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Afroman found not liable in defamation case

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Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#541

Post by mothballed »

wafflemaker wrote: post #394
mothballed wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you change the culture it will be just like the drug war. Firearms familiarity and possession are a cultural rite of passage for ~most males in the USA and there is no way to regulate that in a way that meaningfully stops it short of perhaps large-scale death penalty. Pretty much everyone in Europe that wants a gun can have one within a couple weeks, the reason they don't only has a little to do with the law.

To get a gun in Norway i need 6 months in a shooting sports club. And then can only take the gun with me for shooting exercise. Strictly prohibited to have a round chambered when not standing on the shooting lane. And then only after an order from the guy running the training.

Sure, but I could print a reliable firearm with ECM'd barrel and make ammunition within a couple weeks if I went to Norway and so could most of your citizens, just following FGC-9 and "but what about ammo" instruction guides. The law says 6 months but in practice that's not the limiting factor. And then with no problem chamber a round and walk around with it in a backpack. The same applies in most of EU; of course in someplace like France or Poland you can straight up buy a black powder revolver over the counter which although heavy works quite well for most self defense cases with a firearm.

The fact is if any particular Norwegian decides today they want a gun, criminal record or not, and they have very modest means by Norwegian standards they will have it within a few weeks, no problem at all. Of course in USA criminal have been found many times with these self-made guns, now quite reliable and accurate, but a great deal of culture here is people will bear arms no matter the prison sentence hanging over their head or what the law says, and that is the cultural issue you will run into trying to curb gun possession in America. The fact Norwegians don't I think has more to do is that they don't view gun's as integrally to their natural rights and cultural imperative as much as Americans do, the physical potentiality is there for them to bear arms roughly widely as Americans do even without a change to law.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#542

Post by mywittyname »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #528
adrr wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even the most dangerous job in the US. Forest workers, commercial fishermen, pilots etc are more dangerous. If we're talking about gun violence, your corner market cashier is more likely to get shot, Has anyone thanked a 7 eleven worker for their sacrifice thas you can get a slurpee at 2am?

Roofing, I think, tends to be the most dangerous.

Depends on how you look at the numbers. But construction, logging, garbage collection and truck driving tend to be the most deadly depending on the specific metric (absolute, per capita, by industry, etc).

Expanding that, the deadliest part of being a police officer is almost certainly the driving component. No gun will save you from smashing your SUV into a pole. And the aftermarket modifications made to the vehicles aren't crash tested. A police cruiser is full of potential projectiles.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#543

Post by parineum »

pear01 wrote: post #356
parineum wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is, apparently, a strategy you wholly endorse.

People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state to detain, arrest, and potentially deprive citizens of a free country of their life, liberty or property is asinine and shameful. Cops want the power to do all this, do it incorrectly, be unable to be held account…

> People walking around with guns and badges should be held to the highest of standards. Suggesting an equivalence between the burden of proof on a hackernews commenter and individuals authorized by the state

Let's take a step back. OP, essentially, made a very basic logical error (actually not an error IMO, but a willfully misleading statement).

They said, "Statistically, [assuming a cop is a white supremacist] a pretty sensible assumption."

In my mind, what makes something a statistically safe assumption would mean that, more times than not, you'd be right. So it'd mean that greater than half of police are white supremacists. They then posted a link to support that statement which said that some white supremacist groups are instructing their members to join the police force. He's gone from the evidence of "some" white supremacist groups are telling "some" of their members among the police force to justify saying that it's a safe assumption to assume any officer is a white supremacist (greater than 50% chance for any random cop to be a white supremacist).

Considering that I strongly doubt the quantity of white supremacists that are members of white supremacist organizations in this county is even more than half of the amount of police officers, I very much doubt that the subset of individuals in the subset of organizations who were given this instruction and actually followed through on it comprises more than half of the police officers in the country.

To which I facetious said, "I'd hate to see someone use this kind of bad logic when deciding who is a criminal." Implying that, if the cops used the same logic on a neighborhood with criminals, it'd be sensible for them to assume every member of the neighborhood is a criminal. That point seemed to go over OPs head as he replied as if I wasn't making a facetious point and implied that cops do indeed do that. Presumably he thinks that's a bad thing when they do it but is perfectly reasonable for him to do.

I don't think anyone should be using faulty logic to make claims about groups of people.

> If you support the cops on this

I never said I did and, as such, the rest of this comment is not directed to me.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#544

Post by OkayPhysicist »

dehrmann wrote: post #381

Defamation is the most boring version of this case. Barring dishonest editing, of course it's fine. There are hypothetical versions of this that get more interesting. Ohio is a one-party consent state. It's not clear what happens in a two-party consent state. Law enforcement has no expectation of privacy in public spaces. Private is "it depends," think cases where low enforcement is discussing something with one part…

> If he had used bodycam footage, then you get into interesting copyright laws

Not that interesting. The US government cannot create copyrighted works. Works created by the government are public domain. This is why Ghidra (made by the NSA), for example, has a really odd license, where the parts written by the government are "not subject to U.S. copyright protections under 17 U.S.C.", whereas future contributions by the public are covered under the Apache license.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#545

Post by busymom0 »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #136

I have a potentially silly question, and obviously naive - but why so many drawn guns? Fun music videos aside, what was the background here? Were they coming in on a Massive gang fortress? Or are all the stereotypes of American police forces true and they just come guns a-blazing all the time? I mean, that wasn't even police officers with hand guns, they have army-like guys with massive automatic rifles, and they see…

Considering this was a no-knock warrant, one of the probably causes being kidnapping (shady & possibly corrupt warrant in itself) where they broke down the doors, I'd say they expected some sort of gang activity or something.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#546

Post by ctoth »

malfist wrote: post #267
delecti wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the only reason I'm not quite sure SLAPP is right is that he's a fairly prominent and well-off figure and they're a pretty small department. So I guess it's an attempted SLAPP suit, but they aimed too high (poor aim not being unfamiliar to cops).

Cops only know how to do one thing: escalate the situation. Even when it doesn't make sense too. Like suing afroman. Like shooting blindly through a house like they did when they killed Breonna Taylor. Like the time they shot Charles Kinsey who was laying on the ground with his hands in the air. Like the deadly game of Simon Says they like to play. Like any of the millions of examples where they shoot someone who was…

Millions?

That's... A very big number.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#547

Post by OkayPhysicist »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #173
Asooka wrote: post #64

I know things are bad in the USA right now, but news like these show that you still have your basic rights. This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. There have been some people abusing their freedom in recent times cough Kanye cough , but for every loud nazi there are ten more excellent people whose…

> This kind of song would not fly in any other country on Earth. No other country has Freedom of Speech laws strong enough to defend against insulting the police. I'm fairly certain you could do the exact same thing here in Canada. I honestly don't think it's as exceptional as you're making it out to be.

Canada has better defamation laws than most of Europe (as truth is an absolute defense), but the US puts the onus of proving falsehood on the plaintiff, not the defense, in cases concerning public figures. The US's freedom of speech laws are one of the few truly exceptional legal constructs we should be proud of. Most other good legal concepts the US has pioneered have been copied to similar or greater effect abroad, such as the ADA and worker's comp.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#548

Post by tptacek »

Moomoomoo309 wrote: post #118
mmooss wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

To be fair, there is legal precedent for cops not being too smart. https://ny.prelawland.com/post/719662253773832192/too-smart-... They're allowed to not hire someone if their IQ is too high. The stereotype is at the very least based on truth, and has been affirmed legally.

People keep saying this and this case from 2000 is the one instance anybody has been able to cite. Most police agencies use standardized domain-specific written exams --- the PELLETB, NTN, IOS --- that are both not general cognitive exams and have no ceiling score.

This really seems like one of those too-perfect Internet myths that just isn't ever going to die. I think the balance of evidence is that if you picked any police department in the US out at random, it would have the opposite of the incentive claimed in your comment, and no ceiling on general cognitive ability whatsoever.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#549

Post by jMyles »

purpleidea wrote: post #537

The thing I don't understand is why it isn't a felony for the police the disable the surveillance cameras! That alone should be a crime. I get that you need search warrants and protections, but you shouldn't be able to suppress the evidence of your work, since it's common for police to steal, plant evidence, or destroy property.

It is a crime, obviously. Things don't magically become crimes depending on the employer of the perpetrator - that's the whole point of "a nation of laws and not of men."

It's legal for you to arrest someone if you see them commit a felony. It's legal for you to arrest someone under a warrant if you are deputized by a Sheriff of the court (almost never happens, but legal). It's not legal for you, whether you are employed at a police agency or not, to vandalize someone's camera.

Re: Afroman found not liable in defamation case

#550

Post by busymom0 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #26
looofooo0 wrote: post #2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oponIfu5L3Y This is the video in question, police again falling trap to the Streisand effect.

Also probably a rare case where there are a few Streisand effect's all packed together, where the cops at each step made it worse for themselves. If they never did the raid in the first place, no music video, no "embarrassment". They could have cut their losses, and not made a big deal about it and probably way less people (including myself) would have ever heard about it. Instead they decided to sue, which made even…

I had never even heard of Afroman until 3 days ago when I saw some lawyers livestream the trial on YouTube. The whole thing seemed so bizarre and I was surprised why the case wasn't even summary dismissed by the judge in the first place.

Now Afroman has even more material to make YouTube videos of and humiliate these cops for eternity.

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