The left operates on its own internal currency and it’s the one currency in the world where the more of it you have the less of a person you are…at least by intent.
Social justice rules the Democrats and it’s a kind of ideology that puts more value on victimhood than it does success, merit, or talent. In fact, the more you have of those three, the worse of a person you are in the eyes of social justice adherents. It’s from this ideological foundation that we get “critical race theory.” //
Democrats are a lot like Wormtongue from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. He whispers lies into the ears of anyone he targets, and sometimes what he says may seem soothing and understanding but really they’re pure poison meant to make you doubt yourself and your own ability. Like the Democrats, he speaks for people, accusing those who resist his agenda of attempting to bring burdens and troubles upon the people he speaks for. Meanwhile, the person he’s poisoning believes what he says and grows as weak and incapable as he tells them they are. //
CRT is an attempt at teaching the black community, specifically children, that they can’t do anything because it will automatically result in failure thanks to the American system. The only way they’ll get anywhere is if they lean heavily into whatever program the Democrats say they should, oddly enough, driving them further into a system that oppresses them.
This is an unbelievable amount of racism that no one is addressing. The left says it’s attempting to help out those who America considers second class, but in truth, it’s Democrats who continue to put them there. They continue to divide races against each other, making them even more incapable of working for a better future.
Telling someone of a certain race that they can’t function without them is racism. Period.
I’ve viewed every part of this journey through many lenses, not the least of which is one we call ‘WOMAN.’
I say all this because suddenly and tragically there is a movement afoot to erase womanhood. The “woke left,” progressives, some well-meaning conservatives, and even my own President have decided that in order to appease the tiniest of slivers of humanity who believe they can change their genders by surgically altering their bodies they must completely erase womanhood for all of us. It has come to the point where our own governmental and academic institutions have replaced the word “mother” with “birthing person,” as if that is some type of equality.
You’ll notice we are not replacing “father” with “sperm producer” or some other idiot term. There is something so grossly misogynistic about the movement to erase womanhood. It’s as if none of the notions of women have changed in the last 1000 years. One philosophy is to the far right and one is to the far left, but both paint womanhood as inherently disgusting, flawed, misshapen, and grotesque. The natural form and function of our bodies are repulsive to each extreme. One extreme sought to eliminate our gender through silence – keeping us tucked away at home, away from the reaches of “civilized” society. The other extreme seeks to eliminate our gender through erasure – denying us the privilege of the markers that make us different than men and seeking to nullify the most beautiful aspects of our bodies. It is vile.
I am not a “birthing person.” I am a mother. I am not a “person who menstruates.” I am a woman. My body and my gender deserve your recognition. God knows I have fought a bloody and emotional battle to obtain that recognition. I have earned the respect of womanhood. How dare anyone suggest that because some people are gender bigots that I do not deserve the respect I have earned in this body?
I have given birth to the very future of humanity. That is the privilege of motherhood and the function of womanhood. And if one happens to be a woman who can’t give birth, or who chooses not to give birth, rest assured she is taking those journeys as a woman. She is dealing with the emotional fallout from how that affects her life as a woman. Those things still fall under the umbrella of womanhood and yes, motherhood. Because motherhood – the choosing of it or the absence of it – is an exclusively female function. //
Live your life how you want, but you will not steal my God-given and gloriously created form. You will not reduce me to a function – a person who can give birth. You will address me with the respect I deserve, the respect my mother and her mother and her mother before her fought for. The respect I deserve and I have earned as a WOMAN.
My gender is not your social experiment.
These spoon-fed questions and powder puff interviews somehow got Harris into national office; but when she actually has to perform under pressure, Harris chokes. //
So, when I say Kamala Harris has been hand-picked, propped up, and groomed, it is legitimate. The ability to make a credible stand, stay cool under pressure, and think on your feet, are lessons learned when the challenges and pressures that produce growth and change are applied. Harris’ “Root Causes Guatemalan Tour” puts on full display that she has never had to suffer under any form of challenge or pressure for a very long time.
Whatever “intellect” or “smarts” Harris may have started with in her career, she quickly abandoned them for the easier cult of personality route, being handed roles and places of power that she never earned and would never be able to fill. //
Jmied01
15 hours ago
“…Did the Biden team not pay attention to her entire failed Presidential campaign…?”
They didn’t care about anything she said, they only cared about how many intersectional boxes she checked. //
Jaye
17 hours ago
You are a Californian. I am a Californian. Can either of us name a single thing Kamala Harris did for us when she was elected senator fo our state?
Her list of crimes while Caliof AG is long enough - mainly destroying two qualified ballot initiatives for public pension reform that could have saved this state, which she re-wrote the ballot language as AG, in order to ensure they would fail. And they did.
The second time she did this, the ballot sponsors just gave up and stopped campaigning for the issue they got enough signatures for to qualify - but Kamala Harris stuck a knife into both efforts - the second one was to repair what she inflicted the first time, but she found a way to destroy it the second time.
RedState has now learned some details of the information provided by the defector, including that he provided data proving that SARS-CoV-2 was manmade and leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in addition to evidence confirming that the People’s Liberation Army managed the Wuhan program (and others), as Chinese virologist Yan Li-Meng told the FBI last year.
Technical details provided by the defector, RedState is told, were given to scientists (who were not told how that information was given to the government) who then re-analyzed data from published sources in conjunction with the new data and concluded that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was engineered. And, the defector was able to confirm numerous non-public details Yan provided the US government. //
Dr. Li-Meng YAN
@DrLiMengYAN1
Verified again! “CGG-CGG” in SARS-CoV-2 genome is part of smoking-gun evidence to prove Gain-of-Function done by CCP.
I have presented analysis with other smoking guns in the First Yan Report last Sep.
However, CCP’s unrestricted misinformation campaign dismiss it using lies! //
And just how was it that Yan’s information was able to be so effectively dismissed? As we’ve covered over the last few weeks, EcoHealth Alliance’s Peter Daszak strongarmed other researchers into writing pieces in influential journals, like Lancet and Nature, dismissing the theory, and specifically dismissing Yan’s claims. Those pieces were used by Science Feedback, Facebook’s fact-checker, to deplatform news organizations who shared the information and wouldn’t take it down and to shut down the accounts of individuals who shared the information. News organizations couldn’t even report about Yan’s appearance on Tucker Carlson without being censored by big tech. //
Ted Cruz
@tedcruz
Wow. Stunning scientific evidence suggests that: (1) Covid escaped from a Chinese lab & (2) the virus was CREATED in that lab, thru “gain of function” research.
For over a year, corporate media & deep state insisted this was a “conspiracy theory.”
Rasmussen Reports
@Rasmussen_Poll
Our polling indicates 51%, a majority of U.S. likely voters, believe cheating impacted the 2020 election results, up from 47% just after the November election. Legacy media spends 24/7 demonizing any questioning of the 2020 results. Public trust in them is demonstrated below - //
Arizona has historically been a Republican state.
Since WWII, it has only voted for a Democrat twice, 1948 and 1996. Maricopa has not voted for the Democrat since 1948.
John Kerry added 118,166 votes in Maricopa in 2004.
Barack Obama added 97,677 votes in Maricopa in 2008.
Hillary Clinton added 100,619 votes in Maricopa in 2016.
Joe Biden added 337,867 votes in Maricopa in 2020.
Biden won Arizona by 10,457 votes so if 0.5% of the 2.1 million ballots in Maricopa are illegal or invalid ballots for Biden then you have a state for the first time in the history of the United States that would have been wrongfully awarded in the American electoral college. //
“AZ still has over 21k “Federal Only voters” who cannot prove they are a citizen or that they even exist. They are not in the MVD system and all they need is a bank statement (easily doctored) to get a ballot. This will need to be addressed at the Federal level, and I have been working to make this more known for some time. This is the next thing that needs an audit, and voter intimidation is a flimsy excuse not to do it.” //
Approximately 3,000 mail-in ballots counted in the Nov. 3 election were supposedly cast by UCSB [CA] students residing in a voting precinct that, along with other dorm buildings, includes the Francisco Torres/Santa Catalina Residence Hall at 6850 El Colegio Road in Goleta.
Problem: Due to COVID-19, the Torres Building, which normally accommodates 1,300 students, was empty and locked down through most of 2020, as were all other UCSB dorms.
This means no students/voters were residing inside the Torres Building (nor any of the other dorms) during the election season.
It also means these ballots were fraudulent.
That’s because there’s a second problem: These ballots could not legally have been forwarded to students where they were actually living.
Why not?
Because forwarding ballots to alternative addresses is a felony. //
One final reminder: the AZ audit is NOT the “gold standard” for audits, as previously reported here. “Based on economic and time constraints (due in part to the aggressive resistance against any meaningful election audit), the Maricopa audit is a partial forensics audit. Based on the Statement of Work, we’d estimate that it is 75% of an FFA [full forensic audit].”
Harris is an absolutely awful politician on her own merits. Every embarrassing flub and hysterical cackle of the last week serves as a reminder of why her own presidential campaign was such a failure. Yet, the Biden administration knows she’s incapable of being a likable, competent figure. Instead of helping her and protecting her, they are hanging the border crisis around her neck and throwing her into the deep end with no floaties on. Further, they are negating to do the one thing that could settle a lot of the questions causing Harris so much consternation – just sending her to the border and getting it over with.
Meanwhile, Jill Biden is chilling at the G7, rubbing shoulders with royalty and cosplaying as co-president to the glowing reviews of the media. It’s all just too perfect to be a coincidence at this point. I’m convinced – Harris is the fall guy, and she’s being pushed over the cliff by the very administration she serves. //
bk
5 hours ago
Joe Biden has illustrated perfectly how the Democrat party works - use black people as props at election time and then kick them aside until the next election rolls around. //
Steve in CO
7 hours ago
Maybe some of us have been wrong all along. Maybe there really is no master plan, and it’s all just as absurd and random as it appears.
ReeNC
6 hours ago
Stealing election(s) was the only plan. This is the aftermath.
Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
·
Jun 8, 2021
Great news! Cleveland clinic study of 52,238 employees shows unvaccinated people who have had COVID 19 have no difference in re-infection rate than people who had COVID 19 and who took the vaccine.
Senator Rand Paul
@RandPaul
This information frees up millions of doses of vaccines for those not yet infected in places with vaccine shortages like India.
No point vaccinating those who’ve had COVID-19: Findings of Cleveland Clinic study
news-medical.net
North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson first gained notoriety at an April 5, 2018 Greensboro City Council meeting, when he eloquently defended his, and his fellow gun owners, Second Amendment Rights. The Council was taking constituent comments on then-Mayor Nancy Vaughn’s attempt to end gun shows at the Greensboro Coliseum, and despite Robinson’s qualifier that he didn’t have time to prepare a fancy speech, his words were well-spoken, fiery, and effective.
Americans are a country of people that should be proud of who they are and what they’ve accomplished and despite what the left may say about you or this country, it’s one that not only needs defending, it deserves defending.
That was the message from North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson during the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention. //
“The greatest example that I saw, and witnessed it firsthand on television, was during 9/11. People running away from those burning buildings, running away in horror. We saw a policeman and fireman running to those buildings, basically running to their deaths to go help others because they saw trouble and they knew that they would need it.,” said Robinson.
“That’s got to be us this day right here,” he continued. “And what is the trouble? The trouble is the Biden administration that is seeking the turn this country into a socialist hellhole. The trouble is Antifa, who wants to roam the streets and beat you into submission. The trouble is Black Lives Matter that claims to care about the lives of black people but it’s turned a blind eye
while violence in black communities are taking lives at a genocidalal of rate. They turn a blind eye!”
“That’s where the trouble is and that’s where we’ve got to run to,” he added.
“We’ve got all the right in the world on our side, and there ain’t no reason to be afraid,” said Robinson. “It ain’t no reason to not take the challenge dead on.”
Robinson reminded the crowd who it is we come from, saying that we don’t descend from “weak, jelly backed, spineless people.” He also made it clear that it doesn’t matter your skin color or what nation your ancestors came from, nor how much money you have. In the end, we’re all Americans.
What do you get when you cross the largest social media platform in the world with the most powerful, Communist regime in existence? Apparently, you get a match made in Marxist heaven. A recent report shows that Facebook has become quite protective over the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propaganda reports on its site. Indeed, the social media giant appears to be treating the brutal regime far better than Americans who happen to be right-leaning.
The Media Research Center recently published a report detailing how the CCP is allowed to operate unimpeded on Facebook, which routinely censors conservative content. //
Forty accounts on Facebook, amassing over 751 million followers, are managed by Chinese state-controlled media outlets. For comparison, 751 million is over six times (6.39x) more followers than CNN, Fox News, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, The Washington Post and CBS News have combined (roughly 117,500,000) on Facebook.
Facebook has removed disinformation operations connected to Iranian state-controlled media and had targeted Russian state-controlled media, as well. However, the company has done very little to curb Chinese propaganda disseminated on the platform through its government-run media outlets. //
Thirty-seven of the 40 Facebook accounts identified by the Media Research Center as belonging to Chinese state-controlled media have corresponding accounts on Twitter. There they were labeled “state-affiliated” media. The MRC identified only 23 out of the 40 accounts that Facebook labeled state-affiliated accounts on its platform — a blatant violation of its policy on identifying accounts run by state-controlled media outlets. //
etbass
3 hours ago
It's all about the money. They censor the right and they lose what? 20 million accounts, maybe? 10 million? 5?
CCP has 751 million. Money, money, money. They do what they are told to get China's money.
In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court just narrowed the scope of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act:
In a ruling delivered today, the court sided with Van Buren and overturned his 18-month conviction.
In a 37-page opinion written and delivered by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the court explained that the “exceeds authorized access” language was, indeed, too broad.
Justice Barrett said the clause was effectively making criminals of most US citizens who ever used a work resource to perform unauthorized actions, such as updating a dating profile, checking sports scores, or paying bills at work.
What today’s ruling means is that the CFAA cannot be used to prosecute rogue employees who have legitimate access to work-related resources, which will need to be prosecuted under different charges.
The ruling does not apply to former employees accessing their old work systems because their access has been revoked and they’re not “authorized” to access those systems anymore. //.
Clive Robinson • June 7, 2021 9:43 AM
I’ve already commented on why the law was technically very bad.
But a saliant legal point was that it confused contracts and legislation.
That is it alowed a non legalistive organidation such as a corporation to write a document that had criminal penalties.
That is wrong by any measure.
In the US you get taught that,
A tort arises from a breach of a private duty and a crime arises from a breach of a public duty.
The two should never ever be confused getting on for atleast two millennia of jurisprudence has repeatedly shown that any cross over leads to an escalation of undesirable outcomes and other unintended consequences that easily cascade into what becomes a runaway set of consequences.
But then US legislators have a history going right back to the constirution of at the best antipathy towards democracy right through to ensuring that the citizens have no rights in any form.
The CFAA was an insidious form of the age old game of “Rights Striping” by ensuring a “non equity of arms” which favours those that see themselves as entitled through the holding of property and directly or indirectly other humans as chattels or endentured servitude.
The horrors of experimentation on aborted babies are too easily purged from our thoughts, but they should stoke our national conscience. //
Child sacrifice strains the limits of moral relativity, yet too often abortion gets a pass. There are various arguments why, but at least it’s a debate. In contrast, most Americans are only semi-conscious of the use of aborted babies for medical experiments. Our tax dollars pay for it through the National Institutes of Health, but more often than not, we never hear about it.
In a recent Newsweek editorial, David Daleiden reminded the public that scientists at the University of Pittsburgh have been taking five-month-old aborted infants, cutting out their body parts, then grafting their scalps onto mice, or otherwise harvesting their organs for medical use. Our natural response is revulsion. For the sake of sanity, though, our momentary outrage is usually followed by forgetfulness.
Frequency Specific Microcurrent (FSM) offers exciting promise in working with tissues unresponsive to conventional efforts such as nerve pain, damage or injury, scar tissue, adhesions, and the ability to facilitate healing of acute and chronic injuries. GMA also finds it is a useful supportive treatment as part of comprehensive treatment for chronic conditions like chronic Lyme disease, CFS, and fibromyalgia.
The frequencies appear to change a variety of conditions and tissues, and change pain and function in a large number of clinical conditions. FSM is especially effective at treating nerve and muscle pain, inflammation, and scar tissue.
The CustomCare© Pack comes with Windows compatible software and one pocket-sized microcurrent satellite. The CustomCare© software resides on the practitioner’s Windows PC computer and allows the practitioner to prescribe specific protocols for any specific patient. The software contains 150 updated protocols from the AutoCare1300© and many more!
Software is meant for professional use only and it is not recommended to be sold or provided to patients. If the practitioner does provide the software to a patient, it is the practitioners responsibility to show the patient how to use the software and prescribe the patient treatment protocols. PDI cannot provide medical advice. ///
Used by some specialists in treatment for POTS.
Messages were routed to an FBI-owned server and decrypted with master key. //
The Federal Bureau of Investigation created a company that sold encrypted devices to hundreds of organized crime syndicates, resulting in 800 arrests in 16 countries, law-enforcement authorities announced today. The FBI and agencies in other countries intercepted 27 million messages over 18 months before making the arrests in recent days, and more arrests are planned.
The FBI teamed up with Australian Federal Police to target drug trafficking and money laundering. They "strategically developed and covertly operated an encrypted device company, called ANOM, which grew to service more than 12,000 encrypted devices to over 300 criminal syndicates operating in more than 100 countries, including Italian organized crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and international drug trafficking organizations," Europol said today. //
"For years, organized crime figures around the globe relied on the devices to orchestrate international drug shipments, coordinate the trafficking of arms and explosives, and discuss contract killings, law enforcement officials said," the Times wrote. "Users trusted the devices' security so much that they often laid out their plans not in code, but in plain language."
Unbeknownst to users, messages were routed to an FBI-owned server and decrypted with a master key controlled by the FBI. //
The operation was given the names "Trojan Shield" and "Greenlight." Europol called it "one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against encrypted criminal activities." //
The FBI has complained about encryption in consumer products for years, with one FBI official in 2018 reportedly calling Apple "jerks." Today's announcement demonstrates again that law enforcement has the ability to target criminals' use of encrypted communications without making mass-market devices less secure.
Penn State musicologist Marica Tacconi discovered the fakes on sabbatical in Venice. //
Penn State musicologist Marica Tacconi wasn't planning to discover forged music books when she started her sabbatical research at the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice in 2018. But when she encountered an embellished, leather-bound music book ostensibly from the 17th century, something about it struck her as off. Subsequent analysis showed that her instincts had been right: the book was an early 20th-century forgery, as were two other music books, supposedly from the same period, that she examined in the collection. Tacconi gives a full account of her investigations in a recent paper published in the Journal of Seventeenth Century Music.
The Marciana Library acquired the music books—catalogued as MSS 740, 742, and 743—in 1916 and 1917 from a musician and book dealer named Giovanni Concina. But before Tacconi undertook her analysis, the books had neither received much scholarly attention nor been studied as a set. //
david newallArs Scholae Palatinaereplyabout 9 hours agoReader Fav
I wonder why they were forged. Apparently not for financial gain as they sold for so little. Somebody went to a lot of effort and didn't receive fame or fortune. //
agkhayyamWise, Aged Ars Veteran about 9 hours ago
david newall wrote:
I wonder why they were forged. Apparently not for financial gain as they sold for so little. Somebody went to a lot of effort and didn't receive fame or fortune.
And now this feels like the beginning of a Dan Brown novel...
Last summer, we got our first glimpse of Apple TV's hotly anticipated adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of novels when Apple released a teaser trailer during the 2020 Worldwide Developers Conference. Production on the new show, which stars Jared Harris and Lee Pace, shut down last March due to the pandemic, but filming resumed last October. No official air date besides "late 2021" has surfaced, but there are a few tantalizing extra glimpses in the streaming platform's new summer (and beyond) preview trailer, per the eagle eye of The Spaceshipper on Twitter.
Mild spoilers for the first book in the Foundation series below.)
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The series started as eight short stories by Asimov that appeared in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and early 1950. Those stories were inspired in part by Edward Gibbons' History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the first four were collected, along with a new introductory story, and published as Foundation in 1951. The next pair of stories became Foundation and Empire (1952), and the final two stories appeared in 1953's Second Foundation. Asimov's publishers eventually convinced him to continue the series, starting with two sequels: Foundation's Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). Next came a pair of prequels: Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993), the latter published posthumously (Asimov died in 1992).
The original trilogy centered on mathematician Hari Seldon, who has developed a mathematical approach to sociology that he calls "psychohistory." Psychohistory enables him to predict the future of large populations—like the Galactic Empire, which incorporates all inhabitants of the Milky Way. Unfortunately, Seldon's theory predicts an imminent collapse of the empire—well, in 500 years, which is certainly imminent on galactic time scales. This will usher in a Dark Age lasting 30,000 years, after which a second empire will arise. The news is not received well by the members of the Committee on Public Safety, who essentially rule the empire, and Seldon is forced to stand trial for treason, along with a brilliant young mathematical protégé named Gaal. //
In his defense, Seldon argues that he cannot stop the collapse, but there is a way to limit those Dark Ages to just 1,000 years. He proposes creating a Foundation, a group of the most intelligent minds in the empire, charged with preserving all human knowledge in the Encyclopedia Galactica. Rather than executing Seldon, the committee decides to exile him, along with the members of the new Foundation, to a remote world called Terminus, where they can begin compiling the encyclopedia. Much of the first book in the trilogy follows the establishment of the colony on Terminus and the various political machinations that shape its early history, along with a startling revelation: unbeknownst to the committee, Seldon has established a second Foundation at the other end of the galaxy.
We don't yet know how much of this history will be included in the TV adaptation or how closely the show's narrative will follow the books.
"In every SpaceX animation, we saw a fade into black right when people walked out of the rocket on Mars," Ellis said. "So what was clear [is] that there needed to be some other company building humanity's industrial base on Mars. Replicating the infrastructure for a million people that live on Mars is a massive undertaking, and I think a lot of people need to work on it."
Relativity seeks to do this by pushing forward 3D-printing technology. Ellis intends to disrupt the long-standing aerospace practice of using fixed tooling to manufacture rockets, which are then finished using a hands-on process of adding thousands of parts. Ultimately, Relatively hopes to use what it learns about printing rockets on Earth to additively manufacture habitats and other materials on the surface of Mars.
Even as Relativity Space seeks to augment the efforts by Musk and SpaceX to make humans a multiplanetary species, the company is also directly competing with its much more established rival. If successfully developed, the Terran R would challenge SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for both government and commercial launch contracts. //
The Terran R vehicle will have a first stage that lands on a drone ship at sea, and the second stage will retain its payload fairing after satellite separation. Then, this combined stack, the second stage and payload fairing, will make a propulsive landing from orbit.
"To my knowledge, we're only the second fully reusable vehicle other than Starship that's even been planned," Ellis said. //
The rocket's first stage will be printed from a custom aluminum alloy, and the upper stage will be built from a more exotic, heat-resistant material to withstand re-entry temperatures. For the rocket's first missions, Relativity will seek to bring back the first stage, incorporating full-vehicle reuse over time, Ellis said.
If all of this sounds ambitious, that's because it is, especially for a company that has yet to launch a rocket or even perform an integrated-stage test firing. However, Relativity's steady growth, to about 400 employees now, and total fundraising of $1.34 billion lend some credence to the idea that it may indeed be successful.
The Force was with me (well, except for the delay) when I recently got to fly on the United Airlines Boeing 737-800 decorated for Star Wars fans.
I had no idea the final leg of my journey to Puerto Rico would be on the Star Wars plane, but I was thrilled to see it at the gate. I thought it would be fun for you all to see the outside and inside of this cool plane, too.
For more news and AvGeek
A billion-dollar judgment in a piracy lawsuit involving a major Internet service provider could force ISPs to terminate more customer accounts and "punish the innocent and guilty alike," advocacy groups have warned. Urging an appeals court to overturn the ruling, the groups wrote that "upholding this verdict would result in innocent and vulnerable users losing essential Internet access." //
"In going after Internet service providers for the actions of just a few of their users, Sony Music, other major record labels, and music publishing companies have found a way to cut people off of the Internet based on mere accusations of copyright infringement," the EFF wrote in a blog post announcing the filing. "When these music companies sued Cox Communications, an ISP, the court got the law wrong. It effectively decided that the only way for an ISP to avoid being liable for infringement by its users is to terminate a household or business's account after a small number of accusations—perhaps only two. The court also allowed a damages formula that can lead to nearly unlimited damages, with no relationship to any actual harm suffered. If not overturned, this decision will lead to an untold number of people losing vital Internet access as ISPs start to cut off more and more customers to avoid massive damages."
A jury ruled in December 2019 that Cox must pay $1 billion in damages to the major record labels. Sony, Universal, and Warner had sued the cable ISP in 2018 in US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. A district judge upheld the verdict in January 2021, approving the $1 billion judgment and paving the way for to Cox appeal to the 4th Circuit. //
Given this reality, the stakes of this case for Internet users are enormous. The district court's judgment and the jury's damage award in this case are founded on fundamental errors of law that, if affirmed, will force ISPs to terminate more subscribers with less justification or risk staggering liability. First, the judgment relies on unwarranted extensions of copyright's two "secondary liability" doctrines, which will encourage ISPs to terminate subscribers when more proportionate means of addressing infringement exist. Second, the staggering and poorly justified $1,000,000,000 award of statutory damages against Cox thwarts basic principles of due process and the public interest. //
Previous court decisions set important limits that were disregarded by the district court in the Cox case, the group argued:
First, vicarious liability requires proof of direct financial benefit to the defendant from another's copyright infringement. But since all subscribers (including infringers) pay a monthly fee for Internet access, courts have agreed that an ISP's receipt of such fees is not sufficient to meet this burden. Instead, the plaintiff must show in addition that the customer was "drawn" to use the defendant's Internet service (as opposed to any other Internet service) because of the availability of infringing copies of the plaintiff's works.
Second, because infringement occurs on all Internet networks, this Court, in BMG [see BMG Rights Management v. Cox Communications], refused to impose contributory liability on an ISP simply because it had generalized knowledge that some customers will use the ISP's Internet service to infringe. Instead, contributory liability can be imposed only where an ISP knows of (or willfully blinds itself to) specific acts of infringement by particular subscribers and also knows "that infringement is substantially certain to result from [its] continued provision of Internet access to particular subscribers."
The district court disregarded these critical limitations, sustaining vicarious liability even though there was no proof that infringers were specifically "drawn" to the Cox service, and finding on summary judgment that as a matter of law, Cox had the knowledge necessary to contributory liability solely from receiving the plaintiffs' DMCA notices. It refused to submit the knowledge issue to the jury despite Cox's showing evidence that some of [the] DMCA notices were false and that Cox could not be substantially certain of future infringement by subscribers named in the notices.