class="headerlink" href="#bathrooms" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Fine, let’s talk bathrooms. Everybody wants to talk about bathrooms, I have to talk about bathrooms.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Not only do people not regularly engage with each other’s genitals in bathrooms, nobody wants trans men in the women’s bathroom or trans women in the men’s! That’s obviously absurd! It’s not about that, it’s about applying as much pressure as possible wherever there’s a scary case to be made.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s the full aside I originally wrote for this. But then the <a href="https://www.fox19.com/2022/07/08/transgender-butler-county-man-says-group-beat-him-up-using-wrong-restroom/">Butler County incident</a> happened.</p>
<p>The anti-trans lobby got what they wanted in Butler County, Ohio. The law requires people use sex-specific facilities according to the sex they were assigned at birth, rather than their current gender. </p>
<p>Noah Ruiz is a man who was assigned female at birth. He now identifies and presents as man. You can see him on camera <a href="https://www.fox19.com/2022/07/08/transgender-butler-county-man-says-group-beat-him-up-using-wrong-restroom/">starting at 0:40 here</a>; like I said, nobody wants him in a women’s bathroom, and he needs to use the men’s. But he went camping in Butler County, where that isn’t allowed. He even checked with the manager. So he used the only bathroom he was allowed in, the women’s, and was brutally assaulted for it. Another woman in the bathroom saw him and started screaming expletives and demanding he use the men’s, but of course he explained that was illegal. </p>
<p>When he left the bathroom, a group of large men came up, heard the distress, and assaulted him. They grabbed him, lifted him off the ground, choked him out and threatened to kill him for the perceived sexual slight. He was left with bruises on his head from being punched, as well as large cuts and gashes. </p>
<p>The Preble County deputies arrived, found the beaten and bloody Ruiz yelling in his own defence, and arrested <em>him</em>. They didn’t listen, just shoved him into the dirt and arrested him. The men who assaulted him were <em>not</em> arrested, and he was only ever permitted to make an assault report later.</p>
<p>Of course, this is the whole game, right? Heads I win, tails you lose. The bathroom bills aren’t about making spaces safer for women, they’re about finding a new way to attack trans people. And when those laws backfire, they’ll attack trans people for that too. The endgame is making an overtly hostile environment and ultimately criminalizing the existence of trans people outright.</p>
<p><img alt="butler gender critical comment" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/butler_gc.jpg"></p>
<p>And there’s always one more step of nastiness. You can always peek behind one more door, and find <a href="https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/118737/ohio-transgender-butler-county-man-sic-says-group-beat-him-sic-up-over-restroom/f30cd8ac-a9a3-4a8f-bc68-4a3f7eabd443">the gender critical forums</a>, where people are gathering to talk about how “she” did it to “herself”; that she was “asking for it”. That he was “walking around in a sex offender costume”, and it was a good thing he was assaulted. How “disguising yourself as the opposite sex is a dangerous game and always has been. Women have done it mainly for survival and freedom, men do it for fun and perverted thrills.”</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="passing">Passing<a class="headerlink" href="#passing" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>In the Butler County story we find this contradiction when it comes to trans people passing. “Passing” is when someone “passes” as the gender they’re meant to be. This is a bit reductive, but it’s still a useful concept to investigate. Basically, if a person “passes”, it means you can look at them and tell what their gender is from their presentation, whether they’re cis or transitioned. Modern medical science is <em>remarkably</em> good at this, even without surgery.</p>
<p>Anti-trans people <em>hate</em> passing, for a couple reasons.</p>
<p>When they picture trans women, they picture <a href="https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/9194967/740full-monty-python's-flying-circus-screenshot.jpg">John Cleese playing a lady</a>, not Abigail Thorn. And for trans men, instead of Benjamin Melzer, they’re picturing <a href="https://i0.wp.com/batman-news.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/wonder-woman-trailer-4-hd-screencaps76.jpeg">Gal Godot in a hat</a>.
The fact that people can and do effectively change their gender presentation breaks their whole worldview. Gender transition is supposed to be an invented fetish, self delusion, not a totally achievable thing. See how in the Butler County story the existence of a passing trans men didn’t fit into the imagined world they were trying to regulate, and failed gender policing erupted into violence instead.</p>
<p class="side-by-side align-top"><img alt="thorn" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/thorn.jpg">
<img alt="melzer" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/melzer.jpg"></p>
<p><em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abigail_Thorn">Abigail Thorn</a>, <a href="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Melzer">Benjamin Melzer</a></em></p>
<p>But trans people passing also prevents discrimination. Which, for some, is a bad thing.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/going-stealth/">Toby Beauchamp’s “Going Stealth - Transgender Politics and U.S. Surveillance Practices”</a> is a full 200-page book studying this issue. It shows how surveillance that profiles people and identifies threats based on categories of difference is threatened by nonconforming expression, especially gender nonconformity. Beauchamp argues that part of the resistance to trans normalization is motivated by transgender people’s perceived threat to the U.S. security apparatus.</p>
<p>But the security case applies in the case of ideologically motivated anti-trans sentiment too. People effectively passing prevents them from being effectively policed: In our world, where trans people can pass, attacks on trans people based on their appearance that are thorough enough to catch most trans people will also effect a large number of cisgendered people. </p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Unfortunately, genocide doesn’t actually depend on visible characteristics. The holocaust didn’t primarily consist of police trucks driving around and grabbing people off the street. The holocaust relied on bureaucrats using detailed government records to identify and isolate targets. The holocaust was not limited to visible physical differences and neither is this.</p>
</aside>
<p>Look too closely at TERF communities and you’ll quickly notice nonsense gender phrenology: people trying to analyze their friends’ bone structure to determine their sex, often <a href="https://twitter.com/mandolakes/status/1544369024913457155">ultimately determining that their cis friends are undercover trans “handlers” assigned to them by the trans cabal</a>, because 1) they’re angry and vulnerable people looking for enemies behind every corner and 2) their absurd gender dousing methods don’t work. (See related reading: <a href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/transvestigator-celebrity-conspiracy-theories">Miles Klee, “Unhinged ‘Transvestigators’ Think They’re the Only Cis People Left”</a>)</p>
<p><img alt="phrenology" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/26/the-genocidaires-exterminationism/phrenology1.jpg"></p>
<!-- TODO: Bioessentialism -->
<p>This happens in other cases too. Famously, <a href="https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/31749541/namibia-female-runners-banned-olympic-400-meters-high-testosterone-levels">testing for “normal” levels of testosterone and estrogen to determine sex doesn’t work</a>. There is no “normal” level of testosterone; even just <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiochem.2020.06.006">participating in sports</a> increases your testosterone levels above the reference intervals from the general population. In fact, the estrogen levels of cis women can actually overlap those of cis men! So there’s no possible way to make a reasonably-accurate “sex test” to determine if someone is trans. When “gender eligibility” tests <em>are</em> implemented, they backfire catestrophically, as seen in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/sport/africa/62057259">Wafcon 2022</a> where cisgender female olympian Barbra Banda was excluded due to her naturally high testosterone levels, even after taking artifical testosterone-<em>lowering</em> drugs. Anti-trans would <em>like</em> to be able to scientifically test for gender, but unlike passing, biology can’t be regulated by fiat. Hormones are a chemical example, but the point remains for the aesthetic case: trans people passing impedes anti-trans ideologues from discriminating against trans people.</p>
<p>These reasons are a major reason that anti-trans activists push so hard to prevent trans healthcare. Trans healthcare, especially hormone blocking and HRT, is safe and effective. But what it’s effective at is letting people pass and be comfortable in their own skin, and that’s precisely what the war is against.
This is especially the case for trans children: trans kids who were properly treated with puberty blockers earlier life pass more easily as adults, and removes an element of coercion.
For the trans genocide, it’s vital that people <em>are</em> coerced into being an assigned gender, and so a main part of the reason people advocate against trans healthcare is to prevent the specific desirable outcomes it provides. The healthcare is great for the patient, but it’s not good for the genocide.</p>
</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2019/02/origins-of-social-contagion-and-rapid.html">Julia Serano, “Origins of “Social Contagion” and “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria””</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://juliaserano.medium.com/transgender-agendas-social-contagion-peer-pressure-and-prevalence-c3694d11ed24">Julia Serano, “Transgender Agendas, Social Contagion, Peer Pressure, and Prevalence”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/at-orlando-weekly-we-say-gay-and-we-will-keep-saying-gay-regardless-of-what-gov-ron-desantis-or-91-florida-legislators-think-31183867">At Orlando Weekly, we say gay, and we also say lesbian, queer, bi, trans and intersex | Orlando Weekly</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/transvestigator-celebrity-conspiracy-theories">Miles Klee, “Unhinged ‘Transvestigators’ Think They’re the Only Cis People Left”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://sadbrowngirl.substack.com/p/a-trans-history-of-conversion-therapy?s=r">Jules Gill-Peterson, “A Trans History of Conversion Therapy”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/abigail-shriers-irreversible-damage-a-wealth-of-irreversible-misinformation/">Rose Lovell, “Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage: A Wealth of Irreversible Misinformation”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-constitutional-conflationists-on-abigail-shriers-irreversible-damage-and-the-dangerous-absurdity-of-anti-trans-trolls/">Sarah Fonseca, “The Constitutional Conflationists: On Abigail Shrier’s “Irreversible Damage” and the Dangerous Absurdity of Anti-Trans Trolls”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/irreversible-damage-to-the-trans-community-a-critical-review-of-abigail-shriers-book-irreversible-damage-part-one/">AJ Eckert, “Irreversible Damage to the Trans Community: A Critical Review of Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2015-3223">Olson, K. R., Durwood, L., DeMeules, M., & McLaughlin, K. A. (2016). Mental Health of Transgender Children Who Are Supported in Their Identities</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.012">Connolly, M. D., Zervos, M. J., Barone, C. J., Johnson, C. C., & Joseph, C. L. M. (2016). The Mental Health of Transgender Youth: Advances in Understanding</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.glaad.org/gap/abigail-shrier">Abigail Shrier | GLAAD Accountability Project</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-religion-arrests-riots-race-and-ethnicity-c65c1090ed923687716114be371e9fdb">Rebecca Boone, “Right-wing extremists amp up anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://acleddata.com/2022/06/16/fact-sheet-anti-lgbt-mobilization-is-on-the-rise-in-the-united-states/">Fact Sheet: Anti-lgbt+ Mobilization On The Rise In The United States | The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://fox11online.com/news/local/kiel-school-district-ends-title-ix-investigation-amid-ongoing-threats">Andrea Azzo, “Kiel School District ends Title IX investigation amid ongoing threats”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.nbc26.com/news/local-news/kiel-school-district-closes-title-ix-investigation">Kelsey Dickeson, “Kiel School District closes Title IX investigation”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.wbay.com/2022/06/03/kiel-school-board-says-sexual-harassment-investigation-is-closed/">Jason Zimmerman, “WILL responds to Kiel Area School District closing Title IX investigation”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="http://features.yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/04/04/figures-of-speech/">Jack McCordick, “Figures of Speech” about William F. Buckley</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Keep_Track/comments/vry1bq/the_terror_of_pride_month_2022/">Reddit thread, The terror of Pride Month 2022 on r/keep_track</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/africa/62057259">Celestine Karoney, Wafcon 2022: Zambian Barbra Banda ruled out over ‘gender eligibility’ issues</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIK-x5uT6oS-jLoc8axeD_zZ_TDK0OTeb">Cass Eris, “Irreversible Damage from a cog psych perspective” - YouTube (playlist)</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.readthepresentage.com/p/anti-lgbtq-right">Parker Molloy, “The anti-LGBTQ right is going to get people killed”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://first-draft.com/2022/06/15/everythings-coming-up-nazis/">Cassandra, “Everything’s Coming Up Nazis”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/histories-of-the-transgender-child">Jules Gill-Peterson, “Histories of the Transgender Child”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7gz53/the-conspiracy-singularity-has-arrived">Anna Merlan, “The Conspiracy Singularity Has Arrived”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://transsafety.network/posts/genspect-misleading-letters/">Mallory Moore, “Genspect exploit confusion over UK trans health reviews to spread misinformation globally”</a></li>
</ul>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:bioethics">
<p>To be clear, The Nuffield Council is a legitimate organization that writes reports on ethical issues in medicine, and — to my knowledge — not crackpot genocidal whackjobs, yet. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:bioethics" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:accommodation">
<p>There is a <em>nugget</em> of truth here, in that gender transition is an externalization of a problem from a (repressed) place that didn’t directly affect society to a place that does, and needs some level of accommodation. But the appropriate response to that is providing that reasonable accommodation, not waging a genocide on the inconvenient. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:accommodation" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>The Génocidaires: Laws2022-07-21T00:00:00-05:002022-07-21T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-07-21:/blog/2022/07/21/the-genocidaires-laws/<!-- ad: i hate your manifesto, your statistics and your lies -->
<hr/>
<p>So, we’ve talked broad strokes. Here’s where we start seeing specific policies emerge as part of the agenda.</p>
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for the same topics discussed previously, with a particular focus on state-sanctioned violence, modern state-perpetrated sexual violence, and extreme, genocidal anti-LGBTQ sentiment and action.</p>
<p>Special caution is advised for trans people or those with the trans loved ones who are the targets of policies discussed.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform">Genocide as a core of the platform</a></li>
<li><a href="#new-angry-law">New, angry law</a><ul>
<li><a href="#trans-medicine-rundown">Trans medicine rundown</a></li>
<li><a href="#texas-opinion-no-kp-0401">Texas Opinion No. KP-0401</a><ul>
<li><a href="#texas-fallout">Texas Fallout</a></li>
<li><a href="#dfps">DFPS</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#florida">Florida</a><ul>
<li><a href="#let-kids-be-kids-science">“Let Kids Be Kids”’ Science</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#federal-law">Federal law</a></li>
<li><a href="#just-a-whole-bunch-more">Just a whole bunch more</a></li>
<li><a href="#model-law">Model Law</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#appendix">Appendix</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform">Genocide as a core of the platform<a class="headerlink" href="#genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>In the last year or so the mainstream political attitude towards transgender people has gone from generalized bigotry to trans genocide becoming a pillar of the republican political platform. </p>
<!-- The party has driven its base into a frenzy over this issue so it can "[feed it red meat][ohio-veto]" as it were. -->
<p>Right off the bat, here’s Trump boosting the “activist teachers are infecting your children” social contagion rhetoric while emphasizing “parents’ rights” to… keep their children from wanting to be trans, I guess? To raucous applause, of course:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true" data-lang="en" data-nosnippet="true" data-tweetid="1530698271705939968"><div class="header" data-reply="atrupar/1530694632698531841"><a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/" title="journalist. sign up for my new newsletter, Public Notice https://t.co/nanxIVEj5h"><img onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1335565046290804738/eGXNmTvg_normal.jpg"/><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Aaron Rupar</span><span class="at">@atrupar</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1530694632698531841">atrupar</a>:</span><p>"No teacher should ever be allowed to teach transgender to our children without parental consent" -- Trump </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video controls="true" src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1530698224121561090/pu/vid/480x270/SQ242AqvkUFCteqf.mp4?tag=12"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1530698271705939968" target="_blank">Sat May 28 23:51:21 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The republican party <em>loves</em> the tribalist us-vs-them mentality. When the democrats are painted categorically as sexual predators and threats to children, family, and the American way, that only helps them. Here’s Rebecca Boone connecting some of the dots in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-religion-arrests-riots-race-and-ethnicity-c65c1090ed923687716114be371e9fdb?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter">“Right-wing extremists amp up anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur d’Alene.<br/>
…<br/>
A “massive right-wing media ecosystem” has been promoting the notion that “there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to ‘groom’ your children,” [extremism researcher] Lewis said.</p>
<p>The rhetoric has been amplified by right-wing social media accounts that use photos and videos of LGBTQ individuals to drive outrage among their followers.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- Platform -->
<p>Because I literally can’t write fast enough to keep up with the horrors, here’s the <a href="https://texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/6-Permanent-Platform-Committee-FINAL-REPORT-6-16-2022.pdf">Texas GOP Report of the Permanent 2022 Platform & Resolutions Committee</a>. As of 2022, the core platform (which is a hodgepodge of christian nationalist nonsense, in addition these bits) includes:</p>
</section><!-- ad: i hate your manifesto, your statistics and your lies -->
<hr>
<p>So, we’ve talked broad strokes. Here’s where we start seeing specific policies emerge as part of the agenda.</p>
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for nonstop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Content warnings for the same topics discussed previously, with a particular focus on state-sanctioned violence, modern state-perpetrated sexual violence, and extreme, genocidal anti-LGBTQ sentiment and action.</p>
<p>Special caution is advised for trans people or those with the trans loved ones who are the targets of policies discussed.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform">Genocide as a core of the platform</a></li>
<li><a href="#new-angry-law">New, angry law</a><ul>
<li><a href="#trans-medicine-rundown">Trans medicine rundown</a></li>
<li><a href="#texas-opinion-no-kp-0401">Texas Opinion No. KP-0401</a><ul>
<li><a href="#texas-fallout">Texas Fallout</a></li>
<li><a href="#dfps">DFPS</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#florida">Florida</a><ul>
<li><a href="#let-kids-be-kids-science">“Let Kids Be Kids”’ Science</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#federal-law">Federal law</a></li>
<li><a href="#just-a-whole-bunch-more">Just a whole bunch more</a></li>
<li><a href="#model-law">Model Law</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#appendix">Appendix</a></li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform">Genocide as a core of the platform<a class="headerlink" href="#genocide-as-a-core-of-the-platform" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>In the last year or so the mainstream political attitude towards transgender people has gone from generalized bigotry to trans genocide becoming a pillar of the republican political platform. </p>
<!-- The party has driven its base into a frenzy over this issue so it can "[feed it red meat][ohio-veto]" as it were. -->
<p>Right off the bat, here’s Trump boosting the “activist teachers are infecting your children” social contagion rhetoric while emphasizing “parents’ rights” to… keep their children from wanting to be trans, I guess? To raucous applause, of course:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1530698271705939968" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="atrupar/1530694632698531841"><a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/" title="journalist. sign up for my new newsletter, Public Notice https://t.co/nanxIVEj5h"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1335565046290804738/eGXNmTvg_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Aaron Rupar</span><span class="at">@atrupar</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1530694632698531841">atrupar</a>:</span><p>"No teacher should ever be allowed to teach transgender to our children without parental consent" -- Trump </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1530698224121561090/pu/vid/480x270/SQ242AqvkUFCteqf.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1530698271705939968" target="_blank">Sat May 28 23:51:21 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The republican party <em>loves</em> the tribalist us-vs-them mentality. When the democrats are painted categorically as sexual predators and threats to children, family, and the American way, that only helps them. Here’s Rebecca Boone connecting some of the dots in <a href="https://apnews.com/article/politics-religion-arrests-riots-race-and-ethnicity-c65c1090ed923687716114be371e9fdb?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter">“Right-wing extremists amp up anti-LGBTQ rhetoric online”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A toxic brew of hateful rhetoric has been percolating in Idaho and elsewhere around the U.S., well ahead of the arrests of the Patriot Front members at the pride event Saturday in Coeur d’Alene.<br>
…<br>
A “massive right-wing media ecosystem” has been promoting the notion that “there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to ‘groom’ your children,” [extremism researcher] Lewis said.</p>
<p>The rhetoric has been amplified by right-wing social media accounts that use photos and videos of LGBTQ individuals to drive outrage among their followers.</p>
</blockquote>
<!-- Platform -->
<p>Because I literally can’t write fast enough to keep up with the horrors, here’s the <a href="https://texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/6-Permanent-Platform-Committee-FINAL-REPORT-6-16-2022.pdf">Texas GOP Report of the Permanent 2022 Platform & Resolutions Committee</a>. As of 2022, the core platform (which is a hodgepodge of christian nationalist nonsense, in addition these bits) includes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Add penalties in Texas law for corporations operating in Texas who lead boycotts against Texas due to legislative action to protect the rights of Texans to decline vaccination, protect the unborn, stop the teaching of Critical Race Theory in schools, compete in sports with those of their own biological gender, or to protect children and juveniles against sexual organ mutilation and hormones and puberty blockers designed to fake transition from one gender to another.<br>
…<br>
We support passage of a law more comprehensive than the Florida law that prohibits instruction in sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools.
We advocate for those who violate any of the above to have their educator’s certification revoked and be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law where appropriate.<br>
…<br>
The official position of the Texas schools shall be that there are only two genders: biological male and biological female. We oppose transgender normalizing curriculum and pronoun use. <br>
…<br>
Gender Identity: We oppose all efforts to validate transgender identity. For the purpose of attempting to affirm a person age 21 or under if their perception is inconsistent with their biological sex, no medical practitioner or provider may engage in the following practices:<br>
a. Intervene in any way to prevent natural progression of puberty.<br>
b. Administer or provide opposite sex hormones.<br>
c. Perform any surgery on healthy body parts of the underage person.<br>
…<br>
Counseling Methods: Therapists, psychologists, and counselors licensed with the State of Texas shall not be forbidden or penalized by any licensing board for practicing Reintegrative Therapy or other counseling methods when counseling clients of any age with gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, ignoring all the factual inaccuracies in the language (“gender” isn’t biological, the word for that is sex) and just looking at the policy positions, that’s</p>
<ul>
<li>Explicit law to ban companies from speech on specific sides of certain issues</li>
<li>A full ban on teaching sexual education or theories of gender in schools</li>
<li>A decree as to how gender (not sex!) works, as well as a blanket ban on… pronoun use.</li>
<li>A blanket ban on medical treatment for gender dysphoria</li>
<li>A blanket ban on therapy for trans people</li>
</ul>
<p>In addition, there’s</p>
<ul>
<li>Special legal liability for doctors who have ever practised trans medicine in the past</li>
<li>Multiple condemnations of homosexuality</li>
<li>A legal carve-out for Christians followed by a condemnation of legal carve-outs</li>
</ul>
<p>This is honestly maybe the most disgusting thing I’ve had to read as part of research for this article, and that’s saying something. I’ve only been noting the gender things, but this document is so thoroughly cruel to so many different groups of people it’s astonishing. It’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/19/texas-gop-convention-maga">“full MAGA”</a> theocratic extremism. You’ve seen some of this already above, but it’s full of attempts to decree as fact statements that are patently wrong<sup id="fnref:biden"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:biden">2</a></sup> and to reenforce those lies through repetition. </p>
<p><img alt="Neidert: let's start rounding up people" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/21/the-genocidaires-laws/neidert.png"></p>
<p>This document comes out of the Texas republican party convention, which is disturbing in its own right. See <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-incredibly-disturbing-texas-gop-agenda-is-a-vision-for-a-theocratic-dystopia">Nathan J Robinson’s “The Incredibly Disturbing Texas GOP Agenda Is a Vision For a Theocratic Dystopia”</a>, which describes the “apocalyptic tone” set during the convention and the absolute siege mentality against the left, who are “destroying America”. To the GOP, whose leadership thoroughly believes in fully legalized discrimination against queer people for making an “abnormal lifestyle choice”, proper opposition to that attack looks like a repeal of hate crime laws, not recognizing marriages from other states, banning sex education “in any grade whatsoever”, and a full ban on trans-affirming medical care for both children and legal adults. I’m using Texas and its platform as a case study here, but <a href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000017f-1cf5-d281-a7ff-3ffd5f4a0000">Florida’s agenda is similar in tone and radicalism</a>.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536727720486264832" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="KarlBode/1536727112299646981"><a href="https://twitter.com/KarlBode/" title="tech, telecom, media, and consumer rights @techdirt, @motherboard, @ILSR, elsewhere. 'radical broadband populist.' helped build DSLReports."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1387914919736090625/4_SgKgct_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Karl Bode</span><span class="at">@KarlBode</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/KarlBode/status/1536727112299646981">KarlBode</a>:</span><p>GOP propaganda works through just brutal and relentless repetition. this anti-LGBTQ messaging isn't just coming from extremist groups, it's coming from most major Republican party leaders, and it will be absolutely everywhere by fall</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/KarlBode/status/1536727720486264832" target="_blank">Tue Jun 14 15:10:14 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>This isn’t threatening to become mainstream, this is all-the-way in the main stream.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="new-angry-law">New, angry law<a class="headerlink" href="#new-angry-law" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- ### Angry law -->
<p>That was the platform: the statement of intent. It’s not law yet. But it’s not hard to find clear, well-documented cases of this ideology formalizing itself in American legal policy.</p>
<p>These laws are “angry law”. They’re categorically driven by ideologues. The policies they codify are overreaching and don’t hold up to scrutiny, because they’re born from the extremist, obliterationist ideology. They often include special extralegal provisions to exempt their policy from normal due process and regulation, like setting up legal immunity. And usually there is a reasonable alternative on the table that has been intentionally left out of the policy discussion in order to railroad the most extreme solution in.</p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Note that “angry law” is just a tool being used here; there’s nothing about it that’s <em>inherently</em> genocidal, just arguably authoritarian. Texas’ anti-abortion S.B. 8, for instance, includes <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/abortion-law-texas.html">comprehensive legal immunity for state officials or the citizens it deputizes to harass its targets in ways the state legally cannot, as well as other obscene strongarming</a>. Other examples would include <a href="https://twitter.com/emmanuelfelton/status/1523833745937252354">Louisiana’s abortion ban</a>, civil asset forfeiture, and huge swaths of criminal law. I have some other notes on this, I’ll probably give it its own article someday.</p>
</aside>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="trans-medicine-rundown">Trans medicine rundown<a class="headerlink" href="#trans-medicine-rundown" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (agreed standards, caution, blockers) -->
<p>If “genital mutilation of children” were the first thing you ever heard about trans healthcare, you might think the child abuse argument had a point. That’s intentional; this rhetoric relies on you focusing on the harms it discusses instead of checking to see if the point they’re making is legitimate. It isn’t.</p>
<p>I want to talk more about some of the abject cruelty seen in anti-trans legislation, but to understand how divorced from reality it is you’ll need a quick medical primer. You know, facts.</p>
<p>While there are slight variances in the Standards of Care documents published by different organizations, the <a href="https://www.apa.org/practice/guidelines/transgender.pdf">American Psychological Association</a>, <a href="https://www.endocrine.org/clinical-practice-guidelines/gender-dysphoria-gender-incongruence">The Endocrine Society</a>, <a href="https://endocrine.org/-/media/endocrine/files/advocacy/position-statement/position_statement_transgender_health_pes.pdf">The Pediatric Endocrine Society</a>, <a href="https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v7/SOC%20V7_English2012.pdf">The World Professional Association for Transgender Health</a>, <a href="https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2021/03/health-care-for-transgender-and-gender-diverse-individuals">The American Collages of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists</a>, <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/clinicians/transforming-health/health-care-providers/affirmative-care.html">The Center for Disease Control</a> and more (<a href="https://doi.org/10.5694/mja17.01044">MJA</a>, <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/142/4/e20182162/37381/Ensuring-Comprehensive-Care-and-Support-for">AAP</a>, <a href="https://www.ama-assn.org/health-care-advocacy/advocacy-update/march-26-2021-state-advocacy-update">AMA</a>,
<a href="https://www.apa.org/about/policy/resolution-gender-identity-change-efforts.pdf">the APA again</a>…) agree that:</p>
<ul>
<li>Nonstereotypical gender expression is not pathological (relating to or caused by disease) per se and should not be treated as such</li>
<li><a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gender%20dysphoria">Gender dysphoria</a> in adults should be treated progressively by mental health counselling, non-medical social steps, hormone therapy, and finally surgery if necessary.</li>
<li>Fully-reversible treatments (hormone blockers) are preferable to semi-reversible treatments and irreversible treatments (surgery), and all patients should be counselled on options before beginning any treatment (which requires informed consent)</li>
<li>Medical intervention for transgender youth and adults is effective, safe (when appropriately monitored), and has been established as the medical standard of care</li>
<li>Treatment plans put together by <em>qualified</em> doctors in cooperation with informed patients suffering from gender dysphoria are medically necessary, not cosmetic or optional</li>
<li>Failure to treat gender dysphoria is known to induce severe health risks far in excess<sup id="fnref:cost-efficacy"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:cost-efficacy">3</a></sup> of the risks associated with treatment</li>
<li><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/american-medical-association-backs-nationwide-conversion-therapy-ban-n1088731">Conversion therapy</a> or other direct hostility toward the patient was attempted in the past but is now known to be both ineffective and extremely dangerous (conversion therapy is often literal torture)</li>
</ul>
<p>As is the case with all medicine, policy for minors is more cautious:</p>
<ul>
<li>Extra emphasis is placed on the importance of requiring evaluations before beginning any treatment, “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/health/transgender-health-care.html?action=click&pgtype=Article&state=default&module=styln-transgender-youth-us&variant=show&region=BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT&block=storyline_flex_guide_recirc#:~:text=No%20single%20set,Dr.%20Chong%20said.">to ensure patients make a fully informed decision that protects their future well-being</a>“</li>
<li>Psychotherapy (affirming) is recommended to reducing distress related the gender dysphoria and ameliorating any other psychosocial difficulties</li>
<li><a href="https://hrc-prod-requests.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/files/assets/resources/Schools-In-Transition.pdf?mtime=20200713142742">Children in particular should not be pressured to express their gender in a way contrary to their self-identification</a></li>
<li>If a minor is determined to need physical treatment, fully reversible hormone blockers should be used to temporarily prevent the development of sex characteristics that are difficult or impossible to reverse in the future<ul>
<li>Hormone suppression is a temporary process and <em>does not</em> inevitably lead to pursuing sex reassignment</li>
<li>Studies show that young children with gender dysphoria are less likely to have that continue throughout adulthood than adults: see <a href="https://doi.org/10.1097/00004583-200104000-00006">2001 Cohen-Kettenis letter</a> and studies cited therein</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Withholding treatment (specifically puberty suppression) is not a neutral option. Puberty suppression is specifically used to <em>prevent</em> the need for more serious treatment or surgery later in life</li>
<li><strong><em>Gender-affirming genital surgery should never be be carried out on minors</em></strong><ul>
<li>Genital surgery is <em>never</em> to be given to patients under the age of majority. </li>
<li>Even for adults there are strict limits on this; dysphoria must be diagnosed, well-documented, and persistent. Patients must already be living in their gender role for more than a year to even be candidates for surgery (although some argue these restrictions are too strict for adults giving informed consent)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>Trans children are treated differently than trans adults, they’re treated with much <em>more</em> care and caution. But for adults, too, the emphasis is on caution through. (So much so that, in practice, it’s often difficult for even adults to get prescriptive care, even after years of diagnosis and treatment.)</p>
<!-- > <cite markdown='1'>[WPATH Standards of Care v7](https://www.wpath.org/media/cms/Documents/SOC%20v7/SOC%20V7_English2012.pdf), *Psychological Assessment of Children and Adolescents*:</cite>
> For adolescents, the assessment phase should also be used to inform youth and their families about the possibilities and limitations of different treatments. **This is necessary for informed consent**... Correct information may alter a youth's desire for certain treatment, if the desire was based on unrealistic expectations of its possibilities. -->
<p>Again, <strong><em>Gender-affirming genital surgery is not performed on minors.</em></strong> For it to be <em>would</em> be medical malpractice, as has already been clearly established by the mainstream medical community.
And even in adults it is well understood that it is only for a subset of patients that “relief from gender dysphoria cannot be achieved without modification of their primary and/or secondary sex characteristics to establish greater congruence with their gender identity.”
In other words, <em>nobody is running around snipping things off willy-nilly.</em></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1549105609420808194" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/RepMTG/" title="Wife, Mother, and Congresswoman representing Georgia’s 14th District"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1522919169599184896/CVPC3b3M_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸</span><span class="at">@RepMTG</span></div></a></div><div><p>We must do everything we can to prevent Dr. Dick Levine’s pre-teen #WeenieChop </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1549105571768553474/pu/vid/640x360/5_eqDM7rZ-fdklF-.mp4?tag=12" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/RepMTG/status/1549105609420808194" target="_blank">Mon Jul 18 18:55:32 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The people who say otherwise are bold-faced liars.</p>
<p>What <em>is</em> recommended for minors suffering from dysphoria — after consultation and diagnosis, of course — are puberty blockers. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/edrv/article/40/1/97/5123979">Puberty blockers have been used safely to delay puberty since 1981</a>, with <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jes/article/3/5/965/5421014">30 years of data showing them to be safe and effective</a>.
Cisgendered children with have been treated for puberty blockers for decades <a href="http://pedsinreview.aappublications.org/content/27/10/373">without any serious concerns about sterilization</a>.
(Who would toss around baseless claims about sterilization? Just you wait!) </p>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2020.1747768">They are especially valuable in trans healthcare</a>; see the famous <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9879847#10.1007/s007870050073">Cohen-Kettenis, P. T., & van Goozen, S. H. M. (1998). Pubertal delay as an aid in diagnosis and treatment of a transsexual adolescent. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 7(4), 246–248.</a> paper about a twelve-year-old who wrote a suicide note explaining how he’d rather die than be forced to go through the wrong puberty. <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789423#doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.0978">One of the latest studies</a>, published just February of this year, shows that in a sample group of adolescents, “receipt of gender-affirming care, including puberty blockers and gender-affirming hormones, was associated with 60% lower odds of moderate or severe depression and 73% lower odds of suicidality over a 12-month follow-up”. A 73% reduction in suicidality. That’s astonishing. And that’s the truly crucial thing: the deaths caused by dysphoria are suicides, and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/hormone-therapy-linked-lower-suicide-risk-trans-youths-study-finds-rcna8617">medical care reduces suicide across the board</a>. </p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Puberty blockers are the conservative alternative to hormone replacement therapy, and highly effective at producing positive outcomes for patients. Depriving a trans child of blockers at a young age may cause them to develop the wrong secondary sex characteristics, and indirectly <em>necessitate</em> unnecessary, dangerous surgeries like the so-feared mastectomy. Attacking blockers doesn’t only cause psychological suffering, it creates major unnecessary health risks.</p>
</aside>
<p>Speaking of the ol’ snip-snip, that’s not what trans healthcare looks like for adults, either. Some people do get cosmetic surgery, but in most cases for fully transitioned adults, “trans healthcare” looks like <a href="https://www.bumc.bu.edu/endo/clinics/transgender-medicine/guidelines/">a sustained regimen of painful hormone shots</a>. Trans people can’t just get a one-off operation, they need a continuous regimen of care, somewhat parallel to the diabetics who require insulin to self-regulate.
I say this to point out two things. First, that this treatment is difficult and physically taxing for the patient. It’s not fun and it’s not minor; people are only going on this medicine because they need it.
But second, I want to point out that <em>transgender adults need continuous care</em>. Banning trans medical care doesn’t just stop people from transitioning, it cripples the entire trans population overnight. That’s why attacking healthcare is so dangerous, but it’s also what makes them such attractive targets to the genocidalists who want the trans population in agony and — really — want the mass suicides such a ban induces.</p>
<p>I really can’t emphasize this enough: literally <em>all</em> relevant major medical organizations disagree entirely with the anti-trans agenda and its talking points. The republican anti-trans stance in particular seems almost antagonistic towards science in general, as part of a general mistrust of intellectuality.</p>
<p>So now, with reality firmly behind us, back to our story where everyone involved deliberately ignores all this, because lawmakers’ feelings don’t care about facts. </p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="texas-opinion-no-kp-0401">Texas Opinion No. KP-0401<a class="headerlink" href="#texas-opinion-no-kp-0401" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (long study, consent trick, circumcision, cps weaponization, CPS abuse) -->
<p>The Texas KP-0401 opinion is a blatant example of angry anti-science law, and the one nearest to my heart. It also represents both the spirit of the genocidal ideology and the willingness of the assailants to write awful law in order to achieve their ideological goals. </p>
<!-- August 6: Abbot directs DFPS to issue a determination concerning "genital mutilation"
August 11: Masters-Abbott request https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-receives-response-from-dfps-regarding-whether-genital-mutilation-through-reassignment-surgery-constitutes-child-abuse
August 23: Krause-Paxton request https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/opinions/51paxton (Locked, lost?)
Feb 18: Paxton opinion drafted
Feb 21: Paxton opinion published https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/ken-paxton/kp-0401
Feb 22: Abbott letter to Masters https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-dfps-to-investigate-gender-transitioning-procedures-as-child-abuse
Feb 22: DFPS announces cooperation https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crossroads-lab/article258692193.html
Feb 22: DFPS initiates investigations into trans families
March 1: Texas primary elections
March 24: SB1646 introduced https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB1646/2021
May 24: Primary runoff
May 31: Texas 87th session ends; SB 1646 fails. Criminalization continues -->
<p>It started August 6, 2021, when Governor Greg Abbott (R, governor since 2015) wrote the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (<abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr>) asking them to clarify whether — under current state law — gender reassignment surgery constituted child abuse. <abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr> commissioner Jamie Masters replied August 11 in <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-receives-response-from-dfps-regarding-whether-genital-mutilation-through-reassignment-surgery-constitutes-child-abuse">a letter</a> that concludes reassignment surgery is abuse when not medically necessary, which is mostly correct. This letter only seems concerned with gender reassignment surgery (so that fun word “mutilation” can be thrown around as much as possible), and not other trans healthcare practices.</p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This letter does imply that gender-affirming genital surgery on children is a real practice, which is a lie that will continue throughout. Again, this is not done. The only genital surgery regularly performed on (non-intersex) children — and an exception I would have to make for the “<em>Nobody is running around snipping things off.</em>” claim — is circumcision; a permanent, non-medically-necessary procedure performed on infants incapable of participating in any way in the decision-making process, often for primarily religious or cosmetic reasons, and arguably <em>does</em> meet the criteria for child abuse given in Masters’ original letter.</p>
</aside>
<p>At this point, Rep. Matt Krause(R) enters.
You might remember Krause as the man who wrote the demand that Texas schools audit and report the physical locations of everything on his manifesto-like list of books about topics <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/10/28/1050013664/texas-lawmaker-matt-krause-launches-inquiry-into-850-books">he personally dislikes</a>, like human rights and women. He’s also the one who requested an opinion from AG Ken Paxton as to whether Texas <a href="https://www2.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/opinions/51paxton/rq/2022/pdf/RQ0454KP.pdf">“has the sovereign power to defend itself from invasion”</a> as an approach to border security (because <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2022/03/30/operation-lone-star-texas-explained/">Operation Lone Star</a> had too much oversight for him, I guess), or his support for <a href="https://www.dallasnews.com/news/education/2021/11/18/who-is-matt-krause-texas-lawmaker-who-launched-book-probe-has-other-jobs-that-illustrate-worldview/">nationalist historical revisionism</a>.
Matt’s true passion, though, is the Gays. Before his appointment, Matt worked with a group <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/liberty-counsel">identified by the Southern Poverty Center as being anti-LGBTQ extremist organizations</a> and continues to push their ideology from office with his legal activism to strongly regulate areas relating to gender and sexuality, including pushes to expand Texas’s already-absurd obscenity laws.
He’s a crazy person, but also completely representative of the Texas republican party.</p>
<p>This Matt Krause wrote <a href="https://www2.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/opinions/51paxton/rq/2021/pdf/RQ0426KP.pdf">another request</a> (he writes <em>many</em>) to Ken Paxton arguing for a formal expansion of the notion of child abuse to include gender reassignment procedures. Paxton responded on February the 21st by writing the now-infamous <a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/ken-paxton/kp-0401">KP-0401</a> opinion, which more specifically advises that a broad range of medical treatment for gender dysphoria (explicitly including non-surgical medication and procedures that risk, but do not intentionally induce, infertility, and even implicitly including therapy) categorically constitute child abuse. Note the escalation.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1495873633440485381" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/KenPaxtonTX/" title="Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Follow @TXAG for official state business and news from my office."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1488655496739500032/bhQuFaVo_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Attorney General Ken Paxton</span><span class="at">@KenPaxtonTX</span></div></a></div><div><p>Sex-change operations and puberty blockers prescribed to kids is “child abuse” under Texas law.</p><p>These procedures are monstrous and tragic. “I’ll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans. <a href='https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-declares-so-called-sex-change-procedures-children-and-prescription-puberty-blockers-be' target='_blank'>texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/KenPaxtonTX/status/1495873633440485381" target="_blank">Mon Feb 21 21:30:40 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/opinions/ken-paxton/kp-0401">KP-0401</a> is 13 pages, relatively long for a AG opinion. It primarily consists of rhetorical prose and standard anti-trans assertions mixed with the childbirth-fetishistic ideas also seen in the Texan anti-abortion movement. (See also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/abortion-law-texas.html">S.B. 8</a>, etc.)
The opinion derides the choice to “destroy a fully functioning sex organ” and spends an immense amount of time lauding the danger posed to the right to procreate.
It even goes so low as to wield historical eugenicist campaigns against minority groups as an argument in favour of preventing sterilization procedures even — as in this case — when medically advisable. Yes, really: one of his key arguments for law denying individuals bodily autonomy is the history of governments denying individuals bodily autonomy: “violations”, in his own words. </p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>I would love to say here that sterilization isn’t a serious concern for trans people, but that isn’t so. In reality, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/its-not-just-japan-many-us-states-require-transgender-people-get-sterilized">trans people are frequently required to be medically sterilized by the state</a>, even in the US. Many states fail the <a href="http://yogyakartaprinciples.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/principles_en.pdf">Yogyakarta Principles</a> by requiring proof of medical sterilization to issue trans people <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws">required legal identification</a> including, you guessed it, <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/identity_document_laws">Texas</a>, where you need that ID to vote. </p>
<p>I’ll say that again: Gregg Abbott actively pushes policies that require trans people to medically sterilize themselves for the right to vote, yet throws around the risk of <em>voluntary</em> sterilization to justify child separation. Just another reminder that the people here don’t care a wit about any of the decency they cite.</p>
</aside>
<p>Paxton directly compares parents of trans children, who he calls facilitators throughout, to abusers a la Munchausen by proxy, and uses that to argue for a suspension of the parent’s right to consent to a child’s medical treatment for this particular treatment.</p>
<!-- Consent -->
<p>The lip service paid to importance of consent is a familiar little hoax. Consent <em>should</em> be a crucial issue to consider, one of the most important when discussing any medical treatment. But in regards to trans healthcare, anti-trans legislators’ concerns are never <em>really</em> about the patient’s consent or anyone else’s.
To the ideologue, “[Person X] should choose” is a card that to play when that would make the choice you want made. If you think they’d make a different decision than you, well, it can’t be a matter of consent anymore, you have to argue it’s abuse.
Any reasonable conversation about an established medical treatment would need to divide consent somewhere between the patient, their guardians, and the prescribing physician. Paxton doesn’t trust any of those parties to always prevent gender transition — which, again, is his only real goal here — so he grants the responsibility of consent to the state, instead of anyone involved. It’s a sham.</p>
<p>Many of the assertions in the opinion are blatant factual inaccuracies, even in addition to the deceit that child genital surgery was ever seriously an issue in the first place.
For example, Paxton lists an increased risk of mental health issue as a dangerous side-effect of transitioning, when the studies overwhelmingly show the opposite. The <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-suicide-risk-prevent-summary/">UCLA Suicide Risk and Prevention for Transgender People: Summary of Research Findings - September 2021</a> found that factors related to <em>not</em> transitioning — religious and social rejection, conversion therapy, discrimination — drastically <em>increased</em> suicidal tendency. There has been an enormous amount of serious, peer-reviewed medical research on this issue, and there is <em>no</em> evidence to suggest the act of transitioning is harmful to mental health.
But, in case you thought there might have been even the slightest amount of sincere care about suicide, after this was published Texas <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/12/texas-lgbtq-resources-department-family-protective-services/">removed information about its trans suicide prevention hotline from is website</a>.
It’s… really not subtle.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1439320899111591941" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="joss_prior/1439320896842485764"><a href="https://twitter.com/joss_prior/" title="LGBTQ+🌈 Bi/Pan. Trans-Femme. Polyam. 5 overturned perma-bans. 🚫 Gender-Critical conspiracy-theorists🚫 ⚠️Might 'go off on one' sometimes. 👍 ⚠️ She/Her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1536124099076005891/XQUZBQT-_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Joss Prior 🌈Chemically altered...🌈</span><span class="at">@joss_prior</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1439320896842485764">joss_prior</a>:</span><p>Like many others, the point of transition arrived as a 'fuck it, I may as well give it a try if I'm thinking of ending it, whats worse than that' moment.</p><p>Transition brought me the peace of mind, I thought impossible to experience.</p><p>3/</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/joss_prior/status/1439320899111591941" target="_blank">Sat Sep 18 20:10:18 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- He laughably asserts simply that "The medical evidence does not demonstrate that children and adolescents benefit" and "There is no evidence that long-term mental health outcomes are improved or that rates of suicide are reduced by hormonal or surgical intervention", which are both outright lies. Here is that medical evidence: TODO -->
<p>This was done — rather conspicuously — immediately before the Texas primary elections and the <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/gop-ag-candidate-profiles-incumbent-ken-paxton/">relatively competitive AG race</a>. Paxton won by a wide margin despite (or, realistically, due in part to) having an <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2019/06/19/ken-paxton-criminal-case-timeline-texas-attorney-general-fraud/">active indictment for multiple counts of first-degree securities fraud</a>, <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/top-texas-republicans-to-stump-with-trump-in-conroe-rally-saturday/">being endorsed by insurrection leader Donald Trump</a>, and <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/dfw/news/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-refuses-to-hand-over-january-6-records/">violating Texas public records law by refusing to turn over documents relating to January 6th</a>.
Gillian Branstetter of the ACLU described the Texas election as a “<a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1496095537694658565">race to the bottom on trans rights</a>”, commenting on how anti-trans policy is exceedingly popular among Texas republican voters.</p>
<p>This doesn’t come as a surprise to Texas GOP leadership: several different reporters reported hearing on a call that attacking trans families was polling at 75%-80%:</p>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499057125493981200" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/jdavidgoodman/" title="Houston Bureau Chief for The New York Times. I cover Texas. Previously @NYTMetro david.goodman@nytimes.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1108367478089023489/aRnEjPiy_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">J. David Goodman</span><span class="at">@jdavidgoodman</span></div></a></div><div><p>NEW: The campaign of @GregAbbott_TX sees child abuse investigations for the parents of transgender children as a political winner</p><p>“That is a 75, 80 percent winner," says @granitewinger, his campaign strategist in a call with reporters. Says Democrats are "are out of touch.”</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/jdavidgoodman/status/1499057125493981200" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 16:20:44 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499061949362888704" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="PatrickSvitek/1499060513363435520"><a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/" title="Primary political correspondent, @TexasTribune | psvitek@texastribune.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1465428693766098944/LmmsPX3L_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Patrick Svitek</span><span class="at">@PatrickSvitek</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1499060513363435520">PatrickSvitek</a>:</span><p>Carney on Abbott's transgender care investigation order: "That is a 75-80% winner. ... That is a winning issue. Texans have common sense."</p><p>"This is why the Democrats across the country are out of touch."</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/PatrickSvitek/status/1499061949362888704" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 16:39:54 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499061969311059972" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel/" title="Covering politics for @washingtonpost. daveweigel@gmail.com, 202-334-7387. @CWAUnion member. Avatar by @damnyouregis. Buy my book: https://t.co/6sWfZ4MNgH"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1532808731292991496/8O1sCdS6_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">David Weigel</span><span class="at">@daveweigel</span></div></a></div><div><p>On #TXGov call, I asked Abbott campaign about running on his "gender-affirming care = child abuse" order.</p><p>"That is a 75-80% winner," said @granitewinger. "I don't believe even O'Rourke would think that if a parent caught off the hand of their kid, that would not be child abuse."</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1499061969311059972" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 16:39:59 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
<!-- Naivety -->
<p>Between February 21st and the 22nd, there was optimism from some due to the fact that this was a nonbinding interpretation of existing law, and did not constitute any sort of new legislation. But that analysis fails to see how the letter and opinion and later the executive order exist as meditated pieces of a political movement. The goal was eradication of trans people, and the goal will continue to be eradication of trans people. None of it is happening in a liberal constitutional vacuum.</p>
<p>Febuary 22nd, one day after the Paxton opinion, <a href="https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-dfps-to-investigate-gender-transitioning-procedures-as-child-abuse">Greg Abbott wrote <abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr> commissioner Jamie Masters</a> instructing them to “conduct a prompt and thorough investigation of any reported instances of these abusive procedures in the State of Texas”, where the antecedent of “these abusive procedures” explicitly includes puberty blocking drugs (which, again, is <em>not</em> abuse, and is in fact the universally recommended treatment). </p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1496114209238794247" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/" title="Texas Governor Greg Abbott's Personal Twitter Feed"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1106778059590565889/M-ak-U5F_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Greg Abbott</span><span class="at">@GregAbbott_TX</span></div></a></div><div><p>Texas Attorney General: “There is no doubt" that gender transition of minors is ‘child abuse’ under Texas law.</p><p>The Texas Dept. of Family & Protective Services will enforce this ruling and investigate & refer for prosecution any such abuse.</p><p><a href='https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/02/21/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-health-care-for-transgender-children-is-abuse/' target='_blank'>dallasnews.com/news/politics/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GregAbbott_TX/status/1496114209238794247" target="_blank">Tue Feb 22 13:26:38 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1496231235416469505" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/GovAbbott/" title="Official news from the Office of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. You can follow the governor's personal feed @GregAbbott_TX"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/582638954597330944/HDKMBXZx_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gov. Greg Abbott</span><span class="at">@GovAbbott</span></div></a></div><div><p>Directing @TexasDFPS to conduct prompt & thorough investigations of any reported instances of Texas children being subjected to abusive gender-transitioning procedures.</p><p><a href='https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-directs-dfps-to-investigate-gender-transitioning-procedures-as-child-abuse' target='_blank'>gov.texas.gov/news/post/gove…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GovAbbott/status/1496231235416469505" target="_blank">Tue Feb 22 21:11:39 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<!-- Not a ruling, the law actually failed -->
<p>Note that Abbott called this a “ruling” which isn’t true — it’s a nonbinding opinion issued by the AG. In fact, it’s <em>so</em> not a law that the hyper-partisan <a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB1646/2021">Senate Bill 1646</a> which would have codified the policy that trans healthcare is child abuse into actual law went up before the Texas senate and failed repeatedly over the course of two days before dying, because <a href="https://legiscan.com/TX/rollcall/SB1646/id/1065780">literally only republicans would vote for it</a>.</p>
<p>Which, actually, looking at it now, I got angry about way back when it was first introduced, apparently.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381656053482422278" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof’d • cyber artisan • to know me is to love me"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1457503215503790085/-oAda_Yd_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>It’s really astonishing how eager conservatives are to hold people at gunpoint to keep them from deviating, including viciously, savagely attack any outgroup they can position as “defeatable” <a href='https://twitter.com/chasestrangio/status/1381641701245194244' target='_blank'>twitter.com/chasestrangio/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381656053482422278" target="_blank">Mon Apr 12 17:10:47 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381657512651407366" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1381656053482422278"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531872210708840451/jMQqpBZC_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381656053482422278">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>If you’re worried about medical abuse, you extend medical liability. That’s not what this is. That’s not what this fight is about for them. It’s about eradication.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381657512651407366" target="_blank">Mon Apr 12 17:16:35 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381657515058954243" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1381657512651407366"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531872210708840451/jMQqpBZC_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381657512651407366">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>And not eradication of trans people, or gay people, or drug users, or specific ethnicities. It’s about eradicating *whatever* the least popular demographic happens to be, and maintaining a constant cycle of populist culture purges.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381657515058954243" target="_blank">Mon Apr 12 17:16:36 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1381658970285355010" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1381657515058954243"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531872210708840451/jMQqpBZC_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381657515058954243">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>The culture war is between constantly, violently eliminating whatever populations are at the edges of popularity OR just not doing that.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1381658970285355010" target="_blank">Mon Apr 12 17:22:23 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="texas-fallout">Texas Fallout<a class="headerlink" href="#texas-fallout" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>Investigations into families began immediately <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/01/us/texas-child-abuse-trans-youth.html">starting with an investigation into an employee of <abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr> with a trans daughter</a>, who was also put on suspension after being investigated by her own employer. This was a choice, not a coincidence. Targeting social workers specifically acts as intimidation against the people in the best position to help — “we won’t have you supporting transgenderism in your community and we’re not afraid to go after you directly if you do”. </p>
<!-- Investigated just for having a trans child -->
<p>That case also revealed that transgenderism was specifically being used as cause to weaponize an abuse investigation independently from any specific evidence or even claims of harm: according to the promptly-filed <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/doe-v-abbott-petition">ACLU lawsuit</a>, the state’s investigator told the parents that the only allegation against them was that their transgender daughter might have been provided with gender-affirming health care and was “currently transitioning from male to female.” This can be a purely social decision — there may be no medicine involved at all — but this was enough to trigger taking children away from their parents. </p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>See the escalation here: “concern” about non-existent child surgery stretches a little bit into criminalizing healthcare that is real but safe, which stretches into investigating families for child abuse due to the child’s presentation and expression. This incremental escalation is not a natural phenomenon, it is manufactured. The incremental shifts are not based on any policy process: all the republican lawmakers involved started out wanting trans people eliminated, and took whatever incremental steps toward that goal they could. Throughout the process, they work towards the specific goal of genocide.</p>
</aside>
<p>Harris County attorney Christian Menefee of <abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/science/texas-abbott-transgender-child-abuse.html">called the investigation</a> “a complete misrepresentation of the definition of abuse in the family code” and <a href="(https://cao.harriscountytx.gov/Newsroom/Press-Releases/harris-county-attorney-menefee-responds-to-governor-abbotts-and-general-paxtons-new-policy-banning-healthcare-for-transgender-children)">released a statement saying</a> that “Governor Abbott and General Paxton are ignoring medical professionals and <strong>intentionally misrepresenting the law</strong> to the detriment of transgender children and their families.”. Dr. Alex Keuroghlian <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/23/science/texas-abbott-transgender-child-abuse.html">denounced it</a> as “legislating in a manner that is entirely divorced from medical evidence, consensus and mainstream practice.”</p>
<!-- Mandatory reporting -->
<p>But parents aren’t the only ones at risk. As Abbott explicitly outlined in his letter, because Texas is calling all trans children abused, this triggers mandatory reporting requirements.
All licensed professionals in Texas who interact with children — doctors, nurses, teachers — are legally obligated to report for child abuse the parents of any child they <em>think</em> are receiving gender-affirming treatment.
This is an onerous requirement on decent people, but it also grants an incredible amount of power to anti-trans professionals to hunt down and attack trans families. To trans children, this means all the adults they’re supposed to able to trust and confide in have been weaponized against them, and saying the wrong thing may mean forcible separation from their parents.</p>
<p>If you’re a family with a trans child in TX your only options are to either get the recommended medical care and treatment, which is now presumptively child abuse, or abruptly stop your child’s medical treatment, which is known to be physically dangerous (in addition to dramatically increasing suicide risk), which is <em>also</em> child abuse in TX. Although, unlike the first option, the child abuse of abruptly stopping your child’s treatment plan is real. So in Texas… having a trans child just <em>is</em> child abuse, even though every action you took was both legal and medically advisable. This is an effective ban on transgender children in Texas, ex post facto and all. The policy isn’t tied to preventing any abusive action, it’s just meant to be as destructive as possible in order to remove the population.</p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1469362345793273860" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="GBBranstetter/1469362016347435008"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/" title="Comms Strategy @ACLU // Opinions are my own // She/Her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1515980642772828160/DL6b2hWs_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gillian Branstetter</span><span class="at">@GBBranstetter</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469362016347435008">GBBranstetter</a>:</span><p>This morning, Ken Paxton went on a local talk radio show and made clear this order from DFPS does not go far enough, that he may very well prosecute parents, providers, you name it for any affirming care given to a minor, including reversible puberty blockers or HRT.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469362345793273860" target="_blank">Fri Dec 10 17:44:17 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1469363231806402563" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="GBBranstetter/1469362345793273860"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/" title="Comms Strategy @ACLU // Opinions are my own // She/Her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1515980642772828160/DL6b2hWs_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gillian Branstetter</span><span class="at">@GBBranstetter</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469362345793273860">GBBranstetter</a>:</span><p>This is the context for the closing of the only gender clinic for youth in the state of Texas a few weeks ago. The governor and the Attorney General are very seriously threatening to prosecute them for saving the lives of transgender kids. <a href='https://19thnews.org/2021/11/dallas-childrens-hospital-ends-genecis-program/' target='_blank'>19thnews.org/2021/11/dallas…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469363231806402563" target="_blank">Fri Dec 10 17:47:48 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1469363632232353799" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="GBBranstetter/1469363231806402563"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/" title="Comms Strategy @ACLU // Opinions are my own // She/Her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1515980642772828160/DL6b2hWs_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gillian Branstetter</span><span class="at">@GBBranstetter</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469363231806402563">GBBranstetter</a>:</span><p>Not just the doctors, but the parents and caregivers of trans kids as well. They want to weaponize the state's child welfare agency to remove trans children from their home, place them in foster care, and put their parents and doctors in prison. That's not hyperbole.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469363632232353799" target="_blank">Fri Dec 10 17:49:24 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1469364954776100874" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="GBBranstetter/1469363632232353799"><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/" title="Comms Strategy @ACLU // Opinions are my own // She/Her"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1515980642772828160/DL6b2hWs_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gillian Branstetter</span><span class="at">@GBBranstetter</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469363632232353799">GBBranstetter</a>:</span><p>SB8 is medieval in its cruelty, and it's already having devastating effects. But the bloodlust behind that law is not limited to people who need abortion--the same people are going after some of the most vulnerable kids in our country and for the same reason.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/GBBranstetter/status/1469364954776100874" target="_blank">Fri Dec 10 17:54:39 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Again, this isn’t theoretical. From the <a href="https://www.lambdalegal.org/sites/default/files/legal-docs/downloads/pflag_v._abbott_-_filed_petition.pdf">ACLU lawsuit</a>, a 16-year trans boy tried to commit suicide the same day that Abbott issued the child abuse directive in part because of the letter. He was admitted to a psych facility, but when facility staff learned he was undergoing hormone therapy, <strong>they turned his family in for child abuse.</strong> That atrocity is the system is working as intended. Removing support increases suicides, and Abbott is getting his suicides. If you’re trans, or you let your children be trans, the state destroys your family. It’s a system designed to prevent the existence of alive trans people. This is the environment the policies were made to create: a genocide where all choices lead to trans deaths. Victory.</p>
</section>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="dfps"><abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr><a class="headerlink" href="#dfps" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<p>But what of the trans children who are separated from their parents and put into the child support system? Well, that’s where Texas sends kids to die.</p>
<p>Texas’s child support system is known to be insufficient and abusive. Over the course of less than two years, <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/06/texas-foster-care-system-lawsuit/">at least 23 children died in Texas foster care, at least 6 due directly to abuse or neglect.</a> There are more children in the system than it can handle, as more children are taken from their parents and pumped into facilities that are being shut down for being wildly unsafe. Texas puts children in environments that <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/05/06/texas-foster-care-system-lawsuit/">“create an unreasonable risk of serious harm” “repeatedly, with serious, harmful consequences to the children in its care.”</a> </p>
<p>The Texas state-sanctioned The Refuge Ranch, the self-proclaimed largest long-term live-in rehabilitation facility for child survivors of sex trafficking in the US, <a href="https://lawandcrime.com/child-abuse/young-sex-trafficking-victims-were-allegedly-trafficked-again-by-staff-at-government-contracted-shelter-in-texas/">systematically abused the children under its care, sexually and medically.</a> (Additional coverage: <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/bastrop-county/significant-evidence-of-child-safety-risks-at-the-refuge-court-monitors-say/">1</a>, <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/bastrop-county/significant-evidence-of-child-safety-risks-at-the-refuge-court-monitors-say/">2</a>, <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/ample-evidence-child-abuse-refuge-191309519.html">3</a>) The Refugee Ranch had a ring of more than nine staff members involved in the abuse ring, which shot pornography of the minor girls, sold the porn, and used the money to purchase illegal drugs to give to the children. A preliminary investigation by Texas police claimed there was no evidence of abuse, but <a href="https://www.kxan.com/news/local/bastrop-county/significant-evidence-of-child-safety-risks-at-the-refuge-court-monitors-say/">an actual investigation found that to be false</a> (although there may be no special circumstance here: unfortunately, negligence in investigating sex abuse cases <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/12/16/an-unbelievable-story-of-rape">is typical of law enforcement</a>).</p>
<p>Taking healthy children from loving families and putting them into the Texas <abbr title="Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Texas's Child Protective Services">DFPS</abbr> system — which Abbott and Paxton <em>know</em> is grossly unfit — <em>is</em> child abuse, full stop. It’s an inexcusable cruelty done to children and families to further a genocidal agenda.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="florida">Florida<a class="headerlink" href="#florida" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (medicaid, social transition) -->
<p>In Florida the most obvious anti-trans legislation is the <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/04/03/experts-fear-floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-already-affecting-the-mental-health-of-lgbtq-youth/">Don’t Say Gay</a> bill, forcing schools to discriminate against trans youth.
It’s already having serious impacts on children: <a href="https://www.wftv.com/news/local/teachers-voice-concerns-after-orange-county-previews-dont-say-gay-impact-classrooms/R6VGDIOC2RFURLBUVT6TVWPDGA/">according to reports</a> Orange County teachers will be required to remove stickers of support and will be banned from wearing any pride-supporting clothing, including lanyards the district itself distributed just one year prior.
(This is all wildly contrary to any notion of free speech, but as I continue to remind, the blatant hypocrisy is to be expected here.)
Teachers will be forced to report students’ health concerns to their parents without the consent of the child, and faculty will be required to use the pronouns “assigned at birth” (which pronouns aren’t, but whatever) <em>regardless of the wishes of teacher, parents, or children.</em>
But this bill has had <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-as-vicious-as-it-sounds">extensive coverage already</a>, so I won’t rehash the details further.</p>
<aside class="cb None">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>You know, this is exactly the state-compelled speech situation everybody’s favourite guy Jordan Peterson was so concerned about: the state has made a compelled-speech law mandating teachers use a certain set of pronouns to refer to their students.
Of course, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37875695">Peterson launched his career off just the <em>possibility</em> of such a policy existing in Canada</a> on free speech grounds, so I’m sure he’s up in arms about this real law doing active harm. Let’s just fire up the ol’ internet and ah, nope, looks like what he’s actually doing is <a href="https://twitter.com/jordanbpeterson/status/1516904685403185153">cheering Florida’s anti-trans legal agenda on Twitter</a> in-between platforming Abigail Shrier and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxdHm2dmvKE">arguing that degenerate transgenderism in the US justifies Russia’s invasion of Ukraine</a>, gotcha. That’s it for his intellectual credibility, then. Glad we settled that.</p>
</aside>
<!-- #### Medicaid -->
<p>But on June 2, right off the heels of its anti-LGBTQ Don’t Say Gay victory, Florida released <a href="https://ahca.myflorida.com/Executive/Communications/Press_Releases/pdf/6-2-22_AHCA_GAPMS_Press_Release_FINAL.pdf">a press release declaring all gender affirming care to be “experimental”</a> so that trans health care would no longer be covered under Medicaid. (Gender affirming care is, of course, not experimental; this is a lie. The corpus on gender transition, including minors, includes more than 90 years of scientific research and best-selling medical books published as far bask as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transsexual_Phenomenon">1966</a>.) While this doesn’t yet ban healthcare for trans adults outright, it explicitly lays out the groundwork and makes it clear that it intends to do so (see page 38), with restrictions on private insurance (disallowing private health insurance from covering treatment) as a next policy step. </p>
<p>What’s interesting about the Florida Medicaid decision is that it claims to be based on science. It’s filled with links to scientific sources that come to the same conclusions it does. It also points out the US Department of Health and Human Services guidance has some specific problems, which it links a rebuttal of.</p>
<p>So what’s going on here? This seems almost credible. Look at all those science words! Maybe I got this whole thing wrong, and it’s the gays who were the baddies the whole time. Instead of just guessing though, let’s actually look.</p>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="let-kids-be-kids-science">“Let Kids Be Kids”’ Science<a class="headerlink" href="#let-kids-be-kids-science" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<!-- SCIENCE -->
<p>Right out of the gate there’s a problem with the decision letter: it cites six sources, but all but two of those are duplicates. They just kept linking to the same studies to make the decision look thorough. But if you look up their <a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/index.shtml">web page</a> they do give a list of five scientific sources, so I’ll be generous and treat the PDF as an error.</p>
<p>Not counting <a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/letkidsbekids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Report.pdf">the summary published by the state</a> alongside the press release, those five medical sources are:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_D.pdf">“The Science Of Gender Dysphoria And Transsexualism”</a>, by James M. Cantor, published May 17, 2022</li>
<li><a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/letkidsbekids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_C.pdf">“Effects of gender affirming therapies in people with gender dysphoria: evalulation of the best available evidence”</a> by Romina Brignardello-Peterson and Wojtek Wiercioch, published May 16, 2022</li>
<li><a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_E.pdf">“Concerns about Affirmation of an Incongruent Gender in a Child or Adolescent.”</a> by Quentin Van Meter, published May 17, 2022</li>
<li><a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_F.pdf">“Surgical Procedures and Gender Dysphoria”</a> by Patrick Lappert, published May 17, 2022</li>
<li><a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_G.pdf">“Medical Experimentation without Informed Consent: An Ethicist’s View of Transgender Treatment for Children”</a> by G. Kevin Donovan, published May 16, 2022</li>
</ul>
<p>First of all, no, that isn’t a copy-paste error. Every single study Florida came up with to support its premise was written within a span of <strong>two days</strong>.
The batch was commissioned and published by the Florida Agency For Health Care Administration’s “Let Kids Be Kids” campaign — as confirmed by <a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/letkidsbekids/docs/AHCA_GAPMS_June_2022_Attachment_C.pdf">Brignardello-Peterson et al</a> — specifically to legitimate anti-trans policies.
There doesn’t appear to have been any oversight conducted in the “research.” Not a single source was peer reviewed in any capacity or even published in any sort of medical journal, just the campaign’s own web page.</p>
<p>The sources in the state’s report themselves are generally underqualified.</p>
<ul>
<li>Patrick Lappert is a catholic deacon and devout member of outspoken anti-trans organization Catholic Medical Association who <a href="https://www.breakingchristiannews.com/articles/display_art.html?ID=28826">speaks religiously against trans medicine</a>, citing the usual ideological slurry of the gendered soul, trans people being a liberal plot, and of course “grooming”. Here he discusses cosmetic surgery, but only after spending his overview asserting an expertise over child psychology and endocrinology that he does not have, by his own later admission. As such, his “expertise” has been <a href="https://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/209-P-Memo-iso-mtn-to-Exclude-Lappert-Testimony.pdf">recently disqualified in federal court</a>. His views stem directly from his personal religious beliefs in <a href="http://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/209-P-Memo-iso-mtn-to-Exclude-Lappert-Testimony.pdf">“Christian anthropology”</a> and <a href="https://www.arlingtondiocese.org/bishop/public-messages/2021/a-catechesis-on-the-human-person-and-gender-ideology/">specific catechisms by individual bishops</a> that make specific (unfalsifiable) claims about how supernatural entities prescribe genders on human souls prior to conception, which of course have no business being anywhere near public policy. </li>
<li>G. Kevin Donovan makes the extremely basic error of assuming inaction in the face of treat able illness is the safest course of action, and fails to address not only the evidence that this is untrue in the case of trans medicine, but is also untrue in the case of the vast majority of medicine: intentionally failing to treat a condition is wrong if that condition is an infection, too. But it’s easy to see why he’s willing to make so many errors in order to make his point; In <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7273639/">Strangers in a Strange Land: How Our Founding Principles and a Bitter Pill Undo the Assimilation of US Catholics</a>, Donovan argues that transitioning — alongside contraceptives, marriage equality, and oral sex — existing in modern society is antithetical to Catholic values, and the fact that “society insists [behaviors] must be tolorated” is a threat to Catholic physicians. Donovan has applied his “our values are under attack” philosophy to the courts on <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/18/18-107/113249/20190822143850673_18-107%20Amici%20BOM%20Scholars%20et%20al--PDFA.pdf">multiple occasions</a>, including a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/19/19-1392/185346/20210729162737297_19-1392%20BRIEF%20OF%20BIOLOGISTS%20AS%20AMICI%20CURIAE%20IN%20SUPPORT%20OF%20NEITHER%20PARTY.pdf">Dobbs brief</a> arguing that human life begins at <em>fertilization</em>.</li>
<li>Quentin L. Van Meter spends his time imagining how gender affirmation “tears the fabric of the patient’s life into pieces- pitting family members against each other, ruining child friendships and it introduces the child to a fantasy world, much of it on the internet” [sic]. In real life, Quentin spends his time denouncing transgenderism as an elaborate social experiment and <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/02/05/conversion-therapy-is-a-discredited-practice-ohio-hired-its-advocate-as-an-expert-witness/">advocating for the discredited and dangerous practice of conversion therapy</a>. Van Meter is the president of the <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/07/anti-lgbt-hate-group-releases-anti-trans-position-statement">“American College of Pediatricians” anti-LGBTQ hate group</a>, and was recently <a href="https://www.penncapital-star.com/government-politics/a-texas-judge-ruled-this-doctor-was-not-an-expert-a-pennsylvania-republican-invited-him-to-testify-on-trans-health-care/">disqualified as an expert</a> by a Texas judge for refusing to offer a fact-driven opinion..</li>
<li>James Cantor’s credibility as a clinical psychologist has been destroyed after being kicked out professional societies for anti-trans bullying, and he has since been a paid expert witness for such anti-trans groups. His testimony has been thrown out in these cases, with courts deciding he is unqualified to speak on this issue due to bias and having “no clinical experience in treating gender dysphoria in minors and no experience monitoring patients receiving drug treatments for gender dysphoria.” Cantor’s report itself is copy-pasted from his “paid expert testimony” in a case where anti-trans activist group “Alliance Defending Freedom” paid him to support legislation baring athletes from sports teams. </li>
<li>Romina Brignardello-Peterson is a writer for discredited activist organization “The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine”, but more importantly, <em>literally a dentist.</em> I like to imagine DeSantis overheard her telling someone else her only real qualification was diagnosing <em>oral</em> decay, and everyone was just too scared to correct him.</li>
</ul>
<!-- [^cantor] -->
<!-- [^cantor]:
The James Cantor report stands out as an unusual case of legitimacy. Cantor is a qualified clinical psychologist who specializes in the study of human sexuality, but Cantor seems to have contradictory beliefs about transgender people:
His self-published "[Bill of Transsexual Rights](http://www.jamescantor.org/bill-of-rights.html)" (2019) takes a moderately progressive view, arguing trans people should have the right to respect, freedom to transition with informed consent, a right to have their gender recognized by institutions and governments, the right to use bathrooms and sex-specific facilities regardless of "genital status", and even argues that public health care systems should fund gender-affirming care, including surgical reassignment, as such procedures are medically necessary.
But in 2020, Cantor published "[When is a TERF not a TERF](http://www.sexologytoday.org/2020/07/when-is-terf-not-terf.html)", a middle-of-the-road piece arguing for less "extremism" in the discussion space; nothing particularly innately extreme, but the post was framed as a defence of extremist anti-trans activists and arguably irresponsible given the political climate. Soon after that, he incited significant internal friction resulting in him being banned from the email list for incivility and "a pattern of harassment against several other members", and soon after left the organization.
Currently, Cantor is generally placed in the "Gender Critical" anti-trans space.
His report cited by the state of Florida is similarly at odds with itself. Its conclusions are generally consistent with the pro-trans medical consensus, with the exception of conflating pre-pubescent children with adolescents -- two very distinct groups, according to the data -- under the same umbrella as "youth". But there are anti-trans red flags throughout the paper. For instance, it does things like cite [Carmichael et al (2021). Short-term outcomes of pubertal suppression in a selected cohort of 12 to 15 year old young people with persistent gender dysphoria in the UK](https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243894) in an attempt to evidence the claim that treatment resulted in "no mental health improvement". Now, besides the Carmichael et al being an artifact deeply intertwined with the [infamously bad](https://www.irishlegal.com/articles/analysis-gillick-competence-wins-the-day-in-puberty-blockers-appeal) and now rightfully overturned [Bell v Tavistock decision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_v_Tavistock) (which tried to limit transgender care as Texas and Florida are doing now, to [disastrous results](https://inews.co.uk/news/gids-tavistock-gender-hormone-treatment-clinician-trans-800657)), the paper is poorly evidenced: its main data set is the short-term results of an unblinded "overall wellbeing" poll with no control group, without accounting for externalities or compensating for the observer-expectancy effect. Like Cantor's other work, this is a generally middle-of-the-road artifact that seems to be reaching for legitimate ways to justify anti-trans activists, but failing to find any good ones. -->
<!-- oops turns out he's worse than that -->
<p>All five of the sources either make a vague complaint that the data contradicting their theories is “weak” in some ambiguous way or just ignore it outright. They all complain that there isn’t enough hard evidence while simultaneously campaigning for a criminalization of the very medicine that would produce that data. The documents are riddled with basic errors; there are typos, even unbalanced quotes, and you can see above how Van Meter just changes tense in the middle of the sentence. I guess if Florida tells you it needs a letter tomorrow you don’t bother proofreading.</p>
<p><a href="https://law.yale.edu/yls-today/news/team-experts-provides-critical-review-florida-medical-report-transgender-care">A review</a> from qualified experts Anne L. Alstott, Prof. Jacquin D. Bierman, Prof. Hussein Abdul-Latif, M.D., Susan D. Boulware, M.D., Rebecca Kamody, PhD (Clinical Psychology), Laura Kuper PhD (Clinical Psychology), Christy Olezeski, PhD (Clinical Psychology), and Nathalie Szilagyi, M.D. (seven scientists and a law professor at Yale) strongly opposing the change described the report, summarizing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are also distressed as scientists and stewards of public health by the shoddy quality of the purported scientific report offered to justify the Proposed Rule.<br>
…<br>
Our comments [focus on] the absence of any persuasive scientific or medical justification for the Proposed Rule. The June 2 Report purports to be a review of the scientific and medical evidence but is, in fact, fundamentally unsound from a scientific perspective. The June 2 Report disregards established scientific knowledge, ignores longstanding clinical practice recommendations developed by authoritative bodies of medical experts, and unaccountably dismisses the medical recommendations of more than 20 medical societies.<br>
…<br>
… Not only is the study not formally peer-reviewed, the BPW authors violate scientific norms and standards by failing to engage at all with their peers or with actual experts in the subject matter.<br>
…<br>
… When a reader looks past the jargon, however, the BPW authors adopt a method that violates scientific standards and appears to be jury-rigged to reach a foregone conclusion. The authors convey their conclusions in misleading language. Contrary to the BPW authors’ claims, their study does not call into question the scientific and clinical importance of the established science that supports medical care for gender dysphoria.<br>
…<br>
Our analysis demonstrates that the June 2 Report carries no scientific weight. The report disregards established clinical guidelines and peer-reviewed studies and instead relies on purported “expert” reports that raise major red flags for lack of expertise, close ties to advocacy groups, and financial conflicts of interest. The report makes repeated errors about scientific research and medical regulation, and it engages in ungrounded speculation and stereotyping. Accordingly, the Proposed Rule is ungrounded in scientific research and is arbitrary and capricious. Further, because the June 2 report violates Florida’s own standards for scientific review, it cannot support the Proposed Rule as an interpretation of the existing Florida regulatory scheme. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>I’m not going to stop here and meticulously disprove all this garbage or I’d be here forever; you really can just drill anywhere and hit coal with these people. None of it holds up to even cursory scrutiny. In fact, if <em>you’re</em> an aspiring skeptic I invite you to use these as practice. Debunking this slop is like having training wheels to learn how to think.</p>
<p>It’s transparent nonsense: hastily manufactured pseudoscience in order to give an entirely illegitimate political campaign a semblance of respectability in the eyes of people who don’t look too closely at things. The medical literature flatly contradicts the agenda the Florida GOP wants to push, so they put together a stable of anti-trans advocates and just manufactured their own fake reports over the length of a weekend.</p>
<p>Sadly, Florida didn’t kickstart the fake science industry, they just tapped into it.
There’s a whole Doubt-is-Their-Product industry that manufactures disinformation about LGBTQ medical science that caters itself to these extremists grasping for scientific justification. There’s an excellent summary in <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/avivastahl/transgender-trans-kids-healthcare-science">Aviva Stahl’s “Meet The “Fringe Extremists” Pushing Flawed Science To Target Trans Kids”</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>A small number of highly controversial doctors and researchers have been pushing these anti-trans bills. Representing organizations with seemingly professional names like the <a href="https://www.acpeds.org/">American College of Pediatricians</a> or <a href="https://segm.org/">the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine</a>, they have effectively accomplished for gender dysphoria what anti-vaxxer medical professionals have sought to do for their cause: give credence to the notion that no scientific or medical consensus exists regarding the relative safety and efficacy of a given treatment, despite the clear and growing evidence to the contrary.<br>
…<br>
“Proponents of these bills claim that they are advocating in the interests of transgender children, which is actually ludicrous,” said Hannah Willard, the vice president of government affairs at <a href="https://freedomforallamericans.org/">Freedom for All Americans</a>, a bipartisan group pushing for protections against LGTBQ discrimination nationwide. “These fringe extremists are trying to push a narrative that transgender people need saving from the medical experts.”<br>
…<br>
[in regards to claims that the risks of transitioning outweigh the benefit] these assertions are <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-arkansas-law-and-similar-bills-endanger-transgender-youth-research-shows/">either misleading or verifiably false</a>, according to experts in the field. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X1630146X">Studies have consistently shown</a> that providing gender-affirming care to gender-diverse children — which includes allowing <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1054139X18300855">them to socially transition</a> and <a href="https://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/145/2/e20191725">access puberty blockers</a> and <a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-52280-009">gender-affirming hormones</a> — is correlated with lower rates of suicide and mental illness. Studies have also shown that children who aren’t supported, such as those who undergo therapy with the aim of eliminating their trans identity, <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2749479">have worse health outcomes</a> and are more likely to have <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025345/">thoughts of suicide</a>.<br>
…<br>
Turban, the Stanford researcher, has <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/political-minds/201705/the-american-college-pediatricians-is-anti-lgbt-group">described</a> ACP as a “small but clever anti-LGBT group [that] created a legit-sounding name.” He told BuzzFeed News that ACP is not the country’s leading organization for US pediatricians; that group is known as the American Academy of Pediatrics. In 2002, the AAP issued a statement in support of parents of the same sex, prompting a small number of socially conservative physicians to leave the group and found ACP. Since then, ACP has issued many controversial anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ statements. It is currently designated as <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/american-college-pediatricians">an anti-LGBTQ hate group</a> by the Southern Poverty Law Center.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I do especially recommend reading <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/avivastahl/transgender-trans-kids-healthcare-science">that article</a>. It goes in-depth with more examples of laws driven or influenced by these phony pesudomedical paper-mills, and thoroughly they’ve infiltrated the lawmaking process.</p>
<p>Back to Florida, I also want to look at Florida’s “<a href="https://www.ahca.myflorida.com/LetKidsBeKids/docs/FLFactCheck.pdf">fact check</a>” of the federal LGBTQ medical guidelines. The “fact check” — in its entirety — is a defaced version of an <abbr title="HHS Office of Population Affairs' Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health">OASH</abbr> fact sheet with basic summaries of medical research highlighted and stamped with a red “FALSE”, with assertions written in the margin labelled as green “TRUTH.”
Most of these annotations are related to points on the sheet, but some are just recitations of talking points or just fragments like “Lack of credible evidence for adults and children” apropos of nothing.
Every single medical claim in green is uncited and either irrelevant or flatly contradicted by mountains of high quality, peer-reviewed medical research. Trans healthcare is <em>clearly</em> evidenced to be beneficial by every level of study short of double-blind tests, which obviously don’t apply here.
The original fact sheet shows its sources, but the Florida version goes out of its way to obscure the citations with a giant stamp to keep you from verifying that.
It’s an incredibly juvenile tantrum of a document, and tying this in any way to a discussion of real policy is just embarrassing.</p>
<p><img alt="Fact check" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/21/the-genocidaires-laws/factcheck.jpg">
<em>I’d put a big decal over the whole thing marking how the green bits are lies, but that would be gaudy and childish.</em></p>
<!-- If a Nazi handed me this, I would feel sorry for Hitler. -->
<!-- bridge -->
<!-- #### Social Transition -->
<p>Florida <em>really</em> hates that federal fact sheet, too. In April 2022, Florida’s office of the surgeon general <a href="https://www.floridahealth.gov/_documents/newsroom/press-releases/2022/04/20220420-gender-dysphoria-guidance.pdf">sent out a response memo</a> to that fact sheet that rejected <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/20/florida-gender-dysphoria-memo/">both federal guidance and medical best practices</a> in favour of… well, just eradication, really. In addition to insisting that adolescents not be prescribed puberty blockers (which is <em>so</em> counter to all medical guidance that the <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33529227/#:~:text=conclusions%3A%20overall%20patient%20experience%20of%20changes%20on%20gnrha%20treatment%20was%20positive.%20"><em>actual studies the Florida memo cites concludes in favour of the treatment</em></a>), it decrees that “Social gender transition should not be a treatment option for children or adolescents”.</p>
<p>So what’s this “social gender” we don’t want adolescents to transition? Well, that’s going by your chosen name. Picking out your own clothes. Choosing your own hairstyle. Speaking about yourself the way you choose. Extrordinarily fundamental freedom-of-expression and social autonomy stuff. Of course, literally everyone expresses their gender socially. You can’t somehow ban “performance of social gender” as if that were somehow unique to trans people. (I’ll talk more on how queerness is seen as foreign and sexual later.)</p>
<p>What does government policing of social gender look like? <a href="https://www.history.com/news/stonewall-riots-lgbtq-drag-three-article-rule">Stonewall</a>. Laws criminalizing garments. Cops stationing themselves at bars and checking the genitals of patrons they don’t like. Arresting men who weren’t manly enough, or women who weren’t feminine enough. The state deciding what social behaviour and expression is acceptable and what is not. The totalitarian social atrocities that kicked off the LGBTQ rights movement in the first place. That’s what Florida wants to bring back in force.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="federal-law">Federal law<a class="headerlink" href="#federal-law" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Most of the anti-trans laws we see are at the state level, but there are some federal pushes. (So much for states’ rights to make their own laws, huh? You guessed it, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2022/05/02/republicans-will-try-to-ban-abortion-nationwide-if-supreme-court-overturns-roe-v-wade-report-reveals/?sh=1c6645ed23ed">that’s not a real principle republicans hold either</a>.)</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://legiscan.com/US/text/HB1926/2021">Protecting Children From Experimentation Act of 2021</a>”, sponsored by 21 republicans and 0 democrats, is a simple but extreme bill that would unequivocally criminalize all gender care for minors everywhere in the US:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Whoever knowingly performs any gender reassignment medical intervention on a minor shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This includes criminalizing the use of the puberty blockers I discussed earlier, which makes this a proactive choice to subject trans adolescents as old as 17 to the wrong puberty, even if they have medical and parental concurrence. This arguably also criminalizes “social transition” and simple psychological therapies, as states try to argue that affirming counselling is child abuse.</p>
<p>The “<a href="https://legiscan.com/US/text/HB8170/2021">Empower Parents to Protect Their Kids Act of 2022</a>”… god damn, that title. <em>HB8170</em> accuses school districts of “violating parental and familial rights by encouraging or instructing staff to deceive or withhold information parents” by having (good) <a href="https://achieve.lausd.net/cms/lib/CA01000043/Centricity/Domain/383/BUL-6224.2%20Transgender%20Policy%205%2013%2019.pdf">policies that treat student health information with confidentiality</a>, and in some cases not exposing it to people likely to abuse the children if their confidentiality were violated. I have more to say about the “parents’ rights” angle, but I’ll come back around to that.
The proposed law requires school employees to not “facilitate, encourage, or coerce students to withhold information from their parents regarding the student’s “gender transition” or the student’s purported “gender identity”, where the student’s purported “gender identity” is incongruous with the student’s biological sex.”</p>
<p>As usual, we have the telltale signs of angry law, like special provisions exempting a need to seek administrative remedy, so parents can sue without even attempting to resolve disputes in good faith.
You’ll also see some deliberately ambiguous wording there. What involves “facilitating” a child keeping a secret from their parents? Are teachers required to interrogate children? Where does it end? (It doesn’t.)
Astonishingly, this law defines the “designated violations” that constitute grounds for a suit as including <em>perceived threats to possibly violate the law in the future</em>. If you think a teacher might, someday, not tell a boy’s mom about a flower he drew in his margins, <em>that’s grounds for a suit under this rule.</em></p>
<p>The bill blames “powerful teachers unions and activist organizations” [sic] for allowing and encouraging “an experimental social and psychological intervention” (lie) “that has immediate effects on a child’s psychology and a high likelihood of changing the life path of a child”. This is a lie and republicans know it: when they do occasionally cherry-pick science, they grab the factoid that early social experimentation is usually reversed. Experimenting with self-expression does <em>not</em> somehow lock you into a track, because people are responsible for themselves. Which is something you would think republicans believed if they believed anything, but they don’t. </p>
<p>If you look through the language you’ll see the usual mess of rhetoric. “Irreversible consequences” is there. At one point in the preamble the bill just asserts “Any policies that attempt to circumvent parental authority are a violation of parents’ constitutionally protected rights to direct the care, custody, and upbringing of their children as recognized by the Supreme Court” which a) no, and b) they literally just assert that and move on. No explanations, no limits on “parental authority”, certainly no referenced court case establishing precedent that they’re demanding exists. It’s just a garbage fire.</p>
<p>This is another bill that lumps “social transition” in with the kinds of behaviour it wants to eliminate. This polices gender <em>roles</em>, including clothing, hair, names, nicknames, voice, class choice, handwriting, friendships, occupation choice… there are limits placed on this power, just carte blanche for schools to demand control over children’s behaviour in service of eradicating trans kids.</p>
<p>But what happens if a kid <em>is</em> trans at a school? Well fuck me, <em>the school has to pay for the child’s complete and successful conversion therapy</em>.</p>
<blockquote>
<div class="language-text pre-wrap no-line-nums highlight"><table class="highlighttable"><tr><td class="linenos"><div class="linenodiv"><pre><span></span><span class="normal">1</span>
<span class="normal">2</span>
<span class="normal">3</span>
<span class="normal">4</span></pre></div></td><td class="code"><div><pre><span></span><code>(4) NATURE OF RELIEF.—In an action under this section, the court shall grant—
(A) all appropriate relief, including injunctive relief and declaratory relief;
(B) to a prevailing plaintiff, reasonable attorneys’ fees and litigation costs; and
(C) payment for treatments or therapy needed to repair harm to the child perpetuated by pursuit of "gender transition" determined necessary by the parent and the child’s medical providers.
</code></pre></div></td></tr></table></div>
</blockquote>
<p>I have no words. Or, I really wish I didn’t have to have words, but here I am two months into a writing project, so I guess I have to remind you
that conversion therapy <a href="http://www.guideline.gov/content.aspx?id=38417#Section420">is harmful</a>, causes <a href="http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2292051">emotional [and] physical harm to LGBT individuals, particularly adolescents or young persons</a> and has <a href="http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/92/4/631.full.pdf">little or no potential for achieving changes in orientation</a><sup id="fnref:conversion"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:conversion">1</a></sup>. </p>
<p>Conversion is sold to parents as a miracle cure to turn LGBTQ children into the straight, cis, “normal” children the parents wish they had had instead. In practice, conversion therapy <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/gay-conversion-therapy-torture.html">is literally administered torture</a> and the only change it makes to people is inflicting intense psychological trauma. Conversion therapy is abuse, torture, an atrocity. It also doesn’t work, which in context of this bill, I guess, means schools have to keep paying to torture the trans kid until they die.</p>
<p>There’s a great bit in <a href="https://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/252_Exhibit-18A.pdf">the deposition of Stephen Levine</a> for this.
Conversion therapy advocate <a href="https://genderanalysis.net/2022/06/dr-stephen-levine-and-the-plot-to-police-americas-gender-part-1/">Stephen Levine</a> is a professional expert witness hired by various states to argue for anti-trans policies. This deposition revealed he was paid $5,000 — paid, not a grant — to publish articles against informed consent by… The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine, as part of an attempt to hijack the Cochrane review committees for puberty blockers and HRT. You’ll remember SEGM as the non-NIH fringe anti-trans extremist organization from <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/avivastahl/transgender-trans-kids-healthcare-science">Aviva Stahl’s “Meet The “Fringe Extremists” Pushing Flawed Science To Target Trans Kids”</a>.</p>
<!-- [255-P-Memo-iso-Mtn-to-Exclude-Levine-Testimony.pdf](https://files.eqcf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/255-P-Memo-iso-Mtn-to-Exclude-Levine-Testimony.pdf) not qualified, opinions not based in facts, assertions are unsupported by evidence, factual assertions are incorrect -->
<p>In his deposition, Levine described under oath how conversion therapy sells because “Parents would very much like me to be able to return their child efficiently and quickly to a cis state” and it’s “premised on the notion that there’s a way to dissuade someone from being transgender so that they don’t have these outcomes”. But then, he admitted in the same disposition that “To my knowledge, there is no evidence beyond anecdotal reports that psychotherapy can enable a return to male identification for genetically male boys, adolescents, and men, or return to female identification for genetically female girls, adolescents, and women.” It’s a scam. It’s torturing children and selling it to parents as hope.</p>
<p>The state requiring it like this is hideous abuse to the child, but it also encourages parents’ delusion that being trans is a pathological condition, which in turn encourages <em>them</em> to abuse their child. This clause is sickening and horrific, but that’s par. The bar is the floor, here. </p>
<p>Many of these and other federal bills are introduced with no chance of passing. It’s symbolic, but it isn’t <em>just</em> symbolic; it pushes these ideas into mainstream discourse and shifts the Overton Window towards formally codifying anti-trans discrimination into public policy.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="just-a-whole-bunch-more">Just a whole bunch more<a class="headerlink" href="#just-a-whole-bunch-more" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- Legal policy, misc (alabama, idaho, oklahoma, NC, mass, arkansas, utah, indiana, Tennessee, anti-abortion model law) -->
<p>Those are some high-profile examples, but there are just too many for me to go in depth on the rest. Here’s a super-brief overview of what casual research turned out:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.advocate.com/politics/2022/3/07/idaho-seeks-life-prison-providing-gender-affirming-health-care">Alabama and Idaho advancing bills to make it a felony for doctors to provide trans medical care, with sentences of 10 years and life, respectively</a>. More lies here about genital mutilation surgery and denying medical standards. (<a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-challenges-alabama-law-criminalizes-medically-necessary-care-transgender">Already challenged by the justice dept.</a>)</p>
<p><a href="https://legiscan.com/OK/text/SB1470/id/2484266">Proposed Oklahoma book-banning bill</a>, fining teachers a minimum of $10,000 to be paid out-of-pocket if they “promote positions in opposition to closely held religious beliefs of the student”, which would include teaching LGBT issues as well as evolution and sex-ed.
Bill’s author and <a href="http://www.oklegislature.gov/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB1142&Session=2200">anti-gender book banner</a> Rob Standridge describes it as an emergency remedy “immediately necessary for the preservation of the public peace, health or safety.” Oklahoma already engages this kind of classroom policing, including <a href="https://twitter.com/ACLUOK/status/1516473781878870017">firing a teacher for displaying an array of flags that included a pride flag</a>.
Standridge previously advocated and passed law <a href="https://www.newson6.com/story/60ad849157a5b1785086befd/state-senate-passes-bill-banning-school-vaccine-requirements-partial-mask-mandate">banning school mask and covid vaccine requirements</a>, because it’s critical to “<a href="https://oksenate.gov/press-releases/measure-protecting-health-choice-signed-law">protect health choice</a>”.</p>
<p>North Carolina excluded trans healthcare from state healthcare plans, although this was found in court to be <a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ncmd.81532/gov.uscourts.ncmd.81532.234.0_1.pdf">unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of sex</a>, as well as a Title VII violation.
The state of North Carolina brought in <a href="https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2017/12/13/alliance-defending-freedom-developed-stable-anti-lgbt-expert-witnesses">fake expert Paul Hruz</a> to preach his assumptions as “expert testimony”, but the court found him to be unqualified to make any sort of judgement about “the diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the DSM, gender dysphoria’s potential causes, the likelihood that a patient will “desist”, or the efficacy of mental health treatments.” In particular, Hruz peddled the “social contagion” conspiracy theory, which I’ll discuss more later.
Other state testimony from multiple sources was evaluated to be “conspiratorial accusations … nothing more than rank speculation designed to distract or inflame the jury and has no business in expert testimony” and dismissed.</p>
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<p><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.243970/gov.uscourts.mad.243970.1.0.pdf">Parents sued a Massachusetts school district</a> for violating those parents’ “sincerely held religious belief” that parents have the right to exclusively teach “adherence to a Biblical understanding of male and female and standards of behavior.”
The sin the school allegedly committed was instructing counsellors not to discuss students’ confidential thoughts about gender identity with their parents without the student’s consent, because of how <a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/Suicidality-Transgender-Sep-2019.pdf">frequently outing minors triggers actual child abuse</a>.</p>
<p>Backed by anti-lgbtq groups like <a href="https://familycouncil.org/?page_id=13">The Family Council</a>, <a href="https://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/Detail?id=HB1570&ddBienniumSession=2021%2F2021R&Search=">Arkansas enacted a ban on transgender youth medical care</a> overriding republican governor Asa Hutchinson’s veto.
As Hutchinson rightly assessed, “This puts a very vulnerable population in a more difficult position” and the state should not “interrupt treatment that the parents had agreed to, the patient had agreed to and the physician recommended.”
<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/05/politics/asa-hutchinson-arkansas-transgender-health-care-veto/index.html">Hutchinson said he would have signed it if it was limited to surgery</a>, but the bill covered all trans healthcare, including safe therapies patients were already on.
Instead of writing a “more restrained approach that allows a thoughtful study of the science and ethics surrounding the issue before acting”, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/05/politics/asa-hutchinson-arkansas-transgender-health-care-veto/index.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9Ci%20am%20hopeful%2C%20though%2C%20that%20my%20action%20will%20cause%20conservative%20republican%20legislators%20to%20think%20through%20the%20issue%20again%20and%20hopefully%20come%20up%20with%20a%20more%20restrained%20approach%20that%20allows%20a%20thoughtful%20study%20of%20the%20science%20and%20ethics%20surrounding%20the%20issue%20before%20acting%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20said.">as the Governor requested</a>, the republican legislators simply overrode the veto and forced the law through. <a href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/brandt-et-al-v-rutledge-et-al-complaint">After an ACLU suit</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/07/21/1018867391/arkansas-trans-gender-confirming-treatment-judge-lawsuit">Judge Jay Moody issued an injunction</a> because, in his words, “to pull this care midstream from these patients, or minors, would cause irreparable harm”.
<a href="https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2021/03/22/womens-medical-rights-and-transgender-chiildren-take-a-beating-in-senate-committee">This was a particularly brutal session</a> for individual medical rights. More coverage and rebuttal in <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-arkansas-law-and-similar-bills-endanger-transgender-youth-research-shows/">Scientific American</a>.</p>
<p>Another <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/utah-legislature-overrides-governors-veto-transgender-sports-ban-bill-rcna21459">veto override</a> in Utah with <a href="https://le.utah.gov/~2022S3/bills/static/HB3002.html">HB0011</a>, which establishes a new commission to segregate children athletes based on gender and specifically mandates them to prevent “a student of the male sex from competing against another school on a team designated for female students”. It also carves out special immunity for the adults now sexually evaluating underaged girls on behalf of the state, because they need it.
Governor Spencer J Cox wrote a <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1emUTfFEbmNmSdW9UhhsRAseVNr4cPIv9/view">thoughtful letter explaining the veto</a>, saying “Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few,” and “I want [trans children] to live,” but the legislature dismissed him and his concerns so completely that they overturned the veto on the very same day.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/24/politics/indiana-trans-sports-ban-veto-override/index.html">Yet another veto override in Indiana</a> where the republican supermajority forced a scholastic sports ban through even when there hadn’t been a single case of a transgender student participating.
Republican governor Eric Holcomb (a <a href="https://www.indystar.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/21/indiana-gov-holcomb-signs-constitutional-carry-handun-laws-bill/7088876001/">staunch conservative!</a>) vetoed the bill citing the <a href="https://www.in.gov/gov/files/Veto-HEA-1041.pdf">lack of a real problem</a>, saying “After thorough review, I find no evidence to support either claim even if I support the overall goal”, but legislators overrode the veto.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/were-going-to-be-conservative-official-orders-books-removed-from-schools-targeting-titles-about-transgender-people">Texas Superintendent Jeremy Glenn</a> demanding librarians pull books educating people about sexuality or transgender people. He didn’t hide behind the usual “pornographic” go-to, though: he made it clear that this was entirely ideologically driven. “Here in this community, we’re going to be conservative. … And I’m going to take it a step further with you, there are two genders. There’s male, and there’s female. … I don’t have any issues with what people want to believe, but there’s no place for it in our libraries.” But of course, in his mind, <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/embedded-video/mmvo136041541686">this was somehow pushing back <em>against</em> “partisan politics”</a>, which makes sense when you lie hard as hard about what “partisan” means as republicans do.</p>
<p>In Virginia, <a href="https://bookriot.com/virginia-politicians-sue-oni-press-and-maia-kobabe-over-gender-queer/">republican representatives Tim Anderson and Tommy Altman sued Oni Press and Maia Kobabe</a> over their graphic novel, <a href="https://amzn.to/3bExbaJ">GENDER QUEER</a>. The suit alleged it violated <a href="https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter8/section18.2-384/">an unconstitutional and intentionally ambiguous obscenity law</a>, with the only grounds being that it was “obscene for restricted viewing by minors” with no actual complaint or reason given in the motion. (Note here how intentionally ambiguously written laws give enforcers vastly increased powers to harass people on a discretionary basis while allowing people in the ingroup or otherwise powerful to skirt on loopholes.) This was after the graphic novel was <a href="https://bleedingcool.com/comics/texas-asks-if-v-for-vendetta-y-the-last-man-are-in-school-libraries/">singled out for scrutiny by our friend Matt Krause</a>.
Lawyers were clear that <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/005/5935-1.pdf">these materials do not fall under “obscene materials” under any interpretation of the law</a>. The complaint itself fails to show cause and grossly mischaracterizes the nature and subject of the book and <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/005/5935-1.pdf">fails to meet the law’s own criteria on many points</a>. This is the same complaint which names the wrong party in the complaint and — I kid you not — misspells “obscenity” in the title of the petition as “Obsenity”. Not big readers, this bunch.</p>
<p>Emboldened by the atrocious <a href="https://www.aclu.org/cases/dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> decision, Alabama AG Steve Marshall (R) <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/alabama-roe-supreme-court-block-trans-health-care">pushed for the federal court to allow the state’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth</a> using the legal basis in Dobbs that such care is not constitutionally protected, because it’s not “deeply rooted” in the nation’s history. The idea that a right must have historical grounding to be constitutionally protected is absurd, of course: <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/white-papers/the-declaration-the-constitution-and-the-bill-of-rights">the constitution doesn’t enumerate rights</a>, but the same faulty logic being used to force through the ideologically-driven war on abortion is being used, <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22072306-alabama-court-doc">almost immediately</a>, in fights for other medical rights, where <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/597/19-1392/">a rule by judges is substituted for the rule of law</a>. This terrible rationale is now being used to lay a legal framework for the state to forcibly medically de-transition both teenagers and adults.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534196127922126849" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="devweb666/1534194618144681986"><a href="https://twitter.com/devweb666/" title="she/they | 24 | artist & designer in Seattle :)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1343760138889351168/1fHDv8Ik_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">dev</span><span class="at">@devweb666</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/devweb666/status/1534194618144681986">devweb666</a>:</span><p>TW: suicide. to put it bluntly, if I lost access to hormone therapy i would probably kms. I havent considered suicide once since my transition but the prospect of losing access to hormones is a monumental threat to my existence</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/devweb666/status/1534196127922126849" target="_blank">Tue Jun 07 15:30:35 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>In the national sphere, republican senator Roger Marshall is <a href="https://static.politico.com/8a/eb/4df912084abbaa584d14b36f9ad8/letter-to-gao-on-usda-memo.pdf">threatens to block school meal funding over transgender policy</a>: literally, keeping food from children and blaming it on the gays. This is in response to a Biden policy banning discrimination against LGBTQ students in schools who receive federal funding. Republicans are twisting this incredibly low bar for a standard of care into Biden “trying to deny school lunch programs for states that don’t do transgender ideology in the schools”, which is why they have to… make sure government discrimination against the kind of children they don’t like is legal, apparently.</p>
<p>Over in merry old wherever, the NHS commissioner suspects there might be evidence of “regret” in transitioning children — <a href="https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf">there super isn’t, by the way</a>, regret rates are <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.01.016">< 1%</a> — so they’re turning over the medical records of minors to an independent group to comb through them and find ammunition. <a href="https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/usts/USTS-Full-Report-Dec17.pdf">There is data for this, of course</a>, but its findings aren’t what the NHS wants to see. And they’re not willing to do an <em>ethical</em> study where subjects “consent” to researchers exposing their private medical records, so instead they’ve <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10969077/Every-trans-child-treated-NHS-records-scrutinised-regret-transitioning.html">carved out an exception to medical confidentiality laws</a> in order to expose this particularly vulnerable group.
Of course, this practice of violating medical ethics and the law to further a political agenda opens up a door to enormous amounts of future abuse, including seizure of medical records to prosecute sodomy laws or criminalize abortion. But that doesn’t stop the ruthless.</p>
<p>See also:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/996670391/supreme-court-rules-for-a-catholic-group-in-a-case-involving-gay-rights-foster-c">Supreme Court Lets Catholic Group Exclude LGBTQ Foster Parents</a>, where laws don’t apply to religious groups, so long as they’re violating the law at the expense of the LGBTQ community.</li>
<li><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/29/us/politics/transgender-girls-sports.html">Why Transgender Girls Are Suddenly the G.O.P.’s Culture-War Focus</a><ul>
<li>“These efforts appear to be far more slick, and far more organized,” said Elizabeth A. Skarin of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, which opposes the bill.</li>
<li>South Dakota is just one of a growing number of states where Republicans are diving into a culture war clash that seems to have come out of nowhere. It has been brought about by a coordinated and poll-tested campaign by social conservative organizations like the American Principles Project and Concerned Women for America, which say they are determined to move forward with what may be one of their last footholds in the fight against expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/bans-trans-youth-health-care/">Prohibiting Gender-Affirming Medical Care for Youth - UCLA School of Law March 2022</a><ul>
<li>Six states also include penalties for parents who facilitate minors’ access to gender-affirming medical care.</li>
<li>About half the bills would bar insurance providers from offering coverage for gender-affirming care.</li>
<li>A bill in Missouri would attempt classify gender-affirming care as child abuse similar to the order recently issued in Texas.</li>
<li>In total, more than a third of the 150,000 transgender youth ages 13-17 in the U.S. live in the 15 states that have restricted access to gender-affirming care or are currently considering laws that would do so</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/bans-trans-youth-health-care/">UCLA brief - Prohibiting Gender-Affirming Medical Care for Youth</a><ul>
<li>15 states have restricted access to gender-affirming care or are currently considering laws that would do so. </li>
<li>The bills carry severe penalties for health care providers, and sometimes families, who provide or seek out gender-affirming care for minors.</li>
<li>In five states, bills would prohibit gender-affirming care by or in government-owned or operated facilities, and by individual providers employed by government entities.</li>
<li>In four states, bills would exclude gender-affirming care as a tax-deductible health care expense</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>I like the summary in Dr. Jack Turban’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/06/opinion/transgender-children-medical-bills.html">What South Dakota Doesn’t Get About Transgender Children</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In the past, doctors tried to force [trans people] to be cisgender, to identify with the sex they were assigned at birth. New research shows that this approach is associated with their attempting suicide. Having learned from these mistakes, we now follow new protocols that guide us to accept and affirm transgender youths in their transgender identities. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, huge shifts in medical literature do not always make their way to politicians. While there is broad consensus among doctors that these affirmative medical protocols are important, legislators in several states are planning to make this medical care illegal.
…</p>
<p>The bills are about medical care, but the state representatives sponsoring them seem unfazed by the fact that all relevant major medical organizations disagree with them.
…
The medical profession has made it clear: This kind of legislation is dangerous and should not become law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But it does become law. It became law, it’s becoming law, and it will become law. It’s being pushed through by ideologues who don’t care about the danger: harm done to the ingroup is an acceptable loss, and harm done to trans people was always the point.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="model-law">Model Law<a class="headerlink" href="#model-law" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>We know what policies the Christian nationalists pushing these laws want look like too, not just what they’ve been able to get on the books so far. This is the National Right to Life Committee’s model legislation for “post-roe” sexual law: <a href="https://www.nrlc.org/wp-content/uploads/NRLC-Post-Roe-Model-Abortion-Law-FINAL-1.pdf">NRLC Post-Roe Model Abortion Law</a>. And, wow, did I call the Texas GOP document bad? This is a blood-curdlingly horrific document that advocates for a full-blown police surveillance state to eradicate the practice of abortion. It goes as far as hunting down anyone who even suggests online that abortion is legitimate; there is no decency and there are no boundaries.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534677508091695106" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="leahmcelrath/1534674592668827648"><a href="https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/" title="Activism, analysis, commentary | Psychology, human rights, geopolitics | @smithcollege BA, MSW | @LSEalumni | #ActuallyAutistic #LGBTQ #Disabled | 🏴"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1240845477014364160/vcy396tZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Leah McElrath 🏳️🌈</span><span class="at">@leahmcelrath</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1534674592668827648">leahmcelrath</a>:</span><p>This child’s suicide attempt?</p><p>The mass murder in Buffalo?</p><p>These are outcomes the GOP is hoping for with their legislation and rhetoric.</p><p>They want everyone not white, heterosexual, and gender-conforming not to exist or, at a minimum, to be too frightened to demand civil rights.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1534677508091695106" target="_blank">Wed Jun 08 23:23:25 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>What we’re witnessing is a legal system entirely divorced from both reality and decency, using its power to transform conspiratorial media tropes into actionable criminal law.</p>
<p>So wait, what’s the goal? Is this about a threat to culture, or is it about irreversible medical procedures? Or medical consent, or child abuse? It’s not about any of that. It’s about power. <em>It’s trans genocide</em>.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="appendix">Appendix<a class="headerlink" href="#appendix" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<p>Just for fun, here’s just, like, a billion peer-reviewed articles, all published in competitive journals. You know, real science.</p>
<style>
.genocide-billion-sources li a { text-decoration: none; }
.genocide-billion-sources li { padding-bottom: 1em; }
</style>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper genocide-billion-sources"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">just, like, a billion peer-reviewed articles</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012">Adams, N., Pearce, R., Veale, J., Radix, A., Castro, D., Sarkar, A., & Thom, K. C. (2017). Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Undertaking Transgender Health Research and Institutional Review Boards Adjudicating this Research. Transgender Health, 2(1), 165–175. https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012</a></li>
<li><a href="http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/abn0000234">Testa, R. J., Michaels, M. S., Bliss, W., Rogers, M. L., Balsam, K. F., & Joiner, T. (2017). Suicidal ideation in transgender people: Gender minority stress and interpersonal theory factors. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(1), 125–136. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000234</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ijpeonline.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13633-020-00078-2">Achille, C., Taggart, T., Eaton, N. R., Osipoff, J., Tafuri, K., Lane, A., & Wilson, T. A. (2020). Longitudinal impact of gender-affirming endocrine intervention on the mental health and well-being of transgender youths: preliminary results. International Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology, 2020(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13633-020-00078-2</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14461242.2020.1845223">Bartholomaeus, C., Riggs, D. W., & Sansfaçon, A. P. (2020). Expanding and improving trans affirming care in Australia: experiences with healthcare professionals among transgender young people and their parents. Health Sociology Review, 30(1), 58–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/14461242.2020.1845223</a></li>
<li><a href="https://journals.lww.com/00008480-201708000-00015">Lopez, Ximenaa; Marinkovic, Majab; Eimicke, Tonic; Rosenthal, Stephen M.d,∗; Olshan, Jerrold S.e,∗; on behalf of the Pediatric Endocrine Society Transgender Health Special Interest Group Statement on gender-affirmative approach to care from the pediatric endocrine society special interest group on transgender health, Current Opinion in Pediatrics</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2019.1693472">Carlile, A. (2019). The experiences of transgender and non-binary children and young people and their parents in healthcare settings in England, UK: Interviews with members of a family support group. International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(1), 16–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2019.1693472</a></li>
<li><a href="https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/12160">Oliphant J, Veale J, Macdonald J, Carroll R, Johnson R, Harte M, Stephenson C, Bullock J. Guidelines for gender affirming healthcare for gender diverse and transgender children, young people and adults in Aotearoa, New Zealand. Transgender Health Research Lab, University of Waikato, 2018.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19361653.2020.1816244">Kennedy, N. (2020). Deferral: the sociology of young trans people’s epiphanies and coming out. Journal of LGBT Youth, 19(1), 53–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2020.1816244</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2020.1703652">Leibowitz, S., Green, J., Massey, R., Boleware, A. M., Ehrensaft, D., Francis, W., Keo-Meier, C., Olson-Kennedy, A., Pardo, S., Nic Rider, G., Schelling, E., Segovia, A., Tangpricha, V., Anderson, E., & T’Sjoen, G. (2020). Statement in response to calls for banning evidence-based supportive health interventions for transgender and gender diverse youth. International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(1), 111–112. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2020.1703652</a></li>
<li><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2?error=cookies_not_supported&code=064aef29-a015-4d74-9d7c-5eef73cb0ebd">Restar, A. J. (2019). Methodological Critique of Littman’s (2018) Parental-Respondents Accounts of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(1), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2019.1692751">Riggs, D. W., Bartholomaeus, C., & Sansfaçon, A. P. (2019). ‘If they didn’t support me, I most likely wouldn’t be here’: Transgender young people and their parents negotiating medical treatment in Australia. International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2019.1692751</a></li>
<li><a href="https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40985-020-0118-y">Suess Schwend, A. (2020). Trans health care from a depathologization and human rights perspective. Public Health Reviews, 41(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40985-020-0118-y</a></li>
<li><a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/2749479#10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2285">Turban, J. L., Beckwith, N., Reisner, S. L., & Keuroghlian, A. S. (2020). Association Between Recalled Exposure to Gender Identity Conversion Efforts and Psychological Distress and Suicide Attempts Among Transgender Adults. JAMA Psychiatry, 77(1), 68. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2019.2285</a></li>
<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/camh.12437">Rew, L., Young, C. C., Monge, M., & Bogucka, R. (2020). Review: Puberty blockers for transgender and gender diverse youth—a critical review of the literature. Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 26(1), 3–14. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/camh.12437</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2019.1591789">Tan, K. K. H., Treharne, G. J., Ellis, S. J., Schmidt, J. M., & Veale, J. F. (2019). Gender Minority Stress: A Critical Review. Journal of Homosexuality, 67(10), 1471–1489. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1591789</a></li>
<li><a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12833">Turban, J. L., & Ehrensaft, D. (2017). Research Review: Gender identity in youth: treatment paradigms and controversies. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 59(12), 1228–1243. Portico. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.12833</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.10.016">Durwood, L., McLaughlin, K. A., & Olson, K. R. (2017). Mental Health and Self-Worth in Socially Transitioned Transgender Youth. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(2), 116-123.e2. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.10.016</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2017.1414649">Ehrensaft, D., Giammattei, S. V., Storck, K., Tishelman, A. C., & St. Amand, C. (2018). Prepubertal social gender transitions: What we know; what we can learn—A view from a gender affirmative lens. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2017.1414649</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2018.1471767">Winters, K., Temple Newhook, J., Pyne, J., Feder, S., Jamieson, A., Holmes, C., Sinnott, M.-L., Pickett, S., & Tosh, J. (2018). Learning to listen to trans and gender diverse children: A Response to Zucker (2018) and Steensma and Cohen-Kettenis (2018). International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1471767</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.11.008">Turban, J. L. (2017). Transgender Youth: The Building Evidence Base for Early Social Transition. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 56(2), 101–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2016.11.008</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1456390">Temple Newhook, J., Pyne, J., Winters, K., Feder, S., Holmes, C., Tosh, J., Sinnott, M.-L., Jamieson, A., & Pickett, S. (2018). A critical commentary on follow-up studies and “desistance” theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 212–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1456390</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2018.1450798">Aramburu Alegría, C. (2018). Supporting families of transgender children/youth: Parents speak on their experiences, identity, and views. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1450798</a></li>
<li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211203222618/https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/media/cptnc5qm/mou2-reva_0421_web.pdf">Memorandum of Understanding on Conversion Therapy in the UK Version 2, Revision A (03/07/2019)</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2018.1557277">Ashley, F. (2019). Puberty Blockers Are Necessary, but They Don’t Prevent Homelessness: Caring for Transgender Youth by Supporting Unsupportive Parents. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(2), 87–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1557277</a></li>
<li><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1359104519836462">Ashley, F. (2019). Thinking an ethics of gender exploration: Against delaying transition for transgender and gender creative youth. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24(2), 223–236. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359104519836462</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.09.030">Ashley, F., & Domínguez, S. (2021). Transgender Healthcare Does Not Stop at the Doorstep of the Clinic. The American Journal of Medicine, 134(2), 158–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.09.030</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/26895269.2020.1747768">Giordano, S., & Holm, S. (2020). Is puberty delaying treatment ‘experimental treatment’? International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(2), 113–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2020.1747768</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19361653.2020.1719257">Chavanduka, T. M. D., Gamarel, K. E., Todd, K. P., & Stephenson, R. (2020). Responses to the gender minority stress and resilience scales among transgender and nonbinary youth. Journal of LGBT Youth, 18(2), 135–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2020.1719257</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2016.1273104">Ullman, J. (2016). Teacher positivity towards gender diversity: exploring relationships and school outcomes for transgender and gender-diverse students. Sex Education, 17(3), 276–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2016.1273104</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012">Adams, N., Pearce, R., Veale, J., Radix, A., Castro, D., Sarkar, A., & Thom, K. C. (2017). Guidance and Ethical Considerations for Undertaking Transgender Health Research and Institutional Review Boards Adjudicating this Research. Transgender Health, 2(1), 165–175. https://doi.org/10.1089/trgh.2017.0012</a></li>
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<li><a href="http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/abn0000234">Testa, R. J., Michaels, M. S., Bliss, W., Rogers, M. L., Balsam, K. F., & Joiner, T. (2017). Suicidal ideation in transgender people: Gender minority stress and interpersonal theory factors. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 126(1), 125–136. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000234</a></li>
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<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2018.1471767">Winters, K., Temple Newhook, J., Pyne, J., Feder, S., Jamieson, A., Holmes, C., Sinnott, M.-L., Pickett, S., & Tosh, J. (2018). Learning to listen to trans and gender diverse children: A Response to Zucker (2018) and Steensma and Cohen-Kettenis (2018). International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 246–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1471767</a></li>
<li><a href="https://oro.open.ac.uk/67518/">Vincent, Ben (2018). Transgender Health: A Practitioner’s Guide to Binary and Non-Binary Trans Patient Care. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1456390">Temple Newhook, J., Pyne, J., Winters, K., Feder, S., Holmes, C., Tosh, J., Sinnott, M.-L., Jamieson, A., & Pickett, S. (2018). A critical commentary on follow-up studies and “desistance” theories about transgender and gender-nonconforming children. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 212–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1456390</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2018.1450798">Aramburu Alegría, C. (2018). Supporting families of transgender children/youth: Parents speak on their experiences, identity, and views. International Journal of Transgenderism, 19(2), 132–143. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2018.1450798</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2017-3742">Chew, D., Anderson, J., Williams, K., May, T., & Pang, K. (2018). Hormonal Treatment in Young People With Gender Dysphoria: A Systematic Review. Pediatrics, 141(4). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2017-3742</a></li>
<li><a href="https://content.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0000095-008">Coolhart, D. (2018). Helping families move from distress to attunement. The Gender Affirmative Model: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Supporting Transgender and Gender Expansive Children., 125–140. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000095-008</a></li>
<li><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2?error=cookies_not_supported&code=064aef29-a015-4d74-9d7c-5eef73cb0ebd">Restar, A. J. (2019). Methodological Critique of Littman’s (2018) Parental-Respondents Accounts of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(1), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2018.1557277">Ashley, F. (2019). Puberty Blockers Are Necessary, but They Don’t Prevent Homelessness: Caring for Transgender Youth by Supporting Unsupportive Parents. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(2), 87–89. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2018.1557277</a></li>
<li><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1359104519836462">Ashley, F. (2019). Thinking an ethics of gender exploration: Against delaying transition for transgender and gender creative youth. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 24(2), 223–236. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359104519836462</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2019.1599466">Ashley, F. (2019). Watchful Waiting Doesn’t Mean No Puberty Blockers, and Moving Beyond Watchful Waiting. The American Journal of Bioethics, 19(6), W3–W4. https://doi.org/10.1080/15265161.2019.1599466</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19361653.2019.1665610">Ashley, F. (2019). Homophobia, conversion therapy, and care models for trans youth: defending the gender-affirmative approach. Journal of LGBT Youth, 17(4), 361–383. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2019.1665610</a></li>
<li><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.07.006">Chodzen, G., Hidalgo, M. A., Chen, D., & Garofalo, R. (2019). Minority Stress Factors Associated With Depression and Anxiety Among Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Youth. Journal of Adolescent Health, 64(4), 467–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.07.006</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2019.1693472">Carlile, A. (2019). The experiences of transgender and non-binary children and young people and their parents in healthcare settings in England, UK: Interviews with members of a family support group. International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(1), 16–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2019.1693472</a></li>
<li><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2?error=cookies_not_supported&code=064aef29-a015-4d74-9d7c-5eef73cb0ebd">Restar, A. J. (2019). Methodological Critique of Littman’s (2018) Parental-Respondents Accounts of “Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(1), 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-1453-2</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15532739.2019.1692751">Riggs, D. W., Bartholomaeus, C., & Sansfaçon, A. P. (2019). ‘If they didn’t support me, I most likely wouldn’t be here’: Transgender young people and their parents negotiating medical treatment in Australia. International Journal of Transgender Health, 21(1), 3–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/15532739.2019.1692751</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00918369.2019.1591789">Tan, K. K. H., Treharne, G. J., Ellis, S. J., Schmidt, J. M., & Veale, J. F. (2019). Gender Minority Stress: A Critical Review. Journal of Homosexuality, 67(10), 1471–1489. https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1591789</a></li>
<li><a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0038026120934693">Ashley, F. (2020). A critical commentary on ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria.’ The Sociological Review, 68(4), 779–799. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038026120934693</a></li>
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</ul>
</div>
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</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
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<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/B/bo156867001.html">Florence Ashley, “Banning Transgender Conversion Practices: A Legal and Policy Analysis”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.aclu.org/news/lgbtq-rights/texas-wants-to-take-trans-kids-from-their-supportive-parents-were-suing">ACLU, “Texas Wants to Take Trans Kids From Their Supportive Parents. We’re Suing.”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.thv11.com/article/news/politics/growing-up-transgender-in-arkansas/91-7cc8988a-d46e-42e3-8640-318edea7ecc6">Jade Jackson, “The realities of being transgender in Arkansas”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/02/06/transgender-youth-transition-treatment-state-bills/4605054002/">Kristin Lam, “National firestorm on horizon as states consider criminalizing transgender treatments for youths”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.aclu.org/past-legislation-affecting-lgbt-rights-across-country-2020">Past Legislation Affecting LGBT Rights Across the Country 2020 | American Civil Liberties Union</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/19/texas-gop-convention-maga">Ivana Saric, “Texas GOP goes full MAGA at 2022 convention”</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- Misses -->
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://19thnews.org/2021/11/dallas-childrens-hospital-ends-genecis-program/">Orion Rummler, “‘We don’t have other options’: Children’s hospital disbands gender-affirming care program”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.naspa.org/blog/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-bathroom-bill-state-legislation-affecting-trans-and-gender-non-binary-people">Diana Ali, “The Rise and Fall of the Bathroom Bill: State Legislation Affecting Trans & Gender Non-Binary People”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://reason.com/2022/06/10/drag-show-ron-desantis-kids-family/">Lenore Skenazy, “Don't Call Child Services on Families Who Take Their Kids to Drag Shows”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/30/1089462508/teachers-fear-the-chilling-effect-of-floridas-so-called-dont-say-gay-law">Melissa Block, “Teachers fear the chilling effect of Florida’s so-called ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/republicans-congress-lay-groundwork-anti-transgender-push-2022-07-14/">Moira Warburton and Rose Horowitch, “Republicans in Congress lay groundwork for anti-transgender push”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.salon.com/2022/07/04/the-catholic-church-is-dictating-reproductive-health-care--even-in-blue-states/">The Catholic church is dictating reproductive health care — even in blue states | Salon.com</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.communitycatalyst.org/news/press-releases/new-report-finds-rapid-growth-of-catholic-health-systems">New Report Finds Rapid Growth of Catholic Health Systems | Community Catalyst</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- Sources -->
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/05/alito-opinion-lgbtq-rights/">Jonathan Capehart, “Alito's abortion opinion is a warning to LGBTQ Americans”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/doe-v-abbott-petition">Doe v. Abbott - ACLU Petition</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-as-vicious-as-it-sounds">Michael Daly, “Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Bill Is as Vicious as It Sounds”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.salon.com/2022/03/29/floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-just-the-beginning-want-to-claw-back-all-gay-rights/">Amanda Marcotte, “Florida’s "don’t say gay" bill is just the beginning: Republicans want to claw back all gay rights”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/06/03/gop-passes-bill-aiming-to-root-out-suspected-transgender-female-athletes-with-genital-inspection/">Morgan Trau, “GOP passes bill aiming to root out ‘suspected’ transgender female athletes with genital inspection”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ohio-lawmakers-advance-trans-sports-ban-with-genital-check-2022-06-03/">Reuters, “Ohio lawmakers advance trans sports ban with genital check”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2789423#doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.0978">Tordoff, D. M., Wanta, J. W., Collin, A., Stepney, C., Inwards-Breland, D. J., & Ahrens, K. (2022). “Mental Health Outcomes in Transgender and Nonbinary Youths Receiving Gender-Affirming Care”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/11/republicans-infrastructure-bill-january-6-insurrection/620661/">David A. Graham, “The Right’s Total Loss of Proportion”</a></li>
</ul>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1552783960849240066" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/" title="Activist, content creator, queer legislative researcher, and D&D DM. Linktree: https://t.co/Clyfz4Iz3a She/her. All opinions my own. Venmo erin888"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1483827754076454914/Qf4oP6Ht_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Erin Reed</span><span class="at">@ErinInTheMorn</span></div></a></div><div><p>Ron DeSantis filed a public complaint against a bar that does drag brunch.</p><p>In the complaint, he references a 1947 ruling that "men impersonating women in a suggestive fashion" is against the law.</p><p>They are building the framework to go after all drag, and likely all trans people. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1552783960849240066/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYyYp6OWYAAn_yS.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ErinInTheMorn/status/1552783960849240066" target="_blank">Thu Jul 28 22:32:00 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1552788319674589184" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheCBDiva/" title="Stay-at-home dog mom. Disabled former attorney. she/they #CBD #hEDS #Whippets #Cooking (Not affiliated with any company or product). 🐱🐻🐨"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1327325123309801472/w-Enkkcn_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">j-Dope🌻</span><span class="at">@TheCBDiva</span></div></a></div><div><p>This is the what the “deeply seated in American tradition” part of the Dobbs opinion was about. This is what they opened the door to- reconsideration of anything that wasn’t standard in the public sphere pre-1950s. <a href='https://twitter.com/erininthemorn/status/1552783960849240066' target='_blank'>twitter.com/erininthemorn/…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/TheCBDiva/status/1552788319674589184" target="_blank">Thu Jul 28 22:49:19 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<!-- [Lauren McGaughy, "Does the state think transgender care is abuse? Ken Paxton’s comments contradict Texas’ legal stance"][mcgaughy-paxton-contradict]
[Reese Oxner, "Kids in foster care who’d been victims of sex trafficking endured fresh abuse at a state shelter, report says"][oxner-fresh-abuse]
[Reese Oxner, "State-licensed shelter where sex trafficking victims were reportedly abused ordered to close"][oxner-ordered-to-close]
[Eleanor Klibanoff, "More families of trans teens sue to stop Texas child abuse investigations"][klibanoff-more-families-sue]
[Lauren McGaughy, "Texas appeals court sides with parent of transgender teen in case of alleged child abuse"][mcgaughy-court-sides-with-parent]
[Sarah Rumpf, Young Sex Trafficking Victims Were Allegedly Trafficked AGAIN by Staff at Government-Contracted Shelter in Texas][rumpf-trafficked-again]
[Dan Avery, "Texas bill could send parents to prison for providing gender-affirming care"][avery-texas-prison]
[Freedom For All Americans | Legislative Tracker: Youth Healthcare Bans](https://freedomforallamericans.org/legislative-tracker/medical-care-bans/)
[Harris County Attorney Menefee Responds to Governor Abbott's and General Paxton's New Policy Banning Healthcare For Transgender Children](https://cao.harriscountytx.gov/Newsroom/Press-Releases/harris-county-attorney-menefee-responds-to-governor-abbotts-and-general-paxtons-new-policy-banning-healthcare-for-transgender-children)
[Lauren McGaughy, "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Gender-affirming care for transgender children is abuse"](https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2022/02/21/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-health-care-for-transgender-children-is-abuse/)
[Experts fear Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill is already affecting the mental health of LGBTQ youth | Salon.com (experts-fear-floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-already-affecting-the-mental-health-of-lgbtq-youth)](https://www.salon.com/2022/04/03/experts-fear-floridas-dont-say-gay-bill-is-already-affecting-the-mental-health-of-lgbtq-youth/)
[Florida Republicans revive deadly "queers recruit" myth with passage of "don't say gay" bill | Salon.com (florida-revive-queers-recruit-myth-with-passage-of-dont-say-gay-bill)](https://www.salon.com/2022/03/08/florida-revive-queers-recruit-myth-with-passage-of-dont-say-gay-bill/) -->
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:conversion">
<p>This is extrordinarily well evidenced by many people much more qualified than me.<br>
<a href="https://www.counseling.org/news/updates/2013/01/16/ethical-issues-related-to-conversion-or-reparative-therapy">American Counselling Association, “Ethical issues related to conversion or reparative therapy”</a><br>
<a href="http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=401656">Ronald M. Davis, MD; Myron Genel, MD; John P. Howe III; et al, “Health Care Needs of Gay Men and Lesbians in the United States”</a><br>
<a href="http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/about-ama/our-people/member-groups-sections/glbt-advisory-committee/ama-policy-regarding-sexual-orientation.page">AMA Policies on LGBT Issues</a><br>
<a href="https://apsa.org/content/2012-position-statement-attempts-change-sexual-orientation-gender-identity-or-gender">APsaA, “Position Statement on Attempts to Change Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, or Gender Expression”</a><br>
<a href="http://www.apa.org/about/policy/sexual-orientation.pdf">Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts Orientation Distress and Change Efforts | APA policy statement</a><br>
<a href="https://www.schoolcounselor.org/Standards-Positions/Position-Statements/ASCA-Position-Statements/The-School-Counselor-and-Transgender-Gender-noncon">The School Counselor and Transgender and Nonbinary Youth | ASCA Position Statement</a><br>
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20170910205711/http://www.socialworkers.org/diversity/lgb/reparative.asp">NASW, “”Reparative” and “Conversion” Therapies for Lesbians and Gay Men”</a><br>
<a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20160311031459/http://www.socialworkers.org/da/da2005/policies0505/documents/lgbissues.pdf">Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Issues</a><br>
<a href="http://www.paho.org/hq/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_view&gid=17703">Pan-American Health Organization, ““Cures” For An Illness That Does Not Exist”</a><br>
<a href="http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/just-the-facts.pdf">Just The Facts About: Sexual Orientation and Youth</a><br>
And so on and so forth. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:conversion" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:biden">
<p>It literally ends with “We believe that substantial election fraud in key metropolitan areas significantly affected the results in five key states in favor of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. We reject the certified results of the 2020 Presidential election, and we hold that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.” <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:biden" title="Jump back to footnote 2 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:cost-efficacy">
<p>For more notes on direct comparisons with non-treatment see <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3529-6">Padula, W. V., Heru, S., & Campbell, J. D. (2015). Societal Implications of Health Insurance Coverage for Medically Necessary Services in the U.S. Transgender Population: A Cost-Effectiveness Analysis. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 31(4), 394–401. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-015-3529-6</a> <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:cost-efficacy" title="Jump back to footnote 3 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>The Génocidaires: Intro2022-07-19T00:00:00-05:002022-07-19T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-07-19:/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/<p>Genocide. It’s a big word.
It describes possibly the worst atrocity the institution of society can commit.
It’s so mind-bogglingly terrible that a staple holocaust denial argument is that it was simply too bad to have really happened.</p>
<p>Genocide is such a big word that I didn’t title this “The Case for Genocide”, even though that’s what it’s about: the case people actually make for genocide, here, today.</p>
<!-- The people who actively pursue genocide -->
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for non-stop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Particular content warnings for discussion of radical authoritarianism, genocide, the holocaust, genocidal psychology, historical and modern state violence, modern state-perpetrated sexual violence, and anti-trans sentiment.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#genocide-definition-semiotics">“Genocide”, definition, semiotics</a></li>
<li><a href="#prerequisites-for-genocide">Prerequisites for genocide</a><ul>
<li><a href="#some-groups-of-people-should-not-exist">“Some groups of people should not exist”</a><ul>
<li><a href="#schools-of-thought">Schools of Thought</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-correct-in-making-the-judgement-of-which">“You (or your leaders) are correct in making the judgement of which”</a></li>
<li><a href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-qualified-to-execute-that-judgement">“You (or your leaders) are qualified to execute that judgement”</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#left-of-bang">Left of bang</a></li>
<li><a href="#trans-people-as-the-target">Trans people as the target</a><ul>
<li><a href="#ohios-save-womens-sports-act">Ohio’s Save Women’s Sports Act</a></li>
<li><a href="#hypocrisy">Hypocrisy</a></li>
<li><a href="#next">Next</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="genocide-definition-semiotics">“Genocide”, definition, semiotics<a class="headerlink" href="#genocide-definition-semiotics" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- (-cide, agenda, trans mention) -->
<!-- definition -->
<p>It’s counterintuitively difficult to talk about genocide because of how thoroughly the word has become shorthand for pure evil. So first, let’s define the word itself. <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide">The United States Holocaust Museum has an excellent page on the definition of the word here</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the “<a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml#:~:text=Convention%20%20contains%20a-,narrow%20definition,-of%20the%20crime">narrow definition</a>” found in the 1948 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Genocide Convention</a>, written as a response to World War II and the atrocities of the holocaust.
Modern groups like <a href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages">Genocide Watch</a> classify other genocidal crimes like ethnic cleansing and political mass murder as genocide.</p>
<!-- -cide myth -->
<p>Genocide literally means “to kill a tribe”, or “to kill a population”. It has the -cide suffix, meaning to kill, but the “geno” is a population. The crime is the extermination of a group, not just the murder of its members.
So, if someone decides that they want to make a thing no longer exist, and that thing is a kind of person, <em>executing on that belief is genocide.</em></p>
<p>In practice, genocide is not just the crime of the act, but also the <em>agenda</em>. Directly killing members of the group is one act of a genocide, but so is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” or “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” — economic oppression and eugenics, respectively.
Genocide is “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437726">a coordinated plan to annihilate the individual lives of a targeted national group through disintegration of the institutions of culture, economics, language, religion, and destruction of other essential foundations of personal security, liberty, and dignity</a>”. In addition to the effects of the act, there is also a premeditation on behalf of the organizers and drivers of the agenda. </p>
<!-- Glass's Idea as leader -->
<p>This usually maps well to a political faction, but it isn’t necessarily driven by one particular authority: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.164">James Glass’s paper</a> talks about the “Idea as leader” in the psychology of genocide: that the ideology is a kind of shared fantasy in a psychological space, and that Rousseau’s “fervour of intolerance” can be amplified in willed belief and enthusiastic participation in an idea greater than oneself.</p>
<p>There are obvious examples of genocide, both historical (like Nazi Germany) and current: <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china">the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China</a>, but also cases where it’s not yet generally understood that a genocide event is even occurring.</p>
<p>(Trans people. I’m talking about trans people.)</p>
<p>I shouldn’t need to explain how genocide works in practice.
How it starts with “us vs them” ingroup/outgroup polarization,
how it’s used by authoritarians to pin the blame on their own failings or unavoidable facts of life on subgroups that can be demonized and persecuted,
how the importance of national identity becomes prioritized above the people who make up the nation,
how the outgroup is made to be recognizable and distinguishable in order to facilitate attack,
how the definition of that subgroup shifts to meet the political needs of the people in power,
how the perpetrators dehumanize the outgroup with language that equates them with animals, filth, and disease in order to numb human empathy,
how the dominant ingroup wields political and societal power to deny the victims full rights of citizenship,
and how the victims are ultimately persecuted, displaced, deported, or killed (extrajudicially or otherwise).
Above all, the unabashed cruelty that ensues.
You should know this. After the 20th century, all educated people should know this. </p>
<p>So here it is. A genocide is happening right now in America and Europe against trans people with the goal of eradicating the population. So let’s take a good, hard look at it.
Let’s really crack this egg open.</p>
</section><p>Genocide. It’s a big word.
It describes possibly the worst atrocity the institution of society can commit.
It’s so mind-bogglingly terrible that a staple holocaust denial argument is that it was simply too bad to have really happened.</p>
<p>Genocide is such a big word that I didn’t title this “The Case for Genocide”, even though that’s what it’s about: the case people actually make for genocide, here, today.</p>
<!-- The people who actively pursue genocide -->
<aside class="cb content-warning">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Content warning for non-stop horribleness throughout. Like, no kidding, some of the worst humanity has to offer.</p>
<p>Particular content warnings for discussion of radical authoritarianism, genocide, the holocaust, genocidal psychology, historical and modern state violence, modern state-perpetrated sexual violence, and anti-trans sentiment.</p>
</aside>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Table of Contents</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="toc">
<ul>
<li><a href="#genocide-definition-semiotics">“Genocide”, definition, semiotics</a></li>
<li><a href="#prerequisites-for-genocide">Prerequisites for genocide</a><ul>
<li><a href="#some-groups-of-people-should-not-exist">“Some groups of people should not exist”</a><ul>
<li><a href="#schools-of-thought">Schools of Thought</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-correct-in-making-the-judgement-of-which">“You (or your leaders) are correct in making the judgement of which”</a></li>
<li><a href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-qualified-to-execute-that-judgement">“You (or your leaders) are qualified to execute that judgement”</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#left-of-bang">Left of bang</a></li>
<li><a href="#trans-people-as-the-target">Trans people as the target</a><ul>
<li><a href="#ohios-save-womens-sports-act">Ohio’s Save Women’s Sports Act</a></li>
<li><a href="#hypocrisy">Hypocrisy</a></li>
<li><a href="#next">Next</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href="#related-reading">Related Reading</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="genocide-definition-semiotics">“Genocide”, definition, semiotics<a class="headerlink" href="#genocide-definition-semiotics" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- (-cide, agenda, trans mention) -->
<!-- definition -->
<p>It’s counterintuitively difficult to talk about genocide because of how thoroughly the word has become shorthand for pure evil. So first, let’s define the word itself. <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide">The United States Holocaust Museum has an excellent page on the definition of the word here</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is the “<a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml#:~:text=Convention%20%20contains%20a-,narrow%20definition,-of%20the%20crime">narrow definition</a>” found in the 1948 <a href="https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf">Genocide Convention</a>, written as a response to World War II and the atrocities of the holocaust.
Modern groups like <a href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages">Genocide Watch</a> classify other genocidal crimes like ethnic cleansing and political mass murder as genocide.</p>
<!-- -cide myth -->
<p>Genocide literally means “to kill a tribe”, or “to kill a population”. It has the -cide suffix, meaning to kill, but the “geno” is a population. The crime is the extermination of a group, not just the murder of its members.
So, if someone decides that they want to make a thing no longer exist, and that thing is a kind of person, <em>executing on that belief is genocide.</em></p>
<p>In practice, genocide is not just the crime of the act, but also the <em>agenda</em>. Directly killing members of the group is one act of a genocide, but so is “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” or “Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” — economic oppression and eugenics, respectively.
Genocide is “<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437726">a coordinated plan to annihilate the individual lives of a targeted national group through disintegration of the institutions of culture, economics, language, religion, and destruction of other essential foundations of personal security, liberty, and dignity</a>”. In addition to the effects of the act, there is also a premeditation on behalf of the organizers and drivers of the agenda. </p>
<!-- Glass's Idea as leader -->
<p>This usually maps well to a political faction, but it isn’t necessarily driven by one particular authority: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.164">James Glass’s paper</a> talks about the “Idea as leader” in the psychology of genocide: that the ideology is a kind of shared fantasy in a psychological space, and that Rousseau’s “fervour of intolerance” can be amplified in willed belief and enthusiastic participation in an idea greater than oneself.</p>
<p>There are obvious examples of genocide, both historical (like Nazi Germany) and current: <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/countries/china">the ongoing Uyghur genocide in China</a>, but also cases where it’s not yet generally understood that a genocide event is even occurring.</p>
<p>(Trans people. I’m talking about trans people.)</p>
<p>I shouldn’t need to explain how genocide works in practice.
How it starts with “us vs them” ingroup/outgroup polarization,
how it’s used by authoritarians to pin the blame on their own failings or unavoidable facts of life on subgroups that can be demonized and persecuted,
how the importance of national identity becomes prioritized above the people who make up the nation,
how the outgroup is made to be recognizable and distinguishable in order to facilitate attack,
how the definition of that subgroup shifts to meet the political needs of the people in power,
how the perpetrators dehumanize the outgroup with language that equates them with animals, filth, and disease in order to numb human empathy,
how the dominant ingroup wields political and societal power to deny the victims full rights of citizenship,
and how the victims are ultimately persecuted, displaced, deported, or killed (extrajudicially or otherwise).
Above all, the unabashed cruelty that ensues.
You should know this. After the 20th century, all educated people should know this. </p>
<p>So here it is. A genocide is happening right now in America and Europe against trans people with the goal of eradicating the population. So let’s take a good, hard look at it.
Let’s really crack this egg open.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="prerequisites-for-genocide">Prerequisites for genocide<a class="headerlink" href="#prerequisites-for-genocide" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- (perp/bystanders, tautological prereqs) -->
<p>So why do people keep doing it? What is the mentality that accepts genocide, or advances it?</p>
<p>Studies of genocide divide the population into four loose categories: <strong>perpetrators</strong>, <strong>bystanders</strong>, <strong>rescuers</strong>, and <strong>victims</strong>.
Perpetrators actively push the genocidal agenda, bystanders passively allow it due to psychic numbing or a perceived lack of agency, and rescuers make an attempt to fight against the genocide despite not (presently) being members of the target group.
Both bystanders and perpetrators resort to denial, rationalization, and righteous anger at the victims for being the threat and causing the mess in the first place. (See <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/gazing-steadfastly-at-the-holocaust-robert-jay-lifton-the-nazi-doctors-medical-killing-and-the-psychology-of-genocide-new-york-basic-books-1986-pp-xiii-561-1995/79E04FBF90D0CC94D2B3034E89C5D364">Robert Jay Lifton, “Gazing Steadfastly at the Holocaust: The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.</a> for a more in-depth discussion of this.)</p>
<p>The <em>génocidaires</em> — the genocidalists — are the members of the first group, the perpetrators. Bystanders would be people who don’t lend the genocide their support, participatory or otherwise. With modern media culture and political polarization, there are very few bystanders who don’t join in and support one group or the other.</p>
<!-- TODO aside societal conditions that encourage genocide: economic anxiety -->
<p>Cognitively, genocide has some tautological requirements. To be genocidal, you must believe that:</p>
<ol>
<li>Some groups of people should not exist</li>
<li>You (or your leaders) are correct in making the judgement of which</li>
<li>You (or your leaders) are qualified to execute that judgement</li>
</ol>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="some-groups-of-people-should-not-exist">“Some groups of people should not exist”<a class="headerlink" href="#some-groups-of-people-should-not-exist" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (Outgroup, othering) -->
<!-- Outgroups -->
<p>The first criteria is probably the easiest to hit, both for the vicious and for the intellectually lazy. You can always come up with an outgroup such that it seems like it would convenience your group for them to all vanish, or to all be replaced by the kinds of people in <em>your</em> community. This outgroup is safe to criticise, safe to mock, safe to propagandise against.</p>
<p>Establishing the outgroup as other and appealing to members of the ingroup is critical. In <em>Ethics in an Age of Terror and Genocide: Identity and Moral Choice</em>, Kristen Monroe studies how “non-rescuers … see the world in “us v. them” terms, consistent with Social Identity Theory”:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown="1"><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00661.x">Monroe, K. R. (2008). Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust.</a></cite>
Social psychological explanations, in particular, social identity theory’s emphasis on the ingroup/outgroup dynamic, are central to the classic description of the process by which group identities crystallize.
Further work [cited] described how this process makes each group the enemy of the other; groups then limit individual choice by telling members what is appropriate behavior.
One contention is that genocide erupts when ethnic identities become reified and boundaries harden into politicized—as opposed to less polarizing cultural—identities.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>I used categorization theory to identify the subtle process of recategorization through which a perpetrator distances a neighbor, slowly turning a friend and fellow citizen into “the other” who is now seen as threatening and against whom violence as self-defense thus becomes justified. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>(How do these outgroups come about? Who decides who the targets are? I’ll get to that later.)</p>
<section class="section4">
<h4 id="schools-of-thought">Schools of Thought<a class="headerlink" href="#schools-of-thought" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h4>
<!-- (summary, affiliations, pluralism) -->
<!-- Schools of thought -->
<p>There are a few different schools of thought that all lead to the same heinous goal of eradicating a population:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Religion:</strong> You believe religiously that the group should not exist and/or only exist due to their own sin, and so must be and deserve to be destroyed.<ul>
<li>In the case of trans people, this is primarily seen with certain sects of Christianity. “<a href="https://www.focusonthefamily.com/parenting/helping-kids-recognize-the-myths-of-gender-identity-and-transgenderism/">Transgenderism is a scheme from Satan to tamper with the divine image</a>”.</li>
<li>This is arguably the “simplest” one, but is exacerbated by phenomena like the religious alt-right (<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/01/26/christian-nationalism-jan-6-extreme-right/">1</a>, <a href="https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/discerning-the-difference-between">2</a>, <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/">3</a>) where there’s a confluence of motivations. See also Christian nationalism.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Xenophobia:</strong> You believe his group is different and disruptive to society. <ul>
<li>This exists as a wide range spanning from “it is inconvenient to accommodate their existence” to “their existence disrupts our fundamental structure in a way so dangerous it could lead to complete apocalypse”.</li>
<li>Fundamentally a “true conservative” mentality.</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Community:</strong> Members of your existing community believe, and agreeing is natural. <ul>
<li>Pushing back would be alienating, and would disconnect you from your social circles. Group psychology.</li>
<li>Alternatively, you’ve been propagandised into believing the group is evil, but don’t have a personal understanding as to exactly why.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>And a few that are specific to trans genocide:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism:</strong> You are a feminist and you believe transgenderism is an attack on women.<ul>
<li>Trans women are just men who are trying to co-opt and infiltrate womanhood for the purpose of predation or sexual perversion</li>
<li>Trans women existing, and especially passing, is “deception”, and a personal attack on the “real women” they interact with.</li>
<li>Trans men are women who are “<a href="https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-her-reasons-for-speaking-out-on-sex-and-gender-issues/#:~:text=The%20allure%20of-,escaping%20womanhood,-would%20have%20been">escaping womanhood</a>” by buying into a patriarchal hierarchy, and are betraying womankind by trying to escape to a higher strata at the cost of “renouncing” their womanhood.</li>
<li>“<a href="http://www.gettheloutuk.com/attachments/lesbiansatgroundzero.pdf">The female pronoun [is] an honorific, a term… due to women as members of a sex caste that have survived subordination and deserve to be addressed with honour. Men who transgender cannot occupy such a position.</a>” (more on that one later, don’t worry)</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><strong>Parental Abuse:</strong> You want to maintain your abusive relationship over your child/children, and allowing them medical agency undermines your power.<ul>
<li>In abusive situations, maintaining control over the victim is key, which means denying them agency to make personal decisions. Imposing a gender identity can be a form of control.</li>
<li>People in this category will often resort to subjecting children to so-called “conversion therapy”</li>
<li>Note that I’m <em>not</em> counting all child abuse as a result of conversion therapy here, as that’s an incidental harm driven by another school of thought.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<!-- -->
<ul>
<li><strong>Biological Essentialism</strong> or Bioessentialism: You believe the defining essence of a person is their biology; your experience and presentation of gender is and should be defined by your genetics, not circumstance, upbringing, or culture.<ul>
<li>Bioessentialism is the odd one out here. This is what you get if you put religion, xenophobia, and TERFism in a blender and don’t think very hard about what comes out.</li>
<li>Bioessentialism has many parallels with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism">scientific racism</a>, with pseudoscience used to justify preexisting conclusions and create seemingly scientific metrics to legitimize judgement. More on this and “transvestigations” later.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<!-- TODO: Bioessentialism is wrapped up in scientific racism: transvestigations -->
<p>There are a lot of different groups and affiliations at the present moment in American politics that “like” the genocidal ideology. The gender critical movement, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gender_movement">the anti-gender movement</a>, “tankies”, TERFs/gender-criticals, the proud boys, (Christian) nationalists, MAGA, the alt-right, even a few self-proclaimed American Fascists. And, fundamentally, hard-line conservatism in general, for the reasons discussed.
When I say they “like” the genocidal ideology, I mean any of “frequently have members who agree with”, “dabble in” or “are intellectually compatible with”.
I’m not interested in getting too bogged down in the specifics of how certain political groups currently identify and the mountains of word-lawyering that prompts, but to avoid bringing up groups at all would be to imply that the mentality I’m describing might be theoretical or rare, and I feel the need to emphasize that that is not the case.</p>
<!-- Pluralism -->
<p>In a political sense, the ingroup/outgroup dynamic in genocide is philosophically the diametric opposite of pluralism.
The genocidal mind is comfortable with the idea that some groups of people — not hypothetical groups and not pseudogroups like “bad people”, but cultural populations of people that really exist — should not exist, that their existence reflects some kind of error.
And — and this part reminds us that the genocidal are intellectually dishonest — that “error” never demands an interrogation of a societal issue (looking at you, “incarcerated” population), it’s always either something wrong with the outgroup, or even “we should have nipped this in the bud”.</p>
<p>The pluralist demands the exact opposite: that people with different backgrounds, views, and attributes can and must exist together in society.
The United States is ostensibly a pluralist nation, with enormous amounts of political history dedicated to the prevention of any one faction exploiting another. This has met with mixed success. </p>
<p>I am a pluralist. I am not trans or the parent of a trans child, but I am not so grossly arrogant as to impose my hunch as to what is best for strangers on them, overriding the wishes of doctors, parents, and children, and ignoring medical science. If there is uncertainty, we don’t err on the side of restricting everyone in the world to making the choices I imagine I might make if I were they. The state isn’t God, and neither am I. </p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="you-or-your-leaders-are-correct-in-making-the-judgement-of-which">“You (or your leaders) are correct in making the judgement of which”<a class="headerlink" href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-correct-in-making-the-judgement-of-which" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (Postmodern rationality) -->
<p>Well, this is a depressingly easy criterion to meet. People always have faith in their own judgements by default, and they look for trustworthy leaders.
It takes character and sustained effort to consistently interrogate your own assumptions and preconceptions. And that’s made all the more difficult if you’re entrenched in a society or group defined by some of those beliefs.</p>
<p>But unforced error has actually become <em>more</em> prevalent among <strong>postmodern rationalists</strong>. You know the ones. The people who live and die by the words <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/7083/the-magical-thinking-of-guys-who-love-logic">Rational and Logic and Reason and Critical and Facts</a>, the latter of which quite famously don’t care about your feelings. The people who define themselves by their correctness.</p>
<p>Traditional rationalism says “I will learn the truth, and once I know the truth, I will defend it unless I’m shown reason to believe I’m wrong”. But this brand is <strong>“postmodern”</strong>, which means none of that pesky truth business. These people don’t start with facts and reason and preach the conclusions Reason arrives at. Instead they define <em>themselves</em> as intrinsically rational and make whatever conclusions follow that. </p>
<p>It’s an idea of “rationality” that views it as an innate quality, like your race or hair colour, and not as a discipline to be practised.
If they believe something they know that the reason they believe it is because they must have arrived at that conclusion rationally, because they’re a rational person.
And if they arrived at it rationally, then it must be true.
And, because the position we know to be rational is what they believe, anyone who disagrees with them is irrational, illogical, and unworthy of serious consideration.
It’s a posture of <em>aggressive</em> and unassailable ignorance that takes an active pride in not being receptive to contrary information. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1534346133815844865" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/" title="he/him. https://t.co/CXFt8dAqbV https://t.co/Z2XYWcMC95"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1507627313604743171/T8ksXYZu_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Shaun</span><span class="at">@shaun_vids</span></div></a></div><div><p>i didn't really realise how far gone the transphobes were until i watched two of them talking recently. they really think anyone who disagrees with them is just insane. can't argue with that; they'll always know what's best for you, because you're delusional & so can't be trusted</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/shaun_vids/status/1534346133815844865" target="_blank">Wed Jun 08 01:26:39 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Depressingly few people are as vigilant with themselves as they need to be. And depressingly many are choosing to be as entrenched in that habit of non-practice as possible.</p>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="you-or-your-leaders-are-qualified-to-execute-that-judgement">“You (or your leaders) are qualified to execute that judgement”<a class="headerlink" href="#you-or-your-leaders-are-qualified-to-execute-that-judgement" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- (DBAS, map to authoritarianism & fascism) -->
<p>One of my favourite pieces of media is the 1947 US war department’s antifascist propaganda film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K6-cEAJZlE">Don’t Be a Sucker</a>:</p>
<p>
<div class="lazyframe" data-vendor="youtube" onclick="this.outerHTML = `<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8K6-cEAJZlE?autoplay=1" title="Don't Be a Sucker" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen class="media"></iframe>`" style="background-image: url(https://img.youtube.com/vi/8K6-cEAJZlE/hqdefault.jpg);"></div>
</p>
<p>It’s a beautiful piece of pluralist literature that makes a powerful argument against fascism.
It explicitly denounces tribalism with the closing monologue “You see, here in America, [it] is not a question whether we tolerate minorities. America is minorities, and that means you and me. So let’s not be suckers. We must not allow the freedom or dignity of any men to be threatened by any act or word.”</p>
<p>In a pluralist America, the population is made of minorities. Whether or not we “tolerate” each other isn’t a policy question up for discussion. To defend against fascism is to reenforce our pluralism, and a defence against fascism is a defence against the horrors it commits.</p>
<p>The genocidal mentality maps extraordinarily well to capital-f Fascism. They work together and support each other. Genocide is fundamentally authoritarian.
This is observable, historically, but it’s also been well studied independently.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/psychology-of-genocide-perpetrators-bystanders-and-rescuers/oclc/244632700">The psychology of genocide: perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers</a>, Steven Baum studies how the most integral trait for predicting whether someone was a perpetrator is an authoritarian personality.
Baum calls authoritarianism “the basis for the genocidal mindset” based on the work of Altemeyer and Adorno in addition to his own evidence.
Adorno’s “F-scale” test measures the degree of a fascist or authoritarian personality with questions like</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Obedience and respect for authority are the most important virtues children should learn.</li>
<li>A person who has bad manners, habits, and breeding can hardly expect to get along with decent people.</li>
<li>What this country needs most, more than laws and political programs, is a few courageous, tireless, devoted leaders in whom the people can put their faith.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>In the F-scale test, Adorno determined that the people inclined towards an authoritarian personality <em>and</em> inclined to act aggressively towards others possessed the following traits:</p>
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Conventionalism: Rigid adherences to conventional values</li>
<li>Submission: Uncritical attitude towards their own group’s idealized moral authority</li>
<li>Aggression: Punishment for those who violate convention</li>
<li>Anti-intraception: Intolerance of tender-mindedness</li>
<li>Superstition and stereotypy: Rigid categorization and belief in the supernatural</li>
<li>Power and toughness: Preoccupation with power and dominance, strength/weakness</li>
<li>Destruction and cynicism: General hostility</li>
<li>Projectivity: Placing their sexual and aggressive impulses onto others</li>
<li>Sex: Preoccupation with sexuality and morals of others</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<!-- > <cite markdown="1">[Innuendo Studios, "Endnote 2: White Fascism" (video)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Luu1Beb8ng) at 2:00:</cite>
> Central to fascism is the belief that some people are more deserving of power than others and that society's appropriate structure is a hierarchy where increasingly smaller groups of betters rule over the lessors.
>
> This is not unique to fascism; this is the organizing principle of many social systems. The differences between systems is whom each hierarchy says should be at the top. ... In fascism the ones at the top should be "us", whomever us happens to be and they should get there by any means available -->
<!-- And while I'm looking at Danskin's excellent work, I'll continue in that same video to his summary of Fascism as "Palingenetic Ultranationalism": the idea of remaking a prelapsarian paradise by means of a unified national identity, to be achieved by any means available. Genocide is a tool for this. -->
<p>The characteristics of authoritarianism and the traits in perpetrators in genocide overlap heavily, directly and indirectly, almost to the point of making authoritarianism a prerequisite. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1002/aps.164">You can’t wage mass murder without a willingness to accept such behaviour as legitimate</a>.</p>
<p>Submission, aggression, anti-intraception, power, and destruction map very clearly to the genocidalist ideology. However the traits of conventionalism, stereotypy, projectivity, and sex-preoccupation hint as to why trans people are such attractive targets.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="left-of-bang">Left of bang<a class="headerlink" href="#left-of-bang" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>To the 21st century vocabulary, “trans genocide” almost sounds absurd. So much so that if the topic comes up you might <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/blaze-tv-host-mocks-idea-of-trans-genocide-by-joking-about-killing-trans-kids/">seamlessly slip into jokes about lynching trans children en masse</a> to emphasize how safe trans people are. (Well, unless you’re not a psychopath, but that’s a surprisingly high bar.) Why would someone say such a thing? Trans people must just <a href="https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/96858/there-is-nothing-such-as-a-trans-genocide">want to be oppressed</a>. Outrageous.</p>
<!-- TODO, psychopath -->
<p>But it’s not absurd or outrageous. In fact, the more I dug into actual evidence, not just hunches, the more clear it became.</p>
<p>The trouble is the holocaust broke a lot of people’s brains about what genocide actually is.
We imagine genocide is supposed to be convoys explicitly carrying undesirable populations directly to their deaths. Anything short of that is just politics as usual.
That’s wrong, of course.
Genocide isn’t just death camps. Genocide is pogroms, lynch mobs in the street, targeted eugenics campaigns. Genocide is inflicting poverty on groups, criminalizing their behaviour, and publicly cheering their misfortune.
Genocide is when a major political issue is when whether or not society should allow the existence of a population is a political question: “the Jewish question”, “the transgender debate”. (What happens if the trans people lose “the transgender debate”, I wonder?)
“Never Again” doesn’t mean “don’t volunteer to push the button at the death camp”, it means <strong><em>defend marginalized groups before it gets bad.</em></strong></p>
<p>I draw a lot of material from holocaust studies myself because of the wealth of information available, but trans genocide (at this stage) really maps better to the pogrom: violent riots against specific populations encouraged by significant powers and the state.</p>
<p>I’m hardly the first to notice. The transgender genocide has already seen coverage, from <a href="https://www.chicagonow.com/trans-girl-cross/2016/04/transgender-genocide/">blog posts (Meggan Sommerville, ChicagoNow)</a> to <a href="https://donethemagazine.org/trans-genocide">magazine spreads (DONE magazine)</a> to <a href="https://www.transgendergenocide.com/home-page">full-on digital humanities projects (transgendergenocide.com)</a>.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1546570919296077828" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="RashidaTlaib/1546570916334866432"><a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/" title="Unbossed Congresswoman. Detroiter, Palestinian American, Muslima. #RootedInCommunity"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1443756959992369158/YXvAWaa1_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Rashida Tlaib</span><span class="at">@RashidaTlaib</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1546570916334866432">RashidaTlaib</a>:</span><p>The fights for trans rights and reproductive justice are wrapped up together. Our right to bodily autonomy—our ability to make decisions about our own bodies—is under threat. This affects ALL of us. We must be in solidarity to defeat the growing fascist movement to control us.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/RashidaTlaib/status/1546570919296077828" target="_blank">Mon Jul 11 19:03:35 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>The current anti-trans push in the US is a clear example of a genocidal agenda picking up stream. And while transgenderism is being intentionally framed as a niche issue, it’s not at all a small population: <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/06/07/about-5-of-young-adults-in-the-u-s-say-their-gender-is-different-from-their-sex-assigned-at-birth/">Trans people make up about 5% of young adults</a>; that’s about one trans adult for every two left-handed adults. It isn’t a culture war. It isn’t a question. It’s an extermination. It’s a one-sided moral evil.</p>
<p>The anti-trans policies being enacted are being enacted by people who want the community to stop existing, and the purpose of those policies is to exterminate it. In some cases by directly denying medical care, in some cases pushing people into poverty, and in some cases driving people to suicide. The goal is clear throughout.</p>
<p><img alt="I want to wipe you out, I just don't want you to describe it like that" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOd2YDwXsAUDE91?format=png&name=medium" style="max-width: 500px;">
<em><a href="https://twitter.com/KatysCartoons/status/1506302759267614732">@KatysCartoons: I want to wipe you out, I just don’t want you to describe it like that</a></em></p>
<!-- ### Overview (tick off categories) -->
<p>Of those <a href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention/learn-about-genocide-and-other-mass-atrocities/what-is-genocide">5 categories of genocide</a>, US law is already engaging in at least 4 against the trans community: causing serious harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to lead to destruction, imposing measures to prevent new members of the group, and forcibly relocating children out of the group.
That’s not a 80% score, mind you; that’s a 400%. The UN’s definition of genocide only requires <em>one</em> of those activities to be occurring; more than one only means the genocide is <em>worse</em>.</p>
<p>We see this in things like denial of life-saving medical care; even, in some cases, explicit religious exemptions signed into law to protect doctors who refuse to treat trans people. This seems obvious, but additional restrictions on medical care that target trans people directly harm the overall health of the community. </p>
<p>And states like Texas, removing children from parents on the basis of trans care being child abuse. Splitting up families and punishing trans people with institutionalization for existing. </p>
<p>Hundreds of legal and social policies that all deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to induce suicide. People not legally being allowed to use the correct restroom. Hate crimes and violence against people on the basis of them being trans (<a href="https://jhs.press.gonzaga.edu/articles/10.33972/jhs.158/">which increased 587% between 2013 and 2019</a>!)</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="trans-people-as-the-target">Trans people as the target<a class="headerlink" href="#trans-people-as-the-target" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- (autonomy, authoritarianism, bathrooms, ohio collateral damage) -->
<p>There are a few reasons trans people are particularly attractive targets to authoritarians.</p>
<p>One of the main functions of the abject cruelty seen in fascism and genocide is the assertion of power. Cruelty punishes people who try to hold on to self-governance, who rebel against the supposedly perfect order.
This is why you see cruelty inflicted on people who express self-determination: restrictions are made on religion, marriage, birth, and other deeply personal affairs so people are unable to be individualistic, and so that people who try to be can be singled out and punished. The use of cruelty is a specific political tactic of authoritarianism. <a href="https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars">The cruelty isn’t the point. Cruelty is the tactic. The point is power.</a></p>
<p>Freedom of gender expression is a social liberation. It’s an assertion of bodily autonomy and personal existence outside the constraints of the state, an act anathema to authoritarians. To them your body belongs to the state, to the culture, not to something as petty as <em>you</em>.</p>
<p>Gender expression, of course, is a cultural phenomenon. Gendered clothes, gendered hair, gendered accessories, gendered voices. None of it comes from biology; you won’t find suit cuts anywhere in the SRY protein. Woman doesn’t mean “born with XX chromosomes” and literally never has. (In fact, the opposite is true: scientists discovered the correlation long after womanhood was an established concept.)
But authoritarians (really, fascists) see their cultural values as moral and factual absolutes. To them, any deviation from their societal structure is an absolute heresy and a violation of natural law.
This is why the “biology” argument gets thrown around so much. The idea that liberals are “denying science and the truth of genetics” obviously doesn’t make any actual sense when applied to social expression, but it sounds <em>right</em> to people because it invokes the conservative/authoritarian “wrongness” of a violation of an understood social truth without directly making the argument.
The “trans people are denying biology” arguments are obvious folly when applied to this question of categorization and taxonomy, but to the wrong person, they <em>seem</em> right. </p>
<!-- TODO And, of course, pretending trans medicine is denying first principles is a contagious meme that shuts down conversation. -->
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1536667667150651392" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/" title="Editor Emeritus, Daily Wire, Host of "The Ben Shapiro Show” and author of 4 NYT bestsellers including "The Authoritarian Moment.”"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1531038685617082369/733PqiZY_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Shapiro</span><span class="at">@benshapiro</span></div></a></div><div><p>Disney works to push a "not-at-all-secret gay agenda" and seeks to add "queerness" to its programming, according to executive producer Latoya Raveneau. Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see "Lightyear," which hits theaters this week. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1536667667150651392/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FVNWZTRWIAMchEf.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1536667667150651392" target="_blank">Tue Jun 14 11:11:36 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Shapiro is right, actually, that normalizing gay background represents a threat to something he cares about. It’s just that the thing he wants is bad, so he has to lie about it. </p>
<p>Freedom of expression fundamentally offends the fascist. In Nazi Germany, there was only room for a single “correct” style of architecture and a single “correct” style of art. All others were vile, “degenerate”, and need to be publicly ridiculed and destroyed to enforce order. There is only room for one religion under authoritarianism: either a state religion, or the state as religion. To diverge from the state is to be counter to the state.
There is no room for exploration or any advancement of learning, only traditionalism. To think is to disagree, and to disagree is treason. And so too does the fascist only see room for one concept of gender and sexuality (a concept on which fascists’ identities are particularly dependent, as discussed well in <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/psychology-of-genocide-perpetrators-bystanders-and-rescuers/oclc/244632700">Baum’s work</a> and Umberto Eco’s <a href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/">ur-fascism</a>). The authoritarian demands that there must be one true notion of sex and gender, to be established and enforced with whatever violence is necessary to do so.</p>
<!-- TODO Trans desegregates social spaces: what was considered a hard barrier turned out to be a social construct we can break down and pass through -->
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1512180055736307713" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/" title="Earthseed | Abolition | Anti-capitalism | (he/him) Paid stuff @theslowfactory Unpaid stuff @wspmutualaid Backup: @jpbackitup"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1267117596542930949/ja591xA4_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Read Becoming Abolitionists by Derecka Purnell</span><span class="at">@JoshuaPotash</span></div></a></div><div><p>It sucks when folks don’t understand the fight against fascism is one fight, because the fascists do. They’re attacking trans, gay, and all queer folks. They’re attacking the teaching of race and Black voters. And they’re attacking women’s right to abortion. It’s one fight.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1512180055736307713" target="_blank">Thu Apr 07 21:26:34 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1543591448460890113" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="amylittlefield/1543591447341027328"><a href="https://twitter.com/amylittlefield/" title="Abortion access correspondent @thenation & 🕵️ freelancer for hire covering repro health @FSP_NWU member"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1416465095819993089/hgNpXINt_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Amy Littlefield</span><span class="at">@amylittlefield</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/amylittlefield/status/1543591447341027328">amylittlefield</a>:</span><p>One reason it's essential to see these struggles as interconnected?</p><p>The other side does.</p><p>I've been to a lot of anti-abortion events recently and I can tell you: They're all talking about trans health care and abortion as twin symptoms of a cultural shift they want to destroy.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/amylittlefield/status/1543591448460890113" target="_blank">Sun Jul 03 13:44:14 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>And, to the fascist’s delight, such anti-trans policing is only possible by granting the state additional power to police sex and gender. Just like with <a href="https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/07/the-libertarian-case-for-abortion">the denial of abortion rights</a>, granting the state policing power over gender attacks the right to privacy and opens the way to extreme granular control over everyone’s most personal affairs. And the outgroup continually narrows, because of the <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623520500045088">pleasure of aggression</a> and the hunger for ever more expansive power. And like all policing, gender policing will keep looking for new ways to police. Do you look enough like a man? Are you behaving like a woman should? Does your career match your biology? Are you having enough children? Only fascists and fools want their self-expression regulated to such a degree.</p>
<p>This objection to privacy is actually a very common throughline in authoritarianism as part of their general objection to general autonomy. The authority, whether that’s the parent that owns a child or the state that owns a citizen, can always be trusted to make the correct decision, even and especially since what’s “correct” is usually not what the wretched little people want.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, in reality, people are so bad at actually identifying the trans people they think are so different than them it’s a running joke:</p>
<!-- ![StopTweetingMia: "We can always tell" https://t.co/67MXeieG6p ](https://twitter.com/StopTweetingMia/status/1508945730580320260?bigimg=True) -->
<p><img alt="That's a freak, nothing else." src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/freak.jpg"></p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57748135">Namibian teens vow to fight Olympics testosterone ban</a>, in which top Olympic candidates have been banned from competing because their <em>natural</em> testosterone levels were “too high”. </li>
<li><a href="https://nextshark.com/chinese-runners-viral-men/">Chinese Female Track Runners Go Viral for ‘Looking Like Men’</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.gaystarnews.com/article/lesbian-kicked-out-of-bowling-alley-because-she-used-the-womens-restroom/">Lesbian kicked out of bowling alley because she used the women’s restroom</a> - a bowling alley security guard aggressively forced a woman off the premises for using the women’s restroom because he imagined her to be a man</li>
<li><a href="https://www.towleroad.com/2016/04/police-force-lesbian-to-leave-bathroom-for-failing-to-show-id-prove-shes-a-woman-watch/">Viral Video of Lesbian Kicked Out of Women’s Room for Not Showing I.D. Exposes Dangers of Bathroom Policing</a> - same story: a gang of police demand a woman show them ID proving her gender because she used the women’s restroom, then manhandle her for refusing</li>
<li><a href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/lesbian-couple-kicked-out-womens-4977298">Lesbian couple kicked out of women’s toilet at cinema because security thought they were MEN</a></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1506768661591126021" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="JinkiesJerrica/1506765330751758337"><a href="https://twitter.com/JinkiesJerrica/" title="ADHD| Bi/Pan Sapphic 🏳️🌈| Fashionista| Gamer Girl| Guitarist| She/Her| Socialist| Trans Woman 🏳️⚧️| Witch 🌒🌕🌘| Girlfriend of @LetsGetBritt ❤️"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1502742101489963014/0D4HUJZP_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jerrica</span><span class="at">@JinkiesJerrica</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/JinkiesJerrica/status/1506765330751758337">JinkiesJerrica</a>:</span><p>so committed are transohobic cis people to their assumptions about what gender “looks like” that they often misgender other cis people, as was recently seen with Olympic swimmer, Katie Ledecky, a cis woman </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/JinkiesJerrica/status/1506768661591126021/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FOkeG9nVQAMjBX3.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JinkiesJerrica/status/1506768661591126021" target="_blank">Wed Mar 23 23:03:37 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>None of these people were even trans. And yet the atmosphere of hostility toward trans people and gender non-conformity in general opened an avenue to hate and abuse.
But the anti-trans people don’t care about collateral damage, they care for the pleasure of aggression of waging their war on the Others. To them, the side effects of that are collateral damage towards other groups they dislike at best, and barely a consideration at worst.</p>
<p>Not only are people very bad at determining people’s genetic makeup from a cursory visual inspection, but the people who get angriest and care the most seem to be the worst at it. This is also a preview of what enforcement will look like: angry men attacking women for not conforming to their hyperspecific images of how they imagine good women should look and act.</p>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="ohios-save-womens-sports-act">Ohio’s Save Women’s Sports Act<a class="headerlink" href="#ohios-save-womens-sports-act" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>Chumps on the internet making dumb replies is almost comedic. The extent to which policing is willing to go to wage its war is not. I’ll talk more about laws in the next article but for now, here’s a taste in Ohio.</p>
<p>In the 2021-2022 regular house session, Ohio passed <a href="https://search-prod.lis.state.oh.us/solarapi/v1/general_assembly_134/bills/hb151/PH/02/hb151_02_PH?format=pdf">HB 151, the “Save Women’s Sports Act”</a> 56-28 to “designate separate single-sex teams and sports for each sex.”
(Worth noting: the <em>real</em> Save Women’s Sports Act was House Bill 61. not 151, 61 wasn’t up for consideration. This language was instead shoehorned into a different, unrelated amendment to push it through.)
I do like women, and saving their sports sounds nice. But that’s not what this does. What this does is sexually assault children.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite>Sec. 3313.5318.</cite>
<div class="language-text pre-wrap no-line-nums highlight"><table class="highlighttable"><tr><td class="linenos"><div class="linenodiv"><pre><span></span><span class="normal">1</span>
<span class="normal">2</span>
<span class="normal">3</span>
<span class="normal">4</span></pre></div></td><td class="code"><div><pre><span></span><code>(C) If a participant's sex is disputed, the participant shall establish the participant's sex by presenting a signed physician's statement indicating the participant's sex based upon only the following:
(1) The participant's internal and external reproductive anatomy;
(2) The participant's normal endogenously produced levels of testosterone;
(3) An analysis of the participant's genetic makeup.
</code></pre></div></td></tr></table></div></p>
</blockquote>
<p>This law allows anyone to dispute the sex of an athletic participant on a school team. The specific medical procedure is defined here by law to be as invasive as possible. This mandates a full medical examination of the external <em>and internal</em> anatomy, which includes a doctor feeling the child’s uterus and ovaries from the inside. This is meant to be painful and traumatic, and an exam like this would <em>never</em> be performed on girls this young without a clear reason to fear their health is in danger. It is sexual assault by design.</p>
<p>Anyone who claims they suspect an athlete lied about their sex can sue the school district. If that girl’s parents are unwilling to have their child sexually traumatized, the district has to pay the accuser, end of story. Because this gives the general population discretionary bounty-hunting power, this will be used vindictively against targeted populations, as discretionary power always is. A special legal carve-out is provided to allow people to abuse this law without liability. No provisions are made for people who this is used maliciously <em>against</em>.</p>
<p>That title though, the “Save Women’s Sports Act”. Saving sports from what, exactly? How many trans children were there in public sports? One. One single high-school junior. <a href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/06/03/gop-passes-bill-aiming-to-root-out-suspected-transgender-female-athletes-with-genital-inspection/">Said Rep. Rich Brown(D)</a>, “This is not a real problem. This is a made-up, ‘let’s feed red meat to the base’ issue.” But to them, it’s worth it. It doesn’t matter the collateral damage, it doesn’t matter that public schools are now formalizing institutional sexual assault of children. What matters is <em>eliminating the enemy.</em> It’s cruel on every level. </p>
<p><a href="https://chaser.com.au/national/trans-person-likely-upended-entire-life-to-gain-advantage-in-volleyball-competition-reports-idiot/"><img alt="Trans person likely upended entire life to gain advantage in volleyball competition, reports idiot" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/chaser.png"></a></p>
<p>Across the board, though, we know the “men posing as trans women to cheat at sports” panic is absurd. The Olympic committee has allowed trans competitors since 2004, and the NCAA has since 2011. Despite those huge sample sets — more people and over a longer time span than any clinical study — there has yet to be a transgender Olympian or a dominant transgender athlete in college sports. (If someone were found to be getting an unfair advantage, the leagues would ban it, not kick out players who didn’t violate any rules — this is a regular practice, not a new problem.) Nor has there ever been <a href="https://twitter.com/minusplnp/status/1549051640644153345">Meryl Links’s theoretical study</a>: a statistical analysis that demonstrates trans women win (X+A)% where the A is greater than the statistical margin of error. You see none of that, just the occasional anecdote amplified by conservative media. The numbers don’t show sports are in danger because they aren’t. Sports are just being used to attack trans people, with sexism and fear of people “taking advantage” used in lieu of reason and evidence.</p>
<!-- ![KatyMontgomerie: The absolute hysteria of a state of 11 million people voting to let random adults inspect their children's genitals (inc internal) because one single trans kid wants to play sport. Trans panic is absolutely ridiculous https://t.co/Y9t8G8owQE](https://twitter.com/KatyMontgomerie/status/1533155894246121473) -->
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="hypocrisy">Hypocrisy<a class="headerlink" href="#hypocrisy" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<!-- there is a lot of it -->
<p>Hypocrisy is always rampant in authoritarianism. Hurting the people you claim to protect, acting in ways totally opposed to the justifications you use, and just blatant lying. I’m not going to spend too much time arguing the existence of every case of hypocrisy, because it so thoroughly permeates the whole discourse that I could get stuck doing that for years. </p>
<!-- examples -->
<p>Obviously the religious argument that people are made correctly and transgenderism is therefore a sin is just regurgitating the very obviously wrong anti-medicine points that lead people to deny their children necessary medical care, which is <em>actual</em> child abuse. But it’s just unending. <!-- And a bare minimum of decency is not inflicting conditions on people that you know to double their suicide rate. -->
I’ll show you cases where people use the rhetoric of “free speech” as a weapon to keep people from speaking, or even compel specific political speech.
I’ll show you people who fight against “partisan politics” by demanding ideas their side dislikes be banned from libraries.
I’ll even show you a pastor preaching from the pulpit that exterminating the LGBTQ community because they’re categorically brute beasts with no hope of salvation is the only way Christians can truly love their fellow man.
You really don’t need my help to notice the hypocrisy, it’s right there in the open.</p>
<!-- display of power -->
<p>The problem is that — <a href="https://twitter.com/dynamicsymmetry/status/1486798169702871044">borrowed observation</a> — the hypocrisy isn’t an error, the hypocrisy is the <em>point</em>. It’s a show of power: it demonstrates that the authoritarian isn’t constrained by morals or reason, they just get to impose their will on the world because they’re strong enough. It comes from the same place as bombarding your opponent with an exhausting amount of obvious lies. It demonstrates power over meaning; that they’re strong enough that nothing but them matters. The hypocrisy isn’t subtle or even meant to be, it’s a flex.</p>
<!-- [](https://twitter.com/RyanLEllis/status/1512471022037049346) -->
<p class="side-by-side align-top"><img alt="Ryan Ellis tweet" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/brian1.png">
<img alt="Ryan Ellis review" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/review.jpg"></p>
<p>So I don’t point the hypocrisy because it’s a slam-dunk argument that will make people realize the error of their ways, because that’s not going to happen. I’m not operating under the misconception that the villains of this story can feel shame. I point it out partly to demonstrate what <em>proper</em> critical consumption of information looks like, but mostly as a reminder of how disconnected the people driving genocide are from reality. They don’t care that they’re wrong, and you can’t persuade them with reason. So instead of “arguing the case” that this is wildly hypocritical, I’m just going to point out that it is. </p>
<blockquote>
<p><cite markdown='1'>Jean-Paul Sartre:</cite></p>
<p>Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.</p>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section3">
<h3 id="next">Next<a class="headerlink" href="#next" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h3>
<p>This is a high-level intro and the first of four articles I’m writing about this topic.</p>
<p>In the next part, I’m going to dive into some of the specific genocidal laws and policies being enacted. </p>
<p><img alt="This shit sucks, and it sucks having to explain why it sucks and it sucks that assholes will argue it doesn't suck." src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2022/07/19/the-genocidaires-intro/sucks.jpg"></p>
<!-- TODO
Authoritarianism: Rights aren't needed in a perfect order
![courtneymilan: Certain people have spent a very, very long time convincing us that it was okay to not have basic rights because they wouldn’t come after you as long as you met the criteria for inclusion in civil society.](https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1548835427133505537) -->
</section>
</section>
<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.ushmm.org/genocide-prevention">Genocide Prevention at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages">Genocide Watch, The Ten Stages of Genocide</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K6-cEAJZlE">1947 US War Department, “Don’t Be a Sucker”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/">Umberto Eco, “Ur-Fascism”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.amazon.com/Fascism-Today-What-How-End/dp/1849352941">Shane Burley, “Fascism Today”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://theauthoritarians.org/">Bob Altemyer, “The Authoritarians”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://jason-stanley.com/book/how-propaganda-works/">Jason Stanley, “How Propaganda Works”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/subpopulations/transgender-people/">UCLA Williams Institute, “Transgender People” subpopulation page</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/reporting-about-transgender-people-read-this">HRC’s Brief Guide to Getting Transgender Coverage Right - Human Rights Campaign</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-gender_movement">Wikipedia, Anti-Gender Movement</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://theoutline.com/post/7083/the-magical-thinking-of-guys-who-love-logic">Aisling McCrea, “The magical thinking of guys who love logic”</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- - [Cory Doctorow, "The cruelty isn't the point"][doctorow-cruelty-power]{: .related-reading} -->
<!-- - [Briahna Joy Gray, "The Libertarian Case for Abortion"][libertarian-case-for-abortion]{: .related-reading} -->
<!-- - [Jack Jenkins, "How the Capitol attacks helped spread Christian nationalism in the extreme right"][wapo-jan6-extreme-right]{: .related-reading} -->
<!-- -->
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/psychology-of-genocide-perpetrators-bystanders-and-rescuers/oclc/244632700">Steven K. Baum, “The psychology of genocide”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437726">Simpson, K. E. (2012). Hitler’s Genocide. Teaching of Psychology, 39(2), 113–120.</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/review-of-politics/article/abs/gazing-steadfastly-at-the-holocaust-robert-jay-lifton-the-nazi-doctors-medical-killing-and-the-psychology-of-genocide-new-york-basic-books-1986-pp-xiii-561-1995/79E04FBF90D0CC94D2B3034E89C5D364">Robert Jay Lifton, “Gazing Steadfastly at the Holocaust”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00661.x">Kristen Monroe, “Cracking the Code of Genocide: The Moral Psychology of Rescuers, Bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623520500045088">Woolf, L. M., & Hulsizer, M. R. (2005). “Psychosocial roots of genocide: risk, prevention, and intervention”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2022/06/03/gop-passes-bill-aiming-to-root-out-suspected-transgender-female-athletes-with-genital-inspection/">Morgan Trau, “GOP passes bill aiming to root out ‘suspected’ transgender female athletes with genital inspection”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/">Randall Balmer, “The Real Origins of the Religious Right”</a></li>
</ul>
<!-- [Inside a Cult - Gender Critical (Part One - Recruitment) - YouTube (watch)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwI6py78gsI) -->
</section>people who know more than me talk about Epic acquiring Bandcamp2022-03-03T00:00:00-06:002022-03-03T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-03-03:/blog/2022/03/03/people-who-know-more-than-me-talk-about-epic-acquiring-bandcamp/<!-- htmltitle: <span class="nb">people who know more than me talk about</span> <span class="nb">Epic acquiring Bandcamp</span> -->
<p>March 2, 2022: <a href="https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/">Bandcamp puts out a press release about their “joining” Epic Games.</a> This follows in a line of eerily similar acquisitions of companies catering to indies, namely <a href="https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/sketchfab-is-joining-the-epic-games-family">Sketchfab</a> and <a href="https://magazine.artstation.com/2021/04/artstation-is-joining-the-epic-games-family/">ArtStation</a>. </p>
<p>There are lots of interesting topics intersecting here:</p>
<ul>
<li>Venture capital and the associated perverse incentives</li>
<li>Antitrust and general issues with corporate consolidations</li>
<li>The takeover of existing institutions, especially technical infrastructure</li>
<li>The false narrative of corporations as indie and non-corporate</li>
<li>Epic vs Apple and problems of platform monopoly</li>
<li>Bandcamp’s correct but rare approach to piracy, which is endangered</li>
</ul>
<p>I’ll talk more about those some day, don’t worry. For now, though, have some tweets.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true" data-lang="en" data-nosnippet="true" data-tweetid="1499083179206053897"><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/" title="Infosec sorceress • ML/AI mad ethicist • speedrun community moderator • she/her • queer • favorite color is actually orange • 厄"><img onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1443846216169762838/IN_RV73W_normal.jpg"/><div class="vertical"><span class="name">badidea 🪐</span><span class="at">@0xabad1dea</span></div></a></div><div><p>the problem with making a good website is that sooner or later someone will offer you an un-refusable amount of money to ruin it <a href="https://twitter.com/Bandcamp/status/1499068917947510788" target="_blank">twitter.com/Bandcamp/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/1499083179206053897" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:04:16 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<!-- htmltitle: <span class="nb">people who know more than me talk about</span> <span class="nb">Epic acquiring Bandcamp</span> -->
<p>March 2, 2022: <a href="https://blog.bandcamp.com/2022/03/02/bandcamp-is-joining-epic/">Bandcamp puts out a press release about their “joining” Epic Games.</a> This follows in a line of eerily similar acquisitions of companies catering to indies, namely <a href="https://sketchfab.com/blogs/community/sketchfab-is-joining-the-epic-games-family">Sketchfab</a> and <a href="https://magazine.artstation.com/2021/04/artstation-is-joining-the-epic-games-family/">ArtStation</a>. </p>
<p>There are lots of interesting topics intersecting here:</p>
<ul>
<li>Venture capital and the associated perverse incentives</li>
<li>Antitrust and general issues with corporate consolidations</li>
<li>The takeover of existing institutions, especially technical infrastructure</li>
<li>The false narrative of corporations as indie and non-corporate</li>
<li>Epic vs Apple and problems of platform monopoly</li>
<li>Bandcamp’s correct but rare approach to piracy, which is endangered</li>
</ul>
<p>I’ll talk more about those some day, don’t worry. For now, though, have some tweets.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499083179206053897" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/" title="Infosec sorceress • ML/AI mad ethicist • speedrun community moderator • she/her • queer • favorite color is actually orange • 厄"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1443846216169762838/IN_RV73W_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">badidea 🪐</span><span class="at">@0xabad1dea</span></div></a></div><div><p>the problem with making a good website is that sooner or later someone will offer you an un-refusable amount of money to ruin it <a href='https://twitter.com/Bandcamp/status/1499068917947510788' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Bandcamp/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/1499083179206053897" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:04:16 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<p>@mcclure111 on acquisitions in the tech industry and how/why being purchased by a large company often destroys the small acquisition:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499167687913652237" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><p>A basic fact of life in the tech industry is often a company will all of a sudden wind up with a bunch of cash, because they made money quicker than they expected— thinking here Epic Games, Apple, Facebook— and will start acquiring companies *just to do something with the money*.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167687913652237" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:40:04 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper thread"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">@mcclure111 Thread</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499167687913652237" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><p>A basic fact of life in the tech industry is often a company will all of a sudden wind up with a bunch of cash, because they made money quicker than they expected— thinking here Epic Games, Apple, Facebook— and will start acquiring companies *just to do something with the money*.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167687913652237" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:40:04 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499167689515974657" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499167687913652237"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167687913652237">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Generally you don't want to have cash reserves. Money stored in cash is "unproductive"; investing or buying a productive business can bring money in year over year, so leaving it in a bank account is an opportunity cost. Plus surplus cash means investors clamoring for dividends.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167689515974657" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:40:05 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499167691269099522" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499167689515974657"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167689515974657">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Moreover what I *assume* to be the case (tho corp-scale taxes are complicated so I'm nervous I'm about to say something wrong) is random acquisitions are a tax deferral ploy. Excess revenue gets taxed; but spend it on buying something big, & you don't get taxed until you sell it.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167691269099522" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:40:05 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499168878861111299" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499167691269099522"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499167691269099522">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Anyway if $BIGCORP buys $SMALLCORP_YOU_LIKE, and you're nervous because you can't imagine why they would do that, maybe it's *literally* as a cash disposal method.</p><p>Now get nervous again. Since if $BIGCORP sincerely doesn't care about SMALLCORP, there might be a death timer going</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499168878861111299" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:44:48 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499168879947522048" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499168878861111299"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499168878861111299">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>Consider the specific case of Epic Games buying Bandcamp. Bandcamp is productive; Epic isn't going to dismantle it.</p><p>However chances are good Epic will sell it off one day, esp if it starts having financial trouble— probably to an investment bank that breaks or disassembles it.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499168879947522048" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:44:48 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499170281461624834" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499168879947522048"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499168879947522048">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>G/O media is a good model to look at here. Sometime around 2016, Univision made a ploy to break into English-language online publishing. It didn't work out. They wound up bundling the Onion and all the Gizmodo sites together into a new entity & selling them to an investment bank.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499170281461624834" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:50:22 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499170282656964615" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="mcclure111/1499170281461624834"><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/" title="glitch girl – working on a vr game, announcements at @mermaidvr – current avatar by @egypturnash – also at https://t.co/BW7EdeXEWd — she/her — 🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/852519442047225857/juzc1JeR_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">mcc</span><span class="at">@mcclure111</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499170281461624834">mcclure111</a>:</span><p>The new owners proceeded to try to wreck the place. They're hollowing out the Onion+AV Club, & are trying to break the Gizmodo union (which is at this second on strike). AFAIK, Univision doing all these acquisitions was benign; but *when Univision lost interest*, then it got bad.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1499170282656964615" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:50:23 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
</div>
<p>My Emu Is Emo on venture capital and private equity:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499120529776730123" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><p>This, my dear indie musician friends, is a private equity firm's exit strategy on its investment in Bandcamp, so (a) you're not wrong in feeling mangled by greed and (b) I'm going to tell you, in broad terms, what's behind the curtain. #bandcamp 1/? </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499120529776730123/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM3x4LsXwAELBP-.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499120529776730123" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:32:41 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper thread"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">@myemuisemo Thread</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499120891258707970" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499120529776730123"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499120529776730123">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>Bandcamp has (had) one known investor, a venture capital firm called True Ventures. The size of their stake is not available to me: their materials say they usually aim for about 25% of the company, but it varies.</p><p>What matters is what VC does and why. 2/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499120891258707970" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:34:07 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499121320457609221" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499120891258707970"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499120891258707970">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>VC firms like True Ventures provide capital for start-ups to... well... start up. This can be a very early stage to bootstrap the company into existence, or it can be a slightly less early stage to expand. I don't have info on which it was with Bandcamp, but it doesn't matter. 3/</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499121320457609221" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:35:49 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499121718937493510" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499121320457609221"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499121320457609221">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>Typically, people starting a company do a first, informal round of funding by hitting up their friends & family. After that, they start looking for investors, either among VC firms or among rich people looking for private investments. 4/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499121718937493510" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:37:24 +0000 2022</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499122115898978308" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499121718937493510"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499121718937493510">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>A company may do several rounds of VC or they may get a big investor & only do one. What's important here is two things:</p><p>1) This kind of investing is very high risk. Most start-ups fail.</p><p>2) Investors are focused on an exit strategy. 5/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122115898978308" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:38:59 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499122464080777216" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499122115898978308"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122115898978308">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>An exit strategy is how early investors get their money back. There are two conventional exit strategies:</p><p>1) Go public (IPO).</p><p>2) Get acquired.</p><p>Once Bandcamp got in bed with a VC firm, one of these outcomes was going to happen if the company didn't outright fail. 6/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122464080777216" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:40:22 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499122750107144193" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499122464080777216"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122464080777216">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>So why doesn't Bandcamp go public? We don't know, because as things stand, they don't have to disclose any financials. There's nothing really comparable in the music space & the last few major labels are mostly subsidiaries of larger companies. 7/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122750107144193" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:41:30 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499123278895628293" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499122750107144193"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499122750107144193">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>Going public is expensive af, it opens the company to long-term financial compliance expenses, & it requires either being profitable or having a super-exciting growth story. So there are lots of reasons why Bandcamp could be a perfectly nice company that doesn't want to IPO. 8/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499123278895628293" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:43:36 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499123672761749506" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499123278895628293"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499123278895628293">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>Being acquired, on the other hand, just calls for having something that another company wants. It can be the actual business, but it can also be talent, patents, customers, clients... 9/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499123672761749506" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:45:10 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499124102715658240" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499123672761749506"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499123672761749506">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>All you indie musicians using Bandcamp qualify as an asset that could be interesting to a buyer, regardless of how profitable Bandcamp's business model is (which we don't know either way). So yeah, in a sense, you've been sold to Epic, as has the user base of music buyers. 10/?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499124102715658240" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:46:53 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499124759476457475" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="myemuisemo/1499124102715658240"><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/" title="Fan of indie music and pastry. She/her."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1193168460337090560/H-7ijA6m_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eilonwy has an emu, symbolically</span><span class="at">@myemuisemo</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499124102715658240">myemuisemo</a>:</span><p>What Epic Games intends to do with indie music and indie music buyers is another kettle of fish; I haven't looked at them beyond noting that Tencent owns a bit under half the company, which doesn't exactly put the yee in my haw. 11/11</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/myemuisemo/status/1499124759476457475" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:49:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<p>Future of Music Coalition on the important role Bandcamp has, and the qualities it will need to preserve in order to still be decent and non-exploitive:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499096231179661317" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><p>You can bet we have a lot of complicated thoughts about this! 🧵 <a href='https://twitter.com/Bandcamp/status/1499068917947510788' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Bandcamp/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499096231179661317" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:56:08 +0000 2022</a>
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<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499096233037684743" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499096231179661317"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499096231179661317">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Too few companies have too much power in every part of the music business. It's easy to understand why mergers and acquistions are viewed with serious skepticism. And some in the music community have real frustrations with how Epic has dealt with music licensing in the past.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499096233037684743" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:56:08 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499097483695304710" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499096233037684743"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499096233037684743">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>It would be really easy for Bandcamp's new owner to squander the goodwill that the service has banked over the years with artists, indie labels, and music listeners. But the service is profitable NOW--it doesn't need to change course from the principles that made it successful.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499097483695304710" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:01:06 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499098204448739330" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499097483695304710"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499097483695304710">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>In evaluating this merger, that's perhaps the key question: does Epic fundamentally understand what those principles are? And is Epic comfortable with committing to them moving forward?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499098204448739330" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:03:58 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499098746092757000" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499098204448739330"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499098204448739330">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Those principles include: </p><p>(1) clear, fair, and transparent terms</p><p>(2) neutral and nondiscriminatory treatment of all the artists and labels they work with (no sweetheart deals or equity stakes for big rightsholders)</p><p>(3) absolutely no payola of any kind in any part of the platform</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499098746092757000" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:06:07 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499100268302151687" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499098746092757000"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499098746092757000">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>(4) centering the needs of artists, especially those whose work is not aiming for mass scale in platform design and new feature development</p><p>(5) investment in original high quality journalism that centers diverse communities and musical traditions not covered elsewhere</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499100268302151687" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:12:10 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499100781399715851" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499100268302151687"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499100268302151687">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>(6) treating music listeners respectfully, rejecting the kinds of surveillance technologies and user monetization schemes running rampant on some of the major music platforms</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499100781399715851" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:14:12 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499101998624428038" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499100781399715851"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499100781399715851">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>(7) valuing music itself by allowing artists to set pricing--rejecting the notion of music as loss leader</p><p>(8) never joining in efforts by large firms to drive down the value of music in ratesetting processes or working to limit musicians' rights over where/how their work appears.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499101998624428038" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:19:03 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499104564120887297" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499101998624428038"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499101998624428038">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>These are some of the guardrails that Epic will need to be mindful of if they want Bandcamp to remain a partner that musicians value and trust. That path is clearly available to them.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499104564120887297" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:29:14 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499106226281627652" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499104564120887297"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499104564120887297">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>One of the factors that drive mergers and acquistions is the belief that additional resources can encourage growth. In the past, Bandcamp's growth strategy has been simple, slow & steady--to provide a solid value proposition for artists and indie labels and fans.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499106226281627652" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:35:51 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499107916904902662" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499106226281627652"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499106226281627652">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Many artists would certainly prefer an environment where a larger percentage of overall music consumption is happening through Bandcamp, rather than the mainstream full-catalog on demand streaming services that currently undervalue their work.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499107916904902662" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:42:34 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499109364187246593" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499107916904902662"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499107916904902662">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>But one of the pitfalls of mergers and acquisitions is the potential for new gatekeeping or exclusionary behaviors to emerge. So: musicians are going to watch close, and try and keep 'em accountable.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499109364187246593" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:48:19 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499110428047204354" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499109364187246593"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499109364187246593">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Epic has made a compelling case in antitrust suits and in legislative debates that certain app store policies amount to anticompetitive practices by Apple and Google. Notably, those policies have also been a problem for Bandcamp, and are likely a factor inhibiting its growth.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499110428047204354" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:52:32 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499119558346645507" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499110428047204354"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499110428047204354">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>This points to some important context: we have to understand the market dysfunction that has led to Bandcamp's artist friendly policies and payment structure being such an outlier. That's the result of decades of failure by US antitrust regulators and enforcers.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499119558346645507" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 20:28:49 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499134344128077827" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499119558346645507"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499119558346645507">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Tencent’s role as 40% owner of Epic adds another set of potential concerns, over what antitrust nerds call “horizontal shareholding” and “vertical shareholding,” given that Tencent has investments in major music companies and in streaming services.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499134344128077827" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:27:34 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499135750813724675" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499134344128077827"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499134344128077827">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>Still, the details really matter. Vertical/horizontal shareholding can alter business imperatives, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to voting power or operational control.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499135750813724675" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:33:10 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499159052848447501" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="future_of_music/1499135750813724675"><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/" title="Education, Research, and Advocacy for Musicians"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/510073626465271809/ES7BIMzU_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Future of Music Coalition</span><span class="at">@future_of_music</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499135750813724675">future_of_music</a>:</span><p>So: </p><p>1)we watch closely.</p><p>2)we hold ‘em accountable.</p><p>3)we work to address the systemic problems that lead to market dysfunction in recorded music.</p><p>4)we push for reinvigorated antitrust enforcement and regulation.</p><p>5)we address musicians’ lack of collective and individual leverage.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/future_of_music/status/1499159052848447501" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 23:05:45 +0000 2022</a>
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<p>Ron Knox on Epic in particular, and the streaming market:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499083480621330436" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><p>1. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this, but, as someone who is deeply cynical of consolidation, here are some quick reactions to Epic Games buying Bandcamp. <a href='https://twitter.com/Bandcamp/status/1499068917947510788' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Bandcamp/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499083480621330436" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:05:28 +0000 2022</a>
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<div class="spoiler-wrapper thread"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">@ronmknox Thread</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499083861157888004" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499083480621330436"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499083480621330436">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>2. As always, my primary concern here is with the independence and finances of artists and their labels. Bandcamp isn't perfect, but so far it has been a noble and sometimes successful attempt at recreating the brick and mortar record store online. It's too important to lose.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499083861157888004" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:06:58 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499084702266933248" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499083861157888004"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499083861157888004">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>3. There are a few ways Epic could improve Bandcamp, and I suspect it might. </p><p>It should fight for fans to be able to buy music from their phones within the Bandcamp app. Doing so would help artists and fans. Epic deeply understands Apple's payment monopoly - and how to fight it.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499084702266933248" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:10:19 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499085360860741637" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499084702266933248"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499084702266933248">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>4. At the moment, Apple doesn't allow third-parties to accept payments for anything - whether it's Fortnite skins or albums on Bandcamp. That has forever been a barrier for the platform - and one Epic is obviously willing to go to war for.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499085360860741637" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:12:56 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499085498882658306" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499085360860741637"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499085360860741637">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>5. Epic could also help create a thing fans have been asking for for years, and that is now occupied by third-party software: Playlists. </p><p>Bandcamp playlists would be massively popular. But the worry, for me, is that it would lead to something else entirely.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499085498882658306" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:13:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499086003545509899" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499085498882658306"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499085498882658306">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>6. My concern is that Epic looks at Bandcamp as sees the potential to create its own, very profitable streaming platform. </p><p>Maybe it would be better than Spotify and the others, maybe it pays out more royalties. But the core business model of streaming remains bad for artists.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086003545509899" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:15:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499086463371206663" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499086003545509899"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086003545509899">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>7. At the moment, streaming on Bandcamp on mobile does what all streaming companies claim to do - offer a preview of music, so fans can then decide whether they want to pay for an album. On Bandcamp, it's a necessity. You can't keep streaming without buying. That's the model.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086463371206663" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:17:19 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499086987449540610" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499086463371206663"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086463371206663">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>8. Were Epic to undo this model - if it unlinked streaming from buying a song or album - it would crater the core purpose of the platform entirely. </p><p>I'm worried that - given Epic's love for subscription models in games - that's exactly what it wants to do.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086987449540610" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:19:24 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499087682475114507" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499086987449540610"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499086987449540610">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>9. The other concern of course is that Epic starts pinching from artists' current cut of sales on Bandcamp. There's an argument that, hey, even, say, a 70% cut is far better than the penny fractions bands make from Spotify and YouTube.</p><p>But that's not really the point.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499087682475114507" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:22:09 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499088378754744325" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499087682475114507"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499087682475114507">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>10. I have other worries - some less likely than others. Would Epic have right to first refusal for licensing? Would bands have to check if Epic wants to turn a song into an emote before licensing it some other way? </p><p>Probably not, but it's a thought. Stranger things, you know.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499088378754744325" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:24:55 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499088845413003270" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499088378754744325"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499088378754744325">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>11. Would Epic allow fans to stream more music, more times, without paying out royalties, because Bandcamp remains primarily a shopping site? At some point, Epic would be blatantly picking artists pockets.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499088845413003270" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:26:47 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499089244106670084" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ronmknox/1499088845413003270"><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/" title="Senior researcher & writer at @ILSR. Host of @antimonopolyhh. Antimonopoly. Antifascist. he/him. let's eat. || rknox@ilsr.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1357005532599627780/sGVFhqKw_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ron knox</span><span class="at">@ronmknox</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499088845413003270">ronmknox</a>:</span><p>12. Anyway, those are some initial thoughts. I want to be optimistic about this. I love Bandcamp, I've written words for their editorial products before. I want it to remain intact, for artists and for fans. </p><p>But time will tell. /end</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ronmknox/status/1499089244106670084" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:28:22 +0000 2022</a>
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<p>Megan Fox on venture capital:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499136646859538434" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/" title="Queer af founder of @GlassBottomGame, made @skatebirb! Also Hot Tin Roof etc. I work in a barn in the woods of PNW. birb chat: https://t.co/QijBMdkYdO"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1393268600799064064/UgiTMIyD_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Megan Fox</span><span class="at">@glassbottommeg</span></div></a></div><div><p>Anyone wondering why Bandcamp would sell?</p><p>They were VC funded. This is what happens when you take VC money. You're not able to structure in a way that would block their exit, and they will insist eventually if they can find or get given an offer. <a href='https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/bandcamp/company_financials' target='_blank'>crunchbase.com/organization/b…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499136646859538434" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:36:43 +0000 2022</a>
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<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499137132266340357" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="glassbottommeg/1499136646859538434"><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/" title="Queer af founder of @GlassBottomGame, made @skatebirb! Also Hot Tin Roof etc. I work in a barn in the woods of PNW. birb chat: https://t.co/QijBMdkYdO"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1393268600799064064/UgiTMIyD_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Megan Fox</span><span class="at">@glassbottommeg</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499136646859538434">glassbottommeg</a>:</span><p>VC do not give money out of the goodness of their heart. They just want to make more money. If your profits don't suit their desires, then they look for other exits, like a sale event. It's really that simple. And it sucks. Eyyy, capitalism.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499137132266340357" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:38:39 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499137575247745024" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="glassbottommeg/1499137132266340357"><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/" title="Queer af founder of @GlassBottomGame, made @skatebirb! Also Hot Tin Roof etc. I work in a barn in the woods of PNW. birb chat: https://t.co/QijBMdkYdO"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1393268600799064064/UgiTMIyD_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Megan Fox</span><span class="at">@glassbottommeg</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499137132266340357">glassbottommeg</a>:</span><p>Is it the VC's fault? Not precisely? It's just kinda baked into the relationship. In a better world, you wouldn't have to take VC money to build and scale your business. We'd have public funds for that, to encourage stable, long-term business. It's fucking abysmal that we don't.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499137575247745024" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:40:25 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499138089331081216" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="glassbottommeg/1499137575247745024"><a href="https://twitter.com/Campster/" title="Maker of Organic, Artisanal Video Essays About Interactive Media | Professional also-ran | Regret Elemental | (he/him) | Patreon: https://t.co/EWaCwwhs44"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1455273559237042180/ry2vMU4__normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Chris Franklin</span><span class="at">@Campster</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499137575247745024">glassbottommeg</a>:</span><p>@glassbottommeg Still countin' down the days to when this exact same disaster strikes Patreon (which has done multiple rounds of VC funding over almost 10 years, so I feel like it's just a matter of time).</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Campster/status/1499138089331081216" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:42:27 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499138488976887809" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="glassbottommeg/1499137575247745024"><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/" title="Queer af founder of @GlassBottomGame, made @skatebirb! Also Hot Tin Roof etc. I work in a barn in the woods of PNW. birb chat: https://t.co/QijBMdkYdO"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1393268600799064064/UgiTMIyD_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Megan Fox</span><span class="at">@glassbottommeg</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499137575247745024">glassbottommeg</a>:</span><p>Yuuuuup.</p><p>Or Discord. Or Twitter. Or literally any other tool indies have built their whole ass business around that is great for bringing people together but hasn't managed profit yet. <a href='https://twitter.com/Campster/status/1499138089331081216?t=YMC6KVluqxM9SD_euJ2d8Q&s=19' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Campster/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/glassbottommeg/status/1499138488976887809" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 21:44:03 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499099583368073216" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/sug_online/" title="Director of Media at @idpi_umass, host at @_groove_cafe, music as sug. I have a novel/audiobook called Perfect Information coming out in 2022. he/him."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1498722314539708418/ve9AdSY8_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Mike Sugarman</span><span class="at">@sug_online</span></div></a></div><div><p>tbh I think the thing bumming everyone out about Bandcamp is that we're being reminded that there's no room in the current way of the world for a modest, sustainable success that generally benefits everyone opting into it. the sane option just never stays on the table very long.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/sug_online/status/1499099583368073216" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 19:09:27 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499192119654760451" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Nash076/1499191112082370562"><a href="https://twitter.com/Nash076/" title="My hovercraft is full of eels. Co-pilot: @tara_atrandom Also helpful: https://t.co/dTYzdjF9GA"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1798302063/image1328155974_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">The Call is Coming from Inside the Nash</span><span class="at">@Nash076</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Nash076/status/1499191112082370562">Nash076</a>:</span><p>There is no other platform. There is absolutely *nothing* like Bandcamp. Even Soundcloud is a ridiculously pale shadow.</p><p>This is a fucking catastrophe for the entire music industry. <a href='https://twitter.com/Abstruse/status/1499191633417547782' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Abstruse/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Nash076/status/1499192119654760451" target="_blank">Thu Mar 03 01:17:09 +0000 2022</a>
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<p>…Okay, since I haven’t seen anyone else talk about it, let me talk about piracy for a second. </p>
<p>Bandcamp has always understood the truth behind piracy; <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/3kg7pv/studies-keep-showing-that-the-best-way-to-stop-piracy-is-to-offer-cheaper-better-alternatives">most piracy is due to the market not providing a good product.</a> People are generally happy to pay for their entertainment and compensate artists. The panic behind piracy is mostly due to an industry obsession with the perception of “lost revenue” and metrics, which has lead to an inordinate obsession over DRM and content management. </p>
<p><a href="https://blog.bandcamp.com/2012/01/03/cheaper-than-free/">Bandcamp sees itself as a <em>competitor</em> to the natural phenomenon of filesharing</a>, not that filesharing is an evil that they need to stamp out at the expense of their own business. As a result, they’ve consistently delivered a fantastic product and marketplace <em>without</em> ruining their site with elaborate schemes to prevent “malicious use.” You can look up a track by id, and just make an embed that links to it. People can click the embed to listen to the song, or click through to go to the website and buy a copy. It’s magical, and it’s exactly what the internet should be. Bandcamp is a breath of fresh air in this respect, as well as so many others. </p>
<p>Epic, meanwhile, is controlled by the Chinese multinational media conglomerate Tencent, which is exactly the kind of company that <em>does</em> go off on these revenue generation holy wars, even at their own expense. Just look at what they’ve been willing to do in order to monetize <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0">Fortnite</a>. One only has to take one look at that to see that these are not people who place any meaningful value on human dignity or agency. So that worries me.</p>
<p>Anyway. On a lighter note,</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499074750106292229" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/nedwards/" title="I’m a stranger here myself. freelance/consulting editor, writer, gremlin wrangler. previously: senior editor @wirecutter, @maximumpc. (he/him)"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1351631502354870272/jZiUCTDu_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">a cascade of ping-pong balls in a stairwell</span><span class="at">@nedwards</span></div></a></div><div><p>Pleased to announce that Beloved Independent Company has been acquired by Enormous Corporation. While we've declined similar options in the past, Enormous Corporation has promised not to change anything while delivering me, personally, just a buttload of money.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/nedwards/status/1499074750106292229" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 17:30:46 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499085380267692039" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="0xabad1dea/1499083179206053897"><a href="https://twitter.com/tobypinder/" title="Goofy webapp dev dude. Ruby On Rails. AppSec. Fintech. Internet Nonsense. Videogames. Weird Music, He/Him. More URL than IRL"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1022191527819390978/6ajN9RaY_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Toby Pinder</span><span class="at">@tobypinder</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea/status/1499083179206053897">0xabad1dea</a>:</span><p>@0xabad1dea they might need to tweak the website a bit lol </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/tobypinder/status/1499085380267692039/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM3R5HMWQAcZwI9.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/tobypinder/status/1499085380267692039" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 18:13:00 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499275503139790848" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/garrynewman/" title="Owner of @fcpnchstds + the g in @gmodofficial."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/969662125114318848/AH2Try79_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">garry</span><span class="at">@garrynewman</span></div></a></div><div><p>The silver lining when Epic acquires some big brand is that Unity didn't</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/garrynewman/status/1499275503139790848" target="_blank">Thu Mar 03 06:48:29 +0000 2022</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1499079769698226176" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Psilocervine/" title="🔞I RETWEET PORN AND MAKE VIDEOGAMES🔞 kobeni in the streets, makima in the sheets what's my iq? sorry buddy, i fuck NO MINORS, CHRIST"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1478874521595793412/O3R1y-ur_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Carol Malus Dienheim Needs a Fat Bitch (Fauna!)</span><span class="at">@Psilocervine</span></div></a></div><div><p></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Psilocervine/status/1499079769698226176/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FM3NGIOUUAAkMwe.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Psilocervine/status/1499079769698226176" target="_blank">Wed Mar 02 17:50:43 +0000 2022</a>
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<section class="section1">
<h1 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h1>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com">“Our Incredible Journey”, a catalog of startup acquisitions and subsequent destructions</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/24/software-is-cake-too/#looters">Cory Doctorow, “Private equity doesn’t create value, it destroys it”, 2020</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds">Cory Doctorow, “Private equity’s nursing home killing spree”, 2021</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903547253/a-tale-of-two-ecosystems-on-bandcamp-spotify-and-the-wide-open-future">Damon Krukowski, “A Tale Of Two Ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify And The Wide-Open Future”, 2020</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://blog.bandcamp.com/2012/01/03/cheaper-than-free/">Ethan Diamond, “Cheaper than Free”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://postpostmodernsite.wordpress.com/2017/10/16/bandcamp-an-alternative-to-music-piracy/">postmodernpostal, “Bandcamp: An Alternative to Music Piracy”, 2017</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://prospect.org/economy/how-americas-supply-chains-got-railroaded/">Matthew Jinoo Buck, “How America’s Supply Chains Got Railroaded”, 2022</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.bandcamp2.com">www.bandcamp2.com</a></li>
</ul>
</section>Winners and Losers2022-02-23T00:00:00-06:002022-02-23T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-02-23:/blog/2022/02/23/winners-and-losers/<p>I can’t write about antitrust. There’s too much to talk about. So I have to break the idea down, way down, to something manageable. I’m going to chew on one phrase here, “the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers.” It’s a favourite of the pro-monopoly types and it almost sounds reasonable, so let’s think about it for like a minute.</p>
<p>First, when pro-monopoly types say “the government shouldn’t pick winners and losers”, what they’re picturing as the “win state” is market domination. They don’t see it as a bad thing, because they feel that success correlates with virtue, so if a corporation beats out its competitors that’s because it was right and good. We know what it’s like when corporations actualize on this; complete market domination, customers have no option but to go through you, it’s impossible to start competing against you. 100% domination, company towns, corporate rule. But that theoretical “win state” is the answer to the question of what corporations “want”. </p>
<p>“Corporations”, as entities, are little optimizing robots. Executives and boards and shareholders are the cogs and wires, but the thing they come together to form is something of an entirely different nature, something artificial. This is intentional; people want corporate entities instead of humans specifically because corporate entities and humans are different. Corporations last, corporations have a focused goal, corporations have that machinery to scale and pursue it effectively. That thing they form is a very primitive artificial intelligence that uses its cogs and wires to pursue a specific goal.</p>
<p>And the thing they aspire to, the thing they try to maximize, is market share. Revenue is great, but market share prints money. And, in theory, when nobody is cheating or exploiting or being anticompetitive, this actually works. Corporations compete against each other for customers, customers pick the best products, innovation disrupts markets, yadda yadda.</p>
<p>But of course that doesn’t happen with cheats at the helms of these companies. And — as with any model, sport, or competition — without enforced regulation the market rewards the cheats. And what it rewards them with is power to charge more, power to make exploitative products, and ultimately power to keep competition from disrupting them.</p>
<p>In an environment where corporate crime is tightly prosecuted and nobody is “light on crime” even when it comes to the wealthy and powerful, this doesn’t happen. Cut out the cancer and you heal the body.</p>
<p>But keeping companies from being exploitive would be “picking winners and losers”! And that’s obviously wrong, they whine.</p>
<p>Now, in addition to what the words mean and what the states look like, the language “winners and losers” is also absurd because it spins the conversation with an undue emotional connotation. “It’s not <em>fair</em> for you to regulate companies such that they might lose money, because they’ve <em>earned it</em>.” Poor little guy. They’re hurt, and we’re stealing from them. Except no, that’s obviously a lie. Corporations aren’t people, they don’t have emotions or feel pain, they’re organizational structures composed of individuals who <em>are not unduly harmed by antitrust regulation.</em> </p>
<p>The actual humans in this equation, the only party anywhere near this question who we should worry about harming, are the consumers. The people, who depend on access to food and medical supplies and technology. The people who are <em>actually harmed by monopoly</em>, requiring antitrust in the first place!</p>
<p>Antitrust isn’t punishment, it’s correction of situation that has gone wrong. It’s fixing a machine that is producing undesirable results. It’s a correction to the AI’s value function; there was an undesirable outcome that was accidently being rewarded. The regulatory response needs to be either “whoops, you found a new way to hurt people we haven’t made illegal yet, let’s patch that” or “whoops, you’re overtly committing crimes, and there is a consequence for that because that is what rule of law means.”</p>
<p>The scoundrel is the one who makes the argument that because he got away with hurting people at a profit once, to stop him now would be unfair <em>to him.</em> Doing right by people is bad for his business model, so it’s impossible to say who’s right or not. It’s a transparent excuse for politicians who don’t personally agree with the law because they like the company, or like the money they spend to pick the company as the winner by means of policy drift.</p>
<p>The question of winners and losers doesn’t matter because <strong>what “winning” is for corporations is bad, per se.</strong> Corporations are artificial creations who perform by setting goals and pushing themselves toward them. And that (competition) is enormously beneficial! But just because some state is the best thing for a nonhuman entity doesn’t mean that should happen. In fact, every way in which that state is different from one that prioritizes people is a compelling argument against it. </p>Alma Mater2022-02-07T00:00:00-06:002022-02-07T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2022-02-07:/blog/2022/02/07/alma-mater/<p>I went to my old university today.<sup id="fnref:today"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:today">1</a></sup> I wanted to use the library. </p>
<p>It was a strange experience. There were things about my time there I missed, but I didn’t miss my time there. There was too much wrong. Ways I didn’t fit.</p>
<p>I looked around. It was passing period, and there was a throng of students coming and going both ways. The pavement was nice, new construction. People were laughing and talking and introducing each other. </p>
<p>Was I wrong? Should I be missing this? There is still so much good here. So I asked myself what it was I saw, exactly. And I looked out.</p>
<p>I went to my old university today.<sup id="fnref:today"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:today">1</a></sup> I wanted to use the library. </p>
<p>It was a strange experience. There were things about my time there I missed, but I didn’t miss my time there. There was too much wrong. Ways I didn’t fit.</p>
<p>I looked around. It was passing period, and there was a throng of students coming and going both ways. The pavement was nice, new construction. People were laughing and talking and introducing each other. </p>
<p>Was I wrong? Should I be missing this? There is still so much good here. So I asked myself what it was I saw, exactly. And I looked out.</p>
<p>I had just parked. There wasn’t enough parking on campus, and everyone knew it. There was so little parking that people were commonly very late to class because there were no spaces to be found. There were plans to build a new parking structure, but it wasn’t built. Other buildings came up instead.</p>
<p>It’s such a strange problem because it’s such an immediate barrier to entry. Can you visit? No. Can you attend? No. There’s no room. But parking is such a necessity on campus that people are willing to pay the exorbitant fees for a permit. $500/yr, sometimes more. And the passes were always oversold, so having one didn’t entitle you to a space, it just meant if you <em>could</em> park you wouldn’t have your car towed for your trouble.</p>
<p>I walked to the library. Where the path wasn’t concrete it was stone. Usually old stone steps, worn down by years of people coming and going. The metal in those corners had lost its shine. Those spaces were softer, somehow. And it was always like that in the alleys. If you knew the building layout you could pass through the alleys and find yourself in the middle of the next road.</p>
<p>For a span, those spaces were used by smokers. They would hide there, since the university banned smoking on-campus. Not just cigarettes, but chewing tobacco, vapes, or anything containing nicotine. The list was just broad enough that none of the health justifications ever fit it. It was never for health, though, it was so the school would look <em>clean</em>. Just another uniform code, bricks in the wall. And it helped that plenty of grants decided to mandate schools enforce such policies in order to be eligible for their money, of course. </p>
<p>And I as I think about those problems I can’t help but remember the rapes.</p>
<p>The university had restaurants on campus. Not real restaurants; it contracted out to a food service, which sublet their own little restaurants that ran as a state-granted monopoly. </p>
<p>That’s when I learned how to cook, I remember. The restaurants were terrible. Not just terrible as in food, but wildly unsafe. Food that was spoiled or rotten would regularly be served. There were several incidents where roaches were found in the kitchens.</p>
<p>And then there were the rapes. </p>
<p>The stores were managed by employees of the cartel, but the workers were mostly students. Students were supposed to be promoted, but never were. They were often international students, only allowed in the country under the condition they kept a steady job. And the cartel was the only job in town. Not just figuratively: F-1 visa holders are legally barred from seeking employment off-campus.</p>
<p>Students were raped by their managers. “If you want the job, you’ll do what it takes.” Sometimes the sexual harassment was lesser. Students went unpaid. When they were paid it was in scrip. Contracts were violated. Students were deported for trying to seek justice or safety. </p>
<p>There was an attempt at a unionisation. The cartel started pushing people out. Organizers found themselves stalked at night by police and arrested for crimes that hadn’t seemed to exist previously.</p>
<p>One of those managers — one known for sexually harassing women, and known to be a danger — wasn’t fired or disciplined for any of that. He was only fired a few years later, when he committed multiple homicides.</p>
<p>The university didn’t care. They cared that people knew about it, of course. They tried to keep people from talking about it, and had the police — the university has its own private police force that carries the full force of law, thanks to special government dispensation — clean the union away.</p>
<p>The student body government was supposed to vote on the contracts, but somehow that never happened. The outgoing government was told it was the next vote, and the incoming government was told it was the previous vote, and at the end of the day the cartel, even with all their crimes known and exposed, got a contract that would keep them in power over another three generations of students. </p>
<p>It was all the same. Grades were a racket. Class scheduling was racket. Housing was a racket (but of course, you know what landlords are like, except this landlord owned 100% of the homes you were allowed to use.) Tuition was a racket. Textbooks are a racket. Scammy startups shilled out money to use the campus as a testing ground for their new “robot uber for sandwiches” or whatever. Dining was just the most egregious. A difference of degree, not kind. Executives prioritizing money over humans in a more visible way than usual.</p>
<p>But plastered on all this same infrastructure I saw something else. Announcements, put together by teachers in word and taped up on windows. For student government hoping to make things better. I went inside. Not through the student union, or a rec center, or even one of the shiny new computer science buildings. I went through one of the old brownstone buildings; the ones used for everything when the university was young, but the big programs migrated away to their own centers until all that was left here were writing classes and offices of liberal arts teachers. </p>
<p>And the buildings were beautiful. All of them were. Full of desks and tables and walls and boards carefully arranged into spaces designed for humans to be in. Packed with tools and resources and ready to do so much good. Primed and overflowing with potential. It’s just that there was always… something. When you tried to do <em>academia</em>, when you tried to <em>learn</em>, or <em>socialize</em>, or <em>live</em>, there would always be something. Some little sabatouge, some job needlessly crippled, some requirement forcing people to do what was demanded and not what was needed. Some fear that at any moment to do the wrong thing would give the very ground you were walking on the chance it was waiting for, to strike and take and hurt.</p>
<p>I saw classrooms, where the good teachers taught good classes to tired students. A few people in the hallways. A couple at a table — this was an older building, so the chairs were soft and the tables were wooden — casually studying some paper. Students adjusting to the problems and having happy social lives even given the situation. </p>
<p>I had the mental image of greenery poking out and finding a way to grow in whatever soil there was. I was outside now. One of the laudable things I was seeing was not just fun, but people being able to handle circumstances and adjust to them. All that good and the potential I could see was still happening. Never at full potential, but even with life reduced to 20%-30% people were still trying to generate good. “The resiliency of the human spirit.”</p>
<p>And then I saw the new science building.</p>
<p>They had started the construction while I was there, but it was finished now. It was a massive, sophisticated thing. I knew what it was like inside, I saw their last new building. Fresh, and clean, with just enough space in the halls to organize a group of three or four people without blocking the halls. Enormous classrooms for the science lectures.</p>
<p>The science building sat on a lot of land. That grass, from the mental image. There used to be more grass; a few years prior the lot was a much smaller art building. People called it “the art barn”. It was a workshop, a studio space. Not enough room for classes. Over the course of four years the university tore down the art barn and laid the foundations for the science building. </p>
<p>The towering science building didn’t remind me of educational institutions overpriortizing the hard sciences at the expense of the arts. It reminded me of money. Capital. How much it cost to build the new thing, how much it cost to tear the old one down. How the science building was chosen for its utility and investment potential over additional parking infrastructure, or housing. </p>
<p>That money didn’t have to be spent on a building at all, of course; it could have been used to subsidize the actual costs students were baring, if those were real costs and not just revenue extortion schemes.</p>
<p>But that’s not what the money was for. That’s where it came from. All the nickels and dimes, all the overpriced textbooks, all the unmaintained housing utilities, all the money that wasn’t spent on health and safety, all the extortion; it went here. To this physical monument I could see and touch and feel. If it was a monument to something it was a monument to the conversion of human abuse to concrete. Everything else seemed to intertwine with problems, but — just due to my position in time, relative to the rest — this felt like the infrastructure and the problems culminating into something, together. Out of the whole school, the money went to the executives, not teacher or students or facilities, and they put it here. In a brand new building that, when I forced my eyes open like this, I saw as a gash in the sky. </p>
<p>And I thought about the laughter, the friendships, the social life. The people all around me I was looking over. The ping-pong tables, and the people playing smash in the student union. The people putting on nice clothes, and taking showers, and getting up in the morning, and paying attention in class. The human resiliency of it all. </p>
<p>It wasn’t helping.</p>
<p>I saw people who adapted and dealt with the societal problems around them, who weren’t brittle and didn’t break. That was good for them. It’s good not to be miserable.</p>
<p>But that tendency toward human happiness was being explicitly abused as a cushion by the few people and systems that were causing what should have been the misery. I looked and I saw on one side a population who was flexible enough that they could be pushed and pushed forever without breaking, and on the other a force that would push in one direction forever.</p>
<hr>
<p>I don’t normally write like this. I normally dive into issues, and facts, and link sources and stories. No links today. This story isn’t about any of the particulars. It’s about walking through a place, and knowing about it. It’s about the curse that is the skill of being able to see and comprehend. And maybe it’s about why it’s hard for me to really want things.</p>
<p>As for facts? The fact is the library didn’t have what I needed today. I left with just this headful of words.</p>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:today">
<p>No, really, I sat down and wrote this in a single stream of consciousness. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:today" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Your engine hasn't earned your rent2021-08-10T00:00:00-05:002021-08-10T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2021-08-10:/blog/2021/08/10/your-engine-hasnt-earned-your-rent/<p>YoYo Games <a href="https://www.yoyogames.com/en/blog/more-platforms-for-less">announced today</a> that they’re switching GameMaker to a subscription model. You know, I was planning on doing a high-effort article about this some day, but what the heck, let’s do it now. </p>
<p>First, here are the actual details of the GameMaker change. Instead of buying development tools you can use to develop things, YoYo is making its latest version of GameMaker — GameMaker Studio 2 — free to use. You can download it for free, learn how it works, and invest as much time making your game in it as you want. You only have to pay if you want to ship a game. And if you decide you really want to ship your game, it’s a whopping $80/yr for as long as you want your game on the shelves.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is, by the way, a very different YoYo games than the company who you associate with GameMaker. YoYo games was bought out this year by Opera, the company who used to make a good internet browser. Opera, in turn, was bought out in 2016 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo_360">Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd.</a>, the Chinese software conglomerate that now controls every company I just mentioned.</p>
</aside>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="subscriptions">Subscriptions<a class="headerlink" href="#subscriptions" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>This idea of a company turning a product into a subscription service is probably familiar to you. Famously, Photoshop and Adobe’s other creative products switched from one-time purchases of software to indefinite recurring subscription fees, after having locked in most of the creative industry. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, a very similar thing happened with Buildbox, another “no code” game maker program. Buildbox <a href="https://twitter.com/appventuretime/status/1394681401664933898">changed their terms and conditions</a> to demand revenue from all Buildbox games, including games and in-app purchases. In the normal tier, <strong>70%</strong> of your total revenue goes straight to Buildbox. Even if you’re in the highest tier, you can’t stop them siphoning your revenue. </p>
</section><p>YoYo Games <a href="https://www.yoyogames.com/en/blog/more-platforms-for-less">announced today</a> that they’re switching GameMaker to a subscription model. You know, I was planning on doing a high-effort article about this some day, but what the heck, let’s do it now. </p>
<p>First, here are the actual details of the GameMaker change. Instead of buying development tools you can use to develop things, YoYo is making its latest version of GameMaker — GameMaker Studio 2 — free to use. You can download it for free, learn how it works, and invest as much time making your game in it as you want. You only have to pay if you want to ship a game. And if you decide you really want to ship your game, it’s a whopping $80/yr for as long as you want your game on the shelves.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>This is, by the way, a very different YoYo games than the company who you associate with GameMaker. YoYo games was bought out this year by Opera, the company who used to make a good internet browser. Opera, in turn, was bought out in 2016 by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qihoo_360">Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd.</a>, the Chinese software conglomerate that now controls every company I just mentioned.</p>
</aside>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="subscriptions">Subscriptions<a class="headerlink" href="#subscriptions" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>This idea of a company turning a product into a subscription service is probably familiar to you. Famously, Photoshop and Adobe’s other creative products switched from one-time purchases of software to indefinite recurring subscription fees, after having locked in most of the creative industry. </p>
<p>Earlier this year, a very similar thing happened with Buildbox, another “no code” game maker program. Buildbox <a href="https://twitter.com/appventuretime/status/1394681401664933898">changed their terms and conditions</a> to demand revenue from all Buildbox games, including games and in-app purchases. In the normal tier, <strong>70%</strong> of your total revenue goes straight to Buildbox. Even if you’re in the highest tier, you can’t stop them siphoning your revenue. </p>
<p>The subscription model is appealing to companies, of course. Taking a cut of the profits of other people’s work has always been the holy grail. It’s called rent-seeking. Of course, there are things it makes sense to charge “rent” for. If you have something like a game storefront like Steam that requires someone else to run servers, marketing, and payment processing, there’s a built-in recurring cost there. Since it really is a recurring cost, it makes sense that the customer would pay that. And, as the customer, you’re probably happy paying for the added value. But for things like development software, where you create a tool and that’s it, trying to charge people indefinitely for work you only had to do once is pure greed. None of that money goes towards any kind of service you want, it’s just pure profit.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1395148100835106819" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/lemire/" title="Computer science professor at the University of Quebec (TELUQ), open-source hacker, blogger, techno-optimist.👨💻"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1287440428170706945/usPa-NCD_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Daniel Lemire</span><span class="at">@lemire</span></div></a></div><div><p>Speaking for myself, I was never concerned with proprietary software, but I am always worried about vendor lock-in. I am eager to pay for software but I don't want to be "stuck paying for software" through an unearned rent. 1/2 <a href='https://twitter.com/mfussenegger/status/1395072679212818435' target='_blank'>twitter.com/mfussenegger/s…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/lemire/status/1395148100835106819" target="_blank">Wed May 19 22:43:22 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Now obviously that isn’t sustainable, because if everyone takes a cut, you end up with studios who have been completely looted before they even get the chance to sell anything.</p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1394853045842944003" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Enichan/" title="Emma Maassen. Founded and runs LGBTQ+ gamedev studio @KitsuneGamesCom with @NjordGamedev. Kitsune Tails, Super Bernie World, MidBoss, Lore Finder. She/her 🇳🇱"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/989339042478096385/d_nHYtRm_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eniko</span><span class="at">@Enichan</span></div></a></div><div><p>do not give an engine 70% of your revenue (hell don't give them anything over 0%). don't give stores 70% of your revenue. in most cases don't even give publishers 70% of your revenue <a href='https://twitter.com/appventuretime/status/1394681397030227972' target='_blank'>twitter.com/appventuretime…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Enichan/status/1394853045842944003" target="_blank">Wed May 19 03:10:55 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1394914027248234496" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Enichan/1394853045842944003"><a href="https://twitter.com/Enichan/" title="Emma Maassen. Founded and runs LGBTQ+ gamedev studio @KitsuneGamesCom with @NjordGamedev. Kitsune Tails, Super Bernie World, MidBoss, Lore Finder. She/her 🇳🇱"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/989339042478096385/d_nHYtRm_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Eniko</span><span class="at">@Enichan</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Enichan/status/1394853045842944003">Enichan</a>:</span><p>just imagining this now</p><p>engine: takes 70%</p><p>publisher: takes 50%</p><p>store: takes 30%</p><p>govt: taxes 40%</p><p>you sell 1 unit worth $15, you get... 94.5 cents!</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Enichan/status/1394914027248234496" target="_blank">Wed May 19 07:13:15 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-ol-bait-and-switch">The ol’ bait-and-switch<a class="headerlink" href="#the-ol-bait-and-switch" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>But the really hideous thing about the Buildbox story (and others like it) is how the change happened. Overnight. The company just decided they wanted more money and, with a wave of a pen, made it so. Everyone who invested their time and energy developing with Buildbox with the assumption that the service would be relatively stable was suddenly held at gunpoint. Either you pay, or you lose your work. </p>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1423022177910206464" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/gamasutra/" title="Selected news, features, and analysis from Gamasutra, a leading site dealing with the art and business of video games."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/423168555593392129/gJX4Fmxn_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Gamasutra</span><span class="at">@gamasutra</span></div></a></div><div><p>Going forward, Unity devs will need Unity Pro to publish on consoles </p><p><a href='https://gamasutra.com/view/news/386242/Going_forward_Unity_devs_will_need_Unity_Pro_to_publish_on_consoles.php' target='_blank'>gamasutra.com/view/news/3862…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/gamasutra/status/1423022177910206464" target="_blank">Wed Aug 04 20:45:00 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1423060095789719554" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/joewintergreen/" title="video game makin' @ImpromptuGames. so many games??? look at the website. mostly on Weird West right now friendly game dev chat: https://t.co/0dHdsmVG1D he/him"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1422142669610840066/NKOMhqvn_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Joe Wintergreen</span><span class="at">@joewintergreen</span></div></a></div><div><p>at this point everything unity does is just 100% counting on you not having time to learn another engine <a href='https://twitter.com/gamasutra/status/1423022177910206464' target='_blank'>twitter.com/gamasutra/stat…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/joewintergreen/status/1423060095789719554" target="_blank">Wed Aug 04 23:15:40 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1423083609175384068" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="joewintergreen/1423065255513444352"><a href="https://twitter.com/joewintergreen/" title="video game makin' @ImpromptuGames. so many games??? look at the website. mostly on Weird West right now friendly game dev chat: https://t.co/0dHdsmVG1D he/him"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1422142669610840066/NKOMhqvn_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Joe Wintergreen</span><span class="at">@joewintergreen</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/joewintergreen/status/1423065255513444352">joewintergreen</a>:</span><p>the bummer of it is it's a super safe bet. indie devs will 100% spend thousands to keep using the product that keeps getting worse because it's unwise to switch to another engine without any "just learning it" runway and who the fuck has the time</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/joewintergreen/status/1423083609175384068" target="_blank">Thu Aug 05 00:49:06 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>This is really one of the things that makes the “service” software model hideous, especially as part of a serious production pipeline. It’s not enough to never build with anything that takes 70% of your revenue, you have to never build with anything that <em>MIGHT</em> take 70% of your revenue down the line. And, since companies generally like reserving the right to take more of your money down the road, that’s a right they reserve. Every company will reserve the right to change its terms of service at any time, and no company will voluntarily agree to maintain a stable service, unless you’re a huge enterprise with enough leverage to work out your own contract. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="constant-vigilance">Constant vigilance<a class="headerlink" href="#constant-vigilance" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>So, if you shouldn’t work with companies who reserve the right to screw you over, what’s left? How do you make sure your work is your own, and not something that can be taken from you? This is a hard question, but a good start is making a conscious effort to avoid that vendor lock-in that gives companies leverage over you in the first place. Look for software that exports to portable formats, rather than proprietary ones. Ideally, find software like Godot that’s explicitly licensed as open-source. Remember how companies don’t go out of their way to give you leverage over <em>them</em>? Godot does! That’s how open source works.</p>
<p>People need to learn to be extremely wary of these investment traps. Companies dangle out “free” tools and competitive monetization strategies, but once people have invested in the system they can pull a bait-and-switch, and you’re already hooked. You have to learn how to judge things by their architecture: “Am I paying for a product, or am I just going into debt? Do the recurring fees correspond to a real service, or are they just extortion?” We have to ask these questions of everything. With the prevalence of these predatory strategies, people are going to have to be constantly on-guard against these sorts of unfavourable power dynamics, and learn to seek out and reward technologies that let people really own the work they make.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://gamasutra.com/view/news/386242/Going_forward_Unity_devs_will_need_Unity_Pro_to_publish_on_consoles.php">Bryant Francis, “Going forward, Unity devs will need Unity Pro to publish on consoles”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://gamua.com/blog/2019/12/flox-is-phasing-out-a-post-mortem/">Daniel Sperl, “Flox is phasing out - a Post Mortem”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://help.yoyogames.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405059050001-Subscriptions-FAQ">YoYo Games Subscriptions FAQ</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://martinfowler.com/articles/oss-lockin.html">Gregor Hohpe, “Don’t get locked up into avoiding lock-in”, on software lock-in in general</a></li>
</ul>
<aside class="cb update">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUJyms9WstQ">Gamefromscratch, “The Ultimate Open Source Game Engine Advertisement…”</a></p>
</aside>
</section>5G's standard patents wound it2021-08-09T00:00:00-05:002021-08-09T00:00:00-05:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2021-08-09:/blog/2021/08/09/5gs-standard-patents-wound-it/<p>I remember seeing a whole kerfuffle about 5G around this time last year. Not the mind-control vaccine, the actual wireless technology. People (senators, mostly) were worried about national security, because Huawei (the state-controlled Chinese tech company, who is a threat, actually) was getting its 5G patents through and making its claim on the next-gen tech IP landscape. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/opinion/nationalize-5g-network.html">Maybe Trump even needed to seize the technology and nationalize 5G?</a> Everybody sure had a lot to say about it, but I didn’t see a single person address the core conflict.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="format-wars">Format Wars<a class="headerlink" href="#format-wars" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Before we get to 5G, let’s go way back to VHS for a minute.</p>
<p>The basic idea of the “format war” is this: one company invents a format (VHS, SD cards, etc) and make a push to make their format the standard way of doing things. Everybody gets a VHS player instead of BetaMax, so there’s a market for the former but not for the latter. Now everyone uses VHS. If you’re selling video, you sell VHS tapes, and if you’re buying video, you’re buying VHS. If you <em>invented</em> VHS, this is great for you, because you <em>own the concept</em> of VHS and get to charge everyone whatever you want at every step in the process. And, since everyone uses VHS now, you’ve achieved lock-in.</p>
<p>Now, this creates an obvious perverse incentive. Companies like Sony are famous for writing and patenting enormous quantities of formats that never needed to exist in the first place because owning the de factor standard means you can collect rent from the entire market. That’s a powerful lure. </p>
<p>And that’s <em>just</em> talking about de facto standards. This gets even worse when you mix in formal standards setting bodies, which get together and formally declare which formats should be considered “standard” for professional and international use. If you could get your IP written into those standards, it turns your temporary development time into a reliable cash stream. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="enter-seps">Enter SEPs<a class="headerlink" href="#enter-seps" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>“5G” is one of these standards set by standard setting bodies, and it’s a standard packed with proprietary technology. The most important slice of those is called SEPs, or “Standard Essential Patents.” These are the Patents that are Essential to (implementing) the Standard. In other words, these technologies are core and inextricable to 5G itself. This figure represents only the SEPs:</p>
</section><p>I remember seeing a whole kerfuffle about 5G around this time last year. Not the mind-control vaccine, the actual wireless technology. People (senators, mostly) were worried about national security, because Huawei (the state-controlled Chinese tech company, who is a threat, actually) was getting its 5G patents through and making its claim on the next-gen tech IP landscape. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/opinion/nationalize-5g-network.html">Maybe Trump even needed to seize the technology and nationalize 5G?</a> Everybody sure had a lot to say about it, but I didn’t see a single person address the core conflict.</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="format-wars">Format Wars<a class="headerlink" href="#format-wars" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Before we get to 5G, let’s go way back to VHS for a minute.</p>
<p>The basic idea of the “format war” is this: one company invents a format (VHS, SD cards, etc) and make a push to make their format the standard way of doing things. Everybody gets a VHS player instead of BetaMax, so there’s a market for the former but not for the latter. Now everyone uses VHS. If you’re selling video, you sell VHS tapes, and if you’re buying video, you’re buying VHS. If you <em>invented</em> VHS, this is great for you, because you <em>own the concept</em> of VHS and get to charge everyone whatever you want at every step in the process. And, since everyone uses VHS now, you’ve achieved lock-in.</p>
<p>Now, this creates an obvious perverse incentive. Companies like Sony are famous for writing and patenting enormous quantities of formats that never needed to exist in the first place because owning the de factor standard means you can collect rent from the entire market. That’s a powerful lure. </p>
<p>And that’s <em>just</em> talking about de facto standards. This gets even worse when you mix in formal standards setting bodies, which get together and formally declare which formats should be considered “standard” for professional and international use. If you could get your IP written into those standards, it turns your temporary development time into a reliable cash stream. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="enter-seps">Enter SEPs<a class="headerlink" href="#enter-seps" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>“5G” is one of these standards set by standard setting bodies, and it’s a standard packed with proprietary technology. The most important slice of those is called SEPs, or “Standard Essential Patents.” These are the Patents that are Essential to (implementing) the Standard. In other words, these technologies are core and inextricable to 5G itself. This figure represents only the SEPs:</p>
<p><img alt="Distribution of core SEPs with live granted patent families" src="https://telecoms.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2020/06/Greyb-chart-1.jpg">
<em>from <a href="https://telecoms.com/505169/huawei-leads-the-5g-patent-race/">telecoms.com</a>, 2020</em></p>
<p>These are the patents where, <strong>in order to correctly implement the standard, you <em>must</em> either license the technology from the rightsholder or infringe on the patent.</strong> Standards often involve hundreds or thousands of SEPs, which makes negotiating the licenses to use standards a long and arduous process. (There are <a href="https://accessadvance.com/licensing-programs/hevc-advance/">whole companies</a> that exist just as an intermediary for this process, so customers can license the technology with one party.)</p>
<p>Given the obvious danger of exploitation here, standards bodies make a point to compile “open standards”. That sounds good, but the problem is the definition of “open” here is frequently debated, and often different between organizations. </p>
<p>The name “open standard” invokes the idea of “open source”, and implies that the technologies in play would be open to use. This is not usually the case.
<a href="https://www.niso.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/Patents_Caplan.pdf">Patents and Open Standards</a>, a NISO whitepaper by Priscilla Caplan, does an excellent job of summarizing this issue in the current landscape, and the range of interpretations that currently exist:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An obvious question raised by the NISO incident is whether patented intellectual property belongs in open standards at all. To begin to answer this question, one first has to clarify what is meant by “open standards,” which, like many of the terms in common use, has no single authoritative definition. </p>
<p>…</p>
<p>A narrow definition of an open standard is one developed through an open, consensual process in which all identifiable stakeholders have been invited to participate. ANSI does require “openness” as an essential requirement of due process in an ANSI-accredited standards development organization.</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>[Open-source developer Bruce Perens] would allow patented technologies in open standards, provided the standards are free for all to implement with no royalty or fee. “Patents embedded in standards must be licensed royalty-free, with non-discriminatory terms.” </p>
<p>…</p>
<p>Robin Cover in an extensive Cover Pages essay [“Patents and Open Standards”] appears to go a step further, requiring open standards to be freely implementable not only without fees, but also without licensing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>By “open” we do not refer simply to standards produced within a democratic, accessible, and meaningfully “open” standards process; we refer to standards that can be implemented without asking for someone’s permission or signing a license agreement which demands royalty payments.
We mean “open” in the sense of implementable within an open source framework, free of legal encumbrance.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p>So, when you hear “Open Standard”, you might be imagining the latter definition — where the technologies involved are free and safe to use without legal issue — while the standards setting bodies might consider the opportunity participation in the decision-making process sufficient to qualify it as “open”.</p>
<p>Standards bodies don’t require open-source, but they almost always require FRAND, or “Fair, Reasonable, And Non-Discriminatory” licensing conditions. In other words, if your patent is an SEP in a standard set by a standards body, you have to agree to limit the ways you license those patents or else the standards body won’t include your IP in the standard. This is the main mechanism used to limit the exploitation of standards patents. This isn’t a <em>law</em>, but an agreement between SEP holders and the standards bodies themselves, and litigating perceived FRAND violations can be a complex and costly legal struggle.</p>
<p>The concerns people have over the individual companies and countries who own SEPs is warranted, and the attempts to enforce clauses that prevent patent holders from exploiting standards is a laudable effort. But all this misses the larger point that <em>the goal of the process is to make a communications standard</em>, not make people money. Or, at least, not to just make a handful of people money.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="global-communications-and-rent-seeking-are-antithetical">Global Communications and Rent-Seeking are Antithetical<a class="headerlink" href="#global-communications-and-rent-seeking-are-antithetical" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>The whole point of setting the 5G standard is to boost global communication abilities.
Companies want to be able to communicate faster, sell customers better, faster devices, and build more sophisticated technology on the best possible communications platform.
Countries want to be able to communicate internationally, so they want to set global standards as opposed to each region having its isolated network.
The goal of 5G is <em>5G</em>; its existence of 5G will generate more revenue and efficiency <em>across the board</em>, if it’s the best standard. The whole point is mutually beneficial communications that improve utility across the board. People already understand this, that’s why there are standards bodies in the first place. The purpose of the standards body is to make technology <em>easier</em> to implement universally, not harder.</p>
<!-- Communications are special -->
<p>Communications standards are a very special kind of technology that are most effective when they are both globally usable and the best technical solution.
Using patents to bar usage behind licensing fees sabotages both of these goals; it makes the selection process economically driven because of the profit potential, which shouldn’t be part of the selection process, and licensing makes the resulting standard less useful per se. </p>
<p>Not only do licensing requirements make the technology more expensive to use, they actually makes it worse. As seen in the very concern that prompted this article, whole nations are fighting political battles over which patents become core to the technology, which companies own them, and which countries own <em>them</em>. There are layers and layers of lobbying that for-profit patenting has added to this process: lobbying that turns a conversation about technology and communications into a conversation about national security and the relevant dominance of countries. If that’s your priority — if your own dominance is your metric — the resulting standard isn’t going to be optimized for communications, it’s going to optimized for political compromise. </p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-value-of-5g-isnt-in-the-patent">The Value of 5G isn’t in the Patent<a class="headerlink" href="#the-value-of-5g-isnt-in-the-patent" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<!-- todo: this doesn't make any sense -->
<p>And, of course, all of this is totally unnecessary. <strong>You don’t need to milk a patent just to make 5G worth your while to develop.</strong> In communications and such, what you’re selling is enhanced ability and better access to content, not physical devices. You don’t need to find an extra way to make units sell because the IP is the product; every connected market in the world is already driving up demand for you. Having better network communications technology boosts the productivity of nearly <em>every economic sector</em> from its availability alone.</p>
<aside class="cb tangent">
<div class="aside-header"><span class="icon"></span><span class="type"></span></div>
<p>Also, I haven’t even <em>touched</em> on overbroad patents, which is the real monster problem behind the patent system. This is all an extra layer of problem on top of that. Sorry!</p>
</aside>
<!-- Business model -->
<p>SEPs incorporated into international communications standards should not give the patent holders a right to charge rent on everyone on earth who wants to communicate. Right now, that’s the business model.
These technologies are developed on the gamble that they might generate royalties in the future. If your technology is a flop, you’ve lost. (That’s right, this speculative system where you either get leverage on the world or lose your investment isn’t good for Samsung or Huawei, either.) This business model depends on the speculation of future rent-collection as the primary mode of funding, which breaks everything. </p>
<p>But without licenses, how do you fund development? Do I want to nationalize 5g? No, that would be incredibly stupid. I’m also not suggesting we somehow just demand that all SEPs are open-source without making any other changes. The incentives still have to be there.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="theres-plenty-of-money-to-be-made">There’s plenty of money to be made<a class="headerlink" href="#theres-plenty-of-money-to-be-made" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p>Patents encourage innovation. They directly stem from the scientific ethos to share knowledge that can be built upon by encouraging the publication of useful discoveries. They guarantee inventors exclusive rights to profit from their work for a set period of time, in exchange for making the details of the invention public knowledge. This is an excellent mechanism to encourage entrepreneurship and exploration into new and exciting areas, where your idea might be groundbreaking but you don’t have a secured funding yet. </p>
<p>This is not the case with 5G, or really any technology significant enough to occupy a major standards committee. There is an endless list of firms with an intense interest in getting the best possible next-gen communications networks deployed. Every telecommunications company wants to be able to sell 5G, every media company wants to be able to sell people content <em>over</em> 5G, every <em>government</em> wants to deploy infrastructure and even military apparatus onto 5G. </p>
<p>There could easily another way to fund this kind of critical research and development. Every technology and communications company already has a vested interest in communications networks being designed as well as possible.
You could have a model where the research <em>itself</em> is funded — the actual work done on development, not just speculation. </p>
<p>If you set up a proverbial booth on a street (where, in this metaphor, pedestrians are major players in the business world) and say “Hey, if you pay me an enormous sum of money to develop it, I’ll make 5G be a thing that exists in the world”, you’d have companies lining up to make it happen. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, it’s hardly worthwhile for me to speculate about what the specifics of an alternate system would look like, though, because it won’t happen. Even though the current system is bad for <em>everybody</em>: everyone ends up paying rent to a technology company, and technology companies waste an enormous amount of resources putting together patents on technologies that <em>don’t</em> end up winning the jackpot. Far too much is invested in the current system, even though it’s the wrong one.</p>
<p>We can still identify and understand the core problem, though. There is a fundamental disconnect between for-profit patent development and open communications standards, which will always cause ripples of problems when forced together. As usual, the problem isn’t in the specifics of the players involved, but stems from the ideas in fundamental conflict.</p>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related Reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://harvardnsj.org/2018/07/5g-standard-setting-and-national-security/">Eli Greenbaum, “5G, Standard-Setting, and National Security”</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.niso.org/sites/default/files/2017-08/Patents_Caplan.pdf">Priscilla Caplan, “Patents and Open Standards”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2252006">Elyse Dorsey, “How the Google Consent Order Alters the Process and Outcomes of Frand Bargaining”</a> <a href="https://archive.org/download/ssrn-id-2252006/SSRN-id2252006.pdf">(PDF)</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Wikipedia, “Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.haynesboone.com/publications/what-are-standard-essential-patents">Raghav Bajaj, “What Are Standard Essential Patents and Why Do I Need to Know About Them?”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://breakingdefense.com/2020/05/us-risks-losing-5g-standard-setting-battle-to-china-experts-say/">Theresa Hitchens, “US Risks Losing 5G Standard Setting Battle To China, Experts Say”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=903214">Brian DeLacey, “Strategic Behavior in Standard-Setting Organizations”</a> <a href="https://archive.org/download/ssrn-id-903214/SSRN-id903214.pdf">(PDF)</a></li>
</ul>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1358955596033187840" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • cyber artisan • killed Homestuck"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1514466281336025091/kRYSfb5A_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>“Standards based on patented technologies often require users to pay licensing fees” is pretty obviously the culprit here. <a href='https://twitter.com/JohnCornyn/status/1358752847849017344' target='_blank'>twitter.com/JohnCornyn/sta…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1358955596033187840" target="_blank">Tue Feb 09 01:47:16 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>Tweets about the attack on the Capitol2021-01-09T00:00:00-06:002021-01-09T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2021-01-09:/blog/2021/01/09/tweets-about-the-attack-on-the-capitol/<p>Twitter is an ephemeral medium.
You scroll through tweets just fast enough for them to register in your head, and then they’re gone forever.
If you want to find something again, you can go to somebody’s profile and scroll through, one tweet at a time, until you find what you wanted.</p>
<p>This is a lousy way of capturing history. That’s not great, because Twitter does such a good job of capturing important moments, as they happen.
If you want to save that moment, though, what can you do? What do you do if you think a day’s tweets are important? Print them out?</p>
<p>Well, I did. Here is what I tweeted and retweeted, on a page. Tactile. To be read.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-dnt="true" data-lang="en" data-nosnippet="true" data-tweetid="1344800991867248640"><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"/><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>i wonder what will happen</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1344800991867248640" target="_blank">Fri Jan 01 00:21:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Twitter is an ephemeral medium.
You scroll through tweets just fast enough for them to register in your head, and then they’re gone forever.
If you want to find something again, you can go to somebody’s profile and scroll through, one tweet at a time, until you find what you wanted.</p>
<p>This is a lousy way of capturing history. That’s not great, because Twitter does such a good job of capturing important moments, as they happen.
If you want to save that moment, though, what can you do? What do you do if you think a day’s tweets are important? Print them out?</p>
<p>Well, I did. Here is what I tweeted and retweeted, on a page. Tactile. To be read.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1344800991867248640" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>i wonder what will happen</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1344800991867248640" target="_blank">Fri Jan 01 00:21:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p>(edit 2021-01-11: added a few more tweets in here)</p>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="what-would-we-do-without-the-police">What would we do without the police?<a class="headerlink" href="#what-would-we-do-without-the-police" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346920198461419520" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/" title="@Burkecomms/@WGAEast/@jobsitetheater/@LWVFlorida. Before that @thedailybeast & @deadspin. Beagle rescue foster dad, @scrippsjschool alum timothy.burke@gmail.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/378800000703433512/4d469e15223622e8f73a96d29b5e0483_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Timothy Burke</span><span class="at">@bubbaprog</span></div></a></div><div><p>Cops are taking selfies with the terrorists. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346920168849616898/pu/vid/476x270/PwL-weq89XvTrS6C.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1346920198461419520" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 20:42:54 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346924535665348608" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @envinyon: "wow the police must be overwhelmed"</p><p>the police:</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346924535665348608" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:00:08 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346997446690304000" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @dpetrohilos: .@DCPoliceDept just claimed they don’t do mass arrests in dc </p><p>I’ve been mass arrested once, charged with felonies from a…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346997446690304000" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:49:51 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347003624011018246" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @AthertonKD: If police as currently constituted are unwilling to hold the line against an armed takeover, then they have failed in their…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347003624011018246" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 02:14:24 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347022800800927745" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @GravelInstitute: D.C. police only arrested 13 people today.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347022800800927745" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:30:36 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347385518422687744" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @gregpmiller: Pentagon leaders installed as part of Trump purge last month blocked DC National Guard from getting riot gear and ammuniti…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347385518422687744" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 03:31:55 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347316028645236737" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>Now that we know for sure (lol) that the conservative movement was infiltrated by terrorists, it’s going to take years to unravel republican policy and filter all the evil bits out, if they even try to do it.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347316028645236737" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 22:55:47 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347372092254261248" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @thisisbrookeb: waving the blue lives matter flag as you openly disobey law enforcement is extra cool because it illustrates how your fl…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347372092254261248" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 02:38:34 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="there-are-two-americas">There are two Americas.<a class="headerlink" href="#there-are-two-americas" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346924284539793410" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @thejuliacarter: There are two Americas. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/thejuliacarter/status/1346909822768140290/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErEvVo0XMAA0N0O.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/thejuliacarter/status/1346909822768140290/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErEvVpVVEAEqYLJ.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346924284539793410" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 20:59:08 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346993511309172744" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @MartyOropeza: For the record this was the US Capitol during the BLM Protestors </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/MartyOropeza/status/1346906852173312000/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErEsonZUcAA3ZcI.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346993511309172744" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:34:13 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346948419353530373" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Public_Citizen: For reference, there were 14,000+ arrests at the George Floyd protests.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346948419353530373" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 22:35:02 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346990647476154368" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @KrystinaArielle: Black people have been killed for just existing. Black children have been killed for just playing. These people storme…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346990647476154368" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:22:50 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346948187052003329" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/" title="We don't break the news. We break it down for you. Download our app & subscribe to our newsletter. 📩 info@therecount.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1155905677094731777/19WoFsvO_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">The Recount</span><span class="at">@therecount</span></div></a></div><div><p>One of the pro-Trump rioters on the Capitol steps gets a hand down the stairs from a D.C. police officer. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/amplify_video/1346947956071690242/vid/640x360/1q1I9TpEbFvMhEWj.mp4?tag=13" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1346948187052003329" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 22:34:07 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346996030953435137" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @AshleyEsqueda: Remember the old guy who got shoved into the ground because he walked toward a cop</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346996030953435137" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:44:14 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347985214367264770" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @socialistdogmom: that's cool. when i was arrested for standing on a sidewalk while i was on my way to cover a protest that hadn't even…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347985214367264770" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:14:54 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348376920090664963" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @GWillowWilson: I'm really having trouble reconciling this new FBI that is suddenly bound by due process and red tape with the one that…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348376920090664963" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:11:24 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348384848956837888" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @__seab: I don’t think it’s wild that the republicans and Blue Lives Matter people don’t care that a cop died. I do think it’s interesti…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348384848956837888" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:42:54 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="trump-incited-it">Trump incited it<a class="headerlink" href="#trump-incited-it" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346990125109170179" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @maggieNYT: NEW: Trump initially rebuffed and resisted requests to mobilize the National Guard, according to a person with knowledge of…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346990125109170179" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:20:46 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346925113275510787" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @charlie_savage: Trump told his supporters on the Mall that Republicans have been too nice, like a boxer with his hands tied behind his…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346925113275510787" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:02:26 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346912046147842048" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="charlie_savage/1346911927415365632"><a href="https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/" title="New York Times national security & legal reporter • Author of "Takeover" & "Power Wars""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1331649720016662529/ldt4TYQJ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Charlie Savage</span><span class="at">@charlie_savage</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1346911927415365632">charlie_savage</a>:</span><p>“demand” that Congress “confront this egregious assault on our democracy” (that is, his loss to Biden), & kept exhorting them that “you have to show strength and you have to be strong” and “you will never take back our country with weakness.” /2</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1346912046147842048" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 20:10:30 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346925328514437123" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @EdStern: Well that escalated steadily for four years.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346925328514437123" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:03:17 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346991623335538691" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>"Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" wasn’t just a joke</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346991623335538691" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:26:43 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><img alt="JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!" src="https://blog.giovanh.com/blog/2021/01/09/tweets-about-the-attack-on-the-capitol/see_you_in_dc.png">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347015569753694208" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>Trump takes the turbulent priest thing to a new, more dangerous level by providing these little (plausibly deniable) tidbits for his extremist base to organize around <a href='https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1344359312878149634' target='_blank'>twitter.com/realDonaldTrum…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347015569753694208" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:01:52 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347250280958730241" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @zeynep: I wrote about why Trump's latest—threatening a Republican electoral official to try to get him to “find 11,780 votes" for him i…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347250280958730241" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:34:32 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347002226653454341" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @DavidCornDC: .@SenatorDurbin leans hard into Trump's call to the GA SoS and slams Trump: "This mob was invited to come to Washington on…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347002226653454341" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 02:08:51 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347022345425317890" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @gabrielsherman: Per source, White House counsel Pat Cipollone told west wing staffers today not to help Trump stage a coup or else they…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347022345425317890" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:28:48 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347344204461051904" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/" title="Father. Husband. Tap water goblin. @QAnonAnonymous host. QAnon, conspiracy theories, disinfo, and other signs of the dystopia. ✉️ travis @ https://t.co/94F1xmz1LL"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1062093294623047681/cuVjL1Hi_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Travis View</span><span class="at">@travis_view</span></div></a></div><div><p>Well, I'd like to see the QAnon community rationalize THIS new development instead of facing reality.</p><p>*The QAnon community rationalizes this new development instead of facing reality easily*</p><p>Ah! Well. Nevertheless, </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErK6ZkoUYAAvM3k.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErK6Z3-VQAEalv0.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErK6aJKVoAEctPK.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count4" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErK6aYMVQAAtAFz.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:47:45 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347348763879350274" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>If you listen to his speech, Trump goes out of his way not to mention Biden or conceding. It's carefully chosen language designed to encourage people like this. <a href='https://twitter.com/travis_view/status/1347344204461051904' target='_blank'>twitter.com/travis_view/st…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347348763879350274" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 01:05:52 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347379505967603715" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Olivianuzzi: Donald Trump was annoyed by the violent siege on the Capitol Wednesday — which left several dead — because it looked “low…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347379505967603715" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 03:08:01 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347379524145713156" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Olivianuzzi: The adviser confirmed that he was watching television coverage of the siege enthusiastically, but noted that the sight of…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347379524145713156" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 03:08:06 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348073628781445125" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @andrewkimmel: Here’s Alex Jones admitting the orders were coming from Donald Trump. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1347942331526205442/pu/vid/878x432/ZNEdVKUVRAgIGR53.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348073628781445125" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 01:06:13 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="this-shouldnt-surprise-you">This shouldn’t surprise you.<a class="headerlink" href="#this-shouldnt-surprise-you" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346926339069259776" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>I am legitimately baffled by anyone who is surprised by today’s events.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346926339069259776" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:07:18 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346926982794194948" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1346926339069259776"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346926339069259776">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>What did you think antifa has been protesting about? Why did you ignore years of police showing extreme bias in their use of force? What did you THINK was going to happen?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346926982794194948" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:09:52 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346928753352577025" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1346926982794194948"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346926982794194948">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>I’m glad this is the last straw for SOMEBODY, but it shouldn’t have been. People have been warning about this exact danger for years. To be surprised today is to be ashamed that it took you this long.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346928753352577025" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:16:54 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346930597533528065" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1346928753352577025"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346928753352577025">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>At this point anyone involved in policy or nat. defense should drop everything they’re doing, run to antifa, and plead “How did you know this was coming? Please, teach us”</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346930597533528065" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:24:13 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346931101332287491" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1346930597533528065"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346930597533528065">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>Because today we learned that antifa -- whatever political theories they use, whatever assumptions about human nature they made, whatever dangers they saw in institutional racism -- were right.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346931101332287491" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:26:13 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346981515985620993" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @BreeNewsome: Again--the ppl who didn't see this coming a long ways off, who didn't appreciate that Trump needed to be removed from offi…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346981515985620993" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 00:46:33 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346997072940171265" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @IwriteOK: People keep giving me credit for "predicting" this.</p><p>I predicted nothing. I read what these people wrote online about what th…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346997072940171265" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:48:22 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347023890959228933" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/" title="CNN White House Correspondent"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1240082910826377219/gE5NNsPH_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Kaitlan Collins</span><span class="at">@kaitlancollins</span></div></a></div><div><p>White House officials were shaken by Trump's reaction to a mob of his supporters descending on the Capitol today. He was described to me as borderline enthusiastic because it meant the certification was being derailed. It has genuinely freaked people out.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1347023890959228933" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:34:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347038325253812227" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>There is a small contingency of people who wouldn't let themselves see it until now. There's an "oh my god, I've been serving a monster" moment. <a href='https://twitter.com/kaitlancollins/status/1347023890959228933' target='_blank'>twitter.com/kaitlancollins…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347038325253812227" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:32:18 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347312087438135297" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>i joined the leopards eating people's faces party for their economic policy. i never expected this</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347312087438135297" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 22:40:08 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347984935303458817" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @juliacarriew: If you spent time in pro-Trump, Back the Blue, Reopen, or QAnon Facebook groups over the past 9 months, this will be less…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347984935303458817" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:13:47 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="rewriting-history-in-real-time">Rewriting history in real time<a class="headerlink" href="#rewriting-history-in-real-time" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346916295439233024" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/TalKopan/" title="Washington Correspondent, @SFChronicle / Former CNN, Politico / tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com / DMs open -- DM me for Signal / Tal rhymes with fall, not pal."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/839507440362262528/nYeTBoYJ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Tal Kopan</span><span class="at">@TalKopan</span></div></a></div><div><p>CNN has begun calling these individuals anarchists and the events an insurrection</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/TalKopan/status/1346916295439233024" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 20:27:23 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346993112942579713" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @RottenInDenmark: Ah yes, "anarchy," the thing where you want to keep an incumbent president in power forever. <a href='https://twitter.com/TalKopan/status/1346916295439233024' target='_blank'>twitter.com/TalKopan/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346993112942579713" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:32:38 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347040342659502080" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @magpiekilljoy: anarchist does not mean "anyone opposed to the current government" and people attempting a coup on the behalf of the sit…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347040342659502080" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:40:19 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347273406018973698" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/" title="detroit native. senior front page editor @huffpost."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1326729741160902656/qP7bAjPq_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">philip lewis</span><span class="at">@Phil_Lewis_</span></div></a></div><div><p>Lindsey Graham says he doesn't support invoking the 25th Amendment right now but “if something else happens, all options would be on the table." </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1347273406018973698/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErJ6BXhXUAM0zJ5.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1347273406018973698" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 20:06:25 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347305347074174982" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>For some reason the phrase “moving the goalposts” springs to mind <a href='https://twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/status/1347273406018973698' target='_blank'>twitter.com/Phil_Lewis_/st…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347305347074174982" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 22:13:21 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346979712149684231" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/" title="Senior Fellow at @mmfa. Views expressed here are my own. Husband of @alyssarosenberg. Dad. Definitely not the GOP congressman. mgertz@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1211274521099096064/0i86noPZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matthew Gertz</span><span class="at">@MattGertz</span></div></a></div><div><p>Here's Lou Dobbs and Rep. Mo Brooks baselessly speculating that the hundreds of insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol today actually may have included antifa false flag elements. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346979636849246208/pu/vid/640x360/zcaUyz0oarp-f50B.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346979712149684231" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 00:39:23 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346981776653246464" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MattGertz/1346979712149684231"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/" title="Senior Fellow at @mmfa. Views expressed here are my own. Husband of @alyssarosenberg. Dad. Definitely not the GOP congressman. mgertz@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1211274521099096064/0i86noPZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matthew Gertz</span><span class="at">@MattGertz</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346979712149684231">MattGertz</a>:</span><p>Now Sarah Palin, on a Fox "news" show, says "we don't know who all were the instigators in this of these horrible things that happen today, I think a lot of it is the antifa folks" per "pictures she was sent, no response at all from Martha MacCallum.</p><p>There is no Fox "news" side. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346981737126047744/pu/vid/640x360/Hjqm6VKuRaxeETlb.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346981776653246464" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 00:47:35 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346990417493913602" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MattGertz/1346981945440403457"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/" title="Senior Fellow at @mmfa. Views expressed here are my own. Husband of @alyssarosenberg. Dad. Definitely not the GOP congressman. mgertz@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1211274521099096064/0i86noPZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matthew Gertz</span><span class="at">@MattGertz</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346981945440403457">MattGertz</a>:</span><p>"Maybe there were antifa infiltrators" just jumped to Tucker Carlson's show. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346990371876728833/pu/vid/1280x720/Xi6HjYeRTuP7XPFg.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346990417493913602" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:21:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347001487805870080" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MattGertz/1346990417493913602"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/" title="Senior Fellow at @mmfa. Views expressed here are my own. Husband of @alyssarosenberg. Dad. Definitely not the GOP congressman. mgertz@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1211274521099096064/0i86noPZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matthew Gertz</span><span class="at">@MattGertz</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1346990417493913602">MattGertz</a>:</span><p>Fox's senior political analyst. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1347001487805870080/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGCtGaWMAwnbTU.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1347001487805870080" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 02:05:55 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347016340180258816" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MattGertz/1347002144147337216"><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/" title="Senior Fellow at @mmfa. Views expressed here are my own. Husband of @alyssarosenberg. Dad. Definitely not the GOP congressman. mgertz@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1211274521099096064/0i86noPZ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Matthew Gertz</span><span class="at">@MattGertz</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1347002144147337216">MattGertz</a>:</span><p>Laura Ingraham says the insurrectionists were "antithetical to the MAGA movement" and "there are some reports that antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd."</p><p>All three Fox primetime shows have now pushed this baseless rumor. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1347016205773766656/pu/vid/1280x720/Ga6WmpnTvjx3zJCp.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1347016340180258816" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:04:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347030223485771776" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/" title="🦝 #IntFic 🎬 https://t.co/8YwJXfh7Qn 🎲 Boardgames, RPGs 👨🏻🦲@PicardTips 🧔🏻 @RikerGoogling 🧱 @EmojiTetra 🌸 @EmojiMeadow 🐠 @EmojiAquarium 🕺 he/him"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1335511630105309186/tSXbzfwW_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Joe Sondow</span><span class="at">@JoeSondow</span></div></a></div><div><p>Stop saying history will judge them. Judge them now. With judges.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/status/1347030223485771776" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:00:06 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347060003547582466" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>History is famously bad at judging. Let judges do it. In courts. This is why we have them <a href='https://twitter.com/JoeSondow/status/1347030223485771776' target='_blank'>twitter.com/JoeSondow/stat…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347060003547582466" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 05:58:26 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347613311458824194" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Mike_Pence/1347613310452117505"><a href="https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/" title="Vice President of the United States"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1337423084370931712/DH7N-1BW_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Mike Pence</span><span class="at">@Mike_Pence</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1347613310452117505">Mike_Pence</a>:</span><p>Officer Sicknick is an American hero who gave his life defending our Capitol and this Nation will never forget or fail to honor the service and sacrifice of Officer Brian Sicknick.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Mike_Pence/status/1347613311458824194" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 18:37:05 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347627788401061890" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>If he died defending the capitol, that would make what happened an “attack” on the capitol <a href='https://twitter.com/mike_pence/status/1347613311458824194' target='_blank'>twitter.com/mike_pence/sta…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347627788401061890" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 19:34:37 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347371976667631617" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @mguybowman: I can tell you what IS Orwellian: the characterization of yesterday's events as involving "antifa" in any way is a delibera…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347371976667631617" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 02:38:06 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="the-undesirables">The Undesirables<a class="headerlink" href="#the-undesirables" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347385958891663361" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>falling back on “terrorists” to describe people who committed acts of war against their own country</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347385958891663361" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 03:33:40 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346998865187237889" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @samwineburg: Take this in: Never once, in the years 1860-1865, was this flag ever paraded in the halls of the American capitol. https:/…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346998865187237889" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:55:30 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346946815422320641" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/willjennings80/" title="Artist, writer & critical on cultural & architecturey things. Views are my own, because I work for myself."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1051055124188196864/gTUJUs88_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Will Jennings</span><span class="at">@willjennings80</span></div></a></div><div><p>Journalists still asking if this was planned or it just "happened" somehow. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/willjennings80/status/1346946815422320641/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErFQ7MAWMAALiij.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/willjennings80/status/1346946815422320641" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 22:28:40 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347034924864430080" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @melissagira: they had fucking merch <a href='https://twitter.com/willjennings80/status/1346946815422320641' target='_blank'>twitter.com/willjennings80…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347034924864430080" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:18:47 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346908735059456005" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="igorbobic/1346906369232920576"><a href="https://twitter.com/igorbobic/" title="Politics reporter at HuffPost. California raised, Bosnia born. Former Chargers fan. igor.bobic@huffpost.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1311307300674699266/L-HC1VG6_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Igor Bobic</span><span class="at">@igorbobic</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346906369232920576">igorbobic</a>:</span><p>Several people got on to a scaffolding outside Senate, took it to second floor, which looked like the area where McConnell’s office is located, and started banging on windows </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346908697843412992/pu/vid/640x360/ihZ94ttoiaZpEC3N.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346908735059456005" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 19:57:21 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347035155324657670" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @SethColaner: He...threw the American flag to the ground to make room for the Trump flag. That's it...that's the whole metaphor. https:/…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347035155324657670" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:19:42 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346924689101213696" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="MalcolmNance/1346923695755943938"><a href="https://twitter.com/Rebexem/" title=""A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within." -Ariel Durant"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1336288512686120961/6nkQFF0G_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Rebexem</span><span class="at">@Rebexem</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/MalcolmNance/status/1346923695755943938">MalcolmNance</a>:</span><p>@MalcolmNance They were planning to take hostages. </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Rebexem/status/1346924689101213696/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErE83FIXAAAcUEB.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Rebexem/status/1346924689101213696" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:00:45 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347035357850853380" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @IwriteOK: a protester in the Capitol with what appears to be a handgun on his hip and zipties, to take congressional hostages. hundreds…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347035357850853380" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:20:30 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347628427109654528" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @jimbourg: I heard at least 3 different rioters at the Capitol say that they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347628427109654528" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 19:37:09 +0000 2021</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347189169613844482" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/JakeBGibson/" title="Father, Husband, @FoxNews Washington DOJ producer, @sfgiants Fanatic, owner of a Fierce '67 Firebird. 213*818*415*707*209*307*916*505 *704*+972(02)*202*703*"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/491702528510148609/qdXppqNR_normal.jpeg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Jake Gibson</span><span class="at">@JakeBGibson</span></div></a></div><div><p>SCOOP-</p><p>The devices found near the RNC and DNC headquarters on Wednesday were actual explosive devices, not phonies, according to a senior federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigations.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JakeBGibson/status/1347189169613844482" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 14:31:42 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347242021665304576" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @BostonJerry: They brought real bombs, and then the cops just let everyone go.</p><p>The bombmakers are out there, free and clear, and there'…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347242021665304576" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:01:43 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347340774598438917" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @333333333433333: the "anti-woke" mocked AOC for tweeting "im okay" as if she's some self-obsessed selfie-millennial stereotype and not…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347340774598438917" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:34:07 +0000 2021</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347232193341513736" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/thenation/" title="The place for debate on the left. Subscribe: https://t.co/3ZHgm1UYYK"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1308165490293051393/VDo09b2K_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">The Nation</span><span class="at">@thenation</span></div></a></div><div><p>“This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.” <a href='https://bit.ly/2LbkWpp' target='_blank'>bit.ly/2LbkWpp</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/thenation/status/1347232193341513736" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 17:22:39 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347273639159361546" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Imani_Barbarin/" title="she/her Black girl magic+disabled pride |MA Global Comms | my thoughts | #DisTheOscars + #AbledsAreWeird #ThingsDisabledPeopleKnow | ✉️ imani.barbarin gmail"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1265115734620987392/TKxwc_Ut_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Imani Barbarin, MAGC | Crutches&Spice ♿️</span><span class="at">@Imani_Barbarin</span></div></a></div><div><p>Oh look, the quiet part out loud again. <a href='https://twitter.com/thenation/status/1347232193341513736' target='_blank'>twitter.com/thenation/stat…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Imani_Barbarin/status/1347273639159361546" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 20:07:21 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347333035151208453" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @adamgurri: It really doesn't get starker than this, laying out this particular worldview <a href='https://twitter.com/thenation/status/1347232193341513736' target='_blank'>twitter.com/thenation/stat…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347333035151208453" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:03:22 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347250581358968835" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @vexwerewolf: Decades of careful propagandising and doublespeak to hide the exact same intent this white woman just blurted out in full…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347250581358968835" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:35:43 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347252064062234627" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Acosta: Source close to the VP says Trump pressured Pence to engineer a coup, then put the VP and his family in danger. https://t.co/nC…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347252064062234627" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:41:37 +0000 2021</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347334622573719552" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>Terror attacks by people worked up into a violent frenzy warrant an examination of the technology* that incited the emotional frenzy. </p><p>*A broad category including Facebook but also broad ideas like advertising campaigns and the quality of journalism</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347334622573719552" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:09:40 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347335767383810049" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1347334622573719552"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347334622573719552">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>“Why angry people staged a riot” doesn’t interest me. It’s trivial. The interesting question here is “Why did they believe the lies that made them angry?”</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347335767383810049" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:14:13 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347336704995180544" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1347335767383810049"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347335767383810049">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>Some platforms made an attempt to combat disinformation campaigns (because they realized disinfo campaigns lead to people believing legitimately dangerous lies) but didn't have a coherent approach for systematically preventing them</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347336704995180544" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:17:57 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347337218688503808" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1347336704995180544"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347336704995180544">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>(A coherent ban on disinformation, of course, leads to all SORTS of other extremely hard problems which, if you're a giant tech company, are terrifying. Half-assing it irritated everyone on both sides but wasn't as offensive as taking an actual position.)</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347337218688503808" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:19:59 +0000 2021</a>
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</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347340516522917888" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @ClaireJChu: Friend just texted me, horrified, after realizing that her ex was a part of the violent mob in the Capitol today. He’s a we…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347340516522917888" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 00:33:06 +0000 2021</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347186665169833990" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/liamstack/" title="I write about religion for @NYTMetro. @OPCofAmerica board. Once in Cairo, now in New York. Confirmed bachelor. Khawaga-at-large. liam.stack@nytimes.com"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1241044929872306176/rxZsRWrI_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Liam Stack</span><span class="at">@liamstack</span></div></a></div><div><p>I wonder what all the people who ransacked the US Capitol yesterday are doing today.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/liamstack/status/1347186665169833990" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 14:21:45 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347249488205897728" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @EricHaywood: Half of them put their uniforms back on and returned to patrol duty. The other half went back to being your doctors, your…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347249488205897728" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:31:23 +0000 2021</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346914618816524294" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/" title=""><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1169027409678610432/Khz1zWfB_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Ben Jacobs</span><span class="at">@Bencjacobs</span></div></a></div><div><p>This may be the lasting image of today </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1346914618816524294/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErEzsn1XUAAfNfr.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1346914618816524294" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 20:20:44 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347068071215853570" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @elisethoma5: For me, the striking thing about so many of these images of rioters in the Capitol is that what they're doing - all of the…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347068071215853570" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 06:30:30 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347758882530201602" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @dynamicsymmetry: And here’s what really gets me. </p><p>Do people like Cruz and Hawley actually think they would have been safe?</p><p>They proba…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347758882530201602" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 04:15:32 +0000 2021</a>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347986756487012354" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Olivia_Beavers: Meanwhile, this what’s happening on Parler </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/Olivia_Beavers/status/1347957434120351748/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErToJFtXMAcGEfx.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347986756487012354" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:21:01 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347989656126824457" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>Bad news for the economic conservatives who are rightfully outraged by Trump’s mob: as of this week, when people say “conservatives”, they are no longer talking about you.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347989656126824457" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:32:33 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348073583986282499" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @59dallas: Trump supporters chanting 'HANG MIKE PENCE' at the Capitol Building </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1346963153859600386/pu/vid/1280x720/uxYzRilowk68JaMC.mp4?tag=10" controls="true"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348073583986282499" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 01:06:03 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348073592538484736" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @steve_vladeck: The insurrectionists were attempting to kill the first and second people in line to succeed the President and to prevent…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348073592538484736" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 01:06:05 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348377244729823232" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @FrankLuntz: The mob beat an unconscious Capitol Police officer in full uniform to death.</p><p>What do you think they would have done if the…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348377244729823232" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:12:41 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348385019727900673" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @OlgaNYC1211: Chilling </p><p> "They had a map of the tunnels [in the basement of the Capitol], and they were talking about how they're going…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348385019727900673" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:43:35 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348385330148368385" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348385330148368385" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:44:49 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="tech-companies">tech companies<a class="headerlink" href="#tech-companies" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347007531739185152" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @eevee: well it took three years and 351 days, including three months of explicitly fostering violent insurrection against the us govern…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347007531739185152" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 02:29:56 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347713838133731334" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/AlKapDC/" title="Senior Researcher @mmfa, focusing on social media misinfo/disinfo & online extremism. Statements are mine, not employer's. Send tips to akaplan@mediamatters.org"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1157823312099254277/46gjFiVv_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Alex Kaplan</span><span class="at">@AlKapDC</span></div></a></div><div><p>In the past 48 hours:</p><p>-Twitter banned QAnon accounts</p><p>-Twitter banned Trump</p><p>-Reddit banned r/donaldtrump</p><p>-Reddit banned the head moderator of r/conspiracy</p><p>-YouTube banned Steve Bannon's show</p><p>-Discord banned TheDonald dot win's channel</p><p>-Google banned Parler from its app store</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/AlKapDC/status/1347713838133731334" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 01:16:32 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347741139202412545" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>It's been possible to do this all along. People knew it. The dangers had been explained backwards and forwards. They only waited until now to do it so they could keep profiting off these people for as long as possible. <a href='https://twitter.com/AlKapDC/status/1347713838133731334' target='_blank'>twitter.com/AlKapDC/status…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347741139202412545" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 03:05:02 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347690558609829890" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @bombsfall: The twitter ban and the white house resignations etc over the past couple days just makes you all the more aware of how ever…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347690558609829890" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 23:44:02 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347988937776771074" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @mcclure111: Does monopolist corporate control of speech venues restrict freedom? Yes!</p><p>Up until recent, conservatives were *benefiting*…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347988937776771074" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:29:41 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348152685976035329" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1347981316717912064/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErT93LxVgAAQuNp.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/RMac18/status/1347981316717912064/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErT93LxVkAAku0d.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348152685976035329" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 06:20:22 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347985269568512007" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @shaun_vids: i see a lot of people celebrating trump being banned, but i for one am very concerned about what this means for freedom of…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347985269568512007" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:15:07 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="impact">Impact<a class="headerlink" href="#impact" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347254476105723904" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>please enjoy the nauseatingly weaselly email you got today from your boss about how america is better than the things it regularly does and it's important both sides respect each other because divisiveness is the real terrorism</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347254476105723904" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 18:51:12 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347018378981081090" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @JennJayBee: @MEPFuller @lyman_brian Someone on reddit mentioned that there are bullet holes in the door and suggested that the door rem…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347018378981081090" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 03:13:02 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347628132602417154" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @BernieSanders: Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Prece…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347628132602417154" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 19:35:59 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347038925202853888" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Patrick_Wyman: I can't stress this enough: From the top down, if the people responsible for today's events face no consequences for wha…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347038925202853888" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:34:41 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347059834638753792" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>"This isn't who we are!" is the "Not ALL men" of political rhetoric; it's who ENOUGH of us are that it's a problem. There are enough of them to overthrow the federal capitol. There are too many to hand-wave away.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347059834638753792" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 05:57:46 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346932050746630149" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/" title="Husband to @DrBiden, proud father and grandfather. Ready to build back better for all Americans. Official account is @POTUS."><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1308769664240160770/AfgzWVE7_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Joe Biden</span><span class="at">@JoeBiden</span></div></a></div><div><p>America is so much better than what we’re seeing today.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1346932050746630149" target="_blank">Wed Jan 06 21:30:00 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1346997316671184899" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @lightskintiger: <a href='https://twitter.com/joebiden/status/1346932050746630149' target='_blank'>twitter.com/joebiden/statu…</a> </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/lightskintiger/status/1346938434141573126/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErFJXXdXEAAnxqy.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1346997316671184899" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 01:49:20 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347035235012243457" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @mguybowman: "This is not America"? Have you watched the news ever?</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347035235012243457" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 04:20:01 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348015150159319045" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @pramsey342: They might as well just say "Hail Hydra"</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348015150159319045" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 21:13:51 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348387173867937793" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @MahouPoint: Republicans calling for unity after being caught red-handed inciting a failed coup run by a seditious demagogue they held u…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348387173867937793" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 21:52:08 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348403787489292294" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348403787489292294" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 22:58:09 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1348403795718512645" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • writer • universal constant • edge case • cyber artisan • saved Homestuck • @giovan@mastodon.social"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1626048005454417924/wrVCQntf_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @attackerman: Notice it’s “tHeY wAnt tO caLl *ME* a tErroRisT” and not “for 20 years they put innocent people, my own neighbors, into th…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1348403795718512645" target="_blank">Sun Jan 10 22:58:11 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="unsorted">Unsorted<a class="headerlink" href="#unsorted" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347001271958454275" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @itvnews: Watch @robertmooreitv's report from inside the Capitol building as the extraordinary events unfolded in Washington DC</p><p>https://…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347001271958454275" target="_blank">Thu Jan 07 02:05:03 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347625305477963776" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @phillmv: oh shit i wonder how much it costs to read the conspiracy websites </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/phillmv/status/1347025824340434945/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGY1_uXUAAVoJC.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a><a href="https://twitter.com/phillmv/status/1347025824340434945/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count2" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGY1_zWMAEv-W9.jpg"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347625305477963776" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 19:24:45 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347371905758728193" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @dynamicsymmetry: The main reasons offered by scholars tend to be aggrieved nationalism, backlash against the ineffective Weimar governm…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347371905758728193" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 02:37:49 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347385193871667200" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @mattblaze: The violence at the Capitol yesterday will rightly be a source of outrage that we should remember. But we also must not forg…</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347385193871667200" target="_blank">Fri Jan 08 03:30:38 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347720158882787330" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @petridishes: At This Time I’d Like To Resign From My Job Working On This Death Star </p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><video src="https://video.twimg.com/tweet_video/ErPWWnhW4AETQPX.mp4" loop="true" playsinline="true" controls="true" preload="auto"></video></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347720158882787330" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 01:41:39 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1347985184545767426" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>RT @Atrios: don't think it's been stated clearly often enough that President Trump tried to have Vice President Pence killed</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1347985184545767426" target="_blank">Sat Jan 09 19:14:47 +0000 2021</a>
</blockquote>
</section>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://archive.org/details/2021-01-06-trump-protest-social/">Social media footage from 2021-01-06 on the Internet Archive</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2021/warnings-jan-6-insurrection/">Washington Post, “RED FLAGS — As Trump propelled his supporters to Washington, law enforcement agencies failed to heed mounting warnings about violence on Jan. 6.”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/was-there-a-plan-for-hostages-or-killings-at-the-capitol.html">Dan Kois, “They Were Out for Blood” (2021)</a></li>
</ul>
</section>Nintendo: It's about control, not piracy2020-11-19T00:00:00-06:002020-11-19T00:00:00-06:00Giotag:blog.giovanh.com,2020-11-19:/blog/2020/11/19/nintendo-its-about-control-not-piracy/<p>Nintendo is trending on twitter today for yet <em>another</em> abuse of the legal system. Today, though, it’s not about a fan game, or intellectual property, or anything else Nintendo has something approaching a reasonable claim too — it’s all a sham.</p>
<p>Nintendo is trending on twitter today for yet <em>another</em> abuse of the legal system. Today, though, it’s not about a fan game, or intellectual property, or anything else Nintendo has something approaching a reasonable claim too — it’s all a sham.</p>
<p>The Big House — “the largest Super Smash Brothers event series in the fall” — choose to hold its regular Melee tournament as an online competition in 2020. The event was <a href="http://www.umsmash.com/juggleblog-introducing-the-big-house-online/">proudly announced</a> on November 10th:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even the year 2020 can’t hold us back. I’m excited to introduce The Big House Online, this year’s version of our cherished fall Smash major. It’ll take place on December 4-6, featuring both Melee and Ultimate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On November 19th, just nine days later, The Big House was forced to make this announcement:</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329521081577857036" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/" title="The biggest open fall #SmashBros event returns December 4-6, 2020. Register today! https://t.co/elNlPlMmGZ #TBHO"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/781148941676978176/FOSQqzCj_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">The Big House</span><span class="at">@TheBigHouseSSB</span></div></a></div><div><p></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"><a href="https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036/photo/1" target="_blank">
<img class="img count1" src="https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EnNoYMyW8AEImTI.png"
onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;this.src=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;\})();"
></img>
</a></div><a href="https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 20:25:01 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Nintendo <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2020/11/19/21578200/super-smash-bros-tournament-the-big-house-10-canceled-nintendo-c-d">issued the following statement</a> about this specific cease and desist order, and their reasoning behind it:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…We have partnered with numerous Super Smash Bros. tournaments in the past and have hosted our own online and offline tournaments for the game, and we plan to continue that support in the future.
Unfortunately, the upcoming Big House tournament announced plans to host an online tournament for Super Smash Bros. Melee that requires use of illegally copied versions of the game in conjunction with a mod called “Slippi” during their online event.
Nintendo therefore contacted the tournament organizers to ask them to stop. They refused, leaving Nintendo no choice but to step in to protect its intellectual property and brands.
Nintendo cannot condone or allow piracy of its intellectual property.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>My head — and yours too, maybe — jumps to dozens of talking points:
- The main technology being objected to (Slippi) is the network interface, which makes it possible to hold the event remotely and avoid spreading deadly illness during a pandemic
- The importance of games archival and preservation
- what’s legally defined as piracy can be morally justifiable</p>
<p>But here’s the thing: <strong>none of that matters</strong>. The idea that this is a conversation about piracy at all is a lie. </p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329565268453027846" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1329564911920422914"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329564911920422914">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>"what's legally defined as piracy can be morally justifiable" is a correct argument but it grants the idea that this is a conflict over piracy, which is a lie</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329565268453027846" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:20:36 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>If you read Nintendo’s statement a few times, you’ll notice the word “piracy” is thrown in there at the end, but there are no actual complaints about software piracy to be seen. Games piracy (where game studios invest in, develop, and publish a game, and then people download free copies of the games instead of buying them) is a serious and complicated issue — just not one this story is relevant to.</p>
<p>The mod runs on the Dolphin emulator, which reads the game. This requires an “ephemeral copy”, just like all computers including actual Nintendo products do, but it certainly doesn’t somehow require you to pirate the game. It’s entirely possible for a tournament to purchase four melee discs and run melee on three machines. You can’t just send a cease and desist because you think somebody <em>might</em> play a pirated game.</p>
<p>The only possible objection left is whether or not Nintendo manufactured and authorized the client machines that <em>run</em> the game, which is a robustly answered at this point (including a similar case where <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.">Nintendo tried to argue that mods infringed on their IP</a> and lost, soundly, with the court ruling that even selling mods <em>for profit</em> didn’t infringe on Nintendo’s rights.<sup id="fnref:mods"><a class="footnote-ref" href="#fn:mods">1</a></sup>). This matter of absolute control over the client is the only <em>actual</em> objection left, but Nintendo knows it’s in the wrong, so it shouts “piracy”. The hope is that the fact that a “mod” is involved at all is enough for you to shut down your brain and assume software piracy is the issue at hand here. </p>
<div class="thread unified">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329563791877677059" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>"but it's actually about PIRACY" if the question of whether or not each running copy of the game maps to an owned, purchased copy of the media isn't even part of the DISCUSSION, it's not about piracy, it's about control.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329563791877677059" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:14:44 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329564162939359235" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="giovan_h/1329563791877677059"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329563791877677059">giovan_h</a>:</span><p>I own a physical copy of melee on an original gamecube disc printed by Nintendo. They don't care. That's not what it's about for them. Piracy is an interesting topic but in this case it's clearly just a distraction (or, in some circles, a convenient legal justification)</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329564162939359235" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:16:13 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<p>Weirdly, there’s actually a long history of Nintendo going after melee tournaments specifically. Nintendo has been fighting a bizarre campaign against Melee tournament play since 2013, when they <a href="https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/11/4513294/nintendo-were-trying-to-shut-down-evo-not-just-super-smash-bros-melee">tried to shut down the EVO 2013 melee tournament and livestream</a>. The polygon article linked sheds some light about the horrifying amount of pressure Nintendo leveraged:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“It’s their IP, they can do whatever they want, and they didn’t present us with any options to keep it open, they were just ‘Hey, we want to shut you down.’” Cuellar said when asked about Nintendo’s basis for wanting to shut down the event.
“And we kinda wigwammed our way through it and they were fine with just shutting down the streaming portion of the event. And that was that. And we were not going to press any further. Its their IP, we respect Nintendo’s decision to protect their IP, and we were going to comply with the legal department completely. So at that point it was over.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, then, what’s going on here? Why is Nintendo so trigger-happy over people playing their game?</p>
<p>Possibly due to its age, Nintendo has been less and less willing to see it played competitively. Melee was released on the GameCube back in 2001 and has been an <a href="https://liquipedia.net/smash/Major_Tournaments/Melee">incredibly popular tournament game</a> ever since. Melee is completely out of print; Nintendo doesn’t sell it any more, nor does it sell GameCubes or controllers. The entire tournament economy relies on secondhand sales, so Nintendo doesn’t make any money off it directly.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329549900468674560" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>To be perfectly clear, this is Nintendo threatening people with legal action for... playing old games. Not piracy, not TOS violations, just the idea of fans having the option not to continuously pay for new games. <a href='https://twitter.com/SSBUNews/status/1329547072035545088' target='_blank'>twitter.com/SSBUNews/statu…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329549900468674560" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 22:19:32 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329554955561299968" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Chimera_AFX/1329554722668359682"><a href="https://twitter.com/Chimera_AFX/" title="(h/h) Project M enthusiast, motion designer and animator. ⬅️-ist, "Art hacker" & fraud Works at fun loving company for some shows about murder. https://t.co/Fmlp9dt5Av"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1003377370558939136/zX4DFa-0_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Dan Rossner (Chimera)</span><span class="at">@Chimera_AFX</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Chimera_AFX/status/1329554722668359682">Chimera_AFX</a>:</span><p>@ShankMods @TheBigHouseSSB Its literally the same issue they have with anything else regarding their IPs and the use of it; they have beef with the Melee scene and want their new shiny game to be the main attraction for sure, but this is far and away the result of Slippi and Dolphin being used.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/Chimera_AFX/status/1329554955561299968" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 22:39:37 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Nintendo has a long history of demanding absolute control over its games and platforms like this. Often, as in this case, because user freedom has the potential to cost them money, but they’ve been known to throw legal tantrums for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Galoob_Toys,_Inc._v._Nintendo_of_America,_Inc.">less obvious reasons too</a>. This is just something deep in the corporate and legal philosophy of Nintendo, and something people have to know to be careful of.</p>
<p>So wait, then. If Nintendo is wrong about all of this, how are they able to shut down a perfectly legitimate event? Well, the answer to that is complicated, and involves the US legal system being broken, Nintendo being a giant corporation with a huge legal budget, and no other factors.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329576296637054976" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/" title="hacker, game dev, artist, miscellaneous; see https://t.co/w3CnZKgcFS • she/her 🦊🏳️⚧️ • 💍 @glitchedpuppet • other half of @floraverse • weird furry porn → 🔞 @squishfox"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1070456634118307840/s8TJXv02_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">eevee</span><span class="at">@eevee</span></div></a></div><div><p>everyone mad at nintendo for C&Ding a smash tournament: welcome to politics affecting video games. consider organizing and pressuring your nearby politicians for copyright reform</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1329576296637054976" target="_blank">Fri Nov 20 00:04:26 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329532887578800128" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/ultradavid/" title="Video game, esports, & entertainment attorney: david@dpgatlaw.com Fighting game commentator & content creator: david@ultradavid.com https://t.co/mSHYKPZjwj"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1182419211433304064/iKhuh4A6_normal.png"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Just UltraDavid</span><span class="at">@ultradavid</span></div></a></div><div><p>Like I've often said, video game rights holders are the (nearly) absolute monarchs of their games, wielding the right to destroy any communities around them at will. But they usually don't! I'm super disappointed that Nintendo is doing this. I really hope they reconsider <a href='https://twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB/status/1329521081577857036' target='_blank'>twitter.com/TheBigHouseSSB…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ultradavid/status/1329532887578800128" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 21:11:56 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329562978266583044" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/" title="cryptid • universal constant • pal • maplehoof • Ⓒ"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1345571311716859905/CHzAlNzQ_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">gio :⁾</span><span class="at">@giovan_h</span></div></a></div><div><p>“Are” being a descriptive word here. It doesn’t have to be that way, and it very clearly shouldn’t. Nintendo’s misbehavior is just a reminder that this kind of power is wrong. <a href='https://twitter.com/ultradavid/status/1329532887578800128' target='_blank'>twitter.com/ultradavid/sta…</a></p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/giovan_h/status/1329562978266583044" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:11:30 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
<section class="section2">
<h2 id="related-reading">Related reading<a class="headerlink" href="#related-reading" title="Permanent link">🔗</a></h2>
<div class="spoiler-wrapper"><button class="spoiler-button" onclick="this.setAttribute('open', !(this.getAttribute('open') == 'true'))" type="button">Tweets</button><div class="spoiler-content">
<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329562407312748547" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Chimera_AFX/1329554722668359682"><a href="https://twitter.com/ShankMods/" title="Wii hardware nerd, portablizer, electronics enthusiast, and SSBM player. I make YouTube videos of mods and projects"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/816503186907271168/5DSOtLqh_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Shank</span><span class="at">@ShankMods</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Chimera_AFX/status/1329554722668359682">Chimera_AFX</a>:</span><p>@Chimera_AFX @TheBigHouseSSB Except it's not a breach of their IP. Based on current legal precedent, it not a violation of any current copyright law. Cleanroom emulation is legal as per "Sony Vs. Beem". Making backups is legal as per the DMCA. No laws are being broken. No IP is being stolen or misused.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ShankMods/status/1329562407312748547" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:09:14 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329563349152112648" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="ShankMods/1329562407312748547"><a href="https://twitter.com/ShankMods/" title="Wii hardware nerd, portablizer, electronics enthusiast, and SSBM player. I make YouTube videos of mods and projects"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/816503186907271168/5DSOtLqh_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">Shank</span><span class="at">@ShankMods</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/ShankMods/status/1329562407312748547">ShankMods</a>:</span><p>@Chimera_AFX @TheBigHouseSSB Slippi uses stock melee and doesn't add or modify any assets. It's just a client, with no Nintendo code or IP. Ripping a melee disc on a Wii is stupid easy. Unlike other cases Nintendo goes after, there isn't even a case to make that slippi violates their IP.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/ShankMods/status/1329563349152112648" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 23:12:59 +0000 2020</a>
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<div class="thread">
<p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329550880983670786" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="Christian10472/1329549205195526145"><a href="https://twitter.com/shewantconnor/" title="my avi is from when i was 15 since i havent grown as a person since then"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1323623026122989569/r0-X1sP1_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">unemployed</span><span class="at">@shewantconnor</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/Christian10472/status/1329549205195526145">Christian10472</a>:</span><p>@Christian10472 they aren't legally in the right. slippi doesn't require illegal copies of the game and emulators fall within US law.</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/shewantconnor/status/1329550880983670786" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 22:23:26 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-tweetid="1329552989703507971" data-lang="en" data-dnt="true" data-nosnippet="true" ><div class="header"data-reply="shewantconnor/1329550880983670786"><a href="https://twitter.com/schiggySSB/" title="SSBU and Tekken player for @AlpakaEsports | PFP by @littlerootlodge"><img src="https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1288198954736328705/q9ZD4XYW_normal.jpg"onerror="(async () => {this.onerror=null;const newsrc=`https://web.archive.org/web/0/${this.src}`;console.log(this, this.src, newsrc);this.src=newsrc;})();"></img><div class="vertical"><span class="name">ALP Schiggy</span><span class="at">@schiggySSB</span></div></a></div><div><span class="replyto">Replying to <a class="prev" href="https://twitter.com/shewantconnor/status/1329550880983670786">shewantconnor</a>:</span><p>@shewantconnor @Christian10472 Thats true. It requires Dolphin (fully legal), the modification Slippi makes to Dolpin (fully legal) and a copy of Melee, which you can (at least where I live) legally back up to an ISO file. So from a legal perspective, I guess Slippi doesnt REQUIRE piracy at all</p></div><div class="media" style="display: none;"></div><a href="https://twitter.com/schiggySSB/status/1329552989703507971" target="_blank">Thu Nov 19 22:31:49 +0000 2020</a>
</blockquote></p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<ul>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.kotaku.com.au/2020/11/nintendo-shuts-down-smash-tournament-over-some-absurd-bullshit/">Kotaku, “Nintendo Shuts Down Smash Tournament Over Some Absurd Bullshit”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://www.polygon.com/2013/7/11/4513294/nintendo-were-trying-to-shut-down-evo-not-just-super-smash-bros-melee">Polygon, “Nintendo wanted to shut down Super Smash Bros. Melee Evo event”</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://medium.com/@smashworldtour/smash-world-tour-official-statement-f568a3d135c8">Smash World Tour Official Statement, 11/29/2022</a></li>
<li><a class="related-reading" href="https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/21/wrecking-ball/#ssbm">Cory Doctorow, “Nintendo vs Nintendees”</a></li>
</ul>
</section>
<div class="footnote">
<hr>
<ol>
<li id="fn:mods">
<p>Nintendo was so mad about that that it used its enormous legal influence to <a href="https://www.siliconera.com/japan-makes-game-save-editors-console-modding-illegal/">write new legislation in Japan</a> to explicitly handle this case. In America, though, Nintendo has yet to carve out such a law. <a class="footnote-backref" href="#fnref:mods" title="Jump back to footnote 1 in the text">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>