Pt2: had to split in two because of length. See other comment first

_______continued…

my response to this is: if there is immunity, but not for criminal prosecution, what does the immunity apply to?

moving forward, the dissenter discusses the “framework for prosecution of unofficial acts”

Quick on the heels of announcing this astonishingly broad official-acts immunity, the majority assures us that a former President can still be prosecuted for “unofficial acts.” Ante, at 15. Of course he can. No one has questioned the ability to prosecute a former President for unofficial acts Even Trump did not claim immunity for such acts and, as the majority acknowledges, such an immunity would be impossible

essentially saying, yes. unofficial immunity would be absurd.

It says that whenever the President acts in a way that is “‘not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority,’” he is taking official action

they are arguing that the statement is too broad. that it would be effectively impossible to distinguish an item from “official” to “unofficial”

so their problem is not that there doesn’t exist a method to prosecute a president for criminal actions, but that the proposed framework is not going to be effective in doing so

to conclude: i’ve read a couple dissenters and i’ve read a couple of the majority. i personally don’t think this ruling is as important as everyone is making it out to be

why?

1. the president already has these powers, except it has been in a gray legal area up until now. it is essentially writing down active policy. the president had presumed immunity for official acts before this

2. it creates a framework to determine whether or not a president is acting in his official capacity. this power gets thrown to the courts.

what this does is it gives the legislative branch [edit: judicial] a check against the president. i support more checks against the president because i think the executive is too powerful in general

now, i understand the viewpoint that should the courts want to, they could rule everything the president does as “official” and therefore the president is effectively immune should the court politically be aligned with the president.

however, i would repond that is the courts are politically aligned, they would have inevitably ruled in the same manner should this case have come up 10 yearse from now.

this case, while important in the sense that it officially reinforces this precedence, it doesn’t functionally change anything going forward

now that i’ve written out my reasoning, if you disagree with any specific points, feel free. i’m not an expert i’m a layman with a mild interest in constitutional law. i’m more than happy to admit i’m wrong. i’m not a conservative so please believe me i’m not partisanly motivated to see one side or another here. i’m going off of my own independent interpretation

Pt1:appeal to authority means nothing to me, and it shouldn’t to you, because experts and authorities can be wrong just like anyone else. i care about the merits of the argument, as everyone should

and for that, we need to critically think and analyze reasoning on its own merits.

so let’s actually read the court opinion, which you can easily find on the supreme court website if you’re actually curious.

Under our constitutional structure of separated powers, the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority. And he is entitled to at least presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts. There is no immunity for unofficial acts

so essentially - that’s exactly what i said. president has immunity for official acts and no immunity for unofficial acts. what is the court’s reasoning?

Article II of the Constitution vests “executive Power” in “a President of the United States of America.” His authority to act necessarily “stem[s] either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself.”

It follows that an Act of Congress—either a specific one targeted at the President or a generally applicable one—may not criminalize the President’s actions within his exclusive constitutional power.

So, the court’s opinion is that when a President is within his constitutionally defined powers he cannot be held criminally liable. Otherwise, for example, virtually every president for the last few decades could be held criminally liable for some crime. I brought up the examples of the classified document mishandling previously, but there are many more should you go looking.

Not all of the President’s official acts fall within his “conclusive and preclusive” authority. The reasons that justify the President’s absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for acts within the scope of his exclusive constitutional authority do not extend to conduct in areas where his authority is shared with Congress. To determine the President’s immunity in this context, the Court looks primarily to the Framers’ design of the Presidency within the separation of powers

So, not everything a president does falls within this immunity bubble. How do we decide what is official and what isn’t? Well, first we look at the seperation of powers outlined in the constitution. You know, the stuff you were taught in elementary school. 3 branches of government. What is within the scope of the executive branch, president has authority over.

The Framers designed the Presidency to provide for a “vigorous” and “energetic” Executive. The Federalist No. 70, pp. 471–472 They vested the President with “supervisory and policy responsibilities of utmost discretion and sensitivity.” Appreciating the “unique risks” that arise when the President’s energies are diverted by proceedings that might render him “unduly cautious in the discharge of his official duties,” the Court has recognized Presidential immunities and privileges “rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.”

Essentially, the argument is: the President should not be afraid to act because of fear of criminal prosecution. For example, if something like killing a political leader of an enemy state is deemed critical to national security - he has the ability to choose this course of action without fear of being charged for murder. If we did not allow for this, the president’s office would be weaker. The opinion shares many court cases and items of the constitution that reinforces this authority the president is granted.

At a minimum, the President must be immune from prosecution for an official act unless the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no “dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.”

So he can actually be prosecuted for specific acts if the proseuction can show that it doesn’t impede on the use of his constitutionally appointed powers.

As for a President’s unofficial acts, there is no immunity. Although Presidential immunity is required for official actions to ensure that the President’s decisionmaking is not distorted by the threat of future litigation stemming from those actions, that concern does not support immunity for unofficial conduct.

Again, like my previous comment - unofficial acts do not hold immunity. Items outside of his legal presidential powers are not protected.

The first step in deciding whether a former President is entitled to immunity from a particular prosecution is to distinguish his official from unofficial actions. In this case, no court thus far has drawn that distinction, in general or with respect to the conduct alleged in particular. It is therefore incumbent upon the Court to be mindful that it is “a court of final review and not first view.”

So, how do we determine what is “official” versus “unofficial”? Well, the courts decide. However, as the Supreme Court is intended by the constitution to be a “final destination” the process must start at the lower courts and work its way up to the Supreme Court.

So essentially, the decision states a) president has immunity for official acts, b) does not have immunity for unofficial acts, and c) it presents a framework and process for determining the difference between the two

the decision was ruled 6-3

so what did the dissenters say? well here’s justice Sotomayor

Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for “bold and unhesitating action” by the President

They are saying that the argument that the president neesd to act “bold and unhestitatingly” as specified by the constitution is not enough reason to warrant immunity.

the next couple pages, which i won’t quote here for brevity, outlines the crimes that Trump committed circa Jan 6th. None of this has anything to do with the argument above, but has more to do with how Trump blatantly broke the law during this event and lists several examples

The Court now confronts a question it has never had to answer in the Nation’s history: Whether a former President enjoys immunity from federal criminal prosecution.

self explanatory, we’re going back to the topic at hand

The majority makes three moves that, in effect, completely insulate Presidents from criminal liability. First, the majority creates absolute immunity for the President’s exercise of “core constitutional powers.”

i disagree with the statement “completely insulate presidents from criminal liability”. as we showed before, there is a framework for prosecuting presidents should they act in a manner outside of their constitutionally protected powers. the next statement, of course, is just a rehashing of the decision. president has immunity for his “core presidential powers”

a President’s use of any official power for any purpose, even the most corrupt, is immune from prosecution.

this is patently false. if they act in an unofficial manner, they do not get immunity. the courts have the power to determine acts “unofficial” and prosecute him

The Constitution’s text contains no provision for immunity from criminal prosecution for former Presidents

well, this is up for debate and interpretation. it’s been widely recognized that presidents have immunity for official acts. this has been the accepted situation for very long time. if you want to read about the history of this precedence: https://constitution.findlaw.com/article2/article-ii--presidential-immunity-to-criminal-and-civil-suits.html

that article from way before this court case, goes over both the constitutional basis for the precedence as well as supreme court cases that reinforced the precedence

so while the constitution does not explicitly state that the president has immunity, it can be implied that these powers arise from both the powers and responsibilities vested to the office of president

the dissenting judge says as much in the next statement

Of course, “the silence of the Constitution on this score is not dispositive.”

essentially saying - the lack of explicit mention does not by itself necessarily mean the opinion of the court is incorrect.

they then make the argument, which i will summarize for brevity, that a) the framers of the constitution provided for limited immunity for legislators and b) state constitutions at this time period had immunitities

therefore, the framers would have been aware of this and would have explicitly mentioned this if they intended this. therefore, they argue it was not intended by the framers of the constitution

my statement is - this is a valid argument. perhaps the framers not only did not intend for immunity, they left it explicitly unmentioned because they did intend for the president to have immunity.

however i believe this statement alone is not enough to justify a dissent with the opinion. mainly because there’s a lot of things that framers intended or didn’t intend that we have modified since. i don’t think i have to elaborate here.

then the dissenter goes on

Aware of its lack of textual support, the majority points out that this Court has “recognized Presidential immunities and privileges ‘rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history.’” Ante, at 10 (quoting Fitzgerald, 457 U. S., at 749). That is true, as far as it goes.

essentially saying - yes, the majority points out the established precedence that the Supreme Court has on this topic, and they are correct in using that as an argument

Nothing in our history, however, supports the majority’s entirely novel immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts.

however, nothing in the precedence applies explicitly to criminal prosecution. essentially saying - the precedence holds for presidential immunities but not from criminal prosecution.

Acts done in an official manner are immune. So for example if the president orders assassination of political leader of another country (what Trump did with Iran’s Suleinami (I’m probably butchering name)). Protects president from prosecution for murder or whatever if there is evidence it was done in the interest of the state.

Another example is something Biden / Trump and even Hilary are guilty of. The misuse or mishandling of classified materials. Since they are acting in an official manner, it isn’t a crime like it would be if a normal citizen mishandled the documents.

Acts done in an “unofficial manner” are not immune. So let’s say a Mr President does some insider trading while president to enrich himself personally. That presumably would still be illegal and he could be charged.

So who decides what is official and what isn’t? The courts. Lower courts make a determination and presumably it would go up to the SC if necessary.

It’s an interesting question. For example- Reagan’s Iran-Contra episode. Where his administration was smuggling cocaine in order to get money to covertly supply weapons to Iran. Would that be official or unofficial?

I think people need to realize the president has had broad powers to do a lot of dubious things for decades. This doesn’t necessarily increase or decrease his power, but creates a potential pathway to either prosecute or acquit him. Whereas before, it always stayed in the legal gray zone (in Reagan’s Iran Contra)

First, this conversation has little to do with fair use. Fair use is when there is an acceptable reason to break copyright. For example when you are making a parody or critique or for education purposes.

What we are talking about is the act of reading and/or learning and then using that information in order to synthesize new material. This is essentially the entire point of education. When someone goes to art school, they study many different artists and their techniques. They learn from these techniques as they merge them together in different ways to create novel art.

Everybody recognizes this is perfectly OK and to assume otherwise is absurd. So what we are talking about is not fair use, but extracting data from copyrighted material and using it to create novel material.

The distinction here is you claim when this process is automated, it should become illegal. Why?

My opinion is if it’s legal for a human to do, it should be legal for a human to automate.

What’s the limit? This needs to be absolutely explicit and easy to understand because this is what LLMs are doing. They take hundreds of thousands of similar algorithms and they create an amalgamation of it.

When is it copying and when it is “inspiration”? What’s the line between learning and copying?

I have no problem copying code either. The question is at what point does it go from

1. I’m reading code and doing research

To

2. I’m copying code

How abstracted does it have to be before it’s OK? If you write a merge sort, it might be similar to the one you learned when you were studying data structures.

Should you make sure you attribute your data structure textbook every time you write a merge sort?

Are you understanding the point I’m trying to get at?

Well let’s say there’s an algorithm to find length of longest palindrome with a set of letters. I look at 20 different implementations. Some people use hashmaps, some don’t. Some do it recursively, some don’t. Etc

I consider all of them and create my own. I decide to implement myself both recursive and hash map but also add certain novel elements.

Am I copying code? Am I breaking copyright? Can I claim I wrote it? Or do I have to give credit to all 20 people?

As for forbidding patents on software, I agree entirely. Would be a net positive for the world. You should be able to inspect all software that runs on your computer. Of course that’s a bit idealistic and pipe-dreamy.

If I look at a few implementations of an algorithm and then implement my own using those as inspiration, am I breaking copyright law and circumventing licenses?

It depends how you define effective. Of course the consumer would prefer a free market with competition and low barriers to entry. This is the most egalitarian system, where money (and therefore power) gets distributed almost democratically.

It’s a liberal democratic version of capitalism. It’s the version of capitalism that works. Not perfectly, but it rises people out of poverty and is more or less egalitarian, relative to the alternatives.

Authoritarian capitalism is where you still have the large private sector except you don’t have the political freedoms. Think China post 1970s, modern Russia, Singapore.

The government essentially rewards companies that support the power structure. They get privileges and a say at the table. It creates a sort of incestuous relationship between the government and large corporate entities.

The US is moving towards this system as wealth inequality and corporate influence rises (more strongly under Biden than Trump, might I add. Probably to do with pandemic). More $$$ = more power. More power, more influence within the government. Creates a cycle where it’s a “buy your policy” type of democracy.

Slowly our political freedoms are being eroded. Mass surveillance, the CIA and Pentagon are now allowed to spread propaganda on US soil (they were not allowed to before early 2000s), erosion of democratic institutions through populism. For example “fake elections” and events like Jan 6th. We are starting to censor and ban outside views (“misinformation” bans from Covid, the banning of TikTok, Google & Facebook & reddit & Twitter regularly manipulate the information people receive and cooperate with the government)

Only some crazy number like 20% of people approve of Congress in this country. The democracy is falling apart and some new system is forming.

As China is opening up their private market to become more like us in terms of finance, big capital, corporate rights, etc. We are closing down our political system to become more like them in terms of the loss of political freedoms, censorship, etc.

You know how China has a strong centralized government and cooperates with their big companies? Government says jump, Huawei says how high?

We have a similar system. A strong centralized government that cooperates with the big companies. The primarily difference is that on the spectrum of

Government power <-----------> corporate power

The US leans more to the right.

Really what’s interesting is both the US and China are slowly converging onto a point in the middle. Zizek said something like this some years back… authoritarian capitalism is unfortunately the most effective form of capitalism.

Telecommunications. Administration for a company that constructs fiber networks.

Ideally I’d have a 10 inch cock but unfortunately I gotta settle

It’s a question of

How much effort (man hours which ultimately translates to $$$) versus how much revenue lost (people not buying because of Firefox bugs)

In my experience this depends on your specific application. Sometimes there are weird bugs or behavior where you have to really hunt down what’s going on. Other times it’s as simple as changing a few css lines or something.

I view India as a rising power that has the potential to rival China and the USA. I think the culture is backwards in many ways and advanced in others. I don’t like your current administration, but I do think India overall has interesting politics. I mean, you guys have an active Maoist insurgency. Pretty wild for the 21st century.

I tend to get along well with Indians I meet in the states. I appreciate India long history and cultural impact (Buddha came from India for example). There were democracies in India before Athens was a thing.

All in all India’s a rising power with a lot of potential. Unfortunately I don’t think they will reach China-status anytime soon because they don’t exercise as much central control as China does.

In some ways this is good, Cultural Revolution wasn’t exactly a great experience for a lot of people. But in other ways it means the Indian government doesn’t have the power to reshape India in a way where it can successfully rival the European powers.

Well couple of things.

First, I said it gives more incentive. Not explicitly mandates it. So I’m not saying all subscription services are great to the consumer. I’m saying as a whole, it’s probably better than the alternative.

Second, Netflix is a bit of a unique case I think. They essentially created the streaming industry back during blockbuster days. Nobody thought streaming rights had any value so they licensed them to Netflix for cheap. Netflix blew up because it had access to a very large catalog of media.

After companies realized they could make more money streaming things themselves, they stopped renewing the licenses to Netflix.

Netflix was very large because of their access to these licenses. If they lose the license, they over the long term lose their customers. So they took a gamble and invested heavily in self-made media in many different languages. Some were a success, like Stranger Things, but most were flops.

Essentially they became this large corporate behemoth and they are desperately trying to remain in their top hegemon spot. Once a company reaches that size, they are an entirely different animal. And unfortunately because of the way streaming rights works, you’ll probably only see large corporate streaming sites in the foreseeable future

I prefer subscription models. That way I’m paying with my money and not my content. Of course with Google you’re doing both… but in principle I support it. I pay for a family plan and have some friends/ family on it.

It hate ads and to me it’s easily worth the monthly fee. I looked up a YouTube video on a TV that wasn’t signed in and there was like 60 seconds of ads! I’ve had YouTube premium / red for years I didn’t realize it was getting so bad.

But yeah, I support subscription model. More sustainable and honest way for a website to make a profit. In a subscription you are the buyer and the website is the product. In a free model ad companies are the buyer and you are the product.

They have more incentive under the subscription model to create a better experience for the user. In a free they have incentive to squeeze user as much as possible. I think it’s one of the main drivers of enshittification

But I’d be willing to bet 90% of the people who, in a pique of ire, replace their current windows with a linux distro, won’t bother to do the same when they purchase a new laptop down the road.

Linux is superior to Windows. Not only do I get more done and faster, I enjoy the process much more. For example, you know AHK? That useful application on Windows where you can make macros?

Well, on base Fedora you have an AHK built right into the system without any modification and you can use shell scripts- aka a real language instead of the wonky AHK language.

That’s one example. I can list them off rapid fire but I’d just write a wall of text unnecessarily.

My point is just that Linux is better. I don’t use Linux because it’s cool or interesting or I’m a hobbyist or anything like that. I use it because it’s the better option for the things I do on my computer.

That may be different for you. If you are a graphic designer or a music producer that may be different. But I’m usually in a terminal and Unix is the superior terminal. Windows terminal is such a joke they literally had to port in the Linux terminal through WSL

It all depends on what you use it for. There are many valid criticisms of GIMP but the name is such a silly one. It stands for GNU Image Manipulation Program.

If you’re a professional, then you use Photoshop. But for the vast majority of people GIMP is perfectly adequate. I’ve done so much on there over the last 2 decades. I’ve done construction drawings, forged documents, removed people from pictures, used it to make it seem like pictures of receipts were scanned, etc

If you don’t enjoy having driver issues, just install regular old Fedora with Gnome. The fancier you get with Linux, the more maintenance you have to put into the system. Fedora works out of the box.

Daily use of Linux & MacOS is virtually identical. Same terminal commands. Similar file system standards. You have homebrew as a package manager on MacOS. You use whatever comes with your distro on Linux (dnf, apt-get, I forget the arch Linux one. Yaort? Yum?)

Really I see no reason for anyone to stay on Windows. You can play 99% of games on Linux these days. I’m not exaggerating, it’s very specific multi-player games that don’t work.

Maybe if you use specific software for a niche industry or purpose then it’s worth having Linux. But even in those cases, you can just use a VM.

That’s what I do on my MacBook pro. I have a VM with windows just to run a specific program a couple times a week.

On my desktop at home I just use Linux and have for the last 10 years or so