[colliric]

The great legal minds of pofo have weighed in. I guess I stand corrected.

They refuse to understand the concept of effective Public Ownership rather than theoretical public ownership.

There's a difference between practical ownership and legal ownership.

In practice a Roman Catholic Church Mass Service(or any Church Service) is a public service run by a public organisation. Why? Because everything "basic service" is free for the public as the organisation is self sustainable running mostly off public donations and wealth gathered elsewhere from "non-government public service fees". Hence why churches pay no Taxation. They are technically offering alternative public services running off private Donations(and fees of cause), cutting the cost down for the Government and it's taxpayer funded public systems. This allows governments to provide choice and not operate a monopoly on "public services".

[Decky]

If you want to pretend youtube is a part of the government owned by the state and run by the civil service that is between you and your psychiatrist. Do you also think your local corner shop is part of the government? What about the local paper boy? Or maybe the guy at the hot dog stall?

[colliric]

If you want to pretend youtube is a part of the government owned by the state and run by the civil service that is between you and your psychiatrist. Do you also think your local corner shop is part of the government? What about the local paper boy? Or maybe the guy at the hot dog stall?

These are operated as Mum and Pop operations and do not have significant input from the Government, nor do they pay larger taxes.

Larger Pubs and Casinos are cash cow revenue raising operations for Governments(local, state and federal), hence they have much higher legal and social involvement.

The Returned Services League literally is a public government funded organisation and they literally do own a Shitton of Pubs.

[Sivad]

They refuse to understand

I think they're just trying to get the goat, I don't take any of them seriously.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Sivad

I have no issue with your claim that Youtube acts as a public utility and therefore should, minimally, be regulated, since we are not yet in a position to abolish private property and have these kinds of things done by decnetralised workers cooperatives.

But at this moment, Youtube is not a public utility. Correct?

And since that is the case, the first amendment does not apply.

Now, why would a UK company be subject to US law?

[Sivad]

@Sivad

I have no issue with your claim that Youtube acts as a public utility

But at this moment, Youtube is not a public utility. Correct?

If it acts as a public utility then it must be regulated as such. The argument is not that we need to broaden the definition, it's that youtube fits the definition. But really what I'm addressing here is the claim that the government doesn't have the right to restrict private companies from discriminatory practices. There are well defined classifications like 'public forum', 'common carrier', and 'public utility' that restrict companies that fall under those classifications from discrimination.

And since that is the case, the first amendment does not apply.

No, it's an open question that is currently being decided through the courts. The courts will determine whether or not the first amendment applies to social media.

Now, why would a UK company be subject to US law?

Aside from all the international trade agreements, conventions, treaties that most countries have entered into to deal with these sorts of issues, if a company wants to do business inside the US it has to comply with US law. That gives the US quite a bit of leverage which makes it very unlikely that Alphabet or any of its subsidiaries would just ignore federal policy.

[Godstud]

[quote="Sivad"]If it acts as a public utility then it must be regulated as such. [/quote] Wrong. A perception of being a public utility does not make it one.

[quote="Sivad"]it's that youtube fits the definition[/quote] No, it obviously does not if it has private ownership.

[quote="Sivad"]here are well defined classifications like 'public forum', 'common carrier', and 'public utility' that restrict companies that fall under those classifications from discrimination. [/quote]Pofo is a "public forum" only that it's in the public. It is actually privately owned, and as such, isn't actually a public utility. Also, as such, it can have rules that would not apply to a public utility.

[quote="Sivad"]Aside from all the international trade agreements, conventions, treaties that most countries have entered into to deal with these sorts of issues, if a company wants to do business inside the US it has to comply with US law. That gives the US quite a bit of leverage which makes it very unlikely that Alphabet or any of its subsidiaries would just ignore federal policy. [/quote] A UK company, operating on the internet, is not going to be subject to US law. It might be influenced by US trade sanctions, conventions, treaties, etc., but is not still not going to be subject to US law, no matter how much you might wish it were so.

[Sivad]

Wrong. A perception of being a public utility does not make it one.

No, it obviously does not if it has private ownership.

Pofo is a "public forum" only that it's in the public. It is actually privately owned, and as such, isn't actually a public utility. Also, as such, it can have rules that would not apply to a public utility.

A UK company, operating on the internet, is not going to be subject to US law. It might be influenced by US trade sanctions, conventions, treaties, etc., but is not still not going to be subject to US law, no matter how much you might wish it were so.

Another of pofo's many highly qualified and knowledgeable jurists. I'm really out of my depth here.

[Godstud]

Another of pofo's many highly qualified and knowledgeable jurists.

Quite so. Indeed, as qualified as you.

I'm really out of my depth here.

Are you really?

Is this how you normally respond when people don't agree with your assessments? You do not have a rebuttal because you don't have a decent argument, so you give up? When that happens to some, they respond with Ad hominems. Is that what you were implying, or am I to take you at face value?

[Crantag]

As I pointed out earlier Youtube isn't even a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination.

They provide video streaming service. They are the most successful provider of their particular medium sort, but there are a multitude of services available.

You can launch a website and host videos on your own server.

Sivad is mad because Alex Jones, the for-profit propagandist, is suffering--and it is a result of his own bullshit.

[blackjack21]

Now what does it have to do with my opinion on governance?

It's not simply your opinion on governance. You equate Trump's inaction on Russia--read Rex Tillerson's, who has now been fired--with treason. If the Russian state hacked the DNCs server--there isn't much evidence they did; and the FBI has been denied the opportunity to conduct their own forensic investigation--that isn't anything the US isn't already doing anywhere else. Also, since the DNC is a private corporation, if the Russian state or Russians in general hacked the DNC server it is not an act of war. During the Obama administration, Obama went from being a nominal defender of DOMA to being pro-gay marriage while the SCOTUS tried to get us to believe that gay marriage is embedded in the 14th Amendment, whereas its authors probably would have hung Kennedy and his thin majority by their necks for such an opinion. He not only flipped (obviously he already believed that was the case and was just lying about it), he trolled Vladimir Putin during the Sochi Olympics on the subject of gay propaganda. So it is fairly obvious that people who are looking to equate Trump's "inaction" with "treason" are more than likely probably gay or in furtherance of the LGBTQ agenda pushed by Obama--yet, another factor in why the Democrats lost white working class voters.

You brought it up simply to rankle.

I brought it up to highlight the point that most of the world, indeed most Americans, aren't losing their marbles over Russia.

There are many ideas that George Soros embraces that I embrace also also. This is true of Ronald Reagan, Ghandi, Locke, MLK, Marx, and you. What is your point?

Reagan did not believe in a borderless world. Besides, if such a notion had any material value at all, Russia couldn't be an enemy since there would really be no Russia or no United States for all practical purposes. If the US wants to promote open borders and an end to the nation state, it should stop whining and grow up when other nation states take advantage of the comically naive ideals of today's left.

Are you surprised that I ''''tend'''' to be on the side of dynastic power? Duh.

It's one of the general inconsistencies in your political position.

Or have you finally embraced the notion that a bunch of relatively uneducated Bubbas have become the definition of "conservatism".

Your "relatively uneducated Bubbas" are more consistent with conservative values.

I take it that you have exchanged the likes of Goldwater, Nixon and Buckley, for Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

I was never completely impressed with any of them. Of all of them, I liked Buckley the most but found him a bit too self satisfied. Nixon gave us the EPA and was toying with universal income, so I would hardly characterize him as a conservative. If you're ready to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964, I would take you more seriously on extolling Goldwater.

Yes. Conservatives have been doing that since 1776. Washington was an officer of the British government for a very long time.

Washington wasn't a conservative. He was actively involved in overthrowing the existing government and replacing it with a different type of government. That is not the definition of a conservative. He was a revolutionary.

Russia is only a "has-been power as long as the US and others move to thwart its ambitions. We have been successful in doing that for many decades. That is until Trump who refuses to do anything about their openly hostile acts toward us.

Again, this is not true and betrays a significant ignorance of recent history. I've said for nearly two decades now that the US cannot maintain a deterrence against other powers with the size of military it has. This was proven rather poignantly when the US was laying the groundwork for getting Georgia to join NATO. When Shakashvili thought he was safely under the auspices of the US, Putin invaded George in 2008. George W. Bush couldn't do jack shit about it. If the US had heavy tanks there, the Russians would have been routed and they know it. They also know that the US is completely mapped right now and has been for over a decade.

We can't thwart Russia's ambitions if we can't thwart our own first. We don't have the resources to do that. Likewise, we have no moral high ground to lecture other countries about interfering in governance of other countries, since we do it all the time. Barack Obama learned from George W. Bush and raised Bush's two wars with the overthrow of governments in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and Ukraine while failing to counter ISIS in Iraq by a premature pullout and created the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII in his effort to overthrow the government of Syria. It is little wonder that Russia could simply annex Crimea without firing a shot. The EU militarily is an empty suit sans Great Britain, and even they are looking sort of pathetic now.

I am ready to see your evidence of this. I doubt it will be forthcoming.

The evidence is plainly available. The deep state has not proved that there was no wrongdoing. They have proved that they conspire to protect each other and conspire against the will of the American people and frankly do not care what people think now--this arrogance has cost them yet another presidential election they could have easily won if they weren't so obstinate and arrogant. Like you used to muse with respect to Trump, I could show these folks how to win. However, I don't want to. I enjoy watching them lose. They already know how to lie. They are just freaks and can't accept their own nature.

You say these alleged actions are "politically motivated". Do tell me which party they are "all" acting to support?

Is this your textual attempt at guffaw? I've said for I don't know how many years that they create the "illusion" of bipartisanship or partisanship depending on their objective. John McCain and Chuck Schumer for all practical purposes are on the same side. George F. Will isn't really a conservative, etc. You take the Democratic party position far more than the Republican party and for some reason refuse to register with the party that more accurately reflects your views. You would be fine with Hillary Clinton as president. You would be just as comfortable with Jeb Bush, but would criticize him as president far more than you would Hillary Clinton if she were president. My point isn't just that I'm calling you out on it. More than half the electorate is doing that too. Your game is over, Drlee.

Poor special snowflake republicans. The whole government is out to get them. Federal employees have formed a "deep state". Perhaps they have moonlight meetings the skull and bones clubhouse.

I care fuck all about the Republican party. It's a corporation. That's it. I'm just as happy to transpose your argument to nation states. "Poor special snowflake Americans. The big bad Russians are out to get them. Some little punk hackers hacked a website. They must have some secret Russian handshake or something."

YouTube can have what it wants on its website.

It can, but it can not arbitrarily change the terms of an implied contract. I think it may take some time for a legal theory to arise that has staying power. Basically, YouTube induced people like those behind PragerU to create videos with the promise that content creators could host them on YouTube free of charge in exchange for a share of advertising revenue. YouTube's staff doesn't like PragerU's political positions, so they have made supercilious arguments along the lines of PragerU's videos aren't suitable for children and so begin demonetizing them, flagging their content as inappropriate for children, etc. By publishing a policy, YouTube has effectively induced people by fraud into investing in the creation of videos only to have those who made those investments lose the opportunity to monetize them because staff within YouTube disagrees with the political positions of those creating the videos. That's fraud in the inducement.

Alison Weir of organization IfAmericansKnew had her organization's YouTube videos removed. She wrote about the experience a few days ago:

It's totally cool to post a hyperlink...

It doesn't boil down to that all. It's a complicated issue that brings many fundamental principles into conflict and competition. It has to be sorted out through the courts.

Agreed. That will take some time though as the courts are politically charged now too.

Complicated? YouTube is under no obligation to air anything that it finds repulsive, dishonest, illegal, etc….

That depends. It take time to make a video. If YouTube promises a platform for content creators in exchange for a share of advertising revenue. I would say this is an offer, and a content creator who creates a YouTube channel and begins uploading videos is accepting the offer where the consideration is a share of advertising revenue. If I were a judge, I would hold that YouTube cannot arbitrarily change the terms of this agreement unless their is a clear violation of the law; and, that the old terms must apply to videos when they were uploaded, not when YouTube arbitrarily decides to change the rules. I would further rule that YouTube has to provide reasonable notice. For the purposes of video production, that should be approximately 90 days.

Perhaps you’d be in favor of people uploading videos of anal sex and bomb making?

That is done all the time. YouTube has always been opposed to providing a platform for pornography. However, other platforms like YouPorn do just that. It's completely lawful. You can't offer one set of terms to a person and then change them when it suits you simply because you are in a superior bargaining position. That is unconscionable. YouTube is clearly guilty of that.

Sivad seems to be under the impression that youtube is a branch of the government not a private company. I have already tried to explain to him that it has not obligation to broadcast anything it does not want to.

I always find it amusing that people who purport to be communists defend private property rights to the hilt. You are the people who find yourselves despondent that people don't adopt socialism, but you are the best defenders of capitalism out there.

If YouTube makes an offer to broadcast videos under publicly published terms and a content creator accepts for consideration of a share of advertising revenue, this creates a contract and YouTube must abide by those terms. It cannot use its superior bargaining position to change the terms of an agreement or serve as the final arbiter in a dispute over the terms of the agreement.

I would further argue that in a dispute arising over the terms of a video, YouTube has to pay the content creator for the likely number of views and ad impressions it would receive and submit the dispute to a third party arbitration service.

Anyway, one of Google's founders is a Russian. We should be very afraid!

[Sivad]

You do not have a rebuttal because you don't have a decent argument

I don't have a decent interlocutor. You don't seem to have a good grasp of very many issues [dlt]. When you claim that a privately owned corporation can't be a public utility you've just disqualified yourself from the conversation because you don't know what you're talking about.

[Sivad]

Youtube isn't even a monopoly by any stretch of the imagination.

They are the most successful provider of their particular medium sort, but there are a multitude of services available.

"If a firm has maintained a market share in excess of two-thirds for a significant period and the firms market share is unlikely to be eroded in the near future, the Department believes that such facts ordinarily should establish a rebuttable presumption that the firm possesses monopoly power."

[Crantag]

"If a firm has maintained a market share in excess of two-thirds for a significant period and the firms market share is unlikely to be eroded in the near future, the Department believes that such facts ordinarily should establish a rebuttable presumption that the firm possesses monopoly power."

Is that a standard definition, or is there a court ruling using this statement specifically with respect to YouTube?

I think it's the former. Why else would you quote it without context?

Is YouTube up for an anti-trust suit and the quote is a court ruling?

If it is anything other than that, you are sputtering off with no purpose.

[Godstud]

When you claim that a privately owned corporation can't be a public utility you've just disqualified yourself from the conversation because you don't know what you're talking about.

That is simply an opinion, like everything you've said about Youtube Censorship. I am as qualified as you to comment on the topic, and you not liking it is just tough luck.

I disagree with you, so you make up excuses not to engage in an argument. You then name-call because you can't make up a coherent argument. It's OK to be out of ideas, but don't project your frustration out on others.

[Sivad]

That is simply an opinion

Okay there, guy.

[Sivad]

Is that a standard definition, or is there a court ruling using this statement specifically with respect to YouTube?

I think it's the former. Why else would you quote it without context?

Is YouTube up for an anti-trust suit and the quote is a court ruling?

If it is anything other than that, you are sputtering off with no purpose.

What? You claimed Youtube can't be a monopoly because there are competitors, that's just not how monopoly is defined.

[Godstud]

Okay there, guy.

I take it, by your reply, that this is completely accurate, as you are afraid, or unable, to engage in civil discussion about the topic. Why are you even bothering to post if you are incapable of accepting that other people might not agree with your opinion?

[Sivad]

All anyone has to do is google it and they'll find out in 2 seconds that you're talking out your ass.

Public utilities can be privately owned or publicly owned.Publicly owned utilities include cooperative and municipal utilities. Municipal utilities may actually include territories outside of city limits or may not even serve the entire city. Cooperative utilities are owned by the customers they serve. They are usually found in rural areas. Publicly owned utilities are non-profit.[citation needed] Private utilities, also called investor-owned utilities, are owned by investors,[7][8][9] and operate for profit, often referred to as a rate of return.

[Godstud]

Youtube is not a public utility, however. It says it CAN BE, but you have no evidence to actually prove that it is. It's opinion, on your part.

Social media as a public utility is a THEORY. I, for one, do not want government regulation of Youtube, and since it does not regulate it, as of yet, it's not a public utility. That I disagree with you is no reason to get all angry and upset.

Youtube as a public utility with government controls, would be even more heavily censored.