[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 month ago

A true champion of free speech. 🙄

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 36 points 1 month ago

“A copy of the UN application says his refugee claim was denied because the adjudicator did not find Mwangi, who is married and has two children, to be a credible bisexual man“

Bi erasure strikes yet again. Bi and pan folks in supposedly “straight” relationships are still LGBTQ+, the letter “B” is right effing there. Bi and pan folks absolutely face discrimination and oppression, even if it doesn’t necessarily manifest in the same ways other queer folks experience.

I’m glad he has a temporary reprieve from deportation, at least.

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I got a good look and there were roughly 7 of them flying in tight formation, so it has to have been some kind of air show. But I can’t find anything about one happening today even looking at NOTAMs (pilot information notices), and the Celebration of Light doesn’t start until Saturday. I’m stumped too!

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

Good question! Whether it’s actually infringement is a legal judgment I’m certainly not qualified to make. 🙂 But my understanding is that it hinges on whether a court thinks a “reasonable person” could be confused. For example, a clothing brand called “Firefoxy” would probably be in the clear since Mozilla isn’t in the clothing business. And maybe even a clothing brand named “Firefox” might be okay! For example, Apple Computer and Apple Records (founded by The Beatles) coexisted nicely for a long time until Apple Computer started getting into the music-selling business. I forget how it got resolved (maybe a licensing agreement?) but The Beatles’ music wasn’t available on the iTunes Music Store for a looooong time while that dispute was going on.

Firefish is an online service and software package, the very space Mozilla operates in, so there’s at least a case to be made that reasonable people might incorrectly assume it’s from Mozilla. It’s come up many times in this discussion already, and we as active Fediverse users are already pretty well informed about this!

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 points 1 year ago

The name is way too similar to the Firefox trademark and could create the impression that Firefish is associated with Mozilla. I suspect some lawyers are currently in a huddle trying to figure out how to send a Cease and Desist letter that won’t completely piss off the community.

(Trademark law, at least in the US where Mozilla is headquartered, requires organizations to actively defend their trademarks. So just ignoring Firefish would be risky, even if they don’t actually mind the similarity.)

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[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 69 points 1 year ago

How long until Google gives up and shuts it down? Place yer bets!!!

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 year ago

I’m issuing an opinion that they’re getting off cheap. But their careers have suffered irreparable harm, so it’s alright. 🙂

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I feel certain they’ll settle this suit for a tiny fraction of the extra money they “earned” using this anti-consumer strategy.

I mean this for real: I had an easier time cancelling a gym membership than I did a Prime membership. 🤦‍♀️

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

I completely agree with the overall point you’re making, but would like to correct the legal aspects. I am not a lawyer, but I do have a pretty good understanding of US copyright law which is the most relevant in this case.

Having possession of data isn’t sufficient to legally establish the rights to do as a company pleases. In general, an individual author immediately has copyright on a creative work as soon as it’s recorded in any medium. The main exception to this is “work for hire” — a legal agreement that employers hold copyrights since they’re paying for the work. It’s usually part of the paperwork an established company has you sign when you start a job.

Because of this, and because we users aren’t employees of Reddit, they need a license to duplicate and display our copyrighted posts. The terms of service for any online service almost always stipulate a “worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual license”. In other words: you still own the copyright to your post and can still share it elsewhere, but by sending it to Reddit, they get to put it anywhere they want and you can’t ever take that right away from them.

If Meta begins slurping up data from the Fediverse, things get tricky. They’re probably violating copyright law if they do that, just as ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc… likely have. However, legal enforcement of our rights would be near-impossible. Everyone who has ever had an account with any of Meta’s properties has most likely agreed to an binding arbitration provision. (These are utterly immoral, they force you — as a precondition of doing business! — to preemptively waive your legal rights before anything occurs that would cause you to need them.) These provisions also prohibit any sort of class action, so each individual person would have to initiate their own case against Meta. And then you’d have to somehow prove to an arbitrator from an organization selected by and paid by Meta that Meta violated your copyright. And Meta’s high-priced lawyers will have all kinds of ways of referencing prior cases to argue why what they did is fine.

So yeah. But again, I completely agree with your main point. Meta will (if they haven’t already) collect all the data they please from the Fediverse and use it to further their business interests. And those business interests are not aligned with our best interests.

[-] leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone 28 points 1 year ago

It’s unfortunate that a handful of replies here are demonstrating exactly why the Beehaw community leaders felt they had to make this choice. 😞

If Lemmy instances are like web forums, federation basically gives us a “Sign in with your [home instance] account” option. (That’s not technically accurate at all, I’m only talking about the user experience.) It reduces user friction and helps people participate more widely. They just stopped allowing that from certain instances because they think adding a bit of friction back in will be healthier for the Beehaw communities. If you’re on one of the defederated instances, you aren’t banned. Yeah, it’s inconvenient for you, but you just need a different sign-in (at least for the time being).

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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by leigh@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/gaming@beehaw.org

Coming on October 24th… and this looks so good, I might finally upgrade my GPU. 😄

RIP SimCity, thank you for all you gave to gaming, but your time is even more over now than it already was.

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leigh

joined 1 year ago